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Psychiatry & Mind Control Part I Psychiatry, Mind Control, Psychotronic, microwave, voice in head

Wake up meat sacks. One of the major points of this video's aesthetic is that this technology is at minimum 80 years old.

I Am The Highway Album: Audioslave (2002) by Audioslave On this early Audioslave track, frontman Chris Cornell is claiming his self-worth after being taken for granted in his relationships. "I am not your rolling wheels, I am the highway," he sings. He determines the only person he can rely on is himself, but the road to independence is a long one: "I put millions of miles under my heels, and still too close to you I feel." Ann Wilson of Heart recorded this for her 2018 album, Immortal. The collection of cover songs paid tribute to musicians who recently died (Cornell committed suicide in 2017). Wilson connects "I Am The Highway" to Cornell's inability to deal with fame. She told Tone Deaf: "The expectations that were put on him being the voice of a generation and a superstar of the 90's and 2000's and stuff was too much for him." Wilson released a statement explaining why she chose this particular song to honor Cornell: "The song is strong, confident, spiritual. It's about a person who refuses to be tied down to the mundane, who is constantly looking for freedom and independence on a more universal scale, not just ordinary everyday reality. It was the cry of a soul, and it's a beautiful song. Chris and I were friends; we had a lot in common, we were both outsiders in a way. He left us with amazing music." The song opens with the lyric "Pearls and swine, bereft of me," which is a biblical reference to Jesus' Sermon on the Mount from Matthew 7:6, which states: "Do not throw pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet." In other words, don't share anything of value with someone who refuses to appreciate it. Cornell began playing an acoustic version in the middle of the band's live sets and the positive response gave him the courage to bring the approach to some of his other tunes, which prompted his solo acoustic Songbook tour in 2011. He told Walmart Soundcheck: "That song in particular was the first one I stood up in front of a lot of people and played acoustically in Audioslave shows, and it was a kind of scary thing to do. It was an important thing that the band backed me up doing it." This peaked at #3 on the Alternative chart (then known as the Modern Rock chart) and #2 on the Mainstream Rock chart. This was used on the teen drama One Tree Hill in the 2006 episode "Can't Stop This Thing We've Started." Pearls and swine bereft of me Long and weary my road has been I was lost in the cities Alone in the hills No sorrow or pity for leaving I feel I am not your rolling wheels I am the highway I am not your carpet ride I am the sky Friends and liars don't wait for me I'll get on all by myself I put millions of miles Under my heels And still too close to you I feel I am not your rolling wheels I am the highway I am not your carpet ride I am the sky I am not your blowing wind I am the lightning I am not your autumn moon I am the night The night I am not your rolling wheels I am the highway I am not your carpet ride I am the sky I am not your blowing wind I am the lightning I am not your autumn moon I am the night The night Yeah, yeah, yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah

Evil Ways Album: Santana (1969) Black Magic Woman Album: Abraxas (1970) Santana Evil Ways was originally recorded by Willie Bobo in 1965; it was written by Bobo's guitarist, Sonny Henry. Bobo was Latin Jazz percussionist who was a big influence on Santana and played on some of their tracks in the late '70s. "He was one of the first guys who tried to merge Latin music and blues together on record," Carlos Santana said in The Guitar Greats by John Tobler and Stuart Grundy. "He did it before us, because we were doing it on the street, and he was already doing it on records." Gregg Rolie, who joined Journey in 1973, sang lead on this. Carlos Santana, whom the band is named after, rarely took lead vocals but got plenty of guitar solos. His solo in Evil Ways is about 90 seconds long. Santana made a huge impact at the Woodstock festival, where they included "Evil Ways" in their set. They hadn't released their first album yet, but had made a name for themselves playing live shows on the West Coast. Their manager, Bill Graham, got them on the bill, playing the same day as their San Francisco cohorts The Grateful Dead. Their first album, Santana, was released two weeks later amid the raft of positive press from Woodstock. The rhythmic chant track "Jingo" was issued as the first single from the album, reaching #56 in the US. "Evil Ways" was the next single, and it climbed to #9. "Black Magic Woman" was a hit for Santana, but few people know that it's actually a cover of a 1968 Fleetwood Mac song that hit #37 in the UK. Peter Green, who was a founding member of Fleetwood Mac, wrote the lyrics. Many also don't know that Santana started out as a blues band, just like Fleetwood Mac. "I used to go to see the original Fleetwood Mac, and they used to kill me, just knock me out," Carlos Santana said in the book The Guitar Greats. "To me, they were the best blues band." Santana put their own spin on the song, incorporating Latin textures, but they kept the basic sound from the original intact. The 1:49 instrumental at the end is called "Gypsy Queen," and was written by the Hungarian jazz guitarist Gabor Szabo. It was omitted from Santana's 1974 Greatest Hits album, even though radio stations usually play "Black Magic Woman" and "Gypsy Queen" as one song. The original version is based on a blues song Peter Green wrote for Fleetwood Mac's first UK album called "I Loved Another Woman." Mick Fleetwood called the original version, "Three minutes of sustain/reverb guitar with two exquisite solos from Peter." The royalties generated by Santana's cover of this song helped sustain the song's writer, Peter Green, after he left Fleetwood Mac. Green gave most of his money away when he left the band, and would have found himself destitute later in the '70s if he didn't get checks from his old hits. After this was released, Peter Green befriended some people who were into black magic. In an interview with Cameron Crowe of Rolling Stone magazine, Christine McVie said these were the people who turned him on to acid, which led to Green leaving Fleetwood Mac. Santana keybord player Gregg Rolie sang lead on this. He joined Journey in 1973. For this song's solo, Santana played across the Latin rhythm on his Gibson Les Paul Special through the amp and rode the volume knob throughout the track to add sustain and distortion as required. "Black Magic Woman" was the first single from Santana's second album, Abraxas, released in September 1970. In August 1969, they delivered one of the most memorable performances at Woodstock and released their debut album just two weeks later. Thrust into stardom, they toured constantly and didn't have much time to write new songs, so they included two covers on Abraxas; their version of Tito Puente's "Oye Como Va" was the second single from the album, and also a hit. Their first three albums all fulfilled the promise of their Woodstock performance and made them one of the biggest bands in America, but in 1972 they started to fracture and went through a number of lineup changes. The band reinvented themselves many times over the years, with guitarist and namesake Carlos Santana the constant. In 1999, at a career nadir, they released one of the best-selling and most-acclaimed albums of that era: Supernatural. 1967- Carlos Santana Guitar, vocals Gregg Rolie Keyboards, vocals David Brown Bass 1967-1971 Michael Shrieve Drums Mike Carabello Percussion Jose Chepito Areas Percussion Neal Schon Guitar 1971- Coke Escovedo Percussion 1971- Tom Rutley Bass 1971- The group formed in the Latin District of San Francisco. They are named after group leader Carlos Santana, and were originally known as the Santana Blues Band. It's one of the few popular groups named after a guitarist in the band (The J. Geils Band and Van Halen are others). They appeared at both the original (1969) and second (1994) Woodstock. When they played the 1969 festival, they hadn't yet released their first album - their manager, Bill Graham, pulled some strings to get them on the bill. They went on sooner than expected, catching Carlos in the middle of a mescaline experience. "I was praying to God to keep me in time and in tune," he said. Their performance was one of the most acclaimed and thrust them to stardom. As Graham predicted, it went to their heads: Carlos embraced an extravagant rock star lifestyle, but soon changed direction and went down a more spiritual path.

My My Hey Hey (Out Of The Blue) Album: Rust Never Sleeps (1979) Hey Hey, My My (Into The Black) Album: Rust Never Sleeps (1979) Cortez the Killer Album: Zuma (1975) Cinnamon Girl Album: Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (1969) Neil Young & Crazy Horse Young alludes to three specific artists in the lyrics of My My Hey Hey (Out Of The Blue): "Rock and roll is here to stay" - This is the title of a 1958 song by Danny & the Juniors, a vocal group best known for their hit "At The Hop." They proclaim, "Rock 'n roll is here to stay, it will never die." "The king is gone but he's not forgotten" - "The King" is Elvis Presley, who died in 1977, two years before this song was released. "This is the story of a Johnny Rotten" - Johnny Rotten (real name: John Lydon) was lead singer of punk rock pioneers The Sex Pistols. He often seemed hell-bent on self destruction to ensure he would burn out and not fade away, but ended up having a very long and productive career. Around 1977 Neil Young formed a band called The Ducks that included Jeff Blackburn. The band played for a $3 cover charge in the hip Santa Cruz club environment. "My My, Hey Hey (Out Of The Blue)" came out of this period and Jeff Blackburn received co-writing credit on the track with Young. Jeff Blackburn recalled to Uncut magazine: "We were old friends going back to the '60s. I was playing in Santa Cruz with John Craviotto and Bob Mosley (Moby Grape) who were a great rhythm section, when Neil ducked into it. That was a great summer. We played about 30 shows with The Ducks, we played every night. It really was a mighty month. Neil and I swapped ideas. We both had material, we had ideas and things came together as we were rocking together pretty good. I had a song with the line, 'Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. It's better to burn out than it is to rust.' Neil liked that and the whole rust thing came from that line - rust never sleeps. Not many people share a credit with Neil Young. It's hard to say why I got one, you'd need to ask Neil. But you never know what he's going to do next." Young released two versions of the song on the album: an acoustic rendition called "My My, Hey Hey (Out Of The Blue)," and an electric version called "Hey Hey, My My (Into The Black)" that he recorded with his band, Crazy Horse. Both versions were included on the single, with "Hey Hey, My My" the A-side, which is what most radio stations play. The electric version has slightly different lyric and omits the famous line, "It's better to burn out than to fade away." "My My, Hey Hey" is on the first side of the album, which is all acoustic. My My Hey Hey (Out Of The Blue) was the first track on Rust Never Sleeps. Young released a concert documentary with that title the same day as the album. Kurt Cobain's suicide note contained a line from My My Hey Hey (Out Of The Blue): "It's better to burn out than to fade away." That line has become one of the most famous song lyrics of all time. When Young was asked by Time magazine in 2005 about the line and Cobain's death, he said: "The fact that he left the lyrics to my song right there with him when he killed himself left a profound feeling on me, but I don't think he was saying I have to kill myself because I don't want to fade away. I don't think he was interpreting the song in a negative way. It's a song about artistic survival, and I think he had a problem with the fact that he thought he was selling out, and he didn't know how to stop it. He was forced to do tours when he didn't want to, forced into all kinds of stuff. I was trying to get a hold of him - because I had heard some of the things he was doing to himself - just to tell him it's OK not to tour, it's OK not to do these things, just take control of your life and make your music. Or, hey, don't make music. But as soon as you feel like you're out there pretending, you're f--cked. I think he knew that instinctively, but he was young and he didn't have a lot of self-control. And who knows what other personal things in his life were having a negative impression on him at the time?" Def Leppard used the burn out/fade away line at the beginning of their song "Rock of Ages." This was included on Live Rust, a concert album recorded later that year. Young performed these concerts with giant amps and microphones on stage as props. A line from this song, "rust never sleeps," was used as the album title. Young got the line from Mark Mothersbaugh, who is a member of the band Devo. Neil Young performed My My Hey Hey (Out Of The Blue) as a duet with Devo and Booji Boy in his movie Human Highway. The full duet is about twelve minutes, and takes place during a hallucination scene in the movie. The movie itself is only good as a B-grade movie, but the live footage of Devo in costume and Neil Young together is worth the price on the video. In the 1986 movie Highlander, the villain Kurgan quotes this song to people inside a church: "I have something to say! It's better burn out, than to fade away!" By this he means to glorify his ongoing perilous battle for immortality as opposed to living a normal humble life. This is quite an obvious metaphor for being a rock star. The song explicitly deals with the struggles of being a rock musician. As quoted on Hyper Rust, Neil Young said, "The essence of the rock'n'roll spirit to me, is that it's better to burn out really bright than to sort of decay off into infinity. Even though if you look at it in a mature way, you'll think, "well, yes ... you should decay off into infinity, and keep going along." Rock'n'roll doesn't look that far ahead. Rock'n'roll is right now. What's happening right this second" Stephen King quoted the lyric "Out of the blue and into the black" in the epigraph to his 1986 horror novel, It. In the story, an evil entity disguised as a clown emerges from hibernation every 27 years to terrorize the town of Derry, Maine. In the film adaptation's 2019 sequel, It Chapter Two, King makes a cameo appearance as a shopkeeper who wears a Neil Young Harvest Moon T-shirt. Director Andy Muschietti told the Dutch online newspaper NU.nl he was surprised when the author seemed annoyed by the garment. King, who was in the midst of a cocaine addiction when he wrote It, said he wasn't really a Neil Young fan and was probably high when he quoted him in the novel. Hey Hey, My My (Into The Black) is an alternate version of Young's song "My My, Hey Hey (Out Of The Blue)," which also appears on the Rust Never Sleeps album. The lyrics are slightly different, and "Hey Hey, My My" is electric, while "My My, Hey Hey," is acoustic. Young recorded this with the band Crazy Horse. It was the first time Young recorded with them since Zuma in 1975. In the biography of Neil Young, Shakey by Jimmy McDonough, Neil points out that this song came about when he was jamming with the band Devo. The phrase "rust never sleeps" was uttered by Mark Mothersbaugh, and Neil, loving the impromptu line, acquired it. >> The lyrics refer to "The King" and Johnny Rotten as rockers whose legacies live on. The King is Elvis Presley, and Johnny Rotten was the lead singer of The Sex Pistols. In The Complete Guide to the Music of Neil Young, Young explains why the line "rust never sleeps" appealed to him. "It relates to my career; the longer I keep on going the more I have to fight this corrosion. And now that's gotten to be like the World Series for me. The competition's there, whether I will corrode and eventually not be able to move anymore and just repeat myself until further notice or whether I will be able to expand and keep the corrosion down a little." Hey Hey, My My (Into The Black) is the last song on the electric side of Rust Never Sleeps. The first side (first five songs on the CD) are acoustic. The song has become a standby of Young's live performances, being played at nearly every live show throughout his career, often as a closing song. John Lennon expressed his disagreement with the "burn out or fade away" sentiment in a 1980 interview with Playboy: "I hate it. It's better to fade away like an old soldier than to burn out. If he was talking about burning out like Sid Vicious, forget it. I don't appreciate the worship of dead Sid Vicious or of dead James Dean or dead John Wayne. It's the same thing. Making Sid Vicious a hero, Jim Morrison - it's garbage to me. I worship the people who survive." Young responded to the quote, saying that he was describing the paradoxical nature of the rock-and-roll lifestyle, not advocating it. Cortez the Killer is about Hernán Cortez, the Spanish conqueror of the Aztec Empire. The Aztecs lived in what is now considered Mexico, and Cortez had an army of 600 sail from what is now Cuba to the Aztec town of Tobasco (yes, where the hot peppers and the name of the sauce originally came from). The Aztecs thought Cortez was a god and bowed before him. They let his army roam free. Cortez, however, became wary of their good nature and took their leader hostage. He then captured and killed many of their people. He also unwittingly brought new diseases to the Americas, which the natives had no immunities towards. On top of all this, he built what is now Mexico City with slave labor. He returned to Spain a hero. Neil Young's Cortez the Killer brings an interesting alternative viewpoint to the history of Cortez' invasion. While not a complete history of Cortez or the Aztecs, it's title alone gives you a very good idea of how Young viewed the invasion. Young's romantic imagery near end of the track highlight the emotional toll (lost romance, etc.) of the invasion. Peace is a theme of this song. From verse six: "But they built up with their bare hands, what we still can't do today" indicates that even in the most barbarian times there was still peace, and in present day, as sophisticated as it may be, there is anything but peace. The Aztecs were peaceful, representing sort of a utopian nonviolent society. Cortez and the Spanish brigade used trickery to beat the Aztecs, people who had never committed any offensive acts towards the Spanish. The Spanish could represent the status quo society, completely antonymic from the amicable Aztecs. Neil Young's ex-wife Pegi is also a singer/songwriter. When we spoke with Pegi and asked how personal experiences inspired her songs, she told us: "I think there's little kernels of our lives in many of our songs, unless you're writing 'Cortez' or something. It must have been in another life my husband was an Incan warrior." The last verse of Cortez the Killer switches from a third to a first-person perspective, characterizing the faceless, historical figure of Cortez into someone romantically pining for an unnamed somebody: "And I know she's living there, and she loves me to this day. I still can't remember when or how I lost my way." Since the song was written around the time of his split with wife Carrie Snodgress, there's speculation that it's at least partially autobiographical. However, when Jimmy McDoncough, author of the young biography Shakey, questioned the singer about this, Neil simply said: "Its not about information. The song is not meant for them to think about me. The song is meant for people to think about themselves. The specifics about what songs are about are not necessarily constructive or relevant. A lot of stuff I make up because it came to me." Cortez the Killer fades out after around seven and a half minutes. According to Neil's father in the book Neil and Me, this was because an electrical circuit had blown, halting the recording process. This caused a final verse to be lost; Neil, however, opined that he "never liked that verse anyway." While an official recording of the lost verse was never released, the singer added the lines, "Ship is breaking up on the rocks. Sand beach... so close" to the end of the song while on his 2003 Greedale Tour. This song has one of the longest intros in rock: Young's vocals done come in until 3:22. During a show in Manassas, Virginia on August 13, 1996, Young told the audience that he wrote this song after eating too many hamburgers in high school. "One night I stayed up too late when I was goin' to high school. I ate like six hamburgers or something. I felt terrible... very bad... this is before McDonald's. I was studying history, and in the morning I woke up I'd written this song." The song's slow, rambling vibe was partly down to rhythm guitarist Frank Sampedro's drug use. Sampedro recalled to Uncut: "When we recorded 'Cortez,' I had just smoked some angel dust. The whole song I thought the second chord, D, was the first chord. So I emphasized that every time round, while Neil was leaning on the first chord, E minor. I think that helped keep a really slow tune moving along." Young has never said who the Cinnamon Girl is, as he prefers to leave lyric interpretations to the listener. In the liner notes of his Decade compilation, he stated: "Wrote this for a city girl on peeling pavement coming at me thru Phil Ochs eyes playing finger cymbals. It was hard to explain to my wife." Phil Ochs was a folk/protest singer active in the '60s who had issues with his mental stability (although his paranoia about the FBI turned out not to be far off). Young's wife at the time was Susan Acevedo; they were married for just one year at this point. Though Young would not identify his muse, the bit about finger cymbals is a reference to '60s folk singer Jean Ray, who performed with then-husband Jim Glover under the name Jim and Jean. Phil Ochs, a close friend of a couple, penned the title song to their second album, Changes. Brian Ray, Paul McCartney's guitarist and Jean's younger brother, claims Cinnamon Girl is indeed about his sister. Jean, herself, said she inspired another Neil Young song from the Everybody Knows This is Nowhere album: "Cowgirl in the Sand." In the book Shakey, Young copped to having a crush on Ray. When asked if she is the Cinnamon Girl, Young said, "Only part of the song. There's images in there that have to do with Jean and there's images that have to do with other people." Young recorded this with his band Crazy Horse. It was originally released on the Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere album in 1969. Young put out an alternate version as a single in 1970, which did well partly because he was getting exposure as a member of Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. In Neil Young: Long May You Run: The Illustrated History, Neil Young talked about poaching the band The Rockets for the formation of Crazy Horse, who he first recorded with on Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere: "The truth is, I probably did steal them away from the pother band, which was a good band. But only because what we did, we went somewhere." He later goes on to say, "That's the hardest part, is the guilt of the trail of destruction that I've left behind me." In the same work, it is also mentioned that "With songs such as 'Cinnamon Girl,' 'Down By The River,' and 'Cowgirl in the Sand,' Crazy Horse clearly gave Neil Young the kind of sympathetic and almost telepathic backing he needed." Neil Young went on to declare Crazy Horse "the American Rolling Stones." The band Type O Negative did a remake on of Cinnamon Girl their 1996 album October Rust. The song was also covered by Smashing Pumpkins on the Reel Sessions bootleg. That's Danny Whitten singing high harmony on this this song with Young. Whitten was a singer/guitarist in Young's backing band Crazy Horse, which released its own album in 1970 featuring a few Whitten compositions, including "I Don't Want To Talk About It," later a #1 UK hit for Rod Stewart. Whitten spent his last years battling a heroin addiction, and in 1972 died after overdosing on alcohol and Valium. The liner notes to Decade reveal that "Down by the River," "Cinnamon Girl," and "Cowgirl in the Sand" all in a single afternoon - while sick with a 103 degree temperature. Also, they were recorded after being together with the band Crazy Horse for only two weeks." Crazy Horse bassist Billy Talbot recalled to Uncut magazine in 2021: "What I remember about 'Cinnamon Girl' is the four of us playing it - me, Ralph (Molina), Danny (Whitten) and Neil and realizing, 'Oh yeah, we can do this.' There's Danny's guitar, there's Neil's voice and guitar, and Ralph and I just need to keep the beat. When you are inside a song like that, it's something beautiful. It sounded good and I liked it, then we got to the bridge and I loved it! We were able to get very psychedelic; we could slow it down and it got bigger and even more beautiful. I don't think we worked on it for long, we really did just play it once or twice before we got the take." When legendary British DJ "Whispering Bob" Harris made his BBC Radio 1 debut on the August 19, 1970 episode of Sounds of the Seventies, "Cinnamon Girl" was the first record he played. In 2020, a video appeared on YouTube showing Young encountering a fan in a public park. Using the fan's guitar, he gives a brief tutorial on how to play "Cinnamon Girl."

We Got The Beat Our Lips Are Sealed Album: Beauty and the Beat (1981) The Go-Go's The Go-Go's were an American all-female rock band formed in Los Angeles in 1978. Except for short periods when other musicians joined briefly, the band has had a relatively stable lineup consisting of Charlotte Caffey on lead guitar and keyboards, Belinda Carlisle on lead vocals, Gina Schock on drums, Kathy Valentine on bass, and Jane Wiedlin on rhythm guitar. They are widely considered the most successful all-female rock band of all time. The quintet emerged from the L.A. punk rock scene of the late 1970s and in 1981 released their debut album Beauty and the Beat. A first for an all-female band writing their material and playing their instruments, the LP topped the Billboard album chart and remains an achievement yet to be matched. Beauty and the Beat is considered one of the "cornerstone albums of US new wave" (AllMusic), having broken barriers and paved the way for a host of other new American acts. It yielded two of the Go-Go's four biggest Hot 100 hits—"Our Lips Are Sealed" (no. 20) and "We Got the Beat" (no. 2)—and, after a long and steady climb, reached number one in the chart dated March 6, 1982. The album stayed at the top for six consecutive weeks, eventually selling over two million copies. The group, credited as simply Go-Go's on all of their US releases, was nominated for the Best New Artist award at the 24th Annual Grammy Awards. The Go-Go's broke up in 1985, with each member embarking on a solo career and Carlisle being the most successful, having several top-5 singles through the late 1980s. They reconvened several times in the 1990s, releasing a new album in 2001, God Bless the Go-Go's, and touring. They received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2011. Though the band's 2016 performances were billed as a farewell tour, the band remained active on an ad hoc basis for several years afterward. Head Over Heels, a musical featuring the songs of the Go-Go's, ran on Broadway at the Hudson Theatre from 2018 to 2019. The group was inducted into the Women Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2021, and shortly after that announced their disbandment. Formed in Los Angeles in 1978 as the Misfits by Charlotte Caffey, Belinda Carlisle (vocals), Jane Wiedlin (guitar, background vocals), the Go-Go's also included Margot Olavarria on bass and Elissa Bello on drums. They were formed as a punk band and had roots in the L.A. punk community. They shared a rehearsal space with the Motels and Carlisle, under the name "Dottie Danger", had briefly been a member of punk rock band the Germs. After she became temporarily ill, she separated from the Germs before ever playing a gig. The band began playing gigs at punk venues such as The Masque and the Whisky a Go Go in Los Angeles and the Mabuhay Gardens in San Francisco alongside bands such as X, Fear, the Plugz and the Controllers. Charlotte Caffey (lead guitar, keyboards, background vocals) was added later in 1978, and in the summer of 1979, Gina Schock replaced Bello on drums. With these lineup changes, the group began moving towards their more familiar power pop sound. The group frequently met at a Denny's on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, and it was there they chose the band's name. In late 1979, the band recorded a five-song demo at Gold Star Studios in Los Angeles, and in 1980, they supported the British ska revival groups Madness and The Specials in both Los Angeles and England. The Go-Go's subsequently spent half of 1980 touring England, earning a sizable following and releasing the demo version of "We Got the Beat" on Stiff Records, which became a minor UK hit. In December 1980, original bassist Olavarria fell ill[17] and was replaced with Kathy Valentine, who had played guitar in bands such as Girlschool and the Textones. Valentine had not previously played bass guitar. Carlisle also related in her autobiography, Lips Unsealed, that according to the band's view, another reason for Olavarria's dismissal from the Go-Go's was that she frequently missed rehearsals, due largely to her dissatisfaction with the band's move away from punk and toward pop. In late 1982, Olavarria sued the remaining band members for wrongful removal. The lawsuit was settled in 1984. Olavarria later joined Martin Atkins' band Brian Brain. The Go-Go's signed to I.R.S. Records in April 1981. The following year, they toured with The Police on the Ghost in the Machine Tour. Their debut album, Beauty and the Beat, was a surprise hit: it topped the U.S. charts for six weeks in 1982 and eventually received a double platinum certification. The album was also successful outside the U.S., charting at No. 2 in Canada, where it received a platinum certification, and No. 27 in Australia. In 2003, the album was ranked No. 413 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. "Our Lips Are Sealed" and a new version of "We Got the Beat" were popular singles in North America in early 1982. During this period, the Go-Go's started building a fanbase. In 1982, the group was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best New Artist. Go-Go's guitarist Jane Wiedlin wrote Our Lips Are Sealed with the British musician Terry Hall, who was lead singer of The Specials. In an interview with Wiedlin, she told the story: "In 1980 we were playing at The Whisky on Sunset Strip, and The Specials were in town from England. They came to see us, and they really liked us and asked us if we would be their opening act on their tour. I met Terry Hall, the singer of The Specials, and ended up having kind of a romance. He sent me the lyrics to 'Our Lips Are Sealed' later in the mail, and it was kind of about our relationship, because he had a girlfriend at home and all this other stuff. So it was all very dramatic. I really liked the lyrics, so I finished the lyrics and wrote the music to it, and the rest is history. And then his band, The Fun Boy Three, ended up recording it, too - they did a really great version of it, also. It was like a lot gloomier than the Go-Go's' version." Speaking about her relationship with Terry Hall, Wiedlin adds: "Like I said, he had a girlfriend in England, and they were talking about getting married and all this stuff. So I don't know how I got in the picture. And, you know, that's something that I did as a teenager, maybe I was 20. That's something I would never do now, knowingly enter into a relationship with someone who was with someone else. I mean, it was completely screwed on my part. Although I think when people do that, you really have to look at the person who's in the relationship, and they have to take the burden of the responsibility as well. Anyways, it was one of those things with the tragic letters, 'I just can't do this.' You know, 'I'm betrothed to another.' All that kind of stuff." Jane Wiedlin sings the "hush, my darling" interlude on this song. She was a stalwart backing vocalist in the group, but was never allowed to sing lead. When she asked to do lead vocals on "Forget That Day," a song she wrote for their third album in 1984, she was rebuffed and left the group before the album was completed. The band didn't last much longer, breaking up in 1985 before releasing another album. "We'd been together about two years when I wrote Our Lips Are Sealed. Some of the songs from the very beginning were songs that ended up part of our repertoire. Others fell by the wayside. I remember when I wrote it, I was really afraid to show it to the band in case they didn't like it and all this stuff. But luckily they did like it." "We Got The Beat" was written by guitarist Charlotte Caffey, who drew inspiration from some Motown beats, specifically one that mentioned the name of her group. Caffey said, "I thought it would be very clever to do 'Going To A Go-Go.' I thought, Well, let's try working this out as a cover song. Which is really funny when I think about it. I was listening to it a lot one day, and later that night, the song came to me within five minutes. I don't even know if it has anything to do with listening to that song, but this whole idea came to me. It was one of those things that just went right through me and came out my hand; I wrote it down, recorded it a little bit, and then brought it into rehearsal a few days later." This plays in the opening scene of the 1982 movie Fast Times at Ridgemont High, where we meet the main characters in their natural habitat: the Ridgemont Mall. The song doesn't appear on the soundtrack but got a lot of attention from the film. Other movies to use the song include: Brimstone & Treacle (1982) Romy and Michele's High School Reunion (1997) Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius (2001) My Little Pony: The Movie (2017) Poms (2019) The song ties into the album title, Beauty And The Beat, which was Belinda Carlisle's idea. The group's first album, it was recorded in New York City with producer Richard Gottehrer, the man who gave us "I Want Candy." The Go-Go's were based in Los Angeles, so during this time they stayed together in suites at the Wellington Hotel in New York City, causing lots of mischief and having way too much fun. The group brainstormed ideas for the cover and decided to go with a spa theme, showing the girls wrapped in towels with cream on their faces. Their art director, George DuBois, took the photos in the hotel, with shots of each member in the bathtub for use on the back cover. According to Kathy Valentine, their manager, Ginger Canzoneri, got the towels from Macy's and returned them after the shoot. They used Pond's cold cream on their faces. This opens the musical Head Over Heels, based on the music of The Go-Go's, which played on Broadway in 2018. When an oracle, played by Peppermint of RuPaul's Drag Race, foresees a beatless future for the Elizabethan-era townsfolk of Arcadia, they respond with the tune We Got The Beat. Belinda Carlisle – lead vocals, percussion (1978–1985, 1990, 1994, 1999–2022) Jane Wiedlin – rhythm guitar, backing vocals (1978–1985, 1990, 1994, 1999–2022), lead guitar (1978) Charlotte Caffey – lead guitar, keyboards, backing vocals (1978–1985, 1990, 1994, 1999–2022) Margot Olavarria – bass (1978–1980) Elissa Bello – drums (1978–1979)

Should I Stay Or Should I Go Album: Combat Rock (1982) Train In Vain (Stand By Me) Album: London Calling (1979) bonus track... The Clash Should I Stay Or Should I Go is one of the more popular songs by The Clash, this one uses a very unusual technique: Spanish lyrics echoing the English words. Singing the Spanish parts with Joe Strummer was Joe Ely, a Texas singer whose 1978 album Honky Tonk Masquerade got the attention of The Clash when they heard it in England. When Ely and his band performed in London, The Clash went to a show and took them around town after the performance. They became good friends, and when The Clash came to Texas in 1979, they played some shows together. They stayed in touch, and when The Clash returned to America in 1982, they played more shows together and Ely joined them in the studio when they were recording Combat Rock at Electric Ladyland Studio in New York. In a 2012 Songfacts interview with Joe Ely, he explained: "I'm singing all the Spanish verses on that, and I even helped translate them. I translated them into Tex-Mex and Strummer kind of knew Castilian Spanish, because he grew up in Spain in his early life. And a Puerto Rican engineer (Eddie Garcia) kind of added a little flavor to it. So it's taking the verse and then repeating it in Spanish." When we asked Ely whose idea the Spanish part was, he said, "I came in to the studio while they were working out the parts. They'd been working on the song for a few hours already, they had it sketched out pretty good. But I think it was Strummer's idea, because he just immediately, when it came to that part, he immediately went, 'You know Spanish, help me translate these things.' (Laughs) My Spanish was pretty much Tex-Mex, so it was not an accurate translation. But I guess it was meant to be sort of whimsical, because we didn't really translate verbatim." According to Strummer, Eddie Garcia, the sound engineer, called his mother in Brooklyn Heights and got her to translate some of the lyrics over the phone. Eddie's mother is Ecuadorian, so Joe Strummer and Joe Ely ended up singing in Ecuadorian Spanish. About two minutes in, you can hear Mick Jones say, "Split!" While it sounds like it could be some kind of statement related to the song, Joe Ely tells Songfacts it had a much more quotidian meaning. Said Ely: "Me and Joe were yelling this translation back while Mick Jones sang the lead on it, and we were doing the echo part. And there was one time when the song kind of breaks down into just the drums right before a guitar part. And you hear Mick Jones saying, 'Split!' Just really loud, kind of angry. Me and Joe had snuck around in the studio, came up in the back of his booth where he was all partitioned off, and we snuck in and jumped and scared the hell out of him right in the middle of recording the song, and he just looked at us and says, 'Split!' So we ran back to our vocal booth and they never stopped the recording." The line, "If you want me off your back" was originally the sexually charged line "On your front or on your back." In April 1982, the famed '60s producer Glyn Johns was brought in to slash the album down and make it into a mainstream-friendly single-LP. In addition to cutting parts of songs out, he insisted that Mick Jones re-record this line, fearing that US radio stations would not touch a record with such a sexually suggestive line. These sessions as a whole were in bad blood, with Jones furious that his original mixes of his songs were being massacred against his will, and it was this combined with other factors (such as the return of controversial manager Bernie Rhodes) which resulted in the breakdown of the band and Jones' sacking in 1983. For the most part, Mick Jones has refused to assign meaning to the lyrics. He said in 1000 UK #1 Hits by Jon Kutner and Spencer Leigh: "'Should I Stay Or Should I Go?' wasn't about anything specific and it wasn't pre-empting my leaving The Clash. It was just a good rocking song, our attempt at writing a classic." But in a 2009 Rolling Stone article on The Clash, the magazine asserts that Jones wrote this song about his girlfriend Ellen Foley, who acted on the TV series Night Court and sang with Meat Loaf on "Paradise By the Dashboard Light." She told Songfacts in 2021: "I really don't know if it's about me. It's a very good song though, whomever it's about." It was also speculated that the song is a comment on Jones' position in the band, pre-empting his sacking in 1983 by over a year and a half. Strummer pondered this in interviews, as did Jones. "Maybe it was pre-empting my leaving" he noted in 1991, although he did conclude that it was more likely about a "personal situation" - presumably his relationship with Foley. Psychobilly is the punk version of rockabilly; it's a fusion genre which also gets a nice sound out of elements of everything from doo-wop to blues, but with that punk edge to it. "Should I Stay or Should I Go?" resembles early punk, almost retro style, and so could be called rockabilly. More than anything, it compares very nicely with The Cramps. "Should I Stay Or Should I Go?" is possibly one of the most covered Clash songs by dint of being one of the most popular. Some of the groups to cover this song include Living Colour, Skin, MxPx, Weezer, and The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain. Anti-Flag covered the song at various festival dates in 2012, and more memorable versions exist by Die Toten Hosen and Australian pop star Kyle Minogue. It even shows up in "Weird Al" Yankovic's "Polkas On 45" medley - a takeoff on the "Stars On 45 Medley." As a UK #1 single, what song did it replace as #1 on the UK charts? "Do the Bartman" by The Simpsons. Speaking of charts, while this song was their only #1 in the UK, The Clash got even less respect in the US; their highest chart on the Billboard was #8 for "Rock the Casbah". That's amazing when you consider how much airplay they get on the radio. Introduced into The Clash's live set in Paris in September 1981, "Should I Stay or Should I Go?" sat awkwardly in the set after Jones was fired - it was a hugely popular song so fans expected it to be played, but its author and singer was no longer in the band. For a while in 1984 it was performed with new guitarist Nick Sheppard singing lead vocals, with the song developing into an aggressive Metal thrash with bellowed Punk-style vocals. In the end The Clash Mark II dropped the song altogether, although not before they also added some nasty lyrics about Jones (as was common in the post-Jones Clash, sadly). Two much more representative versions are the version of the song filmed at Shea Stadium in 1982 (supporting The Who) for the music video, and the version from Boston in 1982 that features on the From Here To Eternity live compilation. Ice Cube and Mack 10 did a rap remake of this song for the 1998 Clash tribute album Burning London. This was re-released as a single in February 1991 after it was used in a Levi's jeans television ad. It went to #1 in the UK, but didn't chart in the US. Cheekily, Mick Jones used a vocal sample from this track on one of his post-Clash projects, Big Audio Dynamite. You can hear it on their song "The Globe." This is a key song in the '80s-themed Netflix series Stranger Things. It was first used in the second episode (2016), where the character Jonathan Byers introduces it to his younger brother, Will, to distract him when their parents fight, telling him it will change his life. When Will gets abducted into an alternate universe, the song becomes a way for him to communicate, and a source of comfort. The song is used several times throughout the series. To secure the rights, music supervisor Nora Felder had to explain to the band how it would be used. Through scene descriptions, she convinced them they would honor the song. On December 22, 2007, several prominent musicians, including Flea of Red Hot Chili Peppers, put on a tribute show for Strummer, who died of a heart attack in 2002. It was titled Cast A Long Shadow and held in the Key Club in West Hollywood, California. English band Love And Rockets played "Should I Stay or Should I Go?" twice, calling the audience up to sing along the second time. Despite the title, the words "train in vain" don't appear in this song. The predominant lyric is "stand by me," but that's the title of a famous song by Ben E. King. The title of The Clash song comes from the train rhythm in the song combined with the theme of being lost. It's also a reference to Tammy Wynette's 1975 hit single "Stand By Your Man" ("you say you stand, by your man, tell me something, I don't understand"). On the original vinyl copy of the album, "Train Is Vain" isn't listed on the tracklisting on the sleeve. The story is that the song was recorded for an NME promotional flexi-disc once the London Calling sessions were done, and the flexi-disc idea then fell through, leaving the song with no home. The band hastily tacked the song onto the end of the album just before vinyl pressing, but the sleeve had already been designed and there was no time to add it to the tracklisting. The only clue of it's existence is in the run-out groove on Side 4, where the name is carved into the vinyl. On all subsequent releases (including the CD copy) "Train In Vain" is included on the tracklisting on the sleeve. According to NME magazine (3/16/91), this isn't listed on the sleeve credits for London Calling because it was originally going to be a flexi giveaway with NME magazine. Unfortunately, the idea proved too expensive and the track went on the album instead. Clash guitarist Mick Jones sang lead vocals on this song. The lyrics appear to reference the end of his on-off relationship with Viv Albertine, which he also explored on the London Calling track "I'm Not Down." "Train In Vain" also contains a pointed reference to his flat being burgled in early 1979 and to his feelings of depression ("I need new clothes, I need somewhere to stay"). This was the first US Top 40 hit for The Clash. They had only one more - "Rock The Casbah" in 1982. The album cover was designed as a tribute to Elvis Presley's first album. The words "London" and "Calling" are displayed the same way "Elvis" and "Presley" were on his 1956 debut. Instead of a photo of Elvis, however, the text frames a shot of Clash bass player Paul Simonon smashing his bass during a show at The Palladium in New York. That bass was later displayed in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The song became a firm live favorite for the band, introduced to their live set in December 1979 and played consistently until Mick Jones was fired in 1983. The music video is taken from one of these many live performances, a February 1980 show in Lewisham filmed by Don Letts and featuring an amusing introduction from Joe Strummer: "We'd like to take the soul train from platform one... and if you don't want to come, there's always the toilet!" You'd think a big hit like "Rock the Casbah" or "Should I Stay or Should I Go" would be the most covered Clash song, but it's actually "Train in Vain." Cover versions exist by Third Eye Blind, Ill Rapture, Dr. Haze/DJ X-Cel, The Sabrejets, Dwight Yoakam, Annie Lennox, The Manic Street Preachers, Jones Crusher and Kirsty MacColl. The Pretenders lead singer Chrissie Hynde was on the scene when the band recorded this at Wessex Studios. Mick Jones explained to Daniel Rachel (The Art of Noise: Conversations with Great Songwriters): "It wasn't about Chrissie Hynde but she was upstairs and there was a window from the pool room where she could look in. I was singing it to Chrissie." This R&B-flavored tune introduced The Clash to a new audience. "We couldn't believe how popular it became, especially in America," Jones said. "That broke us in there. They thought it was a regular R&B song, then they found out it was The Clash."

Truckin' Album: American Beauty (1970) Touch of Grey Album: In The Dark (1987) by Grateful Dead The '60s was a time for traveling and discovering your place in the world. Sometimes what you found was an empty existence that just keeps repeating itself day to day. Having to deal with everyday life when you were always waiting for some kind of revelation to expand your consciousness was often depressing. In Truckin', The Grateful Dead deal with the banality by continuing their search for epiphany. They just keep truckin' on. "Truckin'" is the Grateful Dead's coming-of-age story. In Anthem To Beauty, a documentary covering the making of the American Beauty album, Dead guitarist/vocalist Bob Weir talks about the romance of striking out on the road. He says it was a rite of passage for young people in the 1960s - as it perhaps still is to some degree today, though the internet has robbed much of the mystery of the road. "Truckin'" covers the Dead's navigation through that rite of passage. "We were starting to become real guys," Weir says, "and really enjoying the hell out of it." For the Dead, that rite became a way of life. The band never made a ton of money from record sales, and their unique legacy was made by touring. Also in Anthem, Phil Lesh talks about how the Dead's touring in 1970 preceded the "rock and roll bubble," when groups were isolated from fans and regular folks. The Dead were flying coach, riding busses, and staying in modest hotels. There were no handlers to protect them from the public or from the authorities. That manner of living was exciting in its way, but it could also get downright boring after a while, with long hours spent in hotel rooms and waiting for transportation to the next show. This is why the song has a line going, "Get tired of travelin' and you want to settle down." Even though the song is autobiographical for the Dead, it also means a lot to the lives of many Deadheads and children of the '60s in general. Part of what defined that generation was the thirst for freedom and adventure, which led to lives on the road (and some people staying there too long). Grateful Dead members Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh and Bob Weir are the credited writers on this track along with their lyricist, Robert Hunter. During recording, Hunter fed Weir one line at a time. The line, "Busted, down on Bourbon Street" refers to an incident on January 31, 1970 when members of the band were arrested in a drug bust that netted 19 people in New Orleans. The group was in town to play two shows at a club called the Warehouse, and the raid happened the morning after their first show at the French Quarter hotel where they were staying. Lesh, Weir and drummer Bill Kreutzmann were all arrested along with crew members and fans of the band who had joined them at the hotel. The story made the front page of the New Orleans Times-Picayune the next day, and drew national attention, with Rolling Stone running an article on the incident. Owsley Stanley, a Dead associate known for his pioneering work with LSD, was also arrested and labeled the "King of Acid" in the Times-Picayune piece. According to the Rolling Stone article, the band paid for bail and legal fees for all 19 arrested. In its original conception, the song was supposed to evolve as the band progressed. Robert Hunter envisioned them adding verses for significant events as time went on, but then came to realize that it simply wasn't going to work that way. The song ended up staying the same, though the band would improvise jams during live performances. In Behind the Hits by Bob Shannon and John Javna, Hunter said he started writing the song in the band's home base of San Francisco, wrote some more in Houston, and then wrapped it up in Florida, which would bring the song all the way from West Coast to East. In the same book, Hunter mentions that the line "sometimes the light's all shining on me" came from the rest of the Dead, not from himself, and that the band tinkered with his melody a bit so the final product sounded less like Chuck Berry than he had originally written. Over at Dead.net, David Dodd reports a rumor that the lyric "arrows of neon and flashing marquees out on Main Street" originally started with "garlands of neon," and that Hunter had chosen the word "garlands" as a prank to tongue-tie Weir. Weir eventually gave it up and went with the more singable "arrows of neon." Despite the emblematic "what a long, strange trip it's been" line, the band had only been together for five years when "Truckin'" was recorded. The band members were also in their 20s or early 30s, hardly the grizzled old veterans that the line implicates. In Skeleton Key: A Dictionary for Deadheads, Hunter says that the "long strange trip" referred also to his decade of performing that preceded his time with the Dead. The line has become almost a cliché today, but it originated in "Truckin'," and it meant a lot not only to the band but to the '60s generation. The hippie counterculture flung its participants through five years of transformation and madness that were very rare. With tens of thousands of young people slinging on backpacks and hitting the road, they lived a lot of life in a short span of time, and came out feeling the road had been longer than mere chronology might suggest. The Dead first played "Truckin'" as the opening song for their August 18, 1970 performance at the Fillmore West in San Francisco. They also debuted American Beauty songs "Operator," "Brokedown Palace," and "Ripple." The final performance was at Maryland Heights Missouri's Riverport Amphitheatre on July 6, 1995. Dead frontman Jerry Garcia died a little over a month later. The Dead released the song as a single, backed with "Ripple." It reached #64, making it the highest-charting single on the album. "Sugar Magnolia" hit #91. Dallas - got a soft machine Beat writer William S. Burroughs wrote a novel titled The Soft Machine in 1961. It's the first part of his Nova Trilogy and is wild and bizarre even by the standards of Burroughs, who was one of American literature's wildest, most bizarre writers. How this book (too winding and strange to even attempt to summarize coherently here) would be used to represent Dallas is truly a mystery, but the connection seems pretty certain. Burroughs and the Beats were the precursors to the hippies, and Hunter was a well-read fellow. Truckin', got my chips cashed in Keep truckin', like the doo-dah man A person cashes chips in at casinos and similar gambling venues. You get money for your chips. People cash in their winnings. In the book Skeleton Key, Hunter states that the "doo-dah man" refers to "Camptown Races" by Stephen Forster, which contains the refrain "doo-dah, doo-dah." Once told me you got to play your hand Sometime - the cards ain't worth a dime These gambling allusions refer back to the opening line about having chips cashed in. Gambling has been used as a metaphor for life so much in popular culture that it's become a trope all its own. The peak was probably in 1978 with Kenny Rogers' "The Gambler." What in the world ever became of sweet Jane? She lost her sparkle, you know she isn't the same Livin' on reds, vitamin C, and cocaine All a friend can say is, "Ain't it a shame?" Mary Jane is a common phrase for marijuana, which has led many to see this as a reference to the drug and possibly to the way that the '60s counterculture went sideways and destroyed itself. The hippies started out using weed, mushrooms, and LSD - "head drugs" seen by the culture's proponents as being harmless or even spiritually and psychological beneficial - but by 1970 many had veered into hard drug territory. Cocaine, speed, and heroin turned the good times bad for many casualties of the era. Robert Hunter said the verse was meant to parody commercials of the 1940s, which frequently used jingles, specifically mentioning a Pepsodent commercial. The Golden Road, a Dead quarterly that ran from 1984 to 1993, mentioned that "truckin'" was a dance step popular in the 1920s and '30s. Others have note that "truckin'" used to be slang for sex. Interesting stuff, but there doesn't seem to be any evidence from the Dead themselves that these things apply to the song. The band members discussed the meaning of "Truckin'" pretty openly and without ambiguity, and none of those hidden meanings were ever hinted at. "Truckin'" is an upbeat song on a generally melancholic album. Phil Lesh was still mourning the loss of his father, and Jerry Garcia's mother was in critical condition following a car accident. That grief is palpable on most of American Beauty, but it doesn't touch "Truckin'" so much. According to Hunter's account in Skeleton Key, American Beauty was also the Dead's attempt to flow with the times. They'd made their name in the psychedelic era (embodying that moment in music history more indelibly than any other act) and had then followed the "back to roots" call of The Band, Dylan, CSN&Y, and The Byrds with Workingman's Dead in June 1970. With American Beauty, they were trying to rise with the tide of "commercially safe" music. "Truckin'" turned out to be the most salable tune of that effort, which is kind of funny considering that it specifically mentions the rather "unsafe" Bourbon Street drug bust. The song is played in the key of E with a 12/8 time signature. On Touch of Grey Robert Hunter wrote the lyrics, as he did with many Dead songs, although Jerry Garcia wrote the line, "Light a candle, curse the glare." This is according to the book Box Of Rain, which was written by Hunter and is a collection of his published songs. In the book, it is "A Touch of Grey" and has an asterisk next to the line Jerry wrote. Robert Hunter started writing the lyrics to Touch of Grey in 1980, and the Dead first performed it on September 15, 1982 at a show in Landover, Maryland. They played it sporadically over the next few years, and finally recorded it for their 1987 album In The Dark. According to David Dodd in The Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics, the line "Light a Candle, curse the glare" is a play on Adlai Stevenson's 1962 reference to Eleanor Roosevelt's death. He said, "She would rather light a candle than curse the darkness." The line, "The Ables and the Bakers and the Cs" refers to the first two words in an older version of the military communication alphabet, "Able" and "Baker." The modern version starts with "Alpha" and "Bravo." The song is about the band aging gracefully. The phrase "Touch Of Grey" is a reference to getting older, as for most people, their hair starts getting grey as they age. Aging gracefully is a challenge, especially in the music industry. According to Dead drummer Mickey Hart, Robert Hunter wrote the lyric as a pick-me-up. "When he wrote 'Touch Of Grey,' we were struggling," Hart said. "But it became an anthem to us. It perked us up." This was The Grateful Dead's first and only hit song. They never set out to be on the radio, enthralling fans with their mind-bending musical landscapes and confounding critics with their interminable jamming. Their large and loyal following ensured that their albums sold well and their concerts were full. For many of the Dead faithful, it was strange hearing the group on pop radio and seeing them on MTV, but the song fit well with their canon and was clearly not an attempt to chase the '80s trends. The song did change the dynamic of Dead discovery. Most fans were turned on to the band by listening to their classic albums or going to a concert with a seasoned follower, but now there was a new poseur class who came on board for "Touch Of Grey." The line, "I will get by, I will survive," became a mantra of resilience in the Dead community. When Jerry Garcia fell into a diabetic coma in July 1986, it looked like the group could be finished; when he returned to action in December, the group opened with "Touch Of Grey," reassuring fans that they would indeed get by. Following Garcia's death in 1995, various incarnations of the band and associated acts like Ratdog and Phil Lesh & Friends have played the song. A notable performance came on the final night of their Fare Thee Well tour on July 5, 2015 in Chicago when Trey Anastasio and Bruce Hornsby each sang a verse. When the band returned that year as Dead & Company with John Mayer in the fold, the song went back into rotation. The band made a video for this song, which was the first one they made for MTV. Directed by Justin Kreutzmann, they shot it after a concert at Laguna Seca Raceway in California on May 9, 1987, which let them use a real audience. The crowd was re-admitted after the shoot was set up; they saw the band run through the song in human form, and also as skeleton likenesses. This footage was combined to create the clip. The video was included on Dead Ringers: The Making of Touch of Grey, which was sold as a home video. The Dead were known for varying their setlists so that every show was different, and they didn't change this tradition even when this song was on the charts. Instead of catering to newcomers by playing their hit single at every concert, they only played it when they felt like it. The Mighty Diamonds covered this in 1996 on Fire On The Mountain, an album of reggae versions of Grateful Dead songs.

Aggression As A Trait Is Constitutional

Back To The Future 322. A short film inspired by my environment...

Runnin' Down A Dream Album: Full Moon Fever (1989) American Girl Album: Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers (1977) by Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers In Runnin' Down A Dream Tom Petty sings about driving into the great wide open, with nothing but glorious possibility in his path. Petty started running down his dream of being a rocker in 1961 when he met Elvis Presley. Petty, 11 years old, came to the Ocala, Florida, set where Elvis was working on the film Follow That Dream - a title Tom took to heart. In a brief encounter, Petty saw how Elvis captivated onlookers and made the girls go crazy. Petty became fascinated with Elvis and set out to follow his path. The animated video was inspired by a comic strip called Little Nemo In Slumberland by Winsor McKay. Each strip told the story of one of Nemo's dreams, and at the end, he always woke up. Full Moon Fever was listed as a Tom Petty solo album even though members of The Heartbreakers played on it. Petty had another band at this time as well: the Traveling Wilburys, which included Jeff Lynne, who co-produced the album and played many of the instruments. Heartbreakers' guitarist Mike Campbell wrote this with Petty and Jeff Lynne. The three of them worked on the album at Campbell's house. Petty and Campbell were very impressed with Lynne's production techniques, and learned a lot from the experience. Campbell gave an example of Lynne's style: "We'd put the mics up on the drums, and he'd walk out and take the microphone over the drum and he'd turn it away from the drum facing the corner, and he'd go 'OK, record it like that.' Sure enough, 99% of the time he'd be right. We'd go, 'Yes sir, Mr. Lynne.' We learned so much from him about arrangements and countermelodies and all kinds of stuff." The line, "Me and Del were singin,' little 'Runaway'" is a reference to the 1961 Del Shannon hit "Runaway." Shannon is credited on the album for "barnyard noises," which can be heard just after this song ends on the album. Under the animal noises, Petty says, "Hello CD listeners. We have come to the point in this album where those listening on cassettes or records will have to stand - up or sit down - and turn over the record or tape. In fairness to those listeners, we will now take a few seconds before we begin Side 2. Thank you, and here is Side 2." Those noises were made by Shannon and Jeff Lynne; Petty used them as an interlude to mark the middle of the album, because you don't have to flip over a CD. This section was included only on CD versions of Full Moon Fever, but survived the transition when the album was released digitally. In 2007, the documentary Runnin' Down A Dream was released. Directed by Peter Bogdanovich, the film chronicles the career of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers played Runnin' Down A Dream at the halftime show of the Super Bowl in 2008. Rather than the usual medley of hits, the band played four full songs, the others being "American Girl," "I Won't Back Down" and "Free Fallin'." The song is used in the 2004 video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, where it shows up on the radio station K-DST. In 2023, another Full Moon Fever track, "Love Is A Long Road," soundtracked the trailer for Grand Theft Auto VI. A track from the first Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers album, "American Girl" was never a hit, but it became one of their most popular songs. Part of its lasting appeal is its intrigue, as it is the subject of an urban myth that reads as follows: The University of Florida is located in Petty's hometown of Gainesville, Florida. A dorm at the school, Beatty Towers, provided the backdrop to a popular urban legend at UF as well as the story behind "American Girl". The story was that there was this virginal, All-American, debutante sort of girl, blonde locks and all, who decided to take hallucinogens for the first time while in her room at Beatty Towers. This being the 1960's and the age of limitless possibilities, it was pretty common to do something like that, especially in a college setting. Apparently, the girl thought she could fly, so she exited through the window and arrived face first on the concrete below. Some modern minstrels like to add that she jumped from the 13th floor, but this is probably part of campus lore. This incident was a big deal in Gainesville, which was still a picturesque Southern college town. It represented the end of innocence experienced by baby-boomers during the 1970's. Using it as inspiration, Tom Petty wove a captivating and poignant song based on this story for his first album and the rest is history. Expanding on the concept of innocence lost, this song speaks volumes and resonates even today. Beatty Towers are by State Road 441, which is mentioned in the second verse. Tom Petty said of American Girl: "I wrote that in a little apartment I had in Encino. It was right next to the freeway and the cars sometimes sounded like waves from the ocean, which is why there's the line about the waves crashing on the beach. The words just came tumbling out very quickly - and it was the start of writing about people who are longing for something else in life, something better than they have." Mike Campbell has been The Heartbreakers' guitarist since they formed the band. Here's what he told us about this song: "We used to have people come up to us and tell us they thought it was about suicide because of the one line about 'if she had to die,' but what they didn't get was, the whole line is 'if she had to die trying.' Some people take it literally and out of context. To me it's just a really beautiful love song. It does have some Florida imagery." In our interview with Mike Campbell, he said: "We cut that track on the 4th of July. I don't know if that had anything to do with Tom writing it about an American girl." Roger McGuinn recorded this on his 1977 album Thunderbyrd. McGuinn was a member of The Byrds and a big influence on Petty. He once joked that this number was a Byrds song he'd forgotten. Petty told Mojo magazine January 2010: "'American Girl' doesn't really sound like The Byrds; it evokes The Byrds. People are usually influenced by more than one thing, so your music becomes a mixture. There's nothing really new, but always new ways to combine things. We tried to play as good as whoever we admired but never could." Even though Petty and his band were from the US, this caught on in England long before it got any attention in America. As a result, Petty started his first big tour in the UK, where this was a bigger hit. This was featured in the 1991 movie Silence Of The Lambs. It was used in a scene where a female character is listening to it in a car before she meets Buffalo Bill, a serial killer who abducts her. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers opened their Live Aid set in Philadelphia with "American Girl." At one point in the song, Petty gives a little smile and flips off someone in the crowd. The concert was broadcast live to an audience of millions, so this was certainly one of the most-seen one-finger salutes in history. The Goo Goo Dolls played this at the 2001 "Concert For New York," a benefit show organized by Paul McCartney. Classic rockers like The Who and David Bowie were big hits among the crowd of police officers and firefighters, and they responded very well when The Goo Goo Dolls played this. Petty gave his reaction to the performance: "I was watching the 9/11 concert in New York and the Goo Goo Dolls played 'American Girl.' I could see the crowd cheering in this really patriotic context. But it was just a story when I wrote it. In my mind, the girl was looking for the strength to move on, and she found it. It's one of my favorites." Petty credits their producer, Denny Cordell, with helping him understand the importance of crafting a story in the lyrics to American Girl. Petty says Cordell told him, "When you put a little truth in a song, it elevates things." In the Bob Dylan tradition, Petty doesn't have a typical singing voice, but as heard in American Girl, he writes compelling lyrics that he delivers with conviction. This song opens the 2004 movie Chasing Liberty. Other films to use the song include Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982) and That's My Boy (2012). Among the TV series that have used it: Scrubs ("My Own American Girl," 2003) Cold Case ("Bad Night," 2005) The Sopranos ("Join the Club," 2006) Parks and Recreation ("Harvest Festival," 2011) The Goldbergs ("Shopping," 2013) Petty and the Heartbreakers played American Girl to open their set at the halftime show of the Super Bowl in 2008. This was featured in an episode of the TV show Scrubs called "My American Girl." Petty told Mojo that the girl in this song was not based anyone in particular. "She was a composite, a character who yearned for more than had life had dealt her." Hillary Clinton used American Girl at her campaign rallies when she was running against Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination. The choice was based solely on the title, as they lyric about desperate longing wasn't the message she was trying to get across. American Girl was the last song that Tom Petty ever performed. His final gig was at the legendary Hollywood Bowl on September 25, 2017 and the rock veteran closed his set with "American Girl." Petty died a week later at UCLA Santa Monica Hospital on October 2, 2017 following a cardiac arrest. The Strokes frontman Julian Casablancas admitted to ripping off this song on their 2001 hit "Last Nite." "Good for you," Petty replied, admiring his audacity in admitting it. "It doesn't bother me." In Francis Ford Coppola's directorial debut film, Dementia 13 (1963), protagonist Louise Haloran (played by Luana Anders) remarks, "Especially an American girl... you can tell she's been raised on promises." Petty never publicly confessed to getting the line from that film, but it would be a mighty strange coincidence if it was by chance.

Red House Album: Are You Experienced? (1967) All Along The Watchtower Album: Electric Ladyland (1968) by Jimi Hendrix Running about 13 minutes depending on the rendition, "Red House" is a scorching blues number where Hendrix sings about returning home to see his girl, who lives in a red house. When he gets there, his key won't work, and he realizes she doesn't live there anymore. Instead of wallowing in his misery, he turns back and decides to pay a visit to her sister. According to the book Hendrix: Setting the Record Straight, Jimi worked up Red House in New York City when he was still a struggling musician. He was staying in a friend's apartment that was decorated almost completely red, which gave him the lyrical inspiration for this song. There have been lots of rumors about the origin. These are the most pervasive: 1) One of his girlfriends in Seattle lived in a house painted red. 2) It comes from a Hopi legend about a mysterious red city. Red House is a very intricate song that demonstrates Hendrix' mastery on guitar. It's one that earned him the respect of many musicians, including Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top. Gibbons says he was "completely turned upside down" when he heard it. Hendrix recorded this in a call-and-response blues style where each line is repeated twice. This style dates back to the field hollers workers would sing to pass time in the American south. This was not included on the original US release of Are You Experienced?; the omission of Red House tweaked Hendrix, since it was one of his favorites. He often performed the song at his concerts, constantly changing the arrangement. Hendrix recorded many versions of this song. The first release was on the UK version of his debut album, Are You Experienced? The original studio version of the song is 3 minutes, 49 seconds. Here's the timeline of the studio versions: Version 1: Recorded December 13, 1966, includes studio chat by Chas Chandler and Jimi, released on the original UK version of Are You Experienced? and on the 1997 30th Anniversary CD re-issue. Version 2: This version The same basic recording as version 1 but with a different vocal take by Jimi recorded March 29, 1967 and a different mix with more guitar echo. The studio chat introduction was mixed out, and the song released on the US version of Smash Hits in 1969, on the 1993 CD re-issue of Are You Experienced? and on The Ultimate Experience CD in 1993. Version 3: Recorded October 29, 1968 and introduced by Jimi as played by the Electric Church, it was released on Variations On A Theme: Red House CD in US only in 1989, released on Blues CD in 1994 and retitled "Electric Church Red House." This song was covered on the 1997 G3 Live In Concert album, where it was performed by Hendrix acolytes Joe Satriani, Steve Vai and Eric Johnson. This appears on the City Of Angels movie soundtrack, and was used in a scene in the movie where Meg Ryan, who plays a cardiovascular surgeon, requests a nurse to turn on Jimi while she's operating on someone. Hendrix performed Red House at many of his famous festival appearances, including Woodstock and the Isle of Wight. All Along The Watchtower was written and originally recorded by Bob Dylan in 1967, but it was the Jimi Hendrix cover that made the song famous. Many other artists have covered it, including Eric Clapton, Neil Young, U2, Dave Matthews Band and The Grateful Dead. Dylan was so impressed with Jimi's version that Dylan for years played it the way that Jimi had recorded it. This was Hendrix' only Top 40 hit in the US, where his influence far outpaced his popularity. He charted a few times in the UK, where he rose to fame before making a name for himself in America. All Along The Watchtower was recorded while Hendrix played with the Jimi Hendrix Experience: Hendrix on guitar, Noel Redding on bass, and Mitch Mitchell on drums. For this song, however, Redding was not on bass; Hendrix did it. Redding was also the guitar player for his band Fat Mattress, which Hendrix referred to as Thin Pillow. Hendrix often felt that Redding did not put his heart into the bass and was concerned that Redding concentrated more on Fat Mattress than he did on the Experience. Things like these led to him being replaced by Billy Cox. The original version of All Along The Watchtower is very slow. Jimi Hendrix' version had a large impact on Dylan which made him make his own version "heavier." Hendrix said: "All those people who don't like Bob Dylan's songs should read his lyrics. They are filled with the joys and sadness of life. I am as Dylan, none of us can sing normally. Sometimes, I play Dylan's songs and they are so much like me that it seems to me that I wrote them. I have the feeling that Watchtower is a song I could have come up with, but I'm sure I would never have finished it. Thinking about Dylan, I often consider that I'd never be able to write the words he manages to come up with, but I'd like him to help me, because I have loads of songs I can't finish. I just lay a few words on the paper, and I just can't go forward. But now things are getting better, I'm a bit more self-confident." Hendrix had been working on and off with the members of the band Traffic as he recorded Electric Ladyland. Traffic guitarist Dave Mason caught Hendrix at a party and the two discussed Bob Dylan's newest album, John Wesley Harding, containing "All Along The Watchtower." Hendrix, long fascinated with Dylan, decided to cover the song on the album. On the resulting track, Mason plays rhythm on a 12-string acoustic guitar. In an interview with Mason, he explained: "Hendrix just happened to be sitting in one of those semi-private clubs in London. He was there one night just sitting alone, and it was like, "F--k, I'm just going to go over and say hi and talk to him." Mason recorded All Along The Watchtower himself in the Hendrix arrangement for his 1974 self-titled album. He also made the song a mainstay of his concerts. Mason says it's a deceptively simple song: "It's just the same three chords, and they never change." This was used in an episode of The Simpsons when Homer's mother was telling him a story that took place in the '60s about why she had to leave him. In a 2008 poll conducted by a panel of experts in the Total Guitar magazine, All Along The Watchtower was voted the best cover song of all time. The Beatles' rendition of "Twist and Shout," first recorded by the Top Notes, came second, followed by the Guns N' Roses version of the Wings song "Live and Let Die" in third place. All Along The Watchtower was used in the 1994 movie Forrest Gump shortly after the title character arrives in Vietnam. It's rare to find a list of the greatest rock guitarists without Jimi Hendrix on it, and this song is often cited as proof of his genius. In 2020, Rik Emmett of Triumph ranked it #1, calling it, "Still the greatest guitar recording that ever made the Top 40. A legendary guitarist making a defining statement. Plus, the epic transfigured Biblical setting of a Bob Dylan song? As good as it gets." Brian Jones of The Rolling Stones handled percussion on the track. In the intro, he played a vibraslap, a modern-day jawbone that creates a rattling sound when it's struck. The rattle also opens Ozzy Osbourne's "Crazy Train."... Brian Jones death rattle...

Love My Way Album: Forever Now (1982) Here Come Cowboys Album: Mirror Moves (1984) by The Psychedelic Furs Furs frontman Richard Butler had a specific audience in mind when he penned the lyrics to Love My Way. He explained in an interview with Creem in 1982: "It's basically addressed to people who are f--ked up about their sexuality, and says 'Don't worry about it.' It was originally written for gay people." To the best of our knowledge, Love My Way is the most popular song featuring a marimba as a lead instrument. The Forever Now album was produced by Todd Rundgren and recorded at his studio, Utopia Sound. It was his idea to use the marimba on this track, and he played it. The demo of the song had a different instrument for those sections, but Rundgren had a marimba in the studio and thought it would be worth a shot. "It turned out that the little musical theme just sounded perfect with the marimbas, and became a signature element of the song," he said in an interview. "So it just was a question of availability. It's not like I had to go rent some marimbas. I happened to have them." The lead single to their third album, "Love My Way" was the first Psychedelic Furs song to chart in America, where it reached #44 thanks in large part to exposure on MTV. To that point, most Americans only heard the band on college radio or at listening stations in independent record stores. When the song caught on in the States, the band moved there because they found the audience more receptive and they liked what New York had to offer. Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan of The Turtles sang backup on this track, but you would never peg the "Happy Together" singers as the backing voices. Producer Todd Rundgren used them essentially as an instrument, creating a wash of vocals under the chorus and at the end of the song. The dreamy, heavily tinted video, directed by Tim Pope, was the first by the band to get significant airplay on MTV, which launched a year earlier. Like many new wave British bands, Psychedelic Furs had been making music videos from the jump and had refined the form by the time MTV went on the air. Their videos didn't rely on subplot storylines where actors would portray characters in the songs. Instead, they typically showed just the band, offset by some abstract imagery. The Forever Now album marked a change in direction for the band, which had slimmed down to a quartet after losing saxophone player Duncan Kilburn and guitarist Roger Morris. Their first two albums were produced by Steve Lillywhite, but Todd Rundgren was at the controls for Forever Now. Richard Butler doesn't write love songs, but he does write songs about love. He told Songfacts that "Love My Way" is a great example. This song is included on the Valley Girl (1983) soundtrack. It was used in the scene when Nicolas Cage surprises Deborah Foreman in the bathroom at a party. Because of issues with music licensing, this song and others hits from the soundtrack, like Men at Work's "Who Can It Be Now?," have been replaced with other songs on the DVD release. Love My Way also appears in the 1998 movie The Wedding Singer and in a 2009 episode of the TV series Hung. When Rich Good filled in for guitarist John Ashton on tour in 2009, he quickly learned how passionate fans were about this song. He remembered in an interview with a now-defunct unofficial Psychedelic Furs website: "We got some rather heated responses when we didn't do 'LMW' for the first dates of 2009. I believe violence was threatened… You can't please all the people all the time." Love My Way features in a dance party sequence in the 2017 movie Call Me by Your Name where we see Armie Hammer bust out some awkward moves. It collected 177,000 audio and video streams in the US in the week ending November 30, 2017 following the film's release, according to Nielsen Music. That marked the song's largest ever streaming week. Written by the Butler brothers of The Psychedelic Furs (lead singer Richard and bass player Tim), "Here Come Cowboys" is one of the few songs by the band that takes a political lean, with Richard taking aim at US President Ronald Reagan and his law-and-order cohorts. In an interview with Artist magazine, Butler said that Reagan was the main cowboy, but the song is also "an attack on TV heroes." Tim Pope directed the Here Come Cowboys music video, which cuts between shots of the band performing the song and scenes from rural America, including sheriffs, rodeos, and, yes, cowboys. It's one of the few videos where you'll see star wipes. (Why have hamburger when you can have steak?) Mirror Moves was the fourth Psychedelic Furs album. Drummer Vince Ely left before they started making it, so their producer, Keith Forsey, stepped in behind the kit. Psychedelic Furs are from England, but by this time, Richard and Tim Butler had moved to America, which explains the very America-oriented lyric. The song was released as a single but failed to chart. Hopes were high that Mirror Moves would be the US breakthrough for the band, but the only single to chart was "The Ghost In You" at #59. 1978- Richard Butler Vocals 1978- Tim Butler Bass guitar 1978- Duncan Kilburn Saxophone 1978-1982 Paul Wilson Drums 1978-1979 Roger Morris Guitar 1978-1982 Vince Ely Drums 1979-1989 John Ashton Guitar 1979-2008 Paul Garisto Drums 1986- Rich Good Guitar 2009- Mars Williams Saxophone 1986- Amanda Kramer Keyboards 2003- The Psychedelic Furs were born amidst the chaos of the late-'70s punk scene in England when bands like The Sex Pistols were chewing scenery and spewing vitriol to the delight of disgruntled teens. But the Furs, formed by brothers Richard and Tim Butler, resist the constant stream of labels thrown at them and their unique blend of sound. Tim explained in an interview: "People for years have been trying to lump music into different categories. Music is just music. I can remember when we first came out, people were asking, 'How would you describe yourself? Punk? Or alternative? Or new wave?' Why pigeonhole people? It's just music." Although the Furs' music has been memorably featured in '80s teen flicks like Pretty in Pink and Valley Girl, Tim Butler leans toward a different genre. He told That Music Magazine his favorite film from the decade is John Carpenter's The Thing. Unfortunately, there are no songs from the band in the horror movie.

Aint Life Grand Album: Aint Life Grand (1994) Blue Indian Album: Til the Medicine Takes (2001) by Widespread Panic Ain't Life Grand is the fourth studio album by the Athens, GA-based band Widespread Panic. It was released by Capricorn Records and Warner Bros. Records on September 6, 1994. It was re-released in 2001 by Zomba Music Group. On July 3, 2014, the band announced that Ain't Life Grand would be reissued on vinyl in August 2014. The band got minor airplay for their cover of Bloodkin's "Can't Get High," as well as their own "Airplane." They performed the song '"Ain't Life Grand'" at Morehouse College for Good Morning America. The band began rehearsing for the album by recording pre-recording sessions at John Keane's home studio like their first album, Space Wrangler. They were so pleased with the results that they decided to use the sessions for Ain't Life Grand instead of going into the studio on a future date with their producer Johnny Sandlin. John Bell – guitar, mandolin, vocals John Hermann - keyboards, vocals Michael Houser – guitar, vocals Todd Nance – drums, vocals Domingo S. Ortiz – percussion Dave Schools – bass guitar Guest performers David Blackmon – fiddle Eric Carter – vocals Adriene Fishe – vocals John Keane – guitar, pedal steel, vocals Dwight Manning – oboe Ain't Life Grand Widespread Panic Watchin people roll by Wonderin where they're goin Hey, what's your job What are you knowin Drivin to the grocery store Pull my money out Passin by the liquor store Throw my money down Ain't life grand Ain't life grand My wife's got the blues Now I've got them Gonna bring her a kiss Make those blues run Ain't life grand Ain't life grand Sun came out the other day Through those dusty clouds And in my mind I was a child And it felt good! Ain't life grand (x4) Blue Indian Widespread Panic Oh, Pappy left a chair like he's still sittin' there Once I almost saw him make his move Brave Indian who never changes his mood In a painting on the wall right there Oh, how long 'til the morning wakes Oh, how long 'til the medicine takes Oh, Sally buffalo in the apartment just below Just a bein' without a care Oh, children from my brood they come and bring me food Maybe open up a window for air Oh, just now I smell the cornbread bake Oh, now, now, now I feel the medicine take Just like home Where the stray dogs go through it all Still right here, still just here, Brave little friend Well, we got a party goin' on many spirits strong Ain't preacher just a happy to meet ya Half a bottle 'neath the bed keep our spirits fed My hat's off to you, to you and you And now our brave friends, too, dancing circles through the room And a broom and a radio and a twistin out a dos-e-do Brand new day, the whole world's goin' Whole room's goin' so Just now, don't hesitate (hesitate) Oh, taste the morning break (morning break) Sweet, sweet, young honeycomb (honeycomb) On, now, now, now just like home (just like home) Oh, just like, just like home Where the stray dogs go Oh, oh, rest my bones Like a fresh skipped stone to it all Still right here, still just here, Still just here, brave, brave friend

“The divine in human nature disappears and interest, greed and selfishness takes it place. When a Republic begins to plunder its neighbors the words of doom are already written upon its walls.” Albert Pike , Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry

Fell On Black Days Black Hole Sun Album: Superunknown (1994) by Soundgarden Soundgarden lead singer Chris Cornell wrote Fell On Black Days about how he suffered from a severe case of depression during his teenage years, rarely leaving the house. At one point, he spent a whole year without leaving his house, during which time he would play drums and guitar. It was released as a single in different versions, each with different B-sides. Cornell told Artist Direct in a 2012 interview that the song is "about waking up and realizing you're in a dark period of your life." Cornell had the idea for this song - and the title - about three years before he completed it. The delay came because he couldn't get in "the right musical mood to support the lyrics," until one day he was playing his guitar and came up with the riff he was looking for. In 1994, Chris Cornell spoke to Melody Maker about creating the song and the meaning behind it. "'Fell On Black Days' was like this ongoing fear I've had for years. It took me a long time to write that song. We've tried to do three different versions with that title, and none of them have ever worked," he said. "It's a feeling that everyone gets. You're happy with your life, everything's going well, things are exciting - when all of a sudden you realize you're unhappy in the extreme, to the point of being really, really scared. There's no particular event you can pin the feeling down to, it's just that you realize one day that everything in your life is f--ked!" The band is named after a sculpture in Seattle called "Soundgarden," and longtime speculation was that Black Hole Sun got its name from another Seattle sculpture called "Black Sun" by the artist Isamu Noguchi. (The piece is located in Volunteer Park on Capitol Hill. It looks kind of like a huge, black doughnut and is aimed so you can see the Space Needle through the middle of it.) Chris Cornell stated in a 2014 interview with Entertainment Weekly that the title came from something he heard on the news - he thought the anchor said "black hole sun," but he really was saying something else. Cornell started thinking about the phrase and decided to write a song around it, as he felt it was a thought-provoking title. He wrote the lyrics first, then composed the music based on the images he came up with. Black Hole Sun was written entirely by Chris Cornell. "If I write lyrics that are bleak or dark, it usually makes me feel better," the Soundgarden frontman said. Black Hole Sun is certainly bleak, with references to snakes, a dead sky, and the summer stench. It's one of the more morose songs to get consistent airplay, and it helped associate the grunge sound with depression and angst. Cornell, however, was simply expressing some dark thoughts in song - he was not suffering or crying for help in the manner of Kurt Cobain. In an interview with Soundgarden guitarist Kim Thayil, he said of this song: "We'd had singles before. But that was easily our biggest hit. That was more singer/songwriterish. Chris went that direction of singer/songwriter guy, and the band was more accepting because of the success of singer/songwriting stuff as opposed to more guitar oriented rock. It was more vocal accompaniment rock, some guitar. So we started utilizing a little bit more of that." This song got a lot of radio play because the Alternative format and grunge sound were popular at the time and Top 40 radio stations were playing a lot of songs by artists like Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, and Stone Temple Pilots. It didn't make the Hot 100 because it wasn't released as a single and therefore ineligible for the chart (it did make #24 on Billboard's Airplay chart). Holding back singles was a common ploy around this time, as it encouraged fans to buy the albums. Accordingly, Superunknown went to #1 in America, far better than the #39 peak of their previous album, Badmotorfinger. Black Hole Sun won a Grammy for Best Hard Rock Performance. They also won Best Metal Performance that year for "Spoonman." The song was covered by Peter Frampton on his 2006 instrumental album Fingerprints. The lyrics were replaced by Frampton on guitar, playing through his trademark "talk box," through which he simulated the pitch of the vocals, but not the words. The only distinguishable words (played through the talk box) in the rendition are "Black hole sun, won't you come," which can be heard in the verses after the bridge/guitar solo. Fingerprints won the 2007 Grammy for Best Pop Instrumental Album. The surreal Howard Greenhalgh-directed video finds the band performing the song in an open field as a suburban neighborhood are swallowed up by a black hole. Speaking with Artist Direct in a 2012 interview, Cornell said that at the time he had made a number of videos with directors who didn't understand where the band was coming from and he was disillusioned with the whole process. "We just read treatments for it, and Howard Greenhalgh's treatment just read weird as the video turned out," he recalled. "I suggested we just pick one that we want, try to find a great one, and let the guy do whatever he wants," continued Cornell. "We should just be there and not emote, not pretend to be excited to play the song, deadpan, stand there, and do absolutely nothing. We chose his treatment because it seemed interesting. I told him on the phone, 'We're not going to do anything. You're not going to get anything out of us. We're just going to stand there because we don't want to do this anymore.'. Somehow, for whatever reason, he loved that. I love the video because it worked. It just happened to be a guy with a great idea who happened to believe in our notion that we're reluctant video stars who are going to give you nothing. The contrast of us giving you nothing and your vision is actually going to be better than if we're jumping around acting like crazy rock people and you're doing these flash jump-cut edits and crazy lighting. We're weird enough as it is, and we're tired of trying to not be. It worked. It was a big lesson. If you get out of somebody's way, or collaborate in the right way, a good thing can come out of it." Chris Cornell got the idea for Black Hole Sun while driving home from Bear Creek Studio, near Seattle, where Soundgarden were recording a version of "New Damage" for a charity album. He recalled to Uncut magazine August 2014: "I wrote it in my head driving home from Bear Creek Studio in Woodinville, a 35-40 minute drive from Seattle. It sparked from something a news anchor said on TV and I heard wrong. I heard 'blah blah blah black hole sun blah blah blah'. I thought that would make an amazing song title, but what would it sound like? It all came together, pretty much the whole arrangement including the guitar solo that's played beneath the riff." "I spent a lot of time spinning those melodies in my head so I wouldn't forget them," he continued. "I got home and whistled it into a Dictaphone. The next day I brought it into the real world, assigning a couple of key changes in the verse to make the melodies more interesting. Then I wrote the lyrics and that was similar,a stream of consciousness based on the feeling I got from the chorus and title." Cornell reflected on the song's lyrical content to Uncut: "What's interesting to me is the combination of a black hole and a sun," he said. "A black hole is a billion times larger than a sun, it's a void, a giant circle of nothing, and then you have the sun, the giver of all life. It was this combination of bright and dark, this sense of hope and underlying moodiness." "I even liked the way the words looked written down," Cornell added. "I liken it to Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd, where there's a happy veneer over something dark. It's not something I can do on purpose but occasionally it will happen by accident."

One Trick Pony God Bless The Absentee Album One-Trick Pony (1980) by Paul Simon One-Trick Pony is the fifth solo studio album by Paul Simon released in 1980. It was Simon's first album for Warner Bros. Records, and his first new studio album since 1975's Still Crazy After All These Years. His back catalog from Columbia Records would also move to Warner Bros. as a result of his signing with the label. Paul Simon's One-Trick Pony was released concurrently with the film of the same name, in which Simon also starred. Despite their similarities, the album and film are musically distinct: each features different versions of the same songs, as well as certain songs that appear exclusively on either the film or the album. The title track was released as a single and became a U.S. Top 40 hit. Two of the tracks (the title song and "Ace in the Hole") were recorded live at the Agora Theatre and Ballroom in Cleveland, Ohio in September 1979, while the rest are studio cuts. Several session musicians appearing on the album also appeared in the movie as the character Jonah's backing band: guitarist Eric Gale, pianist Richard Tee, bassist Tony Levin and drummer Steve Gadd. Simon toured Europe and America in 1980 with this band in support of the album, with one concert from Philadelphia recorded on video and released on VHS under the title "Paul Simon in Concert", then subsequently on DVD under 2 different titles for the same concert footage ("Live at the Tower Theatre" and "Live from Philadelphia"). In 2004, One-Trick Pony was remastered and re-released by Warner Bros. Records. This reissue contains four bonus tracks, including "Soft Parachutes" and "Spiral Highway" (an early version of "How the Heart Approaches What It Yearns") both of which were featured in the film but were missing from the original album release. Also included in the re-release were the outtake of "All Because of You" (an early version of "Oh, Marion" that would also spawn "God Bless the Absentee") and "Stranded in a Limousine", which originally appeared on the 1977 compilation Greatest Hits, Etc... The title is a colloquial American expression meaning a person specializing in only one thing, having only one talent, or of limited ability. Paul Simon – vocals, nylon string guitar, electric guitar, percussion Eric Gale – electric guitar Richard Tee – Fender Rhodes, piano on "God Bless the Absentee" Tony Levin – bass guitar on all songs except where noted Patti Austin – vocals Bob Friedman – horn and string arrangements Lani Groves – background vocals Dave Grusin – horn and string arrangements Ralph MacDonald – percussion Hugh McCracken – acoustic guitar

In honor of the Eclipse I give you For Whom The Bell Tolls Album: Ride The Lightning (1984) by Metallica The rules change April 8th. 04/08 2024 Forty-eight is the double factorial of 6 The number of symmetries of a cube. The number of Ptolemaic constellations. According to the Mishnah, Torah wisdom is acquired via 48 ways (Pirkei Avoth 6:6). In Buddhism, Amitabha Buddha had made 48 great vows and promises to provide ultimate salvation to countless beings through countless eons, with benefits said to be available merely by thinking about his name with Nianfo practice. He is thus hailed as "King of Buddhas" through such skillful compassion and became a popular and formal refuge figure in Pureland Buddhism. On Tool's album Ænima, there is a song named "Forty-Six & 2", the sum of which is 48. 48 Hours is a television news program on CBS. '48 is an alternate history novel by James Herbert. The number 48 in ASCII is what you add to any single digit integer to convert to its ASCII value. In my world, a 48 is an Incomplete Sequence Relay / Blocked Rotor The lyrics are based on the 1940 Ernest Hemingway novel of the same name. The book is about an American who is given the job of taking out a bridge held by the Fascist army in the Spanish Civil War - the precursor to World War II. He fell in love and then found out very disturbing things about life and death. The phrase "For Whom The Bell Tolls" originated in a 1623 poem by the Englishman John Donne, who wrote: Send not to know For whom the bell tolls It tolls for thee Hemingway's book used the title. This song is a commentary on the futility of war. The last few lines of the song diverge from the book to make this point. >> This is another song in which Cliff Burton's unique lead bass style is often mistaken for a guitar solo. Burton played the intro using light distortion on his bass. According to Kirk Hammett, Burton regularly played the intro bass riff when the pair of them were hanging out in their hotel room. The guitarist recalled to Rolling Stone in 2014: "He used to carry around an acoustic classical guitar that he detuned so that he could bend the strings. Anyway, when he would play that riff, I would think, 'That's such a weird, atonal riff that isn't really heavy at all.'" "I remember him playing it for James (Hetfield, vocals), and James adding that accent to it and all of a sudden, it changed," Hammett added. "It's such a crazy riff. To this day, I think, 'How did he write that?' Whenever I hear nowadays, it's like, 'OK, Cliff's in the house.'" Burton, Hetfield and Lars Ulrich are the credited writers on the song. Ride The Lightning is the second Metallica album, and the first co-produced by Flemming Rasmussen, who worked on their next two albums as well. He came on board when the band decided to record the album in Europe, where studio time cost much less than in America thanks to a favorable exchange rate. They chose Rasmussen's Sweet Silence Studios in Copenhagen and used him as engineer and co-producer (along with the band). On this song, they tried something new. "'For Whom the Bell Tolls' was the first song we ever did to a click track," Rasmussen said in a Songfacts interview. "That was kind of tricky. That was also Lars learning how to play to a click." The song opens with the tolling of a bell, which rings throughout the first minute of the song before gradually fading out. It's the second-most famous rock song to do this, placing behind AC/DC's "Hell's Bells," from their 1980 album Back In Black. The bands got their bell sounds in very different ways; AC/DC ordered a custom, one-ton bell from a foundry and recorded it using a mobile unit and 15 microphones. Metallica used a sound effects reel. "We edited in the bell effect so it would fit and be in tempo," Flemming Rasmussen told Songfacts. "I copied it and cut it in where it was supposed to come. So, once we got that tape started at the right spot, it simply played itself, and then dumped it into 24-track."

Mother Goodbye Blue Sky Album: The Wall (1979) by Pink Floyd Pink Floyd's album The Wall is mainly the creation of founding member Roger Waters. It's a semi-autobiographical story about a young boy who loses his father in the war and is raised by his overly protective mother, who is the focus of this song. The child grows up alone as an outsider that absolutely does not fit in. He feels trapped by his overly protective environment while being shunned by the men around him. Waters told Mojo that the mother portrayed in the song has some similarities to his own mum. He said: "My mother was suffocating in her own way. She always had to be right about everything. I'm not blaming her. That's who she was. I grew up with a single parent who could never hear anything I said, because nothing I said could possibly be as important as what she believed. My mother was, to some extent, a wall herself that I was banging my head against. She lived her life in the service of others. She was a school teacher. But it wasn't until I was 45, 50 years old that I realised how impossible it was for her to listen to me." When Mojo asked Waters if his mother saw herself in the song, he replied: "She's not that recognizable. The song is more general, the idea that we can be controlled by our parents' views on things like sex. The single mother of boys, particularly, can make sex harder than it needs to be." The main character in the song and throughout The Wall is named Pink. In this song, he's portrayed by Roger Waters, who asks his mother a series of questions: Mother, do you think they'll drop the bomb? Mother, do you think they'll like this song? Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour is the voice of the mother telling him the world is terrifying, but she'll protect him: Mama's gonna put all of her fears into you Mama's gonna keep you right here under her wing Unlike many of the songs on The Wall, "Mother" works well when extracted as an individual song, making it suitable for airplay. The songs on the album all flow together, so most don't have clear starting and stopping points, but "Mother" follows "Another Brick In The Wall (Part 2)," which ends with the sound of a phone ringing. There's then a brief silence before we hear Roger Waters take a deep breath and sing the first line of "Mother." The song is the last track on Side 1 of the double album, so it has a clear ending on the line, "Mother, did it need to be so high?" Radio stations took advantage and gave the song lots of airplay, playing it right off the album because it wasn't released as a single. It endured for many years on classic rock radio. The Wall was made into a 1982 movie starring Bob Geldof as Pink. There are animated sequences throughout the film created by Gerald Scarfe, who visualized the mother as a huge monstrous woman with a brick-wall bosom. Roger Waters told Mojo magazine December 2009: "The song has some connection with my mother, for sure, though the mother that Gerald Scarfe visualises in his drawings couldn't be further from mine. She's nothing like that." Pink Floyd's drummer Nick Mason didn't play on this track. According to Roger Waters, this was because Mason had trouble with the 5/4 time signatures and other changes, as "his brain doesn't work that way." Jeff Porcaro, who was a session drummer and also a member of the band Toto, took his place. Mason was also replaced on drums (this time by Andy Newmark) on the track "Two Suns in the Sunset" from the album The Final Cut. Roger Waters came up with the idea for The Wall after Pink Floyd's 1977 tour. Over the next year, he developed the idea, and when the band reconvened, he had a 90-minute demo with just his voice and guitar to lay out his vision. With help from producer Bob Ezrin, Waters and the band expanded the songs and tied them all together with sound effects and musical transitions. Many of the songs changed drastically from Waters' demo, but "Mother" hewed close to the original. Other songs that remained pretty much intact include "Is There Anybody Out There?" and "Don't Leave Me Now." Roger Waters took over most of the songwriting in Pink Floyd starting with their 1975 album Wish You Were Here. By the time they recorded The Wall, there was a great deal of tension in the band. They pulled off one more album (The Final Cut in 1983) before Waters left, which he assumed would be the end of the group. He was wrong. Gilmour and company carried on without him as Pink Floyd, releasing their first Waters-less album, A Momentary Lapse Of Reason, in 1987. Waters wasn't done performing The Wall though. In 1990 he staged an ambitious concert in Berlin to celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall, enlisting famous singers to help out. On "Mother," he was joined by Sinéad O'Connor and three members of The Band: Garth Hudson, Rick Danko and Levon Helm. Pearl Jam performed "Mother" on September 30, 2011 as part of a week-long Pink Floyd tribute on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. The Shins, Foo Fighters, MGMT, and Dierks Bentley all played Pink Floyd songs on the show that week. Dixie Chicks lead singer Natalie Maines recorded a cover version in 2013 which was the title track to her first solo album. She decided to cover the song after hearing Roger Waters perform it on his The Wall Live tour, which ran 2010-2013. Waters loved her rendition, telling Rolling Stone, "I get goosebumps just talking about it." "Goodbye Blue Sky" is part of Pink Floyd's seminal album The Wall, the creation of founding member Roger Waters. It's a concept album centered on the character Pink, who is in many ways an outcrop of Waters' psyche. The song finds Pink in early adolescence, already beset by fear in the aftermath of World War II in England ("Did you hear the falling bombs?"). He's getting ready to set out on his own, leaving behind any childhood innocence - the "blue sky." On the vinyl version of the album, "Goodbye Blue Sky" is the first track on Side 2 (The Wall was a double album). In an interview around the album's release, Roger Waters described the song as being a recap of the first side of album one, summing up Pink's life to that point. As Waters says, in it's most simplistic form "it's remembering one's childhood and then getting ready to set off into the rest of one's life." The child who says the line, "Look mummy, there's an airplane up in the sky" is Roger's son Harry, who was only two years old at the time. Harry, like his father, also became a musician. The lead vocal on this one is by Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour, who in various spots on the album shows up as the voice of someone addressing Pink. For instance, he's the voice of Pink's mum in "Mother." The Wall was adapted into an movie in 1982 starring Bob Geldof as Pink. "Goodbye Blue Sky" plays in one of the many sequences animated by Gerald Scarfe. The sequence starts with a dove transforming into a vulture and ends with a cross dripping blood - scary stuff! Roger Waters left Pink Floyd in 1985 but that didn't stop him from performing The Wall in Berlin in 1990 after the Berlin Wall fell. He used guest vocalists to fill David Gilmour's parts. For "Goodbye Blue Sky" he got a good one: Joni Mitchell. Waters did an entire tour for the album that ran from 2010 to 2013.