Like the "legendary" guitarist, pirate & glamorous multi-millionaire junkie Keith Richards, who apprently fell out of a palm tree at some resort in Fiji. Just when the Stones were starting to seem dull, acquiescing politely to Chiness authorities over set list guidelines last month, just leave it to Keith eh?
Keith supposedly suffered a mild concussion, at the Wakaya Resort, after falling from a palm tree he was climbing with fellow aging drinking buddy Ron Wood. He's now been flown to New Zealand for further care... here's a few pictures of the exclusive private resort Keith was chilling at and of course some appropro tuneage...
Room rates for the low end roooms at Wakaya start at $2,000 a night and go up to over $8000 from there...plus you gotta stay at least 5 days, but they do throw in a bottle of bubbly, sunscreen and for all you geeks ...note: each "bure" comes equppied with I-Pod connector ports!!!
this one is a special dedication to the world's most notorious playful tree climbing grampa child
Rolling Stones - Monkey Man
here's Keith from a Hank Williams tribute album
Keith Richards - You Win Again
and here he is singing his notorious theme song Happy live with Sheryl Crow & fellow resort enthusiast Ron Wood right alongside him...
Sheryl Crow, Keith Richards & Rolling Stones - Happy
Speaking of drinking buddies, and trying to catch up with that kind of quasi legendary party animal behaviour... I be feeling it today. Not probably as bad as ol' Keith... but then again, I can't quite afford to party like a real rockstar...
So Thursday night, actually Friday morn I suppose, with last call rapidly approaching, and having just injested enough booze and unmentionables to stun a circus animal, I wisely headed to the liquor store before two. After all, what would Keith do? No shame in reupping the supply of hearty malt beverages I say...
My travelling companion, who shall remain nameless to protect the guilty, is a die hard punk rock renegade, like many of my pals, he's travelled the states many times, and yes even parts of the world, bandmates & guitar in tow extolling the virtues of 3 chords, piss and vinegar.
Hence that is why we are leaving a Stiff Records tribute gig, that also included a female Mentors cover band, with a buncha other disreputable aging punk rockers. We were all doing our part for the uh, cause and our livers at SF's Eagle Tavern. (Stiff , for those of you not paying attention, was a near legendary indie label, I profiled in my last post.)
Word came in that an old Stiff legend, Wreckless Eric himself was just a few blocks away at 12 Galaxies opening for The Cynical Girls - which is apparently Amy Rigby & Marti Jones, (whoever the fuck they be...)
Anyhow some local ne'er do 'ells tried to convince Eric to swing by The Eagle later for a special last minute guest appearance, but he declined. Apparently he had to be up by 4 a.m to catch a flight back to the U.K, and wasn't in the mood to extend the legend to the enjoyment of the patrons of San Francisco's finest seedy legendary gay leather bar...go figger.
So someone mentions though that as Eric was packing up, 12 Galaxies got a last minute request to let Ryan Adams & Phil Lesh of the "legendary" Grateful Dead jam until the wee hours... and soon a line reeking of patchouli & reefer was snaking up the block...
So being drunken idiots and curiosity seekers, we had to go and check it out...
an insider's look at "Hippie Heaven"
and knowing that the bar had no doubt stopped serving, we were well stocked with brews in every pocket.
Even though as we got to the club, we noticed the door was a measly $5, we surmised that still was indeed a ripoff since I doubt that either of the two rockstars onstage really needed our dough. We just walked quickly in, bypassing whatever elaborate hippie protocol was in place, breezing right past a buncha stoned twirly dancers and a cabal of bearded dudes and headed towards the stage which could be barely seen through the clouds of sweet skunk laden smoke.
Onstage in a crisp blue shirt was Ryan Adams, fairly drunk and likely high on some other substances, babbling, and botching Dead lyrics left and right. Occasionally he'd noodle on his guitar, while Phil Lesh just stood there beaming like a proud parent. Phil at least seemed to know the bass licks, but he seemingly had no idea on the lost lyrics either...
Within minutes we immediately rose to the top rank of the little frat-hippie kingdom near the sound booth by simply having a lighter... this comes in handy when 4 joints start getting passed at you while Ryan Adams is trying to figure out his head from his ass...
I sorta couldn't figure out exactly why he wanted to be playing so badly in some dive with his roadies at 3 am. The guys gotta be 60 something. Maybe it's those new organs he's had installed or something, a rant that he made at some point tried to get a shout out for organ transplants...which aging 70's rock stars as a demographic tend to need more often than other folks. Apparently it's a cause that Phil's down for, so to speak, and hey with the Chinese prison population supplying more organs every year, good times are ahead for us all brother...party on.
Ryan definitely looks like he's down for a party...
plus he's like so way into the Dead dude ! How neat ! My buddy said he has a chair with a picture of Jerry Garcia that he talks too & takes to all his shows dude...and rumors are that he parties a lot like like ol' Jerry, let's just say those ain't all cortisone shots he needs for his purty voice...
I tried to party on with these folks in spirit, and to the annoyment of my friend, I insisted on staying for another few noodles , assuming at some point they would play a whole song, or perhaps someting meaningful would transpire. I told my buddy, look this is the type of event that many alt rock stalker weirdos & hippies would give their last bong hit to be at, maybe we should stay just so we better understand what the fuck is going on in their addled brains...
But I felt like pulling these guys aside and maybe mentioning
" Hey, look it's 2:45 a.m, either get it together or go home, neither of you know the lyrics to China Cat Sunflower, but some fat balding tie dyed dude in front of me does and I think you guys have played half of Not Fade Away twice...please stop...these Dead Heads don't tip, and the staff wants to go home..."
here click this link & see them play Not Fade Away again...
But we really, they simply beat us down, killed our buzz & we just couldn't take it...
I told a bored bartender that I was sorry he still had to be there, and after what some seemed like an interminable amount of patchouli scented aimless jam rock...
My punker pal & I just looked at each other and decided we'd had enough. In fact I think punk rock & Stiff records etc were all created just to end the horrible nincompoopery that is the mindless music of the Grateful Dead.
I really wanna dig 'em, or at least respect all that they've accomplished, but everytime I get close to the vortex, something spins me the other way...
even if the music was vaguely tolerable, I can only think of the lost waystrels left in the Dead's wake, like their own children who were left to rot while daddy toured and shot dope, or the fans that sill clog sidewalks on Haight street bumming change , stinking and just being generally miserable.
Now that I know Ryan Adams is in cahoots with this ramshackle Jam Band nightmare scene, it makes me worry even more about the kid.
Phil on why Ryan rocks his zone(Via AnsweringBell.com):
I love playing with Ryan because he’s fearless; because he doesn’t have to do anything the same way twice; because every idea he throws out in a jam is a little gem that cries out “polish me”; because he has about nine hundred voices that he can use like a Bene Gesserit; because of his huge heart and enormous talent.
I like it that we deconstruct the songs so that verses are transposed, or the bridge comes in early, or the jam leads back to a verse instead of a chorus. I like it that we have to be on our tippy-tippy toes to make the acute left turns and abrupt changes that Ryan likes to spring on us. I like to spring those kind of changes too- what do you think I’m doing when I talk into my mike and you can’t hear me? I love playing with Ryan because he takes me back to when the Grateful Dead were young, fearless, crazy and didn’t give a shit about what other people thought we should do.
If what you desire is the perfect rendition, there are many excellent bands that perform Grateful Dead songs- but I have never been about perfection and never will be. I do promise that I will always do my best to follow my weird. I hope you will join me, but I do understand if your path takes you elsewhere. I will also say with no hesitation that Jerry would have loved Ryan and his fearless interpretations of his songs. It’s funny, but I feel Jerry close to me whenever I am around Ryan.
— Phil Lesh (January 2006)
Well whatever dude, you must be on acid or something, cuz I saw yer "fearless" friend and his "abrupt changes" & that shit was weak...
It's amazing to me how people can be so enthused about something so mediocre...already one dead head called me and said it was the "the best night of his life !"...
arrrrgh...
here's the two playing a more together deal last July in Colorado @ Red Rocks
Phil Lesh w/ Ryan Adams - Friend Of The Devil
Phil Lesh w/ Ryan Adams - Easy Plateau
Phil Lesh w/ Ryan Adams - Magnolia Mountain
plus a show from June 05 in which he pays alil' tribute to the previously mentioned Rolling Stones...
Ryan Adams - Brown Sugar
Quasi was in town this week, and I really should've gone to that instead of a Ryan Adams Dead Head wankfest. I was in a band that Janet Weiss played in for awhile and she was always just a super swell lady. According to my nameless friend, she was also way friendlier in a triangulated love way to some of the band members than I actually remembered. She eventually split town and went north with this Sam Coomes fella, and here's their resultant band Quasi...
Janet of course is now in that quasi-legendary band Sleater-Kinney
But here are Quasi from records they put out on Up Records awhile back, circa the late nineteen nineties.
Quasi - Ghost Dreaming
Quasi - All The Same
from "early recordings" a track called Mammom
Quasi - Mammom
and one from their Happiness EP -
and apparently after tonight's DuNord show, that's all of their tourdates this yar.
Here's a couple more tracks in honor of their arrival, which I'm missing due to "scheduling conflicts", fiscal issues, hangover, and a 7 am work day tommorrow.
how about a newer track from their Touch & Go release Hot Sh*t...
Quasi - Drunken Tears
and one from "Sword of God"
Quasi It's Raining
and here's from their latest effort "When The Going Gets Dark" a song called "The Rhino"
Quasi - The Rhino.
I recently ran into this guy Jay, who used to be in a great band with Klaus Flouride of the DK's called The Muskrats that I had a lot of fun checking out back in the day as they say. I worked at the label they were on, and our bands played together a lot etc. I recall one night even jamming onstage with them to a Bob Seger cover of Old Time Rock & Roll once in my underwear...
Well anyhow ,I asked Jay what he was up to lately , and he said he was occasionally playing gigs with the Legendary Stardust Cowboy.
This is crazed country music that's not for the faint hearted....
The Legendary Stardust Cowboy - My Underwear Froze To The Clothespin
The Legendary Stardust Cowboy - Paralyzed
Here's a track from a Norwegian electropop punk band called DataRock. It was one of the hot 100 most popular tunes on Austrailia's Triple J radio last year... go figger...
They are currently on tour all over Europa, so check em out if yer over there...
Data Rock - Sex Me Up
DATA ROCK:
EUROPEAN TOUR 2006 (Support: Ungdomskulen)
29.04, SWITZERLAND, Bern, Dampfzentrale
30.04, SWITZERLAND, Schaffhausen, Tab Tap
01.05, SWITZERLAND, Zurich, Talacker
02.05, GERMANY, Wuerzburg, Cairo
03.05, GERMANY, Berlin, Lovelite
04.05, FRANCE, Paris, Noveau Casino
05.05, FRANCE, Paris, secret show! shhhhhhh! Ask your neighbour for more info. or ask us..
06.05, TBA (check Myspace for updates!)
07.05, SCOTLAND, Glasgow, Optimo
08.05, UK, Wolverhampton, Little Civic
09.05, UK, Southampton, Lennons, Ejector Seat
10.05, TBA (check Myspace for updates!)
11.05, UK, London, The Luminaire
17.06, SWEDEN, Hultsfred, Hultsfred Festival
05.08, NORWAY, Bodø, Klubbfestuka
13.08, FRANCE, Aulnoye Aymeries, Festival les Nuits Secretes
18.08, FRANCE, Cannes, Festival Pantiero
19.08, NORWAY, Steinkjer, Steinkjerfestivalen
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