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Posts tagged ‘TuneTags’

Sep 25

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You might need a tumbler of Wild Turkey with plenty of ice for this: Hunter S. Thompson, Hotel Rooms and One and a Half Suitcases…

I was listening to the iPod this morning while strolling the London footpaths. The Shuffle was working its magic, offering up a wicked three-in-a-row of My Morning Jacket > Chuck Berry > Waylon Jennings.  With The Shuffle it is a serendipitous sound surfing, never know what is coming next. 

What I got next was from The Gonzo Tapes. The Gonzo Tapes is a five CD set of audio recording of and by Hunter S. Thompson. The recordings of Hunter’s mumbles, slurs and twisted Kentucky drawl cover the years of 1965-1975 and it over 100 tracks long.

If you are devout Hunter fan (like I am) you will find this utterly fascinating if not overwhelming.  It is both exhilarating and exhausting to listen to 9I mean this in a good way). When I indulge in repeat listens (of which there are many) I like to be alone in the house, turn it up very loud and double up on that tumbler of Wild Turkey. The extreme volume squelches out any other sounds in the house and disrupts any clear thoughts you may have; hang on and listen.

The Gonzo Tapes track that came up is from the Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas era. It is Hunter surveying the carnage in the hotel room after a week’s stay with “Dr.Gonzo”.  He is riffing on the scene for a matter of record. If you are familiar with the book, you can see the germs of the vibrant imagery and dark happenings expertly transcribed in the pages of the book. 

It is a fun tour of an apparently debauched and ravaged hotel room.  His blasé attitude is cavalier in light of the looming deadline, the heavy room tab and the severe state of his being (“I should be put in a rest home…if not a jail.”). My favourite part is at 3:57 when he says, “I have no guilt”. He means it, too (The Gonzo Way, Lesson #7: “Never apologise, never explain”).

Here, listen and enjoy:

3-17 Vegas D.A. Final Notes…The Whole Room Is Total Chaos_ _I Can’t Imagine How I’m Going To Get This Whole Fucking Room Into One and a Half Suitcases_.m4a
Listen on Posterous

Hunter was a massive fan of music. It was most often a central character in his best works. Here is a quote on music from the Good Doctor:

“Music has always been a matter of Energy to me, a question of Fuel. Sentimental people call it Inspiration, but what they really mean is Fuel. I have always needed Fuel. I am a serious consumer. On some nights I still believe that a car with the gas needle on empty can run about fifty more miles if you have the right music very loud on the radio.” 

Dammit. I miss Hunter.

In 1999, Hunter was asked by a UK label to string together a playlist of his favourite Fuel to be packaged up for sale. It was called, “Where Were You When the Fun Stopped”.  Back when I lived in the States, I ordered a copy from the UK by mail. It is classic Hunter.  The quote above is from the liner notes.

There are the obvious choices (obvious if you know Hunter) from Zevon, Dylan, The Airplane, Buffet and Lovett. There are also a few savvy selection of which you may never heard. Here is the coolest one of the collection:

“The Ballad of Thunder Road“: Who knew Robert Mitchum sang, let alone sang bad-assed shit?! Hunter chose the Mitchum’s reading of the song from the name of the same movie Mitchum Starred in.  

You willing to bet Hunter stepped hard on the gas when he heard these lyrics? I would.

Roarin’ out of Harlan, revvin’ up his mill
He shot the gap at Cumberland, and screamed by Maynordsville
With G-men on his taillights, roadblocks up ahead
The mountain boy took roads that even Angels feared to tred.

Tune Tags

Fuel for your fire:

http://listen.grooveshark.com/songWidget.swf
http://widgets.clearspring.com/o/48f3f305ad1283e4/4abcc594616f0a1c/48f3f3053cbe0b4e/c304e93d

The Goods

Prior posts on Hunter from The 6149:
Lookee Here! (links):

Track listing for “Where Were You When the Fun Stopped”:

  1. Ballad of Thunder Road – Robert Mitchum
  2. I Smell A Rat – Howlin’ Wolf
  3. Spirit In The Sky – Norman Greenbaum
  4. The Hula-Hula Boys – Warren Zevon
  5. Maggie May – Rod Stewart
  6. The Wild Side of Life / It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels – Hank Thompson feat. Kitty Wells & Tanya Tucker
  7. Will The Circle Be Unbroken – Nitty Gritty Dirt Band
  8. Mr Tambourine Man – Bob Dylan
  9. Walk On The Wild Side - Lou Reed
  10. If I Had A Boat – Lyle Lovett
  11. Stars On The Water – Rodney Crowell
  12. Carmelita – Flaco Jiminez feat. Dwight Yoakam
  13. Why Don’t We Get Drunk – Jimmy Buffett
  14. American Pie – Don McClean
  15. White Rabbit – Jefferson Airplane
  16. The Weight- The Band
  17. Melissa – The Allman Brothers Band
  18. Battle Hymn of the Republic – Herbie Mann

Sep 25

4 Comments

“Some are building monuments and others are jotting down notes…”

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“Some are building monuments and others are jotting down notes…((Tags: mind map, blog posts, Bob Dylan, London, Cafe, mobile, Twitter, Simply Tweet))

via SimplyTweet

_____

Update: This is a note for all you twitter/posterous users. 

I started using a new Twitter client on my iPhone: Simply Tweet.  Simply Tweet works well with Posterous (The 6149′s blogging platform). It allows you to post long tweets to Twitter that are simultaneously posted on your Posterous blog. The Tweet ends up being the title of the post as well as appears in the body text. 

In my first post, I used email subject syntax to add tags to the post on posterous. The tags showed up as I wanted them too, but they also showed up in the body text (see above).  I didn’t want that. 

SImply Tweet responded to a tweet I made about this and gave me a solution…within 5 minutes of my posting this. Here is what they said:

@Judd6149 ah. So you want to set Posterous tags? Use hashtags. #SimplyTweet converts hashtags to Posterous tags automatically so you don’t need to use the email subject syntax. The advantage is if they appear early enough, they are included as hashtags in the tweet text.

That solves that. Great customer service from @simplytweet.  Give them a try if you need a (new) mobile twitter client.

And now back to our regularly scheduled program…

The picture in this post was taken at a cafe around the corner from where I am staying in South Kensington, London.  I was on the way home from the gym and decided to stop off for a double-espresso and some early morning sunshine inspiration.

I mapped out a flew blog posts ideas for The 6149 (do you think my blog knows I am talking about it in the third person?).  When I was doing this, I started singing the lyric that is the title to this post.  It is from Bob Dylan’s “The Mighty Quinn”. It is off his second volume of “Greatest Hits”.  

Here is some commentary from The Bob from his “Chronicles” book:

Dylan in his autobiography Chronicles Volume One (published 2004), makes further reference to the song: “On the way back to the house I passed the local movie theater on Prytania Street, where The Mighty Quinn (film) was showing. Years earlier I had written a song called “The Mighty Quinn” which was a hit in England, and I wondered what the movie was about. Eventually I’d sneak off and go there to see it. It was a mystery, suspense, Jamaican thriller with Denzel Washington as the Mighty Xavier Quinn a detective who solves crimes. Funny, that’s just the way I imagined him when I wrote the song The Mighty Quinn, Denzel Washington”

Indeed, Bob. Indeed.

Tune Tags

As mentioned in a 6149 post yesterday, I am introducing Tune Tags.  I have dropped in a Tune Tag playlist here for you to put your ears on. This one is chock full of different versions of “The Mighty Quinn”. 
  • The Bob version is really from sessions in the basement of Big Pink with the band. I love the lazy, slurry, jangle-y feel to this one.
  • The Dead’s version is a reminder of how much fun it was to go to their shows and anticipate what cover they were going to play. Great times at those shows (from what I can recall…I think everyone did dose when Quinn showed up.
  • The Hollies?  Yes, the Hollies did a folksy version of this, too.  Can you hear Gram Nash in there…?
  • Speaking of cover tunes…the curators of the cover tune, Phish do their best Dead doing Bob.
  • I had to include Manfred Mann, right?  There version is the widely know version.  Smart move covering Bob & Bruce.

Note: Apologies to @wolfgangsvault. Mate, I’ll get the Tune Tags up higher in the post next time (heh heh)

The Goods

Here is another new feature I am going to use on The 6149.  The Goods is the section where I will add links that reference the post contents. It will be links, images, footers, etc.  I’ll give this a go and see how it works in conjunction with Tune Tags. Let me know if it is “Too Much Monkey Business“. 
p.s. another technical note: I did not add the Tune Tag playlist via Simply Tweet. I did it in the editing of the post.