Happy Belated Birthday, Eh?

Fellow Canadians and musicians Neil Young and Joni Mitchell both celebrated birthdays this month. Neil Percival Young was born on 12 November 1945 in Toronto while Roberta Joan Anderson (Mitchell was the surname of her first husband Chuck) entered the world two years earlier on 7 November in Fort Macleod, Alberta. The two met and became friends in their early days of playing small clubs in Winnipeg; besides sharing country and music, Young and Mitchell both contracted polio as children. The two intersected in at least two other ways: Young and his sometime bandmates David Crosby (whom Joni dated at one time), Stephen Stills, and Graham Nash (whom Joni was dating at the time of Woodstock) had a huge hit with their cover of Mitchell's tune "Woodstock", which she wrote after watching news reports and hearing Nash's firsthand descriptions of the 1969 music festival (while Mitchell was not in attendance, CSN was there playing "a medley of our hit," as they put it, "Suite: Judy Blues"); and Joni and Neil both played at "The Last Waltz" on Thanksgiving 1976, which was the last hurrah of The Band.

Some trivia:
Both of Neil Young's sons have cerebral palsy while Young himself is an epileptic. In fact, one of his working pseudonyms is Bernard Shakey.

Joni Mitchell had a daughter that she gave up for adoption. Even though it was not public knowledge throughout most of her career, she often made passing references to her daughter in her songs (in fact the tune "Little Green" is all about her daughter). Mitchell's daughter found her once she grew up and they still enjoy a relationship.

Martin Scorsese directed the concert film The Last Waltz. It is rumored that the footage had to be altered in order to remove white powder around Young's nose (I have a feeling that he wasn't grinding up his epilepsy meds and snorting them, but hey that's probably just me).

Mitchell's song "Free Man in Paris" from the album Court and Spark is about music mogul/producer David Geffen.

Young played in a Toronto-based band in the mid-60s called The Mynah Birds. They signed with Motown Records in 1966 and started recording an album that was never released because one of the group members was arrested for going AWOL from the US Navy. That musician's name? Rick James, bitch!

Janet Jackson sampled Mitchell's song "Big Yellow Taxi" for the tune "Got 'Til It's Gone" on the Velvet Rope album. Jackson's song also featured Q-Tip and I can recall that Mitchell participated in an MTV commercial (back when the channel played music videos and didn't suck) about older musicians listening to younger musicians, such as Isaac Hayes declaring that he liked Maxwell, and Mitchell enthusiastically praised Jackson's song and how the sample was used.

Joni Mitchell performing "Free Man in Paris"


CSN&Y doing Young's tune "Down By The River"


If you liked "Down By The River" here is the cover by Buddy Miles, former drummer for Jimi Hendrix's post-Experience band, The Band of Gypsys.


Janet Jackson's "Got 'Til It's Gone"


Lynyrd Skynyrd's hit "Sweet Home Alabama" was written in response to Young's scathing songs "Southern Man" and "Alabama". Skynyrd's lead singer Ronnie Van Zant remained a fan and a friend of Young's though, wearing a Neil Young T-shirt on the cover of Street Survivors, the album released three days before the 20 October 1977 plane crash that killed Van Zant, guitarist Steve Gaines, backup singer and Steve's sister Cassie Gaines, the assistant road manager, and the pilot and co-pilot. And legend has it that Van Zant was buried in a Neil Young T-shirt.

And the point of the VMAs is...?

OK, wow...

I didn't watch the MTV Video Music Awards last night because I don't have cable but I sure as hell heard about them this morning. I've read a lot of stuff on the internet about the Kanye/Taylor incident and a lot of folks think it was staged by Kanye (he wanted attention, per usual) and/or MTV ('cause MTV sucks) and/or Beyonce (resoundingly good PR move and the positive press that goes with it) and/or NBC (Jay Leno's show debuts tonight and the musical guests are Jay-Z, Rihanna, and Kanye). And virtually no one thinks that Taylor Swift was in on it. In fact, the sentiment I read more than once in comments posted on various websites was that if she knew about it, then young Ms. Swift is in the wrong profession because she deserves an Oscar. This is a backstage/audience pit account of last night's Video Music Awards. It says, among other things (look for the Lisa Marie Presley tidbit), that Taylor Swift started to cry and some of the MTV execs came out and escorted her offstage.

Clearly not in on it.

And People.com is reporting that Beyonce's dad helped comfort Swift backstage and arranged for Beyonce to step aside later in the evening to let the young winner finish her speech. I guess that explains why the girl was told to standby backstage but no one would tell her why. Of course, others would say that's further evidence of a setup so I guess the staged/spontaneous asshole moment debate is still ongoing...

As for some people who are taking it as a racial thing, I don't think it's a black/white issue at all. For me, it's more about a 32-year-old drunk-ass baby humiliating a heretofore scandal-free 19-year-old girl on live television in front of millions of people. Or as Katy Perry put it when she dissed West on her blog," IT'S LIKE U STEPPED ON A KITTEN." Kudos to Taylor for pulling herself together and singing soon after the incident, to Pink for wanting to beat the shit out of 'Ye, and to the security for throwing dude's drunk ass out the building.


PS I'm watching Jay's show right now. One of his first jokes was that Obama is organizing a root beer summit between Kanye and Taylor Swift. Heh. And to that end, someone has pieced together this:




UPDATE: If you didn't see Jay's show, Leno briefly interviewed Kanye before he performed. Jay said something to the effect of,"I had the good fortune to meet your mom. What do you think she'd say if she were here?" And there was a really, really long pause and 'Ye rubbed his face like he was trying to keep from crying. Jay touched his kneecap and prompted, speaking more softly," Do you think she'd be disappointed?" The answer was affirmative. West also said that he was sorry that his pain caused someone else pain as he never took any time off after his mother's death; he said he'll take that time off soon and that he'd like to apologize to Taylor Swift in person. As for when he realized he was in the wrong at the VMAs, he replied,"When I gave the mic back to her and she didn't keep talking."


And hey! This is off topic but I think I can answer my own question,"And the point of the VMAs is...?" Apparently it's to bring Jennifer Lopez together with her various men. Check it out: she was there with husband Marc Anthony, former lover Sean Combs was a presenter, and one of her previous spouses, Cris Judd, danced with Janet Jackson. Can you imagine the four of them backstage together? Now that's a collision I would love to have seen!

When Music Got Down With a Cause

I know, I know. I could be blogging about this weekend's big music story, the rapper Drake bustin' his ass onstage after he'd already torn his ACL a month ago (good luck with the surgery, man!). Or I could talk extensively about how on 1 August 1981, Music Television made its debut on cable with the clip "Video Killed the Radio Star" by The Buggles (which just reminds me what MTV used to be and that MTV now sucks, as I've mentioned a few times before on this blog).

Instead, I wanted to commemorate 1 August 1971, The Concert For Bangla Desh (the original title). Ravi Shankar, the sitarist from India, was gravely concerned about the refugee situation in East Pakistan (as Bangladesh was originally known) and he called his buddy George Harrison for his help. Harrison decided to rally some of his friends and put on a concert to raise money for the cause. Shankar, Harrison, Ringo Starr, Leon Russell, Eric Clapton, Billy Preston, and Bob Dylan were among the musicians who performed at Madison Square Garden in New York City. It was the first gathering of its kind, a precursor of such benefits as Live Aid and Farm Aid. Also, it was a rousing success, raising millions of dollars for UNICEF, the United Nations' Children's Fund.

A few years ago, a friend of mine who hails from Bangladesh told me that his people are still grateful to George Harrison for calling attention to his country and its plight, especially since as a newer country, many folks around the world had never even heard of it.


By the way, you can still donate to George Harrison's UNICEF fund.

Addenda about MJ

Just some random stuff that has come forth since Michael Jackson's death:

• Last Monday, June 22, was the 40th anniversary of Judy Garland's death. I was actually trying to find the clip of Liza Minnelli singing "And the World Goes 'Round" from the movie New York, New York in order to commemorate the occasion but I couldn't find it (she used Judy as her model for her character in the film), so I failed to post about it. But there are some eerie connections between Judy Garland and Michael Jackson, besides the proximity of their dates of death. They were both child stars who started out performing with and outshining their older siblings. Garland, whose birth name was Frances Gumm, performed on vaudeville as part of The Gumm Sisters before signing to MGM while Jackson was the lead singer of his family's group, The Jackson Five, on Motown Records. Both were known at young ages for their preternaturally mature singing voices. And both were in movies based on L. Frank Baum's most famous book; Garland played Dorothy in 1939's The Wizard of Oz while Jackson starred as the Scarecrow in the all-black version called The Wiz in 1978. The two performers also complained bitterly throughout their adulthoods of missing out on a more normal childhood experience, as they had spent all of their youth performing. Each developed financial problems as well as an addiction to prescription drugs and both died relatively young (Garland had just turned 47), each survived by three children. Garland's oldest, the aforementioned Liza, had been friends with Jackson for years. In fact, she would often accompany him to Studio 54 in the late '70s. Michael's older brother Tito was a school friend of Liza's fourth husband, David Gest; Michael and Tito both served as Gest's best men when he married Minnelli in 2002.
• This may also be eerie if you take any stock in it. I was first alerted to this tidbit by Solange Knowles' tweet on TMZ.com the night Michael died and I received a text message the next day with the same information. OK. Michael (and Farrah Fawcett, of course) died on June 25. James Brown died on Christmas Day, or December 25. Aaliyah was killed on August 25 while a songwriter/producer she worked with, Static Major, passed on February 25. And Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes of TLC died in a car crash on April 25. Some may say that this is more than a coincidence. Me, I dunno. Maybe if Bob Marley, Jimi Hendrix, Curtis Mayfield, or Philip Lynott had also died on the 25th of a month, I might read more into it (their dates of death were 11 May 1981, 18 September 1970, 26 December 1999, and 4 January 1986, respectively). Nonetheless, for those who may be interested, the principles of numerology dictate that 25 be simplified to a 7 in order to be interpreted.
• Michael has been described as the seventh of nine children when actually he was the eighth of ten (or eleven if you want to include the half-sibling that resulted from his father's affair with a Jackson Five fan). Older brother Marlon was born with a twin named Brandon (Marlon and Brandon- get it?) who died shortly after birth. Click here if you don't believe me.
• MTV sucks. Well, I already knew this but this week, the point has been reinforced. It took the death of one of the major artists to put the fledgling Music Television channel on the map in order for them to abandon their "all-reality" shit-shows (albeit for only 24 hours) and play music videos again. Like I said, MTV sucks. They suck donkey. They suck rhino.

I also wanted to give links to my favorite MJ tributes; they're my faves because they came out while he was still alive to enjoy them and enjoy them he did! He had a great sense of humor and loved Weird Al Yankovic's parodies of his songs "Beat it" and "Bad" and he gave a big thumbs up to Alien Ant Farm's hard-rocking treatment of "Smooth Criminal" a few years back. I'm sure MJ dug all the references to his work that pop up in the video. How many can you spot?

Yo! Ding-dong, man! Ding-dong, ding-dong, yo!
Heh. That still cracks me up.