Thoughtful Preparations: Media Spin Blog

I love Christmas music, don’t you? God’s rested gentlemen, Comfort, Joy, JosieAnna in the highest, Chest hairs roasting on open fires and all that joyous stuff. Coping through Christmas. Right, gotcha. Click the stoned Santa to celebrate, but be forewarned, it’s not exactly Bing Crosby’s White Christmas. I highly recommend the Bah Humbug mix which includes Tiny Tim’s strange warning of Santa Claus Has Got The AIDS This Year.

The MGM Grand Las Vegas
Originally uploaded by Wolfgang Staudt.

In a few days I will be joining the famous video blogger Nick of schmult.com, the TechieDiva and rising TV presence Christianna M to cover the Billboard Music Awards for our newly launched Tubular TV vlog site. Nick seems to be equipped to video blog everything, so it might be a bit uncomfortable sharing a room with this dude. How far will he go to get more hits?

Britney Spears, help!

Ghost on the Highway: A Portrait of Jeffrey Lee Pierce and the Gun Club will be screening this coming Thursday and Friday at SF’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.

I was fortunate to make contact with the filmmaker, Kurt Voss, in the latter stages of editing in time to include a few of my photographs of Pierce and the Gun Club in the movie.

Yerba Buena’s Film Schedule

A message in a bottle washed up at my doorstep the other day, a CD from an old time friend from the shores of Long Island, Tommy Davis. He’s the lead guitarist in surf twang band, Shecky and the Twangtones.

Many folks on Long Island know Tommy for his reggae and blues guitar music, and the tiki lounge surf rock sound of The Ventures and Dick Dale is an exciting new addition to his repertoire.

Live Diamondhead performance video on YouTube. More videos on the Shecky web site: BAJA and Around and Around.

Went to the 6th Annual Hardly Strictly Bluegrass free concert in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park yesterday, and lucked out by seeing a surprise guest appearance of Elvis Costello with T Bone Burnett’s band. Four stages of simultaneous music provided a lot of space and variety to stroll around and enjoy the many varieties of food booths on the scene. Saw a bit of Billy Bragg and ended with Steve Earle.

Fleet Week, Cal football game, Mill Valley Film Festival, the bluegrass festival, numerous other events all in beautiful sunny weather makes the Bay Area a happening place to be. Folks from other parts of the country will say or think whatever they like about San Francisco, but if you’re not here to enjoy it, you really don’t know where it’s at.

P.S. Just added 2 new pages of Elvis and T Bone photos to the Media Spin Rockpix section.  Link to Elvis and T Bone photos.

Added Snakefinger photos from 1981 to the Rockpix section of MediaSpin.com. I foresee Media Spin growing into some kind of massive glob of content, much like the other sites. At least for now I have some control over it.

Snakefinger made some very intense music, a lot of it sounded like a man drven mad by a mad society: warnings, and many a cry for help.

In the previous century, Eric Drew Feldman toured with Captain Beefheart and then Snakefinger, the San Francisco based band of musicians, and is now preparing to tour with Frank Black. It was fun to get back in touch with Eric through MySpace.com. As Eric mentioned, it was good to take a little tour through Snakeland. Look up his music, there are many hidden gems.

Conservatives do not like Woodstock. Perhaps it bothers them that the large gathering of people was not under their control, and so it must be a threat of some kind. But get over it small minded ones, you who see positives in our marvelous invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. Surely you can see the good that came out of the 3 Days of Peace and Music also known as Woodstock, 37 years ago.

• Outdoor rock concert venue testing ground
• Now Bethel Woods Center for the Arts
• Charles Schultz character
• Documentary film enabled Steve Ross to launch Warner Communications, later Time-Warner.
• Peace Sign Pendants

Caught Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young at Concord Pavilion on the last night of the 9 day heat wave in California. They held up well for a bunch old time troopers, playing two great sets and an encore of Woodstock. Neil Young is a force of Nature, balanced by the rest of the band. I especially enjoyed David Crosby's acoustic playing on Helplessly Hoping and Guinnevere, and it's not too often you hear a song like Let's Impeach The President at a concert, complete with sing-along lyrics on a video screen. Protest karaoke! The U.S. politicians have done a great job of pissing a lot of people off! Meanwhile CSNY are doing a great carrying on their music and message on this 2006 tour. Keep On Rockin' In The Free World!

For more info check out the CSNY web site. They are scheduled to perform at the former Woodstock Music Festival site later this summer. More Woodstock.

Neil Young's web site Living With War Today has his entire album Living With War online.

Newspaper Reviews: San Francisco Chronicle, Contra Costa Times

CSNY: Deja Vu, Neil Young: Living With War