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Saturday, March 08, 2008

Saturday Night, All right-

Here Today, Gone Tomorrow just featured a Bassa Nova version of 'The Waters of March', which is a song I love, but always knew through the Susannah McCorkle version. So I went up on You-Tube to find a video of that, and there isn't one! You can download the audio at various places on the internet, which is a great audio, but there's no video. How sad. And how interesting that I have become so habituated to the internet that I simply assumed there would be a video...

They were doing stories on NPR this morning about hearings concerning renewable energy resources. I was struck once more by the dichotomy of hearing Republican Congressmen, and "experts", state that there is absolutely no point whatsoever in giving companies doing work on alternate energy sources tax breaks or any other government aid, since history has shown that the Free Market is the Best Way for new technologies to emerge. Well, ok, but then why are the same Congressmen and "experts" then testifying a week later that Exxon/Mobil, which just posted the greatest quarterly profit in world history, needs further tax breaks and government incentives to drill for new oil and develop new oil technologies?

Obviously I missed a class.

I grew up in a suburb outside of Boston, Massachusetts in the late 70s, early 80s. This was a Golden Age for rock. We went to long-lost clubs like The Rat, and J.J. Flash, and Chet's Last Call (the dive of rock dives, over the old Boston Garden) and saw great bands. For the next few weeks on Saturday Night Fever, I'm going to be featuring a few of these bands, and telling a few stories.

Mission of Burma was perhaps the greatest Boston band of the era that never went national. I first went to see them in an all-ages show when I was 17, somewhere in Boston. These guys always gave a great performance. This was one of their classic songs-



YEAH!!!!!

THAT'S WHEN I REACHED FOR MY REVOLVER!!!!

*sigh*

ok, maybe the world has moved on. We went to Hoboken, and woke up Sunday mornings to blonds, bacon and eggs. Somehow I moved beyond all this. But there are more tales to tell...

10 comments:

Mike said...

It's odd that you chose to post this today because I spent some time this afternoon looking for an old Michigan-based band that I used to listen to back in the mid 70's. The band was called Travis and they played bars and clubs all over the state. A whole group of us would take off every now and then and drive to wherever they were playing and "hang out with the band."

We actually got to know the guys in the band pretty good and one of them ended up marrying a girl from my hometown.

The only thing I found was some stupid My Space page written by a brother of one of the band members dedicated to the band.

Damn disappointing.

Malach the Merciless said...

BURMA FRACKIN' ROCKS. I heard they would make your ears bleed.

fu said...

that's one of my many theme songs...MOBY, the bald techno dude actually did a very good version of this song. you know full well how i feel about that crap ass city but it's spawned some good bands. too bad the people all deserve to suck on the gaspipe.

FOUR DINNERS said...

Late 70's eh? Pistols, Adverts, Sham 69, Buzzcocks, X-Ray Spex, Siouxsie and The Banshees.....

Happy days - bits I can remember anyroad...

here today, gone tomorrow said...

Could you post a link to one of the McCorkle audio files? I'd really like to hear your favorite version.

Mission of Burma! Outstanding; looking forward to more of these types of posts. Nicely done. Damn, that was some fun music.

Anonymous said...

Now I would be really impressed if you brought out a Boston video of...Boston. Not a MTV video, but one from a concert.

Love the theme. I might steal it as we have a number of pretty good bands here that deserve some exposure.

Forrest Proper said...

Mike: Yeah, I've been trying to find info on some lesser-known bands from the period and it's been very disappointing.

Malach: Burma was loud. Especially when they played places with low, hard ceilings. the reason they broke up was that one of them was actually going deaf.

TV: wow, I think that's the nicest thing you've ever said about Boston- I'm touched!

Dinners: Siouxsie! Siouxsie! Siouxsie! The Dead Kennedy's. "God save the Queen. She Ain't No Human Bee'n!"

HTGT: I have all her cd's here; I've never actually looked for audio downloads. When I was Googling there were quite a few links- I think she only did one version.

Sirdar: They just had an article about Boston's lead singer in the Boston Globe Magazine today. he killed himself, quite a sad story.

Commander Zaius said...

Heard some paid advertisement on a Clear Channel radio station by the oil companies the other day whining about how they were making only eight cents on the dollar in profits. The very next story once the news came back was about their record breaking profits. I figure someone at the radio station was smoking some strong stuff to let those two segments out back to back.

Anonymous said...

Gosh I wish Celine Dion had music out in the 70's!

Tequila Mockingbird said...

hmmm/ i'm drunk. i wont pretened to leave a legit comment. i miss you colonel... where have you bee n on my blog?