Music

Category: Music

We Like the Rolling Stone

rolling stoneOn this day 40 years ago Rolling Stone published its first issue. The title comes from the Bob Dylan song “Like a rolling stone“. It looked a little different back then – no shiny glossy cover. But its founder Jann Wenner is still the editor and publisher.

The obvious choice for the first cover was John Lennon, a popular entertainer at that time who composed, sang and played guitar, and who’d just finished filming the Richard Lester film <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061789/"How I Won the War.

The Mudd subscribes to Rolling Stone and keeps the paper copies for a year. We also have R.S. on microfilm from January, 1978 to June, 2002 for all your fogey rock needs.

Yakkity Sax

sax boomIt’s Saxophone Day! It’s a woodwind made of metal! It’s named after a real guy whose birthday is today! It comes in all different sizes! And what could be cooler than a saxophone, or for that matter, a saxophone player? Once you get past the shades and the slouching demeanor, you’ll find a hug-able human being. So go hug one.

The Mudd has a boat load of recordings, scores and videos featuring the saxophone. Of course there’s Coltrane. But we also feature a composer who writes for saxophone(s) and ghettoblaster. For the less adventurous, how about some saxophone quartets?

Nietzsche is Pietzsche

carmenToday marks the 163th anniversary of the birth of Friedrich Nietzsche, philosopher extraordinaire and (who knew?) opera buff. He had definite opinions: Bizet, good; Wagner, bad. Of course, being a philosopher, he was a little more wordy than that. As quoted in his entry in Grove, the music in Carmen “is wicked, cunning, fatalistic: it remains at the same time popular … It is rich. It is precise. It constructs, organizes, finishes.” On the other hand, “Wagner’s art is sick.” Yikes.

If you’ve a hankering for the wicked and cunning, here’s Callas as Carmen. Sick art more your thing? How about a little Walküre with Kirsten Flagstad? Or read something by the man himself.

Imagine….John at 67

While not all of the Mudd staff believe that all “good” rock and roll ceased at the end of the ’60s, we would be remiss if we did not point out that today is the birth anniversary of John Lennon (you know, that Beatle guy…) John would have been 67 today.

Sharing today’s birthday is son Sean Ono Lennon, born on John’s 35th birthday, and turning 32 today.

She Took a Little Piece of Our Hearts

joplinOn October 4, 1970, Janis Joplin committed her final act of self-destruction. At a time when women in popular music were folk singers (Mary Travers, Joan Baez,) flower children (Cass Elliot and Michelle Phillips,) tightly coiffed and choreographed girl groups (The Supremes, Martha & the Vandellas) or singer-song writers (Carole King and Carly Simon,) a white, female blues singer was a stand-out. A year earlier on the “The Tonight Show” Johnny Carson asked her if she was going to her high school reunion. She smiled and said “Yeah. I’m goin’.” We hope she made it.

Watch her in action at Woodstock.