This is renowned poet/singer/songwriter Leonard Cohen performing “The Stranger Song” from his debut album The Songs of Leonard Cohen live on the Julie Felix Show in 1967. The Songs of Leonard Cohen is a poetic masterpiece as much as it is a musical one, and remains to be one of the high points of not only folk but pop music in general.

Take some time and read the brilliant lyrics from “The Stranger Song” here

posted by: Harold Johns III

This video captures Mission of Burma, one of the greatest American rock bands, in their prime performing “Red” live in the band’s hometown of Boston at the Bradford Hotel on March 12, 1983. “Red” is from Mission of Burma’s debut EP Signals, Calls and Marches, which was released in 1981 on the indie label Ace of Hearts. Their full length follow-up Vs. with its masterful mix of punk, pop and avant-garde experimentation continues to be a seminal record to this day and has inspired countless other bands including Nirvana, Sonic Youth and fellow Bostonians The Pixies. This footage was taken from the companion DVD to the 2008 reissue of Vs. by Matador Records.

Learn more about Mission of Burma here

posted by: Harold Johns III

“Mind Playing Tricks on Me” is a single by the Geto Boys, featured on their 1991 album We Can’t Be Stopped. Before the release of We Can’t Be Stopped, one of the Geto Boys, Bushwick Bill, lost his eye in an accidental shooting with his girlfriend, and the cover featured fellow members Willie D. and Scarface wheeling Bill into an emergency room as he talks on a Zach Morris-style cell phone.

posted by: Harold Johns III

For no other reason than it’s Friday the 13th (and, hello, The Cramps are awesome – so says Tricia while editing this post) we decided to bring you this live performance of “Tear it Up ” by The Cramps. Who else could live up to this creepy, ominous day? “Tear it Up” is from The Cramps’ first studio album Songs the Lord Taught Us, produced by Alex Chilton, and is actually a cover of Memphis country singer Billy Burnette’s original from 1972.

Conjuring a fiendish witches’ brew of primal rockabilly, grease-stained ’60s garage rock, vintage monster movies, perverse and glistening sex, and the detritus and effluvia of 50 years of American pop culture, the Cramps are a truly American creation much in the manner of the Cadillac, the White Castle hamburger, the Fender Stratocaster, and Jayne Mansfield. Often imitated, but never with the same psychic resonance as the original, the Cramps celebrate all that is dirty and gaudy with a perverse joy that draws in listeners with its fleshy decadence, not unlike an enchanted gingerbread house on the Las Vegas strip. The entire psychobilly scene would be unthinkable without them, and their prescient celebration of the echoey menace of first-generation rock & roll had a primal (if little acknowledged) influence on the rockabilly revival and the later roots rock movement.

Continue reading this Cramps bio via allmusic

posted by: Harold Johns III

Ellas Otha Bates aka Bo Diddley was known as “The Orignator” for a reason, actually many reasons. Besides being the bridge between blues, r&b and rock music with his driving rumba-like “Bo Diddley beat” and a rough guitar sound he created with new effects like reverb, tremolo and distortion, Diddley was also one of the first American male musicians to include women in his band, one of the first to have a home studio, the first to build and play a customized rectangular guitar (known as “The Twang Machine”), the first to rock the all black suit and the first to incorporate dance moves into his stage show.

Also, in 1955 Diddley became the first, but certainly not the last, musician to piss off Ed Sullivan.

“I did two songs and he got mad,” Bo Diddley later recalled. “Ed Sullivan said that I was one of the first colored boys to ever double-cross him. Said that I wouldn’t last six months.” The show had requested that he sing the Merle Travis-penned Tennessee Ernie Ford hit “Sixteen Tons”, but when he appeared on stage, he sang “Bo Diddley” instead. This substitution resulted in his being banned from further appearances.

One more fun fact: The Obama’s named their Portuguese water dog after Bo Diddley.

posted by: Brent Carter

Delta blues great Eddie “Son” House performs his classic “Death Letter Blues”, a song later covered by The White Stripes on their album De Stijl. This performance is from the Vestapol DVD Legends of Country Blues Guitar, Vol. One.

posted by: Harold Johns III