Just Because: Isaac Hayes

Stupefied: The Holly George-Warren Playlist

We have a special treat today in the form of a new Stupefied playlist from one of my favorite writers, Holly George-Warren. As you hopefully know by now, her latest book, A Man Called Destruction, gives the bio treatment to Alex Chilton - songwriter extraordinaire, rock star at 16 with the Box Tops, and leading light of Big Star. And of course, I'd be remiss not to mention that the cover photo is by none other than our pal, Godlis. 

Already at work on her next book (a Janis Joplin bio), all things Holly can be tracked at HollyGeorgeWarren.com including some appearances this weekend in Carrboro, NC, and next month in Nashville, TN, and Brooklyn, NY. The paperback edition of AMCD will be available in 2015.

Alex Chilton & Holly George Warren by Dan Howell

Big thanks to Holly for the list!

1. Box Tops - The Letter
2. Box Tops - Neon Rainbow
3. Box Tops - Cry Like a Baby
4. Box Tops - I Shall Be Released
5. Box Tops - Soul Deep
6. Alex Chilton - The EMI Song
7. Alex Chilton - Free Again
8. Big Star - Thirteen
9. Big Star - Ballad of El Goodo
10. Big Star - September Gurls
11. Big Star - I’m in Love With a Girl
12. Big Star - Kangaroo
13. Big Star - Holocaust
14. Alex Chilton - Bangkok
15. Alex Chilton - Can’t Seem to Make You Mine
16. Alex Chilton - Hey Little Child
17. Alex Chilton - Alligator Man
18. Alex Chilton - Take It Off
19. Alex Chilton - Dalai Lama
20. Alex Chilton - Thing for You
21. Alex Chilton - Thank You John
22. Alex Chilton - Guantanamerika
23. Alex Chilton - Devil Girl
24. Alex Chilton - Dark End of the Street (with Teenage Fanclub)
25. Alex Chilton - Never Found a Girl
26. Alex Chilton - Never Found a Girl (with Teenage Fanclub)
27. Alex Chilton - You Can Bet Your Heart on Me (Electricity by Candlelight)
28. Big Star - Hot Thing

Documentaries of Note: Take Me To The River & Rock Your Baby

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Movie of the Week: William Eggleston In The Real World (2005)

William Eggleston In the Real World takes a look at the artist, and the connection between his everyday life and his work. Available on DVD here.

Teenie Hodges RIP

Photo courtesy of Area Code Greetings

Teenie Hodges - RIP

Andy Schwartz reports: Farewell to Memphis guitarist/songwriter MABON "TEENIE" HODGES, a pillar of the Hi Rhythm Section and the sound of Al Green, Ann Peebles, Syl Johnson and other artists produced by Willie Mitchell (1928-2010) for Hi Records at his Royal Studios in Memphis TN. Teenie Hodges was the co-composer of the Al Green hits "Here I Am, Come and Take Me," "Take Me to the River" and "Love and Happiness" as well as "I Take What I Want" (Sam & Dave), "Since You've Been Gone" (Garland Green), "When You Talk About Love" (Patti LaBelle), and many more. I was fortunate to have seen Teenie perform on two occasions in recent years; age 68, he died yesterday (6/23) at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas where he'd been hospitalized with complications of emphysema since appearing at South X Southwest in March. Thank you, TEENIE HODGES -- an unsung hero of Our Music.

Movie of the Week: Stranded In Canton (1973, by William Eggleston)

By William Eggleston

In 1973, photographer William Eggleston picked up a Sony PortaPak and took to documenting the soul of Memphis and New Orleans. Some of this footage was used recently in the Big Star documentary. Read a little more about it here, and buy the book/DVD here.

Roland Janes RIP

Roland Janes - RIP

Janes (center) performing with Jerry Lee Lewis (right)

New documentaries of note: Big Star and Wax Trax Records

I'm definitely late to the game posting this, but that doesn't make it any less deserving. I've been hearing great things about it.

Official Website

Read a great piece about the band & the film by Chris Morris over at the Oxford American: "My first encounter with Big Star was in the mid-’70s, when I worked as a disc jockey at an FM station in Madison, Wisconsin. In the manner of the day, it was a completely “free-from” outlet—its official handle was “Radio Free Madison”—and its programming was wide open. There was no playlist and just one basic rule, almost laughably righteous in the face of Top 40 radio’s constant repetition: if a song was played by one jock, another jock could not repeat it during a subsequent shift that day. To police this policy, each of the seven thousand or so LPs in the station library contained a log sheet; when a DJ played a track, they had to note the date on the log so that others wouldn’t spin the cut within the same 24-hour period." Continued here.

Also of note is a new doc about influential record store (in Denver), then record label (in Chicago), Wax Trax. It looks like it may be pretty good although I was never a disciple of their entire catalog. They definitely have their place though, and perhaps the story is interesting enough for a film. We'll see (hopefully)!

Official website

Wax Trax Chicago

Get more details over at Slicing Up Eyeballs.

Movie of the Week: Otis Redding - King of Soul

A fantastic one hour French documentary on the Stax legend. Yes, its in French, but that does not make the music or footage any less compelling for non-French speakers. Hat tip to Andy Schwartz.

Stupefied: The Tav Falco Playlist

This week's edition of the Stupefied playlist is brought to us by Mr. Tav Falco. In case you don't know, Tav is probably the one musician who can claim to be the common factor between Alex Chilton and The Cramps, and the rockabilly revival of the late 70's which eventually became known as psychobilly. And like Chilton, he's also from the south. Like many underground musicians & artists at the time (i.e. punk, and thousands of miles away from Memphis TN), Falco started creating "art action" videos, and moved from there into music. Helped along by Chilton, Tav Falco's Panther Burns released their first album in the very early 80's, Behind the Magnolia Curtain, and haven't looked back since.

Besides creating an extensive discography since those early days, Falco has also added acting to his repertoire appearing in more than a few films since the 80's. Most recently, he also co-authored an ambitious and excellent two-part history of Memphis entitled Ghosts Behind the Sun: Splendor, Enigma & Death: Mondo Memphis Volume 1, (part 2 being written by Eric Morse) published by Creation Books. Scroll down below the playlist to see the current tour itinerary for Panther Burns, which includes some readings for the Mondo Memphis book. A BIG thank you to Tav for this incredible list! (Continued after the jump)

Bernard Lansky RIP

Bernard Lansky - RIP

http://www.lanskybros.com/

 

Donald "Duck" Dunn RIP

Donald "Duck" Dunn - RIP

DuckDunn.com

From left: Al Jackson Jr, Booker T. Jones, Donald "Duck" Dunn, and Steve Cropper

Charles "Skip" Pitts RIP

Charles "Skip" Pitts - RIP. That's him on guitar:

Andrew Love (Memphis Horns) RIP

Andrew Love - RIP

Behind the scenes at FAME Recording Studio in Muscle Shoals, AL (1969)

I must be dead. This must be heaven. Bedazzled just posted this literally a few minutes ago. Holy jesus...This is actually just as much, if nor more, Memphis/Stax stuff than Muscle Shoals, but who cares? This footage is priceless! And yes, Spike, that looks like Isaac Hayes on sax to me.

Tav Falco / Mondo Memphis tour

Tav Falco will be making some somewhat rare appearances to promote his new book, Mondo Memphis, including a stop in Brooklyn at the Powerhouse Arena. Here's everything you need to know:

MONDO MEMPHIS is a dual, 450-page encyclopedic history and psychogeography of the city of Memphis, written by legendary performer Tav Falco and cultural critic Erik Morse and published by Creation Books. MONDO MEMPHIS is both an original history of the gothic South and an intertext of the urban legends, rural fables and literary clichés that have made the Bluff City simultaneously a metropolis of dreams and a necropolis of terrors.

Falco and Morse will talk on the topics of ‘Fantasy, Urbanity and Topography’, in which they discuss “writing” the space of the city/suburb (both in its Northern and Sun Belt incarnations) as a source of imagination, sensuality, horror and architectonics.

BOOK READING SCHEDULE

NOVEMBER

San Francisco

9th:  City Lights Bookstore – 6:00 pm – www.citylights.com
with Tav Falco and Erik Morse
RSVP:  Facebook  -  ReverbNation  – MySpace

Los Angeles

10th: Stories Bookstore – 7:30 pm – www.storiesla.com
with Tav Falco and Erik Morse
RSVP:  Facebook  -  ReverbNation  – MySpace

Austin

11th: End of an Ear Bookstore – 4:00 pm – http://endofanear.com
with Tav Falco and Erik Morse
RSVP:  Facebook  -  ReverbNation  – MySpace

New Orleans

13th: Euclid Records – 4:00 pm – www.euclidnola.com
with Tav Falco
RSVP:  Facebook  -  ReverbNation  – MySpace

Brooklyn

16th: Powerhouse Arena – 6:30 – www.powerhousearena.com
with Tav Falco, Erik Morse and poet Kenneth Goldsmith
RSVP:  Facebook  -  ReverbNation  – MySpace

DECEMBER

Memphis
1st:  Burke’s Book Store – 4:30 pm – www.burkesbooks.com
with Tav Falco
RSVP:  Facebook  -  ReverbNation  – MySpace

It came from the south: New books of note

Mondo Memphis by Tav Falco & Erik Morse, 2011

Limited signed edition available here

Pre-order the paperback edition here

The Chitlin' Circuit and the Road To Rock 'n' Roll by Preston Lauterbach, 2011

Buy the book here

Visit Preston's blog here