Sly Stone on Dick Cavett loaded
DJBombjack
Miami 1,665 Posts
Don't know if this has been posted before...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cn6wNBFdD...0coke%20cocaine
DJBombjack
Miami 1,665 Posts
Comments
Off the head, the only other Soul Struttish content I can think of on that box is Stevie Wonder (ca. 1970, just before he went "progressive" with the synths), so whether you want to buy the set depends on whether you want to see David Bowie, Janis Joplin and others conversating w/Cavett.
On a related note: Does that Cavett box have the episode where Little Richard gets Erich Segal's back ("Don't worry--the critics have always been against me, too"), and then goes Mad Dog 20/20, foaming at the mouth and hollering about "THE HISTORY OF AHHHHHHHHT" and how everyone bit his style and how pretty he is? I'd love to see that shit again, if only just to make sure I really saw it.
There is useful Little Richard material in Peter Guralnick's recent Sam Cooke biography, including a description of the massive family bible that he lugged everywhere on their UK tour together within which to record his homosexual liaisons....
Somewhere in there is a joke about "the oldest trick in The Book," but I'll leave that to someone quicker.
I'm not really checking for Guralnick, but I might give that Sam Cooke thing a looke. Is it any good? I mean, I know it's needed, but is it, you know, good?
...
So as not to threadjack (at least not entirely): The best excuse I've ever read for declining an interview was Sly Stone (or more accurately, Sly Stone's handlers) shutting down Joe Wood a few years back. Something along the lines of: "Sly's working on a completely new type of music, one that will blow rock, rap, and everything else right off the charts. As such, we feel that, rather than doing individual inteviews, it will be best--when the time comes--to pursue a 'saturation' approach across all media simultaneously." Easily the smoothest turn-down since Eudora "I Feel That You'll Understand" Welty.
Yeah, I think it's pretty good, if occasionally dry--it's certainly thorough, but the combination of these two traits sometimes makes it tough to keep the cast of characters straight.
It's the only Guralnick book I've ever read aside from Sweet Soul Music, which I have absolutely no recollection of and therefore suspect of not being very good.
Be warned that it's a brick, though--maybe 650 pages of text, another 250 of notes and all of it in a funny small typeface.
Oh, hell yes, it's good. It's so essential that there's very little duplication with You Send Me, the Cooke bio by Daniel Wolff that came out about ten years earlier. Matter of fact, I'd recommend both.
You know, I never thought of his writing in this tome as "dry." I'm at work right now and do not have a copy at hand, but every now and then Guralnick will bust out with some shit that is well-written, but hardly scholarly (at least once I recall him just offhandedly referring to the Sims Twins as "goofy," referring to their personalities rather than the music they made).
As far as keeping the cast of characters straight...I guess because I knew most of the characters (either from the other bio or just in general, if they were R&B stars), it was easy for me to visualize what was what and who was who.
Massive co-sign from this end. I bought Sweet Soul Music the week it came out, and I could not put it down. Matter of fact, I need a new copy 'cause the version I bought 20 years ago is split in two.
I personally don't mind "bricks" as long as they keep my attention. I've seen college textbooks thinner than either of the Cooke bios that didn't read HALF as good.
I'm afraid not! I was checking for it, too! Since every Little Richard talk show appearance is an automatic Great Moment In Rock TV, you'd think this would have been one of the first episodes they would have used.
You say you'd love to see it again? Where did you see it before, when it first aired? 'Cause if there's a video making the rounds, and you have it, contact me offlist and maybe we can work up a trade??
Maybe "dry" isn't the right word, but I do find my attention occasionally wandering... there are certainly passages that are less than engaging despite Guralnick's use of adjectives like "fu**ing".
You knew who all the guys on the business side were? I was halfway through the book before I made the revelatory connection that "J.W." and "Alex" were both J.W. Alexander.
You knew who all the guys on the business side were? I was halfway through the book before I made the revelatory connection that "J.W." and "Alex" were both J.W. Alexander.
Well, I guess when you've read as many "history of rock & roll"-type tomes as I have, it's not too hard to distinguish a J.W. Alexander from a Bumps Blackwell, because these same people keep popping up in other bios. By now I have a pretty good idea of these people's identities.
Alas, "no" on all counts. I saw it back in the 80s, on some Dick Cavett retrospective, narrated by Dick himself, even (I've always seen him as something of an effete tool, but I can't front: dude is a good sport).
And not that it matters, but Guralnick generally does very little for me, mostly because he always seems to be looking for/hoping for/romanticizing the moment when his subject is at its most pure ("After all the lights had gone off, and all the crowds had gone home, it was then that..."), and those moments are, to me, never the most important or the most interesting or even the most truthful, especially in a medium as public and as mongrel as recorded music. Twenty bucks says that in private conversation he refers to early Elvis as "the real Elvis."
And he seemed to know how to handle coked-out rock stars better than Tom Snyder (check HIS recent DVD set for proof).
Now I would have guessed that it was the detailed orgiastic descriptions of his subjects' personal lives and the search for the prurient that chafed at your delicate sensitivities...
Please. When it comes to running around naked except for a sportcoat and some hard-bottoms, Peter fucking Guralnick isn't gonna tell me anything that I don't know already.