"Love in Vain" is a haunting song that was written by Robert Johnson in 1936, supposedly for a woman named Willie Mae Powell. It became a contemporary hit when the Rolling Stones included it on their 1969 album, Let It Bleed.

For a time we thought the songs that were on that first album were the only recordings (Robert Johnson had) made, and then suddenly around '67 or '68 up comes this second (bootleg) collection that included Love in Vain. Love in Vain was such a beautiful song. Mick and I both loved it, and at the time I was working and playing around with Gram Parsons, and I started searching around for a different way to present it, because if we were going to record it there was no point in trying to copy the Robert Johnson style or ways and styles. We took it a little bit more country, a little bit more formalized, and Mick felt comfortable with that. - Keith Richards, 1990

We changed the arrangement quite a lot from Robert Johnson's. We put in extra chords that aren't there on the Robert Johnson version. Made it more country. And that's another strange song, because it's very poignant. Robert Johnson was a wonderful lyric writer, and his songs are quite often about love, but they're desolate. - Mick Jagger, 1995

Sometimes I wonder... myself (about how we developed that arrangement). I don't know! (laughs) We only knew the Robert Johnson version. At the time we were kicking it around, I was into country music - old white country music, '20s and '30s stuff, and white gospel. Somewhere I crossed over into this more classical mode. Sometimes things just happen. We were sitting in the studio, saying, Let's do "Love in Vain" by Robert Johnson. Then I'm trying to figure out some nuances and chords, and I start to play it in a totally different fashion. Everybody joins in and goes, Yeah, and suddenly you've got your own stamp on it. I certainly wasn't going to be able to top Robert Johnson's guitar playing. - Keith Richards, 1995

P.S. Our sister site Newstalgia's Saturday Night Concert is Crooked Cowboy and the Freshwater Indians concert from last March.

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(The Lilac Time - still together, still recording, still gigging, still great)

In the late 1980s/early 90s, Fontana Records issued a lot of albums by interesting, out of the way, alternative bands. Which, as a subsidiary of a major label (Phonogram now Universal) was a pretty bold thing to do (well . .not since the early 70s anyway). Most of the acts didn't last more than one or two albums before being dropped, but the material most of them recorded was top-notch. A lot of the bands went off to other labels and other degrees of success and some are still together today. One of those acts was The Lilac Time, a band fronted by Stephen Duffy and largely considered an influential part of the early 90s wave of alternative bands coming out of the UK.

This track All For Love & Love For All comes from the album of the same name and was produced by XTC bandmates Andy Partridge and John Leckie. It has the XTC stamp on it and the track did pretty well on the charts at the time, further establishing The Lilac Time as no one-hit wonders. Luckily, they are still together and recording. Their last album came out about a year ago.

In case you missed them the first time around . . .

Please go over to Amazon and "recommend as helpful" Jesus General's priceless review of Going Rogue:

The book also fails to expose Mrs. Palin's intellectual brilliance and keen grasp of foreign policy issues. Why wasn't the text of her recent speech in Hong Kong included? Although it remains secret, it's rumored that she viciously rebuked the Vietcong king for his assault on the Empire State Building. That's a speech we've been waiting for nearly 75 years to hear. It's big news and should have been included.

...a few bad reviews won't stop her. She's seen much worse from her kitchen window. It can't be pleasant to gaze upon Antichristograd every morning as you brew your coffee.

We all love Jesus General. You might also enjoy/recommend his review of Carrie Prejean's book. Priceless.

Ever watch a movie and go "Meh" but absolutely fell in love with the soundtrack?

I happened to catch the Steve Carell vehicle "Dan in Real Life" last week on cable. When I'm working, I tend to keep the TV on as background noise (occupational hazard of being from a big family and having kids--silence is distracting). Normally, I tune it out, but I found myself completely entranced by Sondre Lerche's music. It was quirky, charming and really deserved a much better movie than the one in which it was featured.

Wish I could recommend the movie, but I do strongly recommend the soundtrack.

Any other movie soundtrack knock you out?

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I love seeing Laurie Anderson live; I've seen her about four times and have never been less than electrified. I was lucky enough to have bought the VHS version of Anderson's concert film, Home of the Brave, back when it came out briefly in the early 1990s. Laurie has been promising to put it out on DVD someday, but so far it's remained unavailable in digital form. It featured a great collection of talent, including Adrian Belew on guitar and Joy Askew on keyboards, and perhaps was best known for featuring appearances by William S. Burroughs, including a brief tango with Laurie. And great songs, too. This is my favorite piece on the tape; the studio version of "Sharkey's Day" on Mister Heartbreak is one of the great aural set pieces, and its power is somewhat muted in a live setting, but the stage work here is phenomenal, so it makes for a very cool show.

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(Francoise Hardy - when people ask to describe the 60s, I point to her)

It's hard for me not to think of the 60s without conjuring the image of Francoise Hardy. Aside from being the epitome of 60s style, she had a wonderful voice, wrote great songs and was everyone's idea of what French girls looked like - in short, everyone I knew (myself included) had fallen in love with her.

So she could have sung from the phonebook, it's true. But that she was a major talent who was, and still is, recording some great music, as well as writing it, puts her at icon status for whole generations.

This track, Et Meme is almost an homage to the Brill Building/girl groups sound of the early-mid 1960s.

I don't know - call me crazy, it still sounds fresh.

I love the Billionaires for Wealthcare:

Republican pollster Bill McInturff was the keynote speaker on the final day of the America's Health Insurance Plans's state issues conference on Friday morning.

But his speech on how the health care reform debate was playing among the public was interrupted before it even began. A group of protesters began aggressively cheering McInturff for the work he has done for AHIP (he's a hired pollster for the private insurance lobby and, most infamously, was the force behind the 'Harry and Louise' ads in 1994).

McInturff, initially thinking that the cheering was legitimate, thanked the "AHIP officials" in the back of the room for giving him mental encouragement for his speech. He was not being paid for his appearance, he noted.

And then, the protesters -- dressed in business attire to fit into the crowd -- began singing. A relatively lengthy and harmonious rendition of "Tomorrow" from the musical Annie ensued, only with the chorus focused on government-run insurance. "The option, the option, we must have, the option... " went the rendition, in reference to the public plan.

What does a self-described progressive city girl do when she chases love to a remote corner of Kansas? She blogs about the local news media covering the appropriate kind of squirrel meat to serve at Thanksgiving, among other hilarious findings. Mudflap Bubbas definitely worth the click.

Open thread below...

It is remarkable that there's nary a mention of George Bush, the chosen one and savior of our country by the conservative movement.

Given how things were from 2001 until the presidential campaign heated up, it's really quite stunning how George W. Bush is utterly missing from our discourse. The conservative movement was for that period all about elevating Dear Leader, and now he's just gone.

Some of it is because Dick Cheney has been so outspoken about his love of torture, but it's also the fact that Cheney had almost as much power as Bush himself. That was, until things started blowing up in GW's face.

Yglesias has a fairly convincing post arguing for LFO's "Summer Girls" as the worst hit song in history.

In the course of human affairs, people sometimes write bad songs. Indeed, we have no real idea how many bad songs are written and go unheard. But sometimes a really bad song becomes a widespread radio hit. And one dark summer, LFO’s “Summer Girls” was just such a song. A song that I believe to be the worst hit song ever recorded...

Matt's got a point, as these lyrics are appalling:

Fell deep in love,but now we ain't speaking
Michael J Fox was Alex P Keaton
When I met you I said my name was Rich
You look like a girl from Abercrombie and Fitch

After some careful thought, this song does make it high on the list, but does not displace my longstanding titleholder, Sammy Hagar's "I Can't Drive 55".

Why is this:

When I drive that slow, you know it's hard to steer.
And I can't get my car out of second gear.
What used to take two hours now takes all day.
Huh - It took me 16 hours to get to L.A.!
Go on & write me up for 125
Post my face, wanted dead or alive
Take my license n' all that jive
I can't drive 55!

such a worse violation than "I like the girls who wear Abercrombie and Fitch?"

I know I know, it's not as ostensibly tacky as LFO, but Hagar really is angry about the federally mandated 55 mph speed limit that was in effect in the 1980s (and in your humble DJ's opinion should still be), and probably feels like quite the rebellious protest singer taking a stand against such government tyranny.

If you take two equally awful songs, but one is angry and the other is happy, even celebratory, the angry one wins out for the stinker category - but barely.

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I thought it was distasteful enough that Chris Wallace asked Juan Williams to have to explain why Ted Kennedy wasn't given the "Jesse Helms" treatment by the New York Times in their obituaries of the two men, but it also turns out that he was showing NewsBusters a little love as well. I'm glad Media Matters reads NewsBusters, so I don't have to.

Also, I'm sure I won't be the only one that thinks Chris Wallace or anyone at Fox complaining about "media coverage" is laughable on its face.

Wallace: I also want to talk about the "media" coverage of Ted Kennedy's death this week. Not only the amount of it, which was extraordinary, but also the tone of it, and I want to put up the first paragraph of The New York Times obituary on Ted Kennedy's death. This is the first paragraph this week.

Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, a son of one of the most storied families in American politics, a man who knew triumph and tragedy in near-equal measure and who will be remembered as one of the most effective lawmakers in the history of the Senate, died late Tuesday night.

Now, here's the first paragraph of the Times' story on the passing of Jesse Helms last year.

Jesse Helms, the former North Carolina senator whose courtly manner and mossy drawl barely masked a hard-edged conservatism that opposed civil rights, gay rights, foreign aid and modern art, died early Friday.

Bill Sammon, I'm sure some people will be offended that I'm even making the comparison between these two men, but that is a frightening difference.

Sammon: It is and there are two ways to rectify that double standard. One would have been for the New York Times to find something nice to say about Jesse Helms substantively, other than this mossy drawl. The other, if you're going to go the, and I think that's the preferable way to do it, because you want to, when someone dies, you want to find something nice to say.

The other way if they wanted to be fair would, they would have had to put something in Ted Kennedy's about Chappaquiddick, about his demagoguery Robert Bork, the, you know, lunch-counter America, the back alley abortions, all those kind of things, but they didn't, so either way you do it it's unfair, and that was a striking example.

Wallace: Juan, do you think that there's a striking difference in the way those two men were sent off?

Williams: Well, I think you should be nice to people at the time of their death in general, no matter what their sins, but in fact I think it was good journalism. I think in fact that if you look at the public impact that Jesse Helms had on the country, it was to stand in opposition to civil rights and all the gay rights and all this. If you look at the public impact of Ted Kennedy...

Wallace: But wasn't he for something?

Williams: Yeah! He was for stopping those things and that's what the lead said. I don't have any problem with that and in fact Chappaquiddick has been mentioned prominently throughout this whole period.

Sammon: Not in that lead.

Williams: Not in the lead but in the story. It's not like anybody's hiding Ted Kennedy's flaws. We know them.

Of course, par for the course, it's always alright to politicize a eulogy if you're a Republican. From our own Jon Perr-- Jesse Helms and the Partisan Eulogies of George W. Bush:

Continue reading »

As Instaputz sez: This was inevitable. Edward Kennedy Dies, Wingnuts Cover Themselves in Glory.

Here's an example:

The Anchoress:

What can one do when one is likely unfit for heaven, but possesses just enough charity and love to stave off hell?...read on

But Hot Air's comment section is even lower. Here's two of the many sick ones.

Burn, you fat f**k.
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Normally peoples children should be off limits to ones attacks. But in the Kennedy family I’m reminded that a house infested with roaches is sometimes hard to kill off.

Comment sections are rough to control, but Malkin's requirements to register are incredibly tough and are often closed to the public. Ed tries to remain civil, but that didn't happen all too well.

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Rick Sanchez shows some footage of a woman pleading with Tom Coburn to help her at a town hall meeting because her husband has had a traumatic brain injury, and they can't get insurance for him. After Coburn says he'll help through his office that that we "as neighbors" ought to help each other and the idea that the government is here to help is inaccurate. Gotta' love Sanchez's response here.

What's interesting about that is that Sen. Coburn just essentially said the government is not the solution, but then you have to ask yourself. He just told her to come and see him, isn't he the government? By the way after helping her, what will he do about the other 46,999,999 who don't have insurance, and the thousands upon thousands of Americans who say they do have insurance but like her, they're not getting covered? We'll ask those questions.

Exactly.

h/t The Political Carnival

Where The Wild Things Are doesn't come out until October 16th, but Karen O from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, who did all the film's music, released one of the songs, "All Is Love" today. The song features a decidedly joyful Miss O with an untrained children's choir, and makes this Max even more excited for this movie about another one.

Check out the song at MySpace.

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Must be heard to be believed: this stud muffin's voicemails to a woman he hit on in a bar, is making the viral rounds quickly. After the second voicemail from "Dimitri the Stud," the woman in question gave it to her local radio station. Hilarity (and outrage) ensued. Found at one of my favorite literary blogs, Smart Bitches, Trashy Books.

Open Thread below...