Joe Zawinul Is Dead.
The language of love can be spoken in many ways, but nothing ignites the emotions like a love song. Bring home the most memorable romantic hits of the '70s, '80s and '90s.
Hello Friends!
Depending on where you dwell, you've possibly noticed that midsummer is upon us, with its grim, sweltering mandate. I myself have been seen to spend many hours muttering confused epithets during my morning runs, incensed in the knowledge that no hour is adequate to rise in order to subvert the sun-and-humidity sentence. "But why go running all those miles when it's 94 degrees?" you may be asking, as though I myself wasn't perfectly well aware of my insanity.
“Do you think you are Peter O’Toole, prowling the Ottoman provinces? What is your plan exactly? Why don’t you stop at Whole Foods and get a water?” Fine. You aren’t wrong. Browbeat away.
But allow me this: I will not merely bend to the elements. They will not make my schedule for me. Of course I register the crowds, those bug-eyed fellow pedestrians on their leisurely strolls, mouths agape while I race past them, wheezing and huffing and gasping. I know that I won’t be invited to their catered garden parties. I understand that. High society has never been my milieu.
You are growing uneasy, I can tell. “I’ve got twenty Substacks to read today! What is this eccentric woman and her atmospheric musings? If I wanted a Weather Report I’d subscribe to Joe Zawinul’s Substack!” Fair point, but consider this: Joe Zawinul is dead. He doesn’t have a Substack. That’s the difference. And now we’ve made it to the disclaimer section of my outrageously intermittent newsletter Please Take My Advice. Let's get to the bylaws and then get down to business.
Please Take My Advice is a zero-sum contest of wills. Winners and losers will be clearly delineated and close records will be kept for posterity. There is no possibility of a chopped-pot or “time limit draw.” Please Take My Advice will not resort to cheerfully whistling or humming to keep up morale. Insouciantly honking on a mouth organ or whimsically strumming a ukulele while wearing a “silly” cap is strictly forbidden. Please Take My Advice plays no role in the rise or fall of domestic postal rates, as has been a recent talking point amidst the chattering classes. Further speculation on this point will be deemed libelous. As ever, all complaints are to be referred to: Bar/None Records, Hoboken, New Jersey.
Done and done! Let's get rolling.
Elizabeth, the last we heard you were carrying on quite a bit about the Paranoid Style playing Twangfest in St. Louis. That was back in June. How did it go?
Twangfest fucking ruled all. As a long time superfan of Jon Langford and all things Mekons and Waco Brothers, I was extremely psyched to open for the Wacos on the last night of the festival’s 25th anniversary. My feeling was that the best course of action would be for us to come out throwing haymakers and not stop for sixty minutes and that’s just what we did. The crowd was white hot and with us from go. My boys were primed and ready for nut-cutting time. With the law firm of Dawson, Holsapple, Venutolo-Mantovani, Bracy and Langmead behind me, there was no way we were going to lose. The Wacos had insouciantly trundled in five minutes before our set, or roughly four hours after they were scheduled to soundcheck. I was happy they got to see us, and afterwards Langford, sporting a mysterious electric blue cocktail the size of a novelty basketball, hugged me and kissed me on the forehead which felt like a papal benediction. Any sense I had, however, that our ferocious set would cause them a moment of inhibition clearly went by the wayside as the Wacos proceeded to blaze through an amazing performance that practically required the fire marshall to shut things down on speculative grounds. When they performed their choreography to T-Rex’s “20th Century Boy,” I almost had a panic attack from the sheer serotonin rush. What a wonderful evening, and I want to extend a vast debt of gratitude to the Roy and John and all the Twangfest promoters, all my rowdy friends who showed up to see us, and the Off Broadway in SL for an absolutely first rate experience.
Wow! That sounds like a blast. Guess I should have made it to Twangfest!
I mean, obviously. I get that your precise circumstance may not have afforded you the opportunity to make the trip. But in the future, if there is just one summer festival you have to pay for, this is the one I would heartily recommend.
Noted. I’ve been meaning to confront you about something. One thing that really annoys me about you is that you never talk about John Cale. Why is that?
What?
You’re sleeping on John Cale’s solo work, admit it.
Oh no, no, no. No sir.
Always sleeping on the Welshman. That’s how I characterize you to friends.
Interesting. Have YOU recently published a track-by-track consideration of Paris 1919 over at Lawyers, Guns & Money?
No. Have you?
Yes!
Is that so? Seems pretty convenient. You got an excerpt?
Sure thing, cool beans. Try this on for size.
“1973’s Paris 1919 would extend Cale’s winning streak in spectacular fashion. Released in an era when the music industry could seemingly do no wrong — it came out the same day as Dark Side Of The Moon and the same month as Roxy Music’s For Your Pleasure, Led Zep’s Houses Of The Holy, The Faces’ Ooh La La amongst others — Paris 1919’s most distinguishing musical feature was its so-weird-you-can’t-believe-it one-off collaboration with Lowell George from Little Feat. As I’ve written about in other spaces, George was a singular, brilliant and insane figure in his own regard, and Cale’s decision to draft Lowell in on guitar alongside masterful Feats’ drummer Richie Hayward was a bold and brilliant intuition. Radically different in nearly every other respect, John Cale and Lowell George shared in common musical virtuosity and a pathological commitment to whatever project they happened to be currently engaged in. For the brief half-hour comprising its running time, Paris 1919 comes close to codifying an entirely novel branch of popular music. The combination of Cale’s austere, compositional formalism, George’s beautiful and ornery slide guitar and the great Chris Thomas’s bell-clear production represents one the music business’s most unusual and formidable combination of talents.”
Jesus! That’s some summation!
How you like me now? Here’s a link if you want to read the rest.
New Paranoid Style LP? Or just a rumor?
Only too true. A whole bunch of breaking news is about to take place regarding The Interrogator. I love all my records, but this time we’ve really ripped the pea out of the pod. We stand on the precipice of history.
So it’s called The Interrogator?
I didn’t say that. You did.
Why do you play these games? Why can’t it ever be the straight dope with you? Always stretching the blanket.
To the absolute contrary, my only goal is transparency. Here’s what I can absolutely promise without potentially actionable violations: stay tuned.
And stay free.
Love,
Elizabeth
"...midsummer is upon us, with its grim, sweltering mandate."
"When they performed their choreography to T-Rex’s “20th Century Boy,” I almost had a panic attack from the sheer serotonin rush."
EVERY damn time there's at least a few absolutely, perfectly descriptive phrases. I mean, there are MORE in here, but cutting and pasting the whole damn stack would be deeply weird.
I followed the link to the Lowell George Oxford American article and if anyone here has not, do so immediately. It's incredible.
I never thought in all my days I would read a track by track piece on Paris 1919. I’ve always felt as if I’m the only person even aware of it, never mind in awe of its strange, beautiful, melancholy magnificence. Never mind the Velvets: That Cale did this, and also produced the Stooges first album, makes him a legend.