Truckin’ With Bob Dylan in Tokyo
On the night of April 12th, I finally got my chance to hear Bob Dylan in Tokyo. It was like coming full circle: I’d first heard of Bob in 1964, when I was in 8th grade at the American School in Japan.
The Shorrock Files
New, Rare and Unreleased Material from the DMZ Empire
The Shorrock Files
New, Rare and Unreleased Material from the DMZ Empire
Music
Masters of War – Japanese Version
The late, great Pete Seeger performs Bob Dylan’s Masters Of War with simultaneous translation into Japanese. Eerie yet very moving.
Precious Friend – For Pete Seeger
Precious Friend (sing, please!) Just when I thought All was lost You changed my mind. You gave me hope, (not just the old soft soap) You showed that we could learn to share in time. (You and me and Rockefeller)…
Richard Rabbit Brown – “Sinking of the Titanic”
In all the hoopla surrounding the 100-year anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, there’s been little said about the enormous impact of the disaster on African-Americans and the music they gifted the world: the blues. The absence of race…
DOWN IN NEW ORLEANS
Musicians and artists in the French Quarter, 2010 I spent the last few days in New Orleans poking around old haunts from my last extended reporting visits there in 2006 and 2007. As usual, I stayed in the French Quarter,…
CIA Man
The CIA, Tuli Kupferberg and Me CIA Man, written by the late, great Tuli Kupferberg, is one of the Fugs‘ oldest songs. I first heard it live at the Harry Smith Memorial Concert in DC produced by the Smithsonian Institution…
Limbaugh, Find yourself another country to be part of
My tweet of the day @timothys: Rush Limbaugh calls the first black man elected president “boy.” To the racist white man, America is always Mississippi, circa 1962. (Thanks to the late, great Phil Ochs for the song).
Take it from Pete
In 1964, I was in eighth grade at the American School in Japan in Tokyo. Being the child of left-leaning Protestant missionaries and a recent visitor to Vietnam, where a U.S. counterinsurgency war was brewing, I was pretty aware of…
New Dylan out this week
Via Wired: Starting Tuesday, the latest music from Bob Dylan will be available on NPR. The album is Tell Tale Signs, another addition to his bootleg series of rare and unreleased recordings. Mississippi, the tune available on Wired, is a…
Utah Phillips, Presente!
Hundreds of people from far and near came to the Nevada City, California, Little League park Sunday morning to say farewell to the late, great folksinger and organizer extraordinaire, Utah Phillips. I drove 80 miles from Truckee to pay my…
Memphis Gospel
Darrel Petties & Strength in Praise rock out at the Cooper-Young Festival, Memphis, Tennessee, September 15, 2007. Photo by Tim Shorrock.
Summertime…
…and if you’re a music fan, don’t miss Respect Yourself, the new PBS documentary on Memphis’ Stax Records, produced by my fellow Memphian, Robert Gordon. It’s a beautifully done tribute to the label that produced some of the greatest American…
Eric Clapton and…Kim Jong Il?
Apparently the Dear Leader’s second son is a big fan. From the Korea Times: “Japan’s Fuji TV has broadcast footage of a man resembling North Korean Leader Kim Jong-il’s second son, who is about 170 centimeters high, wearing blue jeans,…