"Gone"

Popmart Tour, North America (third leg), Mexico City, December 3, 1997
Here they are doing "Gone," one of the best songs off of Pop. This is from a program MTV aired called U2: PopMart Live from Mexico City that I taped. It was simulcast live:




I liked Houston Chronicle reporter Michael D. Clark's analyses of U2's body of work so much, I did a post about it. Concerning Pop, he said:

After mining everything from rock to disco to synth, U2 didn't seem to know where to go next. "Discotheque" feels left over from Zooropa while "Staring at the Sun" is yet another tremendous ballad that fits better with Achtung Baby.


I'd have to agree with that assessment. In hindsight, I like Pop a lot more. It's really the last album by the U2 I grew up knowing. It seemed like they were going through the motions a lot more by the time of the release of All That You Can't Leave Behind in 2000.

I got a Yoda on my back

Saw this at Boing Boing I did. I could probably get used to wearing the backpack, but the light saber might be a bit much. The dude in the picture has me outdorked, but just barely.

The more things change...

Just as the oldest town in Texas loses one business, a new one opens up down the street:

"Heroes and Villains"

Released July 24, 1967, from the album Smiley Smile (the watered down Smile).

Composed in early 1966, "Heroes and Villains" was the first collaboration between Wilson and Parks, and it is most likely the first song written specifically for Smile. On this version, the version the cover art above was used for, one can get a good sense of what Van Dyke Parks, Brian Wilson's Smile-era collaborator, called their "American Gothic trip." Here it is:

"Heroes and Villains"

Around the time of writing "Heroes and Villains", Wilson and Parks also wrote something called "Barnyard." If anything shows what I think Brian Wilson was going for with Smile, it's this one. Here is the version recorded for 2005's Brian Wilson Presents Smile:

"Barnyard"

That's a little slice of aural heaven, I think. Do you understand "American Gothic trip" now? Imagine an entire album of that kind of thing. That's what Smile was to have been (I feel). Audio, musical cartoons.

This is a really interesting and thorough dissection of "Heroes and Villains" someone did:

....the ZEN interpretation............HEROES AND VILLAINS..... ..


Here is another little clip from the excellent documentary The Beach Boys: An American Band. First, Brian Wilson talks about how "they got into a very strange bag" around the time of the making of Smile (1966), as footage from the 1966 CBS special is shown, featuring Brian pounding out a melody used on a Smile-era song called "Do You Like Worms." Next will be some stop-motion, film experimentation with Carl and Dennis (Wilson), the soundtrack being a bit of the studio work that resulted in "Heroes and Villains."

"Surf's Up"

If you have an issue with men who sing with a high, soprano voice, do not watch this video. It is difficult for me to handle, sometimes, but when Brian goes into the "surf's up" section of this, it's sort of magical.


The November 8, 1971 single version cover art
Wikipedia entry:

"Surf's Up" is the title of a song written by Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks. The song was intended as the centerpiece for the aborted Beach Boys' album Smile, which was begun in late 1966 but shelved in mid-1967.

The original studio recording of the song was never completed. A fully finished (or near-complete) backing track for the first section was recorded in late 1966 and early 1967, and other vocal and instrumental segments were also recorded, but a final edit was apparently never made. Wilson also recorded a complete 'demo' solo performance of the song in late 1966, accompanying himself on piano; this was apparently made for a CBS television special on pop music hosted by composer Leonard Bernstein.

Here are the Van Dyke Parks (the flamboyant dude at the end of the video) lyrics the other Beach Boys (other than Brian) weren't too crazy about:

A diamond necklace played the pawn
Hand in hand some drummed along, oh
To a handsome man and baton
A blind class aristocracy
Back through the opera glass you see
The pit and the pendulum drawn
Columnated ruins domino

Canvass the town and brush the backdrop
Are you sleeping?

Hung velvet overtaken me
Dim chandelier awaken me
To a song dissolved in the dawn
The music hall a costly bow
The music all is lost for now
To a muted trumperter swan
Columnated ruins domino

Canvass the town and brush the backdrop
Are you sleeping, Brother John?

Dove nested towers the hour was
Strike the street quicksilver moon
Carriage across the fog
Two-Step to lamp lights cellar tune
The laughs come hard in Auld Lang Syne

The glass was raised, the fired rose
The fullness of the wine, the dim last toasting
While at port adieu or die

A choke of grief heart hardened I
Beyond belief a broken man too tough to cry

Surf's Up
Aboard a tidal wave
Come about hard and join
The young and often spring you gave
I heard the word
Wonderful thing
A children's song

It's a long way from "She's real fine my 409" to "Columnated ruins domino".

La farmacia

The Consumerist has this picture of a quaint market, presumably in a Spanish-speaking country.

The Off-World Colony is yours

adfreak has coverage of a "frightening development in blimp technology: the A-170 Video Lightsign Airship from The Lightship Group. As if displaying a giant static logo weren’t enough, this thing has a gigantic video screen that can play commercials." That sounds sort of familiar.


Another stream of consciousness movie reference: