RIP Duck Dunn

Donald "Duck" Dunn, extraordinary bassist who played on hundreds of hit records and was a member of Stax's house band (as well as Booker T. & the M.G.s) died this weekend.



Known to many as the pipe-smoking bassist in the Blues Brothers band, Dunn's bassline anchored most of the classic Memphis soul records of the 1960s.



In 1970, Booker T. & the M.G.s released McLemore Avenue, which featured instrumental versions of songs from the Beatles' Abbey Road album. McLemore Avenue was the home of the Stax recording studio.

Do You Know Now, Mister Show?

Attracts Me Like A Pomegranate

The Beatles working out an arrangement and the words to "Something."

I want to hear the alternate-universe version with the cool harmonies this hints at (around 1:20 to 2:00).



"Just say whatever comes into your head each time, 'Attracts me like a cauliflower,' until you get the words."
-- John Lennon




A promotional film for this song, directed by longtime Beatle confidant Neil Aspinall, features separate footage of each of the four Beatles (with the four Beatle wives). The musical closeness and shorthand in the session is nowhere to be seen in the clip, which hints that the band had basically already broken up (but couldn't yet be bothered to let anyone know).

Women Are Smarter in Every Way

Except sometimes in song choice

Arguably, the classic song "Man Smart, Woman Smarter" should sound like this:




And you could make a case that it sounds as good like this:




Or even this or this or even this.


But only in the coked-out late '70s could anyone have thought it was a good idea to spring Karen Carpenter's beautiful voice on a song that relied so heavily on a sense of rhythm and gritty integrity.



The problem with campy earnestness 35 years later is that it just starts to seem sad...

Frightening Lies From the Other Side

We're Talking About Your Freedom

So President Obama came out (um... so to speak) for marriage equality.

There's been a lot of hand-wringing about this. But I don't see how it's a problem for anyone.

To put it more directly: If you're against freedom, you're on the wrong side.

And 20 years from now, everyone will be ashamed of you.

Wild Rumpus

When I was a kid, two of my favorite books were Chicken Soup with Rice and Where the Wild Things Are, both products of the wondrous imagination of Maurice Sendak.

I'm told that when I was two or three, after being read Chicken Soup with Rice for the millionth time as a bedtime story, I declared that Chicken Soup with Rice comes out of a can.




The movie version of Where the Wild Things Are (directed by Spike Jonze with a script by Jonze and David Eggers) a few years back was polarizing. I know a lot of people who completely hated it -- some thought it was too on-the-nose and filled with psychobabble. Others were shocked by how unhappy the monsters were.

For me, the blending of id-filled adventurousness and the growing awareness of loss was heartbreaking.

The loss of Maurice Sendak this week at age 83 was a sad occasion.

And I'm sure I'm not the only one who was reminded of childhood -- with all the excitement, amazement, and danger that entails.

Thanks for so many decades of great stories and pictures (not to mention sets for plays and operas).

You will be missed.

Better Brush Up On How To Tie A Windsor Knot

Stop The Hands of Time

She was holed up in a small motel room at the edge of the desert, drinking heavily and watching numbers flick by on her laptop.

I waited patiently. In years past, brilliant and powerful men had paid her millions for her insights and opinions. I wondered how she'd downsized from her previous life to a single suitcase, a laptop, and a 19-year-old Ford with a dented fender.

Finally she closed the laptop. And slowly stretched out the word "shit" until it sounded like it had 14 syllables.

"Follow the money," she told me.

So I did.

Here's what I found:

There is a completely unregulated pool of Credit Default Swaps that is gigantic. It's hard to know exactly how big since there's no regulation (and no requirements for reserves and no way to accurately set prices), but experts estimate it's between 800 and 1,200 trillion dollars.

That amount is hard to fathom.

So let me put it another way.

The total annual value of everything in the world is about $50 trillion.

So the amount of outstanding Credit Default Swaps is 16 to 24 years worth of everything in the entire world.

So what happens if someone has to start paying off large numbers of those Credit Default Swaps?

I couldn't imagine, so I went back to the motel room. I'd ask her. Certainly she'd know.

The Ford with the dented fender wasn't there. And her door was open.

Empty liquor bottles littered the floor. But the suitcase wasn't there and she was clearly gone.

All she left behind was a small note. It read "We are all fucked."

And Transmit Thought Energy

The public scoffed "It's far too crude."

By 1976, music fans were desperate to think the Beatles had gotten back together.

How desperate?

This desperate.



If all of this seems silly now (and it does), it was a big deal back then.

And, if you were a fairly good Canadian pop band desperate for publicity of any kind, why wouldn't you be happy about something this completely and totally ridiculous?