Some peo­ple think Chuck Berry invent­ed rock and roll. Chuck Berry sure thinks so. But I say it was Bo Did­dley. At least Did­dley invent­ed the rock and roll I love—throbbing, dirty, hyp­not­ic, hov­er­ing in some space between the blues, gospel and African rhythms but also with its feet firm­ly plant­ed on any indus­tri­al city street­corner. Bo Did­dley invent­ed irony in rock (his first band was called “The Hip­sters”). Bo Did­dley nev­er pan­dered to the teeny­bop­per crowd (though he did go com­mer­cial in the 80s). Even his biggest hits have about them an oth­er­world­ly air of echo‑y weird­ness, with their sig­na­ture beat and one-note drone.  Also some­thing vague­ly sleazy and maybe a lit­tle sin­is­ter, essen­tial ele­ments of rock and roll wor­thy of the name.

So, as a man who made his own rhythm, his own tones, his own stu­dio, and his own gui­tar—who was so much his own man that one of his best known songs is named after him—it stands to rea­son that he would also make his own set of rules for sur­viv­ing the music busi­ness. Called “Bo Diddley’s Guide to Sur­vival,” the list cov­ers all the bases: drugs and booze (“NO!”), food (“any­thing you can get your hands on”), health, mon­ey, defense, cows, women, and hear­ing. What more is there, real­ly?

The list, clear­ly part of a mag­a­zine fea­ture, has cir­cu­lat­ed on the inter­net for some time, but no one has man­aged to track down the source. It’s prob­a­bly gen­uine, though; it sounds like the per­fect mix of the down-to-earth and far-out fun­ny that was Bo Did­dley. I’m par­tic­u­lar­ly intrigued by his very spe­cif­ic defense tech­niques (Elvis obvi­ous­ly took notes). It is true, by the way, that Did­dley once served as a sher­iff in New Mex­i­co, a fact that adds so much to the mys­tique. Where “Defense” and “Women” get lengthy (and respect­ful) treat­ments, his suc­cinct take on “Hear­ing” is as prac­ti­cal as it gets.

See the orig­i­nal list at the top and read the full tran­script below. As you do, lis­ten to the time­less weird­ness of “Bo Did­dley” above. There’s noth­ing else like it.

Alco­hol and Drugs  Only drink Grand Marnier, and that’s to keep the throat from dry­ing up in a place where there’s a lot of smoke. As for drugs: a big NO!

Food  Eat any­time, any­thing you can get your hands on. I mean it!

Health  When­ev­er you get to feel­ing weird, take Bay­er aspirin. I can’t stand tak­ing all that oth­er bull­shit.

Mon­ey  Always take a lawyer with you, and then bring anoth­er lawyer to watch him.

Defense  I can’t go around slap­ping peo­ple with my hands or else I’d go broke. So I take karate, and kick when I fight. Of course, I got plen­ty of guns — one real big one. But guns are for peo­ple try­ing to take your home, not some guy who makes you mad. I used to be a sher­iff down in New Mex­i­co for two and a half years, so I know not to pull it right away.

Cows  If they wan­na play, and you don’t wan­na make pets out of ‘em, and you can’t eat ‘em — then get rid of ‘em!

Women  If you wan­na meet a nice young lady, then you try to smell your best. A girl don’t like nobody walk­ing up in her face smelling like a goat. Then, you don’t say crap like “Hey, don’t I know you?” The first thing you ask her is: “Are you alone?” If she tells you that she’s with her boyfriend, then you see if the cat’s as big as you. If you don’t have no mon­ey, just smell right. And for God’s sake don’t be pulling on her and slap­ping on her. You don’t hit the girls! If you do this, you can’t miss.

Hear­ing  Just don’t put your ears in the speak­ers.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Chuck Berry Takes Kei­th Richards to School, Shows Him How to Rock (1987)

Kei­th Richards Wax­es Philo­soph­i­cal, Plays Live with His Idol, the Great Mud­dy Waters

A His­to­ry of Rock ‘n’ Roll in 100 Riffs

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

In this fun new video from CDZA, gui­tarist Mark Sid­ney John­son takes us on an enter­tain­ing romp through more than fifty years of the rock gui­tar solo, from Chuck Berry to John May­er.

Along the way John­son rips through a suc­ces­sion of famous riffs and solos by Kei­th Richards, Jimi Hen­drix, Car­los San­tana, Jim­my Page, Eric Clap­ton, Mark Knopfler, Randy Rhoads, Eddie Van Halen, Slash … and those are only a few from the first half of the video.

John­son is an Eng­lish mul­ti-instru­men­tal­ist and song­writer based in New York. He works reg­u­lar­ly as a ses­sion gui­tarist and plays with The Brit Pack as well as the exper­i­men­tal music video group CDZA, short for Col­lec­tive Caden­za. For more exam­ples of their off­beat and inno­v­a­tive work, vis­it the CDZA Web site.

via That Eric Alper

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Eric Clapton’s Iso­lat­ed Gui­tar Track From the Clas­sic Bea­t­les Song, ‘While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps’ (1968)

Gui­tar Sto­ries: Mark Knopfler on the Six Gui­tars That Shaped His Career

The Sto­ry of the Gui­tar: The Com­plete Three-Part Doc­u­men­tary

Here Comes The Sun: The Lost Gui­tar Solo by George Har­ri­son

A His­to­ry of Rock ‘n’ Roll in 100 Riffs

Many things have hap­pened on the inter­net this week, among them some get off my lawn out­rage at a $375 Urban Out­fit­ters leather jack­et designed to repli­cate the home­made swag every punk rock kid once draped over their shoul­ders. Then there’s the Justin Bieber/Black Flag mash-up t‑shirt that “ruined punk for­ev­er.” I may have spent some for­ma­tive years immersed in ersatz punk and hard­core cul­ture, but no mat­ter how old and cranky I may be com­pared to the tar­get mar­ket of this mer­chan­dise, I just can’t bring myself to get both­ered. No one has said it bet­ter than Dave Berman: “punk rock died when the first kid said / ‘punk’s not dead, punk’s not dead.’”

The stri­dent desire of some to cling to a punk rock ethos can be amus­ing since the move­men­t’s most famous fig­ure­heads, the Sex Pis­tols, crashed and burned a lit­tle over three years after form­ing and one year after intro­duc­ing their mas­cot, Sid Vicious. The band’s cre­ative destruc­tion often seems like the most viable expres­sion of punk. It burns itself out on its own ener­gy. Every­thing else you can say about it is just more Mal­colm McLaren mar­ket­ing.

Or, put dif­fer­ent­ly, maybe the only dis­cus­sion worth hav­ing about punk rock is archival. It came, it went, get over it—but oh, what a glo­ri­ous comet trail left by the likes of John­ny Rot­ten! And we have evi­dence of the tail end on film. Above, you can see the Pis­tols very last per­for­mance at San Francisco’s Win­ter­land Ball­room in Jan­u­ary of 1978.

The film opens with text excus­ing some qual­i­ty con­trol issues: “The footage con­tained in this video is rare archive mate­r­i­al and irre­place­able. The pub­lish­ers feel that the qual­i­ty of the con­tent… far out­weighs any minor… short­com­ings of sound and vision.” Then we’re off to the races, intro­duced by a pair of announc­ers, male and female, like an Olympic event. Despite the dis­claimer, this is decent film and audio, and def­i­nite­ly “qual­i­ty con­tent.” Bril­liant, in fact (Sid actu­al­ly plays!), and an excel­lent argu­ment for why this band need­ed no future. A YouTube com­menter help­ful­ly breaks down the video into the track­list below. Great stuff.

01:45 — God Save The Queen , 05:56 — I Wan­na Be Me , 10:04 — Sev­en­teen , 12:27 — New York , 15:54 — EMI , 19:38 — Belsen Was Gas , 21:50 — Bod­ies , 25:50 — Hol­i­days In The Sun , 31:17 — Liar , 35:40 — No Feel­ings , 38:55 — Prob­lems , 43:26 — Pret­ty Vacant, 46:57 — Anar­chy In The UK , 52:43 — No Fun

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sex Pis­tols Front­man John­ny Rot­ten Weighs In On Lady Gaga, Paul McCart­ney, Madon­na & Katy Per­ry

John­ny Rotten’s Cor­dial Let­ter to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: Next to the Sex Pis­tols, You’re ‘a Piss Stain’

Mal­colm McLaren: The Quest for Authen­tic Cre­ativ­i­ty

The His­to­ry of Punk Rock

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

I’m gonna tell you some­thing. Most of my life I’ve been a snob. A music snob. I know, peo­ple like me can suck the fun out of a five-year-old’s birth­day par­ty. But I wasn’t always such a twist­ed killjoy. For a cou­ple years of my life, between the ten­der ages of 11 and 13, I was a wide-eyed naïf, groov­ing to what­ev­er late eight­ies R&B pow­er bal­lad rap hits hap­pened to come on the radio, and it all sound­ed pret­ty good to me. Sure, I should’ve known better—I grew up folk and blues and gold­en age rock and roll. But that was my par­ents’ music. To para­phrase Mor­ris­sey, it had noth­ing to say about my life.

No, in that excru­ci­at­ing­ly earnest yet also oh-so painful­ly awk­ward way, the first band I believed spoke to me was INXS. Yes, that’s right, those ridicu­lous Aussie are­na rock­ers whose tum­ble from cheesy to mor­bid­ly tawdry to Real­i­ty TV we all know so well. At 13, I was con­vinced that Michael Hutchence was my gen­er­a­tion’s Jim Mor­ri­son. And so one night in March, dressed in a sleeve­less INXS t‑shirt, ripped jeans and high-top sneak­ers, my hair teased into some kind of Prince-like pom­padour, I told my par­ents I was going to a sleep­over. Instead, I rode with a few neigh­bor­hood friends to the Patri­ot Cen­ter at George Mason Uni­ver­si­ty, the tick­et I’d had a bud­dy’s old­er broth­er buy with the last of my paper route mon­ey tucked neat­ly into the fold of my black Vel­cro INXS wal­let. I mount­ed the stairs to a sec­tion so high that our view of the stage looked like a Georges Seu­rat up close, all dis­ori­ent­ing lit­tle col­ored dots.

But I was there, man, in the throng, in the thick of a rock and roll show, hear­ing the hits blare across acres of scream­ing heads. And it was mag­i­cal. Not very long after, I would turn to hard­er stuff, become jad­ed and crusty and look back with dis­dain on the smooth sounds of INXS. But that feel­ing then… stand­ing there amidst those crowds, almost every­one old­er than me, wob­bling in the haze of sur­rep­ti­tious pot smoke and the slight­ly nau­se­at­ing high of cheap beer drunk fast in an old mus­cle car… I had arrived. I told my par­ents about this years lat­er, when the statute of lim­i­ta­tions ran out. And they laughed. And so did I. Because, c’mon. It’s INXS. Then again, watch­ing the footage above from 1988, the same year I saw them at 13, I have to admit that they don’t sound half bad. But good­ness, those out­fits. Prob­a­bly for the best I couldn’t actu­al­ly see them on the stage back then.

So there’s my sto­ry, read­ers, inspired by this Metafil­ter thread. Now that I’ve told you mine, please tell me yours. What was your very first con­cert? There’s no shame here, friends. Only nos­tal­gia. Extra points to those who pro­vide links to live con­cert footage.

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

The Clash are big in music news again with the arrival of their box set Sound Sys­tem, which Mick Jones promis­es will be their final offi­cial release of all time. Jones also tells The Guardian it’s the “best box set ever,” and I just might believe it. It’s cer­tain­ly one of the coolest look­ing. The band’s music holds up per­fect­ly well; in fact it’s tak­en on renewed rel­e­vance as so much of the cul­tur­al and eco­nom­ic con­flicts they wrote in response to have emerged like zom­bies from the grave to tor­ment us again (this time, per­haps, pace Marx, as zom­bie farce).

In light of their renewed rel­e­vance, Google brings us a five-part doc­u­men­tary series on the band, called Audio Ammu­ni­tion, and it looks fan­tas­tic.

Each part cov­ers the mak­ing of their five clas­sic stu­dio albums (exclud­ing 1985’s mis­guid­ed Cut the Crap). Here’s Google’s offi­cial descrip­tion:

In this exclu­sive doc­u­men­tary fea­tur­ing nev­er-before-seen footage of the late, great Joe Strum­mer, all four mem­bers of “the only band that mat­ters” walk us through the mak­ing of each of their clas­sic albums. New­ly re-mas­tered ver­sions of those albums are avail­able below, along with a new hits col­lec­tion based on the set list from one of Joe’s favorite gigs. Plus, four con­tem­po­rary bands inspired by the Clash’s lega­cy offer their own takes on the band’s songs. If you already love the Clash, watch and lis­ten and we guar­an­tee you’ll hear some­thing new. If you don’t, you’ll hear why you should.

See Part One, “The Clash,” at the top and part 2, “Give ‘Em Enough Rope,” above, and below find part 3, “Lon­don Call­ing,” part 4, “San­din­ista,” and part 5, “Com­bat Rock.” And vis­it the Google Play site for the film and to find oth­er good­ies like Kurt Vile’s fuzzed-out take on “The Guns of Brix­ton” and oth­er exclu­sive cov­ers of Clash songs by con­tem­po­rary artists. The doc­u­men­tary series will be added to our col­lec­tion of 575 Free Movies Online.

Lon­don Call­ing

San­din­ista

Com­bat Rock

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sur­viv­ing Mem­bers of The Clash Recount the Mak­ing of “Lon­don Call­ing” & Dis­cuss New Box Set

Doc­u­men­tary Viva Joe Strum­mer: The Sto­ry of the Clash Sur­veys the Career of Rock’s Beloved Front­man

The Clash: West­way to the World

Mick Jones Plays Three Clas­sics by The Clash at the Pub­lic Library

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

On the strength of its hit sin­gle Enter Sand­man, Metal­li­ca’s epony­mous 1991 album even­tu­al­ly went plat­inum, and the band became one of the biggest heavy met­al acts around. Since then, the influ­ence of “Enter Sand­man” has rip­pled out into the larg­er cul­ture. Since 1999, Mar­i­ano Rivera, sure­ly the great­est relief pitch­er in the his­to­ry of base­ball, has rit­u­al­ly made his entrance to the game with “Enter Sand­man” pro­vid­ing the sound­track. (Per­haps a strange pick for a mild-man­nered, deeply reli­gious man. But some­how it works.) And the song has been cov­ered umpteen times — by oth­er met­al bands (most notably Motör­head) but also by Weird Al Yankovic, Pat Boone, and the blue­grass band called Iron Horse.

Formed over a decade ago in the record­ing cap­i­tal of Mus­cle Shoals, Alaba­ma, Iron Horse fea­tures Tony Robert­son on man­dolin, Vance Hen­ry on gui­tar, Ricky Rogers on bass, and Antho­ny Richard­son on ban­jo. And, togeth­er, they’ve tak­en some risks along the way.

In 2003, they released Fade to Blue­grass: Trib­ute to Metal­li­ca, a col­lec­tion of ten Metal­li­ca songs done in blue­grass fash­ion — “or at least as blue­grass as it’s pos­si­ble for Metal­li­ca songs to be.” Speak­ing about the album on their web­site, they write:

Metallica’s thun­der­ing drums, heart-pound­ing gui­tars and anguished vocals tell the sto­ry of peo­ple lost in the hus­tle of mod­ern soci­ety. Blue­grass music sings the tale of peo­ple stuck between heav­en and hell, the farm and the city and love and hate. In many ways Metal­li­ca and blue­grass are broth­ers, one raised in the urban jun­gle and the oth­er in the coun­try. So what hap­pens when these two estranged sib­lings get togeth­er? Fade to Blue­grass: Trib­ute to Metal­li­ca has the answer. Ban­jo and man­dolin replace elec­tric gui­tars and high lone­some har­monies soar in place of growl­ing vocals to cre­ate a sur­pris­ing and mov­ing trib­ute. Per­formed with pas­sion and skill by Alaba­ma blue­grass band Iron Horse, and fea­tur­ing clas­sics such as “Unfor­giv­en,” “Enter Sand­man” and “Fade to Black,” Fade to Blue­grass: Trib­ute to Metal­li­ca is a fam­i­ly reunion between broth­ers heavy met­al and blue­grass.

You can watch Iron Horse per­form “Enter Sand­man” above. And below you can see that Metal­li­ca’s lead gui­tarist Kirk Ham­mett approves:

via Devour

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Steve Mar­tin on the Leg­endary Blue­grass Musi­cian Earl Scrug­gs

Pickin’ & Trim­min’ in a Down-Home North Car­oli­na Bar­ber­shop: Award-Win­ning Short Film

Steve Mar­tin Writes Song for Hymn-Deprived Athe­ists