11/01/2024

I know, I know. I said that the more frequently I do these playlists the easier and faster it becomes to get the YouTube videos all lined up and posted, etc etc, and now it’s been weeks—several weeks—since my last Matador set list went online! That’s, like, the equivalent of at least a year in intrawebby/election year/news cycle time! Shameful, I admit, but there are reasons for that. Let’s call them excuses.
09/17/2024

With Santa Fe Fiestas and its attendant mayhem now safely in the rear view mirror, it was back to bidness at Ye Olde Matador Bar & Lounge. Bartender Katia was back from the DL, none the worse for her unfortunate close encounter of the arachnid kind, and Big Dom kept his steady eye on everything from the door. This is the traditional Matador format—a tight three-person crew running the show, keeping a positive vibe in effect, backing one another up. Case in point: Around mid-evening a diminutive young lady entered the bar decked out in notably unseasonable attire. Though it was still 70-ish outside she wore a heavy winter coat, a knit hat, dark glasses and a black turtle neck sweater pulled up to completely cover the lower part of her face. She ordered a draft beer from Katia and then began to wander around in the nether regions of the bar, eventually disappearing into one of the bathrooms. Noting this from my DJ post, I began to get a bit curious when, after 15 minutes, she was still in there. I alerted Katia that something odd was afoot, she alerted Dom, Dom went to investigate and, after cueing up several songs, I went to cover the door. Dom got everything sorted and the mysterious diminutive individual emerged from the bathroom, finished her beer and disappeared into the streets of a Thursday night. Interesting.  No harm/no foul.
01/30/2023

The news of the untimely passing of Jeff Beck last week landed like a lightning bolt in the firmament of the guitar gods. By any estimation, Beck was one of the select few—the very top elite players to emerge from the musical/cultural crucible of the  1960s and go on to a career of sustained greatness and glory. His primary peers were his fellow Yardbirds Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page, along with Jimi Hendrix and Pete Townshend. In terms of direct equivalence regarding instrumental genius, innovation and influence—that's it. That's all.
06/28/2018

This missive is intended to address the myth and the mystery of three great albums of late ‘60s/early ‘70s rock n’ roll that have, to various degrees, disappeared from public circulation and from the collective sub- or un-conscious. None of them is completely gone—the original albums exist on the margins of the marketplace, on eBay and in the rarities bins of collector vinyl emporiums (emporia?) and some have been reborn in modern guise—but they remain largely obscure relics of special interest only to pathetic dorks such as Your Humble Narrator. Each one of these albums was important to me as a wee lad back home in New Orleans and I listened to each one of them countless times on my plastic close-and-carry record player back in the days before digital anything and Oranguntans-in-Chief. Ahhhh, thems was the days.   The recordings in question are ‘Live Yardbirds, featuring Jimmy Page’ by the Yardbirds, ‘Coast to Coast, Live: Overture and Beginners’ by Rod Stewart & Faces, and ‘Time Fades Away’ by Neil Young. All three of these recordings disappeared from the record stores not long after they were issued, largely due to the artists’ subsequent dissatisfaction with their quality. They languished in cut-out bins for a while, available for $1.99 or thereabouts before eventually vanishing altogether. In two of these three cases, those of the Yardbirds and Neil Young, only recently has the material been rehabilitated and reissued, nearly 50 years after the fact. As for Sir Roderick of Stewart, I suggest not bothering to hold your breath in anticipation of his following suit.
04/02/2017

I can't recall when I first saw Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow-Up, but it was certainly on television in New Orleans sometime in the early or mid-1970s. Back in those pre-cable days the few broadcast stations that there were (NBC, CBS, ABC, PBS, and a couple of UHF channels) either went off the air after a certain hour or they showed movies with minimal commercial interruption, particularly on the weekends. I was utterly transfixed by European art cinema as a kid, thanks to my parents (who took me regularly to see films by Fellini, Buñuel and others) and the remarkably adventurous late-night presentations on local television. Considering what a ruckus Blow-Up created in the cinemas back in 1966, the version of the film that I saw on television must have been edited quite extensively, but despite the censors' snipping it still made a huge impression.
07/08/2016

  A thousand pardons are begged of you, Gentle Reader(s), for the regrettable paucity of postage as of late. The usual distractions of travel, beisbol, work, beisbol and more travel have been in play with the addition of summertime bicycular activities, the inevitable result being that time spent wracking of the brain and pounding of the keys has suffered. Back in early June I was getting ready to add my two centimes worth of sentiment regarding the passing of the great Muhammad Ali when events such as the horrific massacre at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando and the mind boggling Brexit vote across the pond came crashing down. Next thing you know you're wallowing about in a bewildering swampy slosh of WTFs?? and OMGs!! for which there are no answers and no easy explanations. A bit overwhelming. I attended the Orlando vigil on the Santa Fe Plaza on Monday the 13th, presided over by our estimable Mayor Javier Gonzales and I felt that it did some good. It was a display of solidarity and community in the face of hate and intolerance—a display only, perhaps, but better than doing nothing at all.
05/31/2016

Your Humble Narrator has finally returned home to Santa Fe after an extended sojourn in the magical and misbegotten town of his birth, New Orleans of Louisiana. It was a productive trip for which the skyways were forsaken for the byways—specifically, an exhausting 17-hour drive, the primary feature of which was the state of Texas, which, through some woeful miscalculation or oversight, has been rudely placed betwixt and between the states of my procreation and primary residence. Be that as it may, one highlight of my time in New Orleans was a long-considered but oft-delayed pilgrimage to the gravesite of one of my primary musical heroes, Cecil Ingram Connor III, better known as Gram Parsons.
05/18/2016

Welcome back, Gentle Reader(s) to this humble compendium of verbal effluvia that flows, in fits and starts, from the thinky thing what resides betwixt and between the earholes of Your Humble Narrator. The Ides of May are nigh upon us and it has been a while since my last riposte, what with preparation for travel, travel, and recombobulation from travel taking up an exceptional portion of YHN’s time and attention. I have grabbed this brief moment to consider an opposing pair of epochal events that are marking 2016 as being a year of Exceptional Portent (in both the ominous and auspicious meanings of the term).   On the auspicious end of the spectrum, the Cubs of Chicago have begun the season with an epic tear that, at the time of this writing, finds them playing .806 beisbol, having emerged victorious from 25 of their initial 31 contests. It is a truly amazing situation the equivalent of which has had not been seen in Major League Beisbol since 1984 (the Detroit Tigers, 26 and 4 through their first 30 games), or in the National League since 1977 (the LA Dodgers, with 24 wins through their first 30 games). This is after the shock of the Cubs losing their power hitting left fielder Kyle Schwarber after a season-ending knee injury in game three and with hitting ace/first baseman Anthony Rizzo batting only .282 (respectable, but nothing amazing). How, pray tell, can this be?
04/26/2016

The Purple One has left the building. Unbelievable. At the age of 57 the sudden passing of Prince Rogers Nelson strains credulity in a year that has already seen the losses of David Bowie, George Martin, Keith Emerson, Glen Frey, Merle Haggard, Paul Kantner, Paul Bley, Phife Dawg, Pete Zorn, Nana Vasconcelos, Maurice White, Dan Hicks, Prince protégé Vanity, Frank Sinatra, Jr., Papa Wemba, Billy Paul, and Lonnie Mack. 2016 has been a tough year for music greats and it's only April.   In all honesty, as much of a shock as the loss of Prince is it didn't hit me nearly as hard as David Bowie's passing, artsy fartsy white boy that I am, but back in the '90s I was sufficiently inspired to record a minimalist Prince homage, ala Cream (the song is Prime Time Baby and can be found on the 'Music' page of this site). Whether you were tuned into Prince's groove or not, there's no denying that he was one of a very small, elite group of significant artists whose musical talent seems/seemed boundless—the true genius artists who write great songs, play a dizzying range of instruments, sing with expressiveness, passion and distinction, and know how to handle the technical aspects of the recording studio. It's a short list: Bowie, Paul McCartney, Stevie Wonder, Todd Rundgren, Prince... that's about all I can think of.
03/15/2016

As I'm sure you're already aware, Gentle Reader(s), the great Sir George Henry Martin passed away last Tuesday at the age of 90 years. To all reports, Sir George's was a life very well lived. He was respected and beloved by a great many people, not the least of whom was a group of four lads from Liverpool whom Martin met at Abbey Road studios in London on June 6, 1962. After he signed the Beatles to EMI's Parlophone label George Martin went on to produce all of the group's albums, save for the last ('Let It Be,' for which he functioned in a production advisory capacity). Beyond his groundbreaking work with the Beatles, Martin was a key figure in the evolution of the professional recording studio from a stuffy, formal laboratory environment (which in Martin's early days still involved studio engineers wearing ties and white lab coats) to a venue for free form sonic experimentation and creativity. There are other producers who emerged from the 1950s and '60s whose names are as well known as those of the artists with whom they worked (Sam Phillips, Quincy Jones, Berry Gordy and Phil Spector), and some artist/producers whose visions for their own compositions incorporated the possibilities of the studio as a primary element (Brian Wilson, Jimmy Page, Todd Rundgren and Prince prominent amongst them), but George Martin was the true revolutionary. Be that as it may, it took time for the full measure of Martin's contributions to become acknowledged: In the Beatles section of the first edition (1976) of the epochal 'Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll' George Martin doesn't even merit a mention.