Guitar, Hero

I've been a fan of Marc Ribot's guitar playing since Tom Waits' Rain Dogs in 1985.

He's played with many great people over the years - John Zorn, Elvis Costello, Marianne Faithfull, among others - and his distinctive playing just seemed to get richer and more capable.

I got to see him on tour with Costello (for Spike) - a great show - and once was lucky enough to share a beer and a few words with him at Bar Bob on Eldridge Street when that was still an "art bar."


Mr. Ribot was recently arrested as he closed down the club Tonic, refusing to leave the stage during the eviction until the cops took him (and Rebecca Moore) away in cuffs (they ended with, depending on which account you read, either "Bread and Roses" or "The Nearness of You," either one oddly appropriate).

HERE he gives an interview about the state of NYC culture - particularly about music, but it applies in many other areas as well. Nothing that I didn't know - nor maybe nothing new to most of you - but extremely well-put and thoughtful.


More of interest can be found at Ribot and Moore's Take It To The Bridge forums.


Here's Ribot playing with his group, Ceramic Dog, last year -- a low-quality clip, and I thought I'd shut it off after 15 seconds, but now I just keep playing it . . .

(huh . . . just checked a discography for Mr. Ribot - didn't even realize he played on Stan Ridgway's Mosquitos - one of my favorite albums - and Cibo Matto's Stereo Type A - one of Berit's favorite albums . . .)

Major Tom's a Junkie

So, one of the acknowledged great landmarks of the music video form is David Bowie and David Mallet's video for Bowie's song "Ashes to Ashes," from Scary Monsters (and super creeps).

I saw it years ago at MoMA for a music video retrospective (in 1986 -- yeah, kinda early for an "overview," huh?), and the assembled crowd actually snickered when the title came up, announcing a Bowie video, then sat stunned at the piece:

I had read that Bowie had done a television appearance on the Kenny Everett show around the same time to promote his radical remake of "Space Oddity," released as a single in the UK that same year, singing it from inside a padded cell. I assumed this was the same padded cell set from the "Ashes to Ashes" video (correctly), and also assumed (incorrectly) that it was just a simple multi-camera TV appearance.


It's not. It's a whole video of its own, interconnected (as the song is) with the "Ashes to Ashes" video (and also using the same exploding kitchen set seen there and in Mallet's video for Billy Idol's "White Wedding"). If not as dense and rich as "Ashes to Ashes," it's still quite something:

Bowie fans, ENJOY!