John Gushue . . . Dot Dot Dot

A T-shirt for the vinyl types

Not down with downloads? No biggie. Spotted here, on the Signals site. Click the T-shirts tab below to see previously sighted items.

Patti Smith: I DO use hair conditioner

Patti Smith gets the Deborah Solomon treatment in this week's New York Times magazine. An excerpt from the Q&A:

You were writing poems and drawing long before you recorded your debut album, “Horses.” But don’t you consider your music your most original achievement? I am not really certain how original my contribution to music is as I am obviously an amateur. I know I’m a strong performer. I’m not an evolved musician. I’m an intuitive musician. I have no real technical skills. I can only play six chords on the guitar.

You seem to cultivate a kind of wild-child mystique, even in your appearance. For instance, why don’t you use hair conditioner? I do use conditioner!

I’m surprised. You’re the queen of split ends. That’s very funny because I’ve just cut about eight inches off my hair because it was just too ratty-looking.

Album covers, all over the map

The Word magazine has launched an interesting mashup: readers are invited to tag the location where an album cover has been shot, and add it to a (growing) list on Google Maps. The collection is diverse: from where U2 posed for the cover of The Joshua Tree to the Greenwich Village streets where Bob Dylan, Peter, Paul & Mary, and others posed, to even the airfield where Abba were photographed in a helicopter. You can browse through the alphabetical listings, or zoom around the world and see what was taken where. Zoom in for greater detail. If you have something to add, you're welcome to submit it.

A thought on ramping it up

"If it is worth doing, it is worth overdoing."
- Steven Tyler

Sing along with Star Trek

The Toronto Star rounds up what it calls the Star Trek mixtape, consisting of performances (most found lacking) by Star Trek actors. No. 1 on the list is William Shatner's cover of Pulp's Common People, which I'll agree was quite a bit of fun. Below is a 2006 performance (you'll note that Shatner has a stand to hold the lyrics that evidently he doesn't know by heart) that lacks Jarvis Cocker but boasts Joe Jackson and Ben Folds; Folds produced Shatner's curiously-worth-getting Has Been.

A thought on songwriting

"I see a song as the ashes of existence."
- Leonard Cohen

In Greenwich Village, Bob Dylan stretches out

One of a gallery of photographs of a 20-year-old Bob Dylan, figuring things out in Greenwich Village in late 1961. Click here to see the rest.

A thought on finding your own voice

"My vocal style I haven't tried to copy from anyone. It just developed until it became the girlish whine it is today."
- Robert Plant

The Eagles' flight plan

Rolling Stones rakes over the output of the Eagles, album by album; it's an interesting retrospective, sticking to the apparent consensus that the Eagles did their best work before they were, well, humongous.

Bands with singular visions

One-man bands are nothing new, but the New York Times reports on the resurgence of indie bands that can count their members on one finger. (To be more fair, I should say one-person bands, as in the case of Annie Clark of St. Vincent, pictured above, who is one of the ones profiled.) Check out the piece here.