Don Cornelius checked himself out, it would appear.

See him here — doin’ it to death — with Mary Wilson in the Soul Train line dance.

She was skinny, quick-witted, disarmingly unprofessional, alternating between stand-up patter, bardic intonations, and the hypnotic emotional sway of a chanteuse, and she was sexy in an androgynous way I hadn’t encountered before. The elements cohered convincingly; she seemed both entirely new and somehow long-anticipated. For me at nineteen, the show was an epiphany.

Luc Sante on Patti Smith.

Springtime 1976, I was living in the cinderblock building on the glorified median strip there where they split Highway 13, and one day I went over to this one girl’s apartment, she lived right by the guy who dealt me speed, and she said, “Hey, you know who you remind me of? You remind me of Patti Smith!”

Gave her a possum grin I’m still grinning.

4. Walk with the devil

Old Delta blues players referred to guitar amplifiers as the “devil box.” And they were right. You have to be an equal opportunity employer in terms of who you’re bringing over from the other side. Electricity attracts devils and demons. Other instruments attract other spirits. An acoustic guitar attracts Casper. A mandolin attracts Wendy. But an electric guitar attracts Beelzebub.

(From WFMU’s Beware of the Blog. Via Brian Beatty.)

One thing being lost is the art of conversation, of people seeing a movie and then actually having a good talk afterwards. — As told to J.R. Jones.

Man, does this put me in mind of my friend Charlie’s thoughts re: the “hidden cinema” he frequents in Buenos Aires.

But my exchange with the Tooth Fairy was delightful. Her tone was either flirtatious or something like a Disney character sounds moments before singing the movie’s second big number; it was difficult to discern.

A Manuscript called “De Masticatione Mortuorum, Latin for “The Chewing Dead,” offered helpful tips for those facing the walking (or chewing) dead, and prescribed practical treatments such as the aforementioned brick-in-mouth.

More on the art & gothic psychogeography of Venice.

on the “Tony Orlando & Dawn” show.

DISCLAIMER:
The intent of this post is anthropological and not to make profit. It is strictly to share with fans and the periodic visitors to this planet from other galaxies a part of the musical history of the aforementioned musical group.

Also:

During these times all the TV shows wanted us to mime the entire performance which we were reluctant to do. A compromise was reached with the shows we finally performed on.

In heavy rotation chez Ryan these past few weeks: I Wake Up Screaming, the current release from Kid Creole (August Darnell) & the Coconuts, close relatives of Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band.

Especially the tune “Stony and Cory,”

And now the music lingers on, on, on
And I’m so grateful for it all, all, all
But there’s no right without a wrong, wrong, wrong
And there’s no rise without a fall, fall
Fall, fall

an hommage to “the people who guided the mid-’70s New York disco unit Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band, in which [August] Darnell [Kid Creole] played bass and wrote lyrics. Stony Browder was Darnell’s brother, and bandleader Cory Daye was the band’s singer.”

I miss the times, and I miss the scene, such as it was. I miss the people.

(Merci to Ju Ju Pongo for the tip to the NPR piece.)

Postscript:

How Darnell recalls his days with the Gold-selling Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band, which he formed in 1974 with his since-sadly-deceased brother Stony Browder, Jr.

“It was an interesting period for me, because it basically represented my education in the music business. You know, with my brother being the leader of the band, he was the one that we all FOLLOWED. Because he had a bohemian lifestyle, plus he’d been the one who first said ‘Let’s do this for a LIVING, not a HOBBY!’… And basically the idea behind Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band was to borrow from the past – the close-knit vocal harmonies and the horn arrangements of people we respected like Duke Ellington and Count Basie – and then to combine those foundations that the Forties had given us with contemporary dance music – which, with it being the Seventies, was of course DISCO… And that’s exactly what Stony DID! And the thing that really helped us more than anything else with that was having Cory Daye as our lead-vocalist. Because she was a stylised singer with this special voice who borrowed extensively from her idols of the past like Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald to create her own style based UPON that… So yeah, we really did bring dance music to a new level while at the same time introducing youngsters to a style of music they’d never heard BEFORE – you know, I think Stony was very, very ahead of his time bringing that big-band-style jazz sound to a new generation… And from my point of view the whole experience definitely did teach me a LOT. Because, with me being his student and right-hand man, while Stony was in the studio producing the records I’d be there sitting by his side just absorbing EVERYTHING!”