Rick Gordon says Benny is his favorite uke player:

Just picked up this joyous video from Loobylu, a soulful blog written by Claire Robertson, who says: “I am a writer, illustrator, mama, crafter and procrastinator living and dreaming with my raggle-taggle family in a forest on a small island in Canada’s Pacific Northwest. We have been here since August 2010. Before that we were suburb dwelling people who lived in Melbourne, Australia. We decided to make our lives a bit more of an adventure…”

Inspired by Iceland Video from Inspired By Iceland on Vimeo.

Direct link to video on Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/12236680

I get some really great comments on this blog from time to time. Last week, on the post about the old German diesel housetruck, came thus comment from acep hale:

“Just fell totally and completely in love. Did you ever see One Thursday in November – The Life of a Busker? I know google video has it up. Completely inspires me, I watch it about once a month and pass it along to as many friends as possible.

   Found it:

https://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2511637531026573957#

This sat in my in-box for a few days. and on this early sunny morning, I clicked on the link. It’s a wonderful 30-minute film about a remarkable guy. Make it full screen by clicking the little box to the right of the Google logo. (OK, OK, so I’ve been a little late in figuring this out…)

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Stones fans (and blues guitar players): You’re gonna love this book. What a surprise! It’s not perfect, but in parts is insightful, truthful, and informative. Way interesting background stuff on this phenomenal band.

I enjoyed it immensely. There was a fascinating part about Keith plying an acoustic guitar directly into a cassette recorder and distorting the sound to get the desired effect. They were getting electric guitar out of acoustic guitar in ways you can’t do with today’s digital recording apparatus. I remember listening to a Stones song back in the day as I was returning to reality from an, ahem, chemically-enhanced state of consciousness. What was this sound? It was as if they were distorting time, stretching it, and compressing it.

The book explains how the Keith and Mick couldn’t believe that Americans were so largely unaware of Mississippi/Texas.Chicago blues music, their tangled relationship, how they wrote songs together, Keith’s formidable heroin/cocaine habits… It’s startling in its honesty about a lot of stuff. (And it also led me indirectly to an epiphany about ebooks, which I’ll tackle in another post.)

Been playing the ’50s Sirius station a lot lately. The vocal harmonies of that decade were unique. A few minutes ago, Elvis singing “Are You Lonesome Tonight,” so beautiful it gave me chills. The Isley Brothers doing “Twist and Shout,” Coasters (originally the Robins) doing all those great Lieber and Stoller songs. “Searchin’,” “Young Blood,” “Loop de Loop Mambo.” (The latter a little-known song with special significance for me: my roommate at Stanford was Richard Zanuck, now the uber Hollywood producer. One night (probably 1954), we were drinking at a party and about midnight decided to drive to LA in his 20th Century Fox Ford convertible. There’s a vast difference between San Francisco, my hometown, and LA. Things are a lot looser in LA (duh!) I was a wide-eyed northern foreigner. Things was hangin’ out down there. It was relaxed.

We got into LA around dawn and at a coffee stop, I saw for the first time, pieces of pie in the wall cabinet reflected by mirrors. Sheee-it! The visuality of LA.

As we pulled back onto the coast highway a little north of Santa Monica, we were listening to the great LA DJ Dick “Huggie Boy” Hugg and “Loop de Loop Mambo” came on. Another world. (I’ve loved LA ever since.)

I tried to find this song fore years, and just rediscovered it, like 55 years later on (and I recommend this CD if you’re into R&B, now called “Doo-wop,” of the ’50s:) The Coasters Singles A’s and B’s – 1955-1959 I’m playing “Searchin'” as I write this, and I’m 19 and we’re heading to Zanuck’s beachfront house with our Dale Velzy balsa wood surfboards. We’re both buffed and have full heads of hair…