Posts Tagged San Francisco
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February 21, 2018 by Simon Sweetman
The 1001 Albums Challenge # 35: Quicksilver Messenger Service – “Happy Trails”
Yeah-yeah, I know they’re important in the scheme of things (or a footnote at least) – in fact I wrote about them as part of a piece about the key San Fran bands but I have to admit, and here’s the place to do it, I’ve just never cared/got the buzz about Quicksilver Messenger Service. […]Archive
December 27, 2017 by Simon Sweetman
The 1001 Albums Challenge # 22: The Beau Brummels – “Triangle”
Another great revelation here, another reason to do this challenge, to read this book and make sure I check out the albums I haven’t previously hear. I know The Beau Brummels as reference only. If I’d ever previously heard any of their music I’d never stopped to identify it; I’m sure I’ve never head them. […]Archive
December 12, 2017 by Simon Sweetman
The 1001 Albums Challenge # 21: Moby Grape – “Moby Grape”
Funny that I’d never heard this album, only in that I love Skip Spence, the mythology – that amazing solo album of his and so usually, when something like that comes along you work your way back through everything – and yes I’d heard of Moby Grape and heard some of their stuff, and Jefferson […]Archive
December 11, 2017 by Simon Sweetman
The 1001 Albums Challenge # 20: Country Joe and the Fish – “Electric Music For The Body And Mind”
It’s getting a bit stuck-record, I know, but things will change as we move into the seventies, eighties and nineties – but so far I’m liking pretty much everything I hear. And so it is with this album – and sure, I knew of Country Joe And The Fish, but really only from Woodstock and […]Archive
July 11, 2017 by Simon Sweetman
Joan Didion: South and West
South and West: From a Notebook Joan Didion Knopf; First Edition edition “We tell ourselves stories in order to live”, Didion famously wrote. Here you could imagine a wag in her publisher’s office suggesting “We sell stories in order to make a living” – for this slim volume, this set of notes “from a notebook” […]Archive
March 30, 2017 by Simon Sweetman
It Was The Best Gig Ever # 13: The Roots, San Francisco 2012
Me and my brother-in-law drove down to San Francisco – left the rest of the family back in rural California, decided to take a couple of days out for ourselves. The aim, at first, was to see The Cult. But we drove down with no tickets, no accommodation, and turned up to find it sold […]Archive
March 1, 2017 by Simon Sweetman
Stubs: #201 – Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco, USA, 2016
It was a pretty great 40th birthday last year – and I wrote a wee bit about it here. Suddenly, just the other day I thought about it again, specifically the trip to the Contemporary Jewish Museum – which was showing an amazing Stanley Kubrick exhibition. I was listening to a podcast with a film […]Archive
January 24, 2017 by Simon Sweetman
The Start of the San Fran Sound: The West Coast Bay Area Hippie-Dippie 1960s
British rock critic Nik Cohn, writing with an outside perspective, put it simply when looking at the San Francisco Sound: “In America, acid really mattered”. Using the proceeds from his novel, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, the writer Ken Kesey initiated the Acid Tests; bankrolling experiments conducted by Dr. Timothy Leary – parties fuelled […]Archive
August 23, 2016 by Simon Sweetman
Sweetman Podcast: Episode 29 – Sylvie Simmons
Welcome to episode 29 of Sweetman Podcast brought to you by Phantom Billstickers. This one is a chat with Sylvie Simmons – that’s Sylvie Simmons the music writer, Leonard Cohen biographer and MOJO staff writer, legendary rock writer who was on the tour bus with Black Sabbath and Van Halen, who published the first interview […]Archive
August 13, 2016 by Simon Sweetman
Drive-By Truckers: It’s Great To Be Alive!
Drive-By Truckers It’s Great To Be Alive! ATO Records Near the end of 2014 Drive-By Truckers ran a three-night-stand at San Francisco’s Fillmore and this is the triple-disc set that captures the best of their efforts there. It’s a wondrous thing – utterly raw and beautifully ugly. That songwriters Mike Cooley and Patterson Hood both […]Archive
August 8, 2016 by Simon Sweetman