Explore Posterous

The Instant Vid: Breaking News - Big Bird is a Birther!

TAJ MAHAL - AIN'T THAT A LOT OF LOVE (1968)

Sitting here in the middle of The Tonight Show and anticipating the performance of Bonnie Raitt with modern blues great Taj Mahal.  So I'm inspired with today's track.

Admittedly my knowledge of Taj Mahal is limited toward his work at the beginning in '68 and into the early 70's.  I want to dig deeper but when I still don't feel like I've exhausted what I do have, like his second LP The Natch'l Blues.  Taj's soulful blues on Ain't That A Lot Of Love is just stunning.  Enjoy for yourself:

For more info:
Taj Mahal:  http://www.tajblues.com/

Super Mario Bros. meets The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien

MORPHINE - BUENA (1993)

Last night was a big event in television: Conan O'Brien began hosting the legendary The Tonight Show after Jay Leno had held the honor for seventeen years.  It was good to see the show again be funny and relevant all over again.

I've always been a huge fan of the late night talk shows since I was a kid somehow scamming my parents into allowing me to stay up and watch Johnny Carson with them.  They were laughing when I didn't understand why but I did recognize an excellent rapport with Carson, his guests, and his audience.  When I aged into junior high and high school and began to develop my own sense of humor I discovered Late Night with David Letterman directly after and had found the person who was actually hip and cool.  Carson was the classic, but Letterman was the Carson for our generation.  And when Letterman left to form his own show on CBS we were given a chance to see person who spoke directly to us.

I was used to watching that time slot on NBC and was game to give Conan O'Brien a chance.  He wrote for The Simpsons, after all, so he had to be decent in the very least.  He had his growing pains of course but I still saw potential from the get-go.  Ultimately Conan came into his own and gave a show that felt like it was written specifically for me.  He was sarcastic, self-depreciating, ironic, satirical, and just plain weird, as though he and his writer's saw the world through different window.  They gave us characters like Pimpbot, Clompy, Masturbating Bear, and Triumph the Insult Comic Dog.  I loved Conan and he became a nightly ritual, so much so that when his 5th Anniversary special rolled around I bought tickets and flew to New York City for the first time in my life to participate as an audience member.

I've now reached an age (and time zone) where The Tonight Show is my appropriate time slot for me and it was good to see Conan again, back with Andy Richter, Max Weinberg et. al, and not losing a single step as he fashioned his show into the classic mode of The Tonight Show.  Finally, someone has the keys to the big house and they're going to do it right.

Typically, back when I was in high school and a bit beyond, the Late Night slot tried to distinguish itself with several interesting musical guests you normally wouldn't see in the previous Tonight Show hours.  I often recall hearing O'Brien and Letterman introducing a band with "Making their network television debut..."  When Conan took over the slot he took the ground running and had many artists that had me keeping my finger on the record button of my VCR.  I still have VHS tapes full of guests I loved (Superchunk, Fishbone, Robyn Hitchcock) that I've been meaning to digitize someday.

I also discovered bands this way, including Morphine, a bass, sax, and drum trio from Conan O'Brien's hometown of Boston.  I remember watching Mark Sandman start the opening bass lines for Buena and feeling I was seeing something very original.  I went out the next day and purchased Morphine's 2nd album Cure For Pain and followed the group until Sandman's untimely death of heart attack in 1999.  When a music nerd like myself has an outlet like Conan introducing him to bands like Morphine, how can I not love him forever?

For more info:
The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien: http://www.tonightshowwithconanobrien.com/
Morphine:  http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:j9frxql5ldje