Rolling Stones – "Little Red Rooster" (1964)

Watch out, straying kinpeople

'Cause the little red rooster’s on the prowl

Most online song lyric websites render the line from today’s featured record that is quoted above as “Watch out, strange kin people.”  Click here to read an article that makes a persuasive case that the line is actually “Watch out, straying kinpeople” – in other words, “Watch out, straying kinfolk.”  (In this case, the kinfolk are the hens, of course.)

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As I told you in the last 2 or 3 lines, I was so emotionally drained after I finished watching the last episode of Succession a couple of days ago that I immediately laid myself down on my sofa and told Alexa to play Sirius/XM’s “Underground Garage” channel, hoping that the music would lull me to sleep.

The very first record I heard after doing that was today’s featured record – the Rolling Stones’ cover of Howlin’ Wolf’s blues classic, “Little Red Rooster.”

The next record on the “Underground Garage” playlist was “Search and Destroy,” by Iggy Pop and the Stooges – not the ideal record to induce sleepiness.

“Search and Destroy” was followed by several other winners – Bob Dylan’s “Highway 61 Revisited,” “I Can’t Get Next to You” by the Temptations, “It Won’t Be Wrong” by the Byrds, “Itchycoo Park” by the Small Faces,” and Mick Jagger’s “Memo from Turner.”

My mind was racing after finishing Succession – I was writing yesterday’s review of the show in my head as I lay on the sofa and listened to those records.  I probably wouldn’t have fallen asleep even if a less exciting group of records had been programmed, but you’d best believe there’s no way I’m dozing off to “Itchycoo Park” and “Memo from Turner.”  

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Click here to listen to The Rolling Stones’ cover of “Little Red Rooster,” which is the only true blues record to ever top the British pop charts.

Click here to buy the record from Amazon.

Nicholas Britell – Main Title Theme of "Succession" (2018)

I watched the last episode of the HBO television series, Succession, earlier today.  

I can’t tell you how sad I was to finish that show, WHICH IS NOT ONLY THE GREATEST TV SERIES IN HISTORY BUT ALSO THE ULTIMATE ARTISTIC ACHIEVEMENT OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION.

I was so emotionally drained when that final episode ended that all I could do was lie down on my sofa and take a nap.  But unfortunately, I found myself unable to fall asleep – my brain was too busy thinking about what I could say in this post that would communicate the beauty, the splendor, the wonder of Succession. 

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Wikipedia calls Succession a “satirical black comedy-drama television series.”  That description couldn’t be wronger.  (Someone doesn’t know what in the hell black comedy is.)

The principal cast members of “Succession”

The show’s creator has characterized it as a tragedy, and that’s exactly correct.  It has many comic moments, but ultimately there’s nothing funny about Succession – the main characters are all deeply troubled and wounded people who can’t trust anyone, especially their closest family members.  (The classic tragedy that Succession makes me think of is King Lear, Shakespeare’s play about parent-child relationships gone very, very wrong.) 

Succession also has some things in common with The Godfather, another great work of art about families and betrayal.  

Just imagine if The Godfather was forty hours long instead of merely six-plus hours long.  (I’m only including the first two Godfather movies – you can have Part III.). Then you might have something as great as Succession.

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Every aspect of Succession is just about perfect.

The writing is probably the strongest element of the show – there are literally hundreds of memorable lines in Succession, but the whole of the script is much greater than the sums of its individual lines because the characters talk exactly like you would expect them to talk.  (No one makes speeches in Succession – they just talk.)  

I didn’t like all of the actors right off the bat, buy by the end of the series I found the portrayal of each major character to be utterly convincing.

Succession is breathtakingly beautiful show.  HBO spared no expense – it was filmed at a stunning modern mansion in Pacific Palisades, an English castle, the Plaza Hotel in New York City, a rustic Adirondacks resort, a Tuscan palazzo, a villa on Lake Como, a Long Island estate that is the second-largest private home ever built in the United States, a 279-foot-long yacht, and some Norwegian locations that have to be seen to be believed.   (You can click here to learn more about those locations.)

Even the show’s soundtrack is remarkable.  I found Nicholas Britell’s score infinitely more effective than any original movie or TV series score that I can remember.  (The show’s main theme draws from Beethoven’s Pathétique sonata – and while I would never compare Britell’s music to Beethoven’s, I could easily see myself listening to the Succession score on its own merits.)

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There have been many, many great television series in the last decade – including Breaking Bad, Deadwood, Fargo, Homeland, Orange Is the New Black, The Sopranos, The Bridge, and The Killing (to name a few).  One of the reasons I rank  Succession ahead of all of them is that its final season is even stronger than the seasons that preceded it.  (All too often, a series starts strong but limps to the finish.)

The soundtrack composer saved his best for last as well.  Click here to hear half an hour of musical excerpts from Succession’s fourth season – the music is more than a match for the almost unbearable dramatic intensity of that season’s episodes.

Click here to listen to the main title theme of Succession.

Click here to buy that theme music from Amazon.

Jay-Z – "Takeover" (2001)

Do not bark up that tree

That tree will fall on you

The entirety of “Takeover” is rapped over a sample taken from the Doors’ “Five to One,” which seems like a very unlikely record to use as the foundation of a hip-hop track.

Doors’ drummer John Densmore didn’t get it either when he first heard “Takeover” – in fact, he didn’t get rap generally.  “I was like, ‘What is this stuff? There’s no melody,’” Densmore told Rolling Stone magazine in 2013, sounding like every old white guy on the planet – except for 2 or 3 lines, of course, who bought a ticket on the hip-hop train decades ago.

Jay Z heard about Densmore’s comment, and got in touch with him. “Jay Z wrote me a letter saying, ‘Hey, we’re fighting the authority just like you guys did back then,’” Densmore said. The rapper also sent him a Def Jam T-shirt.

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“Takeover” is featured in the fifth episode of the fourth and final season of Succession, the HBO series that is ONLY THE GREATEST TELEVISION SHOW IN THE HISTORY OF TELEVISION SHOWS.  (As soon as I finish this post, I’m planning to watch the final episode of Succession.   I can’t tell you how depressed I’ll be when that episode ends – I wish they had made 40 seasons of the show instead of just four.)

The storyline of Succession features a number of attempted business takeovers, so it makes sense that the producers chose to use a snippet from this record on the show’s soundtrack.  

“Takeover” was released on Blueprint, Jay-Z’s sixth studio album, which was recorded while Jay-Z was awaiting trial for assault and gun possession.  It was released on September 11, 2001.  (Yes, that date is correct.) 

“Takeover” was one of the four tracks on the album that was produced by Kanye West.  (West was strictly a producer at that time.  He released his first solo album three years later.). It’s one of the most famous diss tracks in the history of rap music, responding to insults from Nas and Prodigy with a withering stream of invective.

Click here to listen to “Takeover.”

Click here to buy the record from Amazon.  

DJ Shadow (feat. Run the Jewels) – "Nobody Speak" (2016)

I am crack, I ain't lyin’

Kick a lion in his crack

2 or 3 lines learned a new word when he was researching today’s featured record.

“Chiasmus” is defined as “a figure of speech in which the grammar of one phrase is inverted in the following phrase, such that two key concepts from the original phrase reappear in the second phrase in inverted order.”

Here’s an example of chiasmus from Milton’s Paradise Lost:  “Adam, first of men/To first of women, Eve.”  

Here’s an example of a particular variety of chiasmus called “antimetabole”: “Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate.”  (If the two inverted phrases use the same words, it’s antimetabole.  If the two inverted phrases use different words, it’s chiasmus.)

The two lines from today’s featured record that are quoted above are another example of chiasmus.

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The featured records in each year’s “29 Posts in 29 Days” – a/k/a/ “28 Posts in 28 Days” in non-leap years – used to share a certain characteristic.  For example, each one might have had a title with a number in it.  Or each one might have been a cover record.

But these days I have far too much on my mind to bother with such trifles.

This year’s featured records have nothing in common – except each of them is a record I heard for the first time only recently.

Some of those records might have been originally recorded in the sixties or seventies.  But if 2 or 3 lines never heard them until recently, then they are new records as far as I’m concerned.

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DJ Shadow was born Joshua Paul Davis in 1972.  “Nobody Speak” – which was released in 2016 on his fifth studio album, The Mountain Will Fall – features El-P and Killer Mike, the two rappers who joined forces to form Run the Jewels in 2012.

I first heard “Nobody Speak” a couple of weeks ago when I was watching “Prague,” which is the title of the eighth episode of the first season of Succession, WHICH IS ONLY THE GREATEST TV SERIES IN HISTORY!  (I find a lot of great music on the soundtracks of the TV series I watch.)

Click here to watch the very provocative music video for “Nobody Speak.”  (Be prepared: the lyrics are extremely explicit!)

Click here to buy the record from Amazon.