This one pretty well speaks for itself. Something to consider this weekend as we remember those who didn’t make it home:
(If your holiday plans are a bit more lighthearted, be sure to check up on Joe Biden‘s itinerary.)
The Lakers’ season is over. With 2:41 left in the fourth quarter of game three of LA’s series against the Thunder in Oklahoma City, Lakers’ GM Mitch Kupchak knew it. TNT knew Mitch Kupchak knew it. And now you know TNT knew Mitch Kupchak knew it.
(HT: Grantland)
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Previously
Hollywood Nights: No World Peace in the Windy City
Hollywood (Disco) Nights: A Hero at the Forum
Hollywood Nights: A Magic Haiku
Hollywood Nights: Z-Bo and Bishop Don The Magic Juan
Get down at the go-round. Flip flop at the tip top. Perhaps there have been music festivals with better names, but you would be hard pressed to find any better arranged than the Hangout Fest, which I attended last weekend.
In its third year, the Hangout Festival happens right on the beach in Gulf Shores, AL, and its 2012 lineup featured a high-end collection of popular rock, indie, jam, and other sorts of acts. The headliners were Jack White, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and the Dave Matthews Band. Other notables included the String Cheese Incident, the Flaming Lips, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, M. Ward, Alabama Shakes, and many, many more.
Two of my favorites, Steve Winwood and Space Capone, were playing on Sunday, but we started the day with another one I really enjoy: Mavis Staples. The 72-year-old singer was in strong voice and persona, and her band was working hard to keep up with her. Although she may have thrown the crowd off a bit early (or played right into its hands) when she became convinced, as a result of some eager heckling, that she was in a town called “Roll Tide, Alabama,” she soon reminded everybody she was hip to the modern scene, forcefully invoking the spirit of Levon Helm after performing “The Weight.” Overall, her set was enjoyable, drawing on different periods of her long career, and the hour was up much too soon.
Later that afternoon, on the same stage, Winwood turned in an excellently crafted set, the best I heard all weekend. Like Mavis, he used his hour-long set to hit on different points of his career, and it just so happens that he has one of the richest, most dynamic careers of any musician. He started and finished with his two early hits from the Spencer Davis Group days (circa 1966), opening with “I’m a Man” and closing with “Gimme Some Lovin’.” In between, he grabbed a couple Traffic tunes (“Low Spark of High Heeled Boys” and a very extended “Light Up or Leave Me Alone”), two Eric Clapton-related numbers (Blind Faith’s “Can’t Find My Way Home” and, from Winwood’s most recent album, Nine Lives, “Dirty City”), and brought everyone to his and her feet with a rousing rendition of maybe his biggest pop hit, “Higher Love.” On Hammond organ, Stratocaster, and signature vocals, Winwood turned in a solid set that lived up to great expectations and was a highlight of the festival.
For all their possibility, opportunity, sun, and sand, festivals can be pretty tiring, so we found … Keep reading …
In light of news posted earlier and the fact that it’s the Preakness, there will be no Preakness live blogging this weekend. In lieu of a full preview, please accept the below photograph of Kentucky Derby winner I’ll Have Another, taken by equine extraordinaire Kenny Mayne, along with this note that the official Preakness “mascot” apparently is a fraud.
I’m kicking off the summer concert season with a big bang deep down in Alabama this weekend. Among many others, favorites Winwood and Space Capone will be there. As for today’s featured Jam, it requires no introduction thanks to the strong captioning work contained therein:
We’re not into name calling, insult hurling, or piling on, but this thing runs two ways, Chicago ABC affiliate WLS, and where all involved demonstrate objectively poor decision making in an objectively public way, and the whole thing can be presented in a brief, photo-driven post involving Los Angeles, we’re going to include it in this series.
(HT: Deadspin)
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Previously
Hollywood (Disco) Nights: A Hero at the Forum
Hollywood Nights: A Magic Haiku
Hollywood Nights: Z-Bo and Bishop Don The Magic Juan
Back in February, I asserted that LeBron James was the best basketball player ever, and at that point, he was. He had at that point, by a comfortable margin, a higher player efficiency rating than any player ever had achieved. (General explanation of PER in the previous post; full explanation here.) Although he regressed from 32.8 to 30.74 to finish the season, it still was good enough to be the tenth best season ever by an individual player. In so doing, James knocked David Robinson out of the top ten, meaning that James (4, 9, 10), Wilt Chamberlain (1, 2, 5), and Michael Jordan (3, 6, 7, 8) collectively turned in the ten best seasons of professional basketball ever played.
James’ competitors for the MVP this year weren’t even close to him:
| Rank | Player | PER | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | LeBron James | 30.74 | ||
| 2. | Chris Paul | 27.04 | ||
| 3. | Dwayne Wade | 26.31 | ||
| 4. | Kevin Durant | 26.20 | ||
| 5. | Kevin Love | 25.36 | ||
| 6. | Dwight Howard | 24.24 | ||
| 7. | Blake Griffin | 23.43 | ||
| 8. | Derrick Rose | 23.02 | ||
| 9. | Russell Westbrook | 22.94 | ||
| 9. | Andrew Bynum | 22.94 |
For comparison, Paul is the only other player whose 2011-12 charted on the top 100 all time— at #79.
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Previously
LeBron James is the best professional basketball player ever
Teddy Roosevelt was a sickly rich kid who grew into a little man with a high voice, and spent the rest of his life in the relentless pursuit of bad-assery. While in public office in Washington, he decided it was time to kill some people. So he went to San Antonio—at the time, a middle-of-nowhere cowboy town—and posted up in the Menger Hotel. He recruited the toughest-looking dudes who walked through the door, then took them to Cuba to start a war. He compared firing a gun to having an orgasm in terms of pleasure and necessity. Even his signature policy accomplishment as President, the “trust-busting” of monopolies, has a tough-guy name. He would scoff at Obama for issuing a “kill order” instead of personally going to Pakistan to carry it out himself. For his sheer mythic ruggedness alone, Teddy Roosevelt is the sort of President to whom candidates in both parties routinely compare themselves. But when it comes to a simple foot race, the 26th President of the United States just can’t win. … Read More
(via The Classical)
Who was that masked man on the floor at the FedEx Forum in Memphis for games five and seven of the Clippers-Grizzlies series? The internet can’t figure it out, although BaconSports and SB Nation have some gooddecent pictures and GIFs.
What we do know is that his use of the towel and mask (and, apparently, the Force) was not enough to will his team to competency in a home game seven. A full four quarters of competency is all it would have taken for these Grizzlies to win– even sweep– this series. Instead, they made like Lebron James and mailed in the fourth quarter each time before totally skipping game seven.
The Clippers now limp down to San Antonio, where Pop’s Geriatrics are unlikely to be interested or flapped by LAC’s nonsense, and injuries are likely to curtail any traditional advantages Paul and Blake Griffin could have exerted over the Spurs.
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Related
Raiford’s Hollywood Disco is back on the market – Memphis Business Journal
Previously
Hollywood Nights: A Magic Haiku
Hollywood Nights: Z-Bo and Bishop Don The Magic Juan
On Sunday, Donald “Duck” Dunn, longtime bass player for legendary Stax Records house band Booker T. & the MG’s died in Tokyo at the age of seventy. As first reported by best friend, bandmate, and guitarist Steve Cropper, Dunn “died in his sleep . . . after finishing two shows at the Blue Note Night Club.”
Dunn grew up with Cropper in Memphis, and the two formed a band in the late 1950s before going to work for Stax, where they eventually became half of the house band, Booker T. & the MG’s, alongside Booker T. Jones (organ) and Al Jackson (drums). AllMusic lays out the essentials:
As the house band at Stax Records in Memphis, TN, Booker T. & the MG’s may have been the single greatest factor in the lasting value of that label’s soul music, not to mention Southern soul as a whole. Their tight, impeccable grooves could be heard on classic hits by Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, Carla Thomas, Albert King, and Sam & Dave, and for that reason alone, they would deserve their subsequent induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. But in addition to their formidable skills as a house band, on their own they were one of the top instrumental outfits of the rock era, cutting classics like “Green Onions,” “Time Is Tight,” and “Hang ’em High.”
As a member of the MG’s and as a session musician, Dunn played with (hyperlinks to video evidence) Redding (also including the 1967 Monterrey Pop Festival performance), Sam & Dave, Wilson Pickett, Eric Clapton (with Phil Collins), Neil Young, and, famously, the Blues Brothers, among many others.. He, Cropper, and Jones also were part of the band backing Clapton, Young, Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Tom Petty, Roger McGuinn, G.E. Smith, and other stars on the Bob Dylan 30th Anniversary Celebration.
Also as a member of the MG’s, Dunn was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992 and received a lifetime achievement award in 2007.
At this point, I don’t find anything on the web beyond the basic AP-style report, but I’ll supplement this post with any engaging remembrances that appear later. My only additions are: 1) Blues Brothers is my favorite movie; 2) this is some great music; 3) dial up Otis and Duck from 1967’s Monterrey Pop Festival; and 4) there would seem to be something to be said for dying (basically) doing what you love.
Close with a clean-shaven, pipeless Dunn and his fellow MG’s performing their biggest hit, “Green Onions”:
ALDLAND 