When I was in high school the beatnik age was ending and the hippie age was beginning and there was a short time when the music reflected the transition. The Fugs and Pearls Before Swine were kind of folk and kind of rock and not many people knew what to make of either. Many decades before I came to run Reprise Records, the company signed-- and dropped-- Pearls Before Swine, a band I used to smoke out to once I got to college. The band's pre-Reprise album, One Nation Underground was their masterpiece. I have a suspicion there aren't many LNMC denizens who have heard them, so I asked my pal Lucas to make a YouTube-- he had never heard them either-- and here it is: "Another Time," the first song on the first side of the first album. Think of it as history:

(guest blogged by Howie Klein)

Easy contest tonight. Just weave these two random songs together into a little news story-- could be about anything; use your imagination-- and you could win a 2-CD set of the ESSENTIAL GEORGE JONES. The songs are "Windy" by The Association and "House of the Rising Sun" by The Animals. Send your entry-- not too long-- to downwithtyranny@aol.com

LNMC story of the night: I went to see John Hammond play at the Cafe Au Go Go in Greenwich Village in the middle 60s and he had this amazing guitar player, Jimmy James, who played guitar with his teeth. After the show I went over and asked him to come play at my school and he said he would love to but "these fellas," pointing to some Animals, who he introduced me to, were taking him to London to be in their band. He didn't stay in their band long and he didn't keep that Jimmy James name long either. He started his own band and when he returned to America, he did come and play my school, immediately.

Chuck Berry (Chess Box)
	Artist: Chuck Berry

It's the first day of school here in Nashville tomorrow, and I'm sending my little girl to the 3rd grade. Summer definitely went by too quickly. Got a favorite song about school?

Faith Hope Love
	Artist: King's X

It's Friday! I wore 1990's Faith Hope Love out in high school and still love to revisit it from time to time. Any clues as to what this song is about?

Raising Sand

Here in Nashville, celebrity sightings are commonplace. It's nothing for me to see Nicole Kidman taking her kid to the local My Gym, or to eat at the next table over from Faith Hil at my favorite sushi joint. Although most sightings leave me unfazed, I must admit that everytime I have run into Robert Plant at the bar or coffeshop, I revert to the high school fanboy that I once was. It becomes hard not to stare, or yell out "duuude that's f***ing ROBERT PLANT", or bow down in front of him. Luckily, to the benefit of my wife and children, I have bitten my lip and carried on as if a god of rock and roll is not standing in front of me. Here's a nice clip of Plant and Allison Krauss doing their Nashvill thing on jule Holland.

Mercy Now
	Artist: Mary Gauthier

New Orleans native Mary Gauthier has seen it all. A runaway at 15, Gauthier spent the next couple of decades in and out of jail and halfway houses, addicted to drugs and alcohol. She also attended the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts and started a restaurant called Dixie Kitchen in Boston's Back Bay area. Here's the title track off of Mercy Now, her first major label release, and the record that put her into the spotlight and onto many top ten lists in 2005.

Today is my first day of graduate school and I woke up thinking about this song. Released as a single in 1966, James Brown warns kids of the dangers of dropping out of school. Lesson learned. Do you have a favorite 'school' song?

The Monkees?!?

Yeah. It turns out one day The Monkees got tired of being nothing but props for a teevee show.

The clip is from The Monkees' movie "HEAD" which begins with them jumping off a bridge. Some critics believe it was a sly homage to Sergio Leone's "Once Upon a Time in the West", which was also released in 1968 and began with Western cinema icons being snuffed as the director's signal that he believed the genre itself was coming to an end. (Those critics are, of course, insane and desperately need to take a year off from film school and get a job hanging drywall.)

The Monkees - Porpoise Song

"Turn It Up" from 2003. LastFM:

Ugly Duckling are a hip hop trio, formed in 1993 in Long Beach, California. Ugly Duckling’s members are Dizzy Dustin, Young Einstein and Andy Cooper. Their style is alternative hip hop, influenced especially by old school performers such as the Zulu Nation and the Native Tongues Posse. Most of their songs follow the creed that hip hop is about having fun and often mock the clichéd gangster rappers who dominate the mainstream.

I hired Otis Redding to play a show at my school when he was 25. I was amazed by the show; I had never seen anything like that kind of energy before-- and I really had never even understood soul before I see that gig. The following year, when he was breaking through to the mainstream with an amazing album of duets-- King & Queen-- with Carla Thomas, he died in a plane crash. Although there are several incredible songs on the album ("Knock on Wood," "It Takes Two," "Bring It On Home To Me," "Ooh Carla, Ooh Otis...), "Tramp" was the big hit. Listen and you'll hear Isaac Hayes, Booker T and Steve Cropper.