This'll melt ya, honey.

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I ran that Sam and Dave clip from this same show featuring the "Stax/Volt Revue" on tour in Europe -- which meant that the house band was Booker T. and the MG's and the Mar-Keys -- a little earlier, but as good as Sam and Dave might have been, they paled in comparison to Otis Redding, who immediately followed them. He was The Man. This was his closing song. Whew. Seven months after this, Redding died in a plane crash. It was one of the great losses to music.

This song by Swedish/American triumvirate Miike Snow (it's the name of the band, and yes there are two I's in Miike) is all the rage with the kids these days and I feel like much less of a coot than I did in my last post for merely knowing it and posting it here.

Like much of today's music, this song broke wide open as a result of placements on television shows (mainly Gossip Girl), which after a few years of being the best source of income for songwriters and musicians (one spin on a popular television show nets the same as thousands of albums sold) is now become the best way to get exposure as well. When such fortune befalls a quality track like "Animal", it catches fire.

Don't hate on this Lady Gaga and Adam Lambert collaboration that's in the works:

Talk about a Fame Monster. As details about Adam Lambert's debut album continue to slowly leak out like the helium from Balloon Boy's spaceship, the "American Idol" runner-up dropped a glitter bomb early Tuesday morning (October 20) when he revealed that he's been working with Lady Gaga.

"Yes it's true: I spent yesterday in the studio w the insanely talented and creative Lady Gaga recording a song that she wrote! I love her," Lambert tweeted.

I'm a big defender of both of these oft-maligned 2009 success stories and am excited to hear what they came up with, as well as the rest of Lambert's upcoming album Entertainment, which will have tracks by top tunesmiths Max Martin and Linda Perry.

Nostalgia ain't what it used to be, but hell, neither is rock and roll. Remember in the mid-nineties when people who weren't your typical rock band types found genuinely new things to do with guitars (not effects, guitars) and had their little corner of MTV on 120 Minutes on Sunday nights? When I pop in my hearing aid and watch this video of Chapel Hill, NC's Archers of Loaf on the internets with my one good eye, it all comes rushing back.

I killed about 4 hours the other day catching up on good stuff I've missed this year via Spin Magazine's 30 Best Albums of 2009 So Far. It's a hot list, with albums like Two Suns from Bat For Lashes, this decade's answer to Kate Bush, and much much more. It's a damn fine primer to get current with.

My one complaint: is spin.com so desperate for pageviews that they had to do these one sentence blurbs on thirty separate pages? C'mon guys. We're all web professionals these days and can see right through that trick.

Three guitar legends, Paco De Lucia, John McLaughlin and Al Di Meola team up live in this video performance of Mediterranean Sun Dance. Di Meola and McLaughlin show off their amazing speed, as does De Lucia -- sans pick.

Happy (belated) Birthday, Chuck Berry, who turned 83 yesterday.

Proto-Kaw is the latest project from former Kansas guitarist, Kerry Livgren. Kansas actually went through three lineup changes before being signed and Proto-Kaw is made up of musicians who formed the second reincarnation.

The song Scont has a nice blend of horns, keys and the kind of Prog-Rock you'd expect from Livgren. Kerry wrote a lot of Kansas' material including two of their biggest hits, Dust In The Wind and Carry On My Wayward Son.

Sadly, Kerry suffered a severe stroke on September 1st, and is now recovering. There is no word on whether he will be able to continue playing music, but I wanted to wish him all the best and hope for a speedy recovery.

Amy Farris, 40, was an amazing fiddler who played with people like Kelly Willis, Brian Wilson, Dave Alvin and Exene Cervenka. She died a few weeks ago, an apparent suicide. From the L.A. Weekly:

A classically trained violinist raised in Austin and blessed with perfect pitch, Amy Farris was a beautiful raw nerve, delicate and intense, a violin-family virtuoso as well as an accomplished composer, arranger and vocalist. She'd performed or recorded with Brian Wilson, Ray Price, Kelly Willis, Bruce Robison and many others, including her hero -- she'd used that word -- Exene.

Now she had her own solo album out on Yep Roc, was getting studio work and teaching (she loved her students, especially the kids) and was a member in good standing of Dave Alvin's new band, the Guilty Women. Once her teen idol, Exene had become good friends with Amy, and they'd begun to write songs together, even though Exene was all the way out in Missouri.

One evening I showed up as Amy was winding down a phone call with Exene. She seemed happy and excited, thanking Exene for some special something. They got off the phone, and Amy had me sit down on the couch so I could properly absorb what Exene had made for her: this beautiful collage/painting -- a small, intricate piece of art that had arrived by mail that afternoon. The artwork's focus was an old monochrome photograph, and I said something about it looking like a representation of sisterly love, big sister's gift to little sister.

Amy glowed.

NOTE: Our sister site Newstalgia has the full concert of the Kinks live at the Rainbow, London, 1977 for your listening pleasure.

I'm in Stockholm, Sweden for a couple of days on a guitar gig, and am having a blast. I had no idea of the fact that Sweden exports the third-most amount of music (behind the U.S. and the U.K.) until today, but it's not surprising when you consider the amount of talent that has come from this country of merely nine million: ABBA, Refused, Ace of Base, Fireside, Entombed, The Cardigans, pop guru Max Martin, the list goes on and on.

My personal favorite: the recently defunct Hellacopters. The band started as an Entombed/Backyard Babies side project and turned into one of the best and most-loved garage revival acts, though that pigeonholing does a disservice to their complex Blue Cheer meets Cheap Trick romp. The Hellacopters weren't doing anything new, but I can't think of anyone in the past decade-and-a-half that did frill-free hard rock as consistently well as these guys.

The finale of the 1993 PBS special, "The Women of Country." Everything they got, they got the hard way, and you'd better believe it.

From Wikipedia:

In 2004, Tedeschi was featured on the PBS show, Austin City Limits, flanked by William Green, on Hammond organ, Jason Crosby, playing keyboards, violin, and vocals, bassist Ron Perry, and Jeff Sipe, on drums. The performance was extremely well received.[4] In the same year, Tedeschi turned a few heads when she was listed by Peter Gammons of ESPN in his list of "all time top 20 favorite albums." She came in at a respectable #15 for her album, Just Won't Burn. Not to be outdone, husband Derek Trucks also made the list, at #9 for Joyful Noise, both surprising accomplishments, given that both artists play blues, a genre often overlooked. In addition, the other musicians on the list were some of rock's elite, Jimi Hendrix, The Rolling Stones, Little Feat, and Jackson Browne, to name a few.

Late nineties trip-hop gold from English masters Morcheeba.

I know what it's like to have people in your band who sound great but are impossible to be in a cohesive unit with, yet I can't possibly understand what facets of anyone's behavior would cause founders Paul and Ross Godfrey to kick a singer as great as Skye Edwards out of the band, which they did in 2003.

This is the leadoff track of their 1998 chillout masterpiece Big Calm, one of those rare albums that starts off with a great song and maintains the quality level 'til the end.