Summer Hit ('97)

Summer Hit (1968)

This 4th of July weekend I'll be going up to Woodstock to see Levon Helm play at his barn up there. That's as Amerikana as it gets. Rather befitting for a 4th of July weekend.

Summer Hit (1972)

Summer Hit (2008)

"The Cool Kids" - very nostalgic, all hoops and loops and BMX bikes on a summer day playing hooky, beats sounding like Rick Rubin put it together in his NYU dorm circa 1985. Which is about the time the target group's parents first met in high school.

Birdland (R.I.P.)

We were about 16, 17 years old, testing our musical chops with overly complicated fusion arrangements in the basement rehearsal room of our friend Wolfgang. His father was a big shot TV and commercial composer from Vienna and one of his best friends was Joe Zawinul, legendary Viennese sideman of Cannonball and Miles. When Zawinul was in town he would drop in for coffee and cake. Once he came down to the basement, highly amused that those skinny Germans would get all excited about meeting the composer of 'Birdland', which we had played a lot on the open air circuit around Munich. He jammed for a while, which was moist likely the most impressive musical experience for any of us.

Years later I ran into him at the Broadway Diner in Santa Monica. He didn't remember me, but he sure remembered the session with the German fusion fan teens. Which still amused him. This morning he died in Vienna.

Zawinul and Weather Report playing Birdland

Zawinul and the Cannonball Adderley Sextet

Zawinul and Miles Davis

Summer Hit (1978)

Driving by former CBGB's the day Hilly Kristal died is not even in hindsight a particularly interesting story. But it wasn't called the "Blank Generation" for nothing.

Summer Hit (2002)

I always liked watching CMT and GAC for their broad range of earnest blue collar emotions wrapped in pedal steel driven softrock. In any given ten minute segment there's always plenty of sorrow and anger, loss and despair, an unusual class conciousness and that fervent sense of patriotism walking the fine line between rabid nationalism ( Toby Keith , Clint Black , Darryl Worley) and rebellious salt-of-the-earth-nostalgia ( Gretchen Wilson , Sammy Kershaw , and of course Montgomery Gentry's "My Town" above). White hinterland America always seems like a strangely sad, but proud place in those videos.

I always missed this kind of blue collar pride over here. Especially in Munich of course, since there's not much of a blue collar population in Beamer town, where teenagers go golfing and senior citizens drive Porsches. But I got a taste of local patriotism, when I made the mistake of writing the town of Augsburg up as a "Kleinstadt", which means smalltown. Haven't had hate mail rain on me that much in a while. Well, when I looked up the stats, they got 263.477 inhabitants, which doesn't really make it a city. But then I was lectured that anything above a population of 100 K is considered a big city around here. Which is actually based on definitions set by the International Conference of Statistics in the year 1887. Well you know what Augsburg? A few things changed since then. Women are allowed to vote now, vehicles powered by combustion engine are the preferred mode of transportation and the Germans lost the war. Twice. These days a big city is anything above a million. And you should have some urban features like variations in cultural and demographic makeup or at least a skyline. So Munich may not apply either.

No Reverse

Here's a link that gives a good boost to New York nostalgia (lifted from MF's comment): Funkmaster Flex' 4th of July broadcast on Hot 97. Five hours of pure old school Independence Day. Makes you go back to The Roxy, Milky Way, Hotel Amazone and of course Big House. In that '78 T-Bird with no reverse of course.

Summer Hit (1977)

Albert sure pulled it off to turn the Brecht Festival into his very own roundtable. With a touch of class reunion. Nobody wanted to leave. And most didn't, spending an impressively overheated weekend in Augsburg, staying up all night to see each other's readings and talks and later getting wasted at the Capitol. Did feel a bit like 1977, staying up all night to watch Rockpalast.

Summer Hit (1973)

You always come back to your first favorite records. So few get better than this. But he sure was stoned out of his mind.

Mindless Summer Fun

Now this is a holiday movie, because after a long Sunday on Sandy Hook, at the lake or some beer garden you do not want to burden your mind with character, plot or motivation. Bay, Spielberg and a whole lot of expensive CGI machinery will do just fine.

Summer Hit (This Year, French Version)

This is the coming summer hit for this year in France and possibly greater Europe including the Balearic isles. DJ duo Justice is one of the acts on Paris based label Ed Banger (like headbanger with a French accent, got it? Tell you, they're funny, those French), who got famous for their ecstatic parties. All sounds like the second coming of Daft Punk to me, who incidentially are on tour again and featured on Kanye West's new single, so I guess late 90s French Eurodisco's the revival du jour.

ThisYear's Summer Hit

More mainstream than 'Kick, Push, Coast', not as easily accessible as 'Crazy', but currently heard on street corners in Lower Manhattan, South Brooklyn, Outer Queens and the Boogie Down Bronx.