I couldn't get it to come alive for me.

it took a long time for me and WMP had to upgrade and blah blah blah.

It's awful and awesome, all at once.

So I followed Jim's link and found this. David, as our resident Bo Diddley expert, do you have any idea when the version of "Who Do You Love" provided was recorded? Did I miss something in the blogger's description? I was expecting the original. He links to a compilation which contains the original but provides an mp3 that sounds like it's from the eighties or nineties.

Also enjoyed this from the description of the Mahavishnu mp3:

with McLaughlin himself on his trademark Gibson twin-necked SG guitar (something he had in common with Jimmy Page, to whom he had given jazz guitar lessons to in England and to whom is attributed the legend of teaching Jimmy the intro chords to 'My Funny Valentine' from which he supposedly extrapolated the 'Stairway to Heaven' chord sequence).

I'd never heard that. As a non-musician I can't comment on its plausibility -- i.e., the extrapolation; it's certainly plausible that Page learned it from McLaughlin. There's a lady who's sure all that glitters is gold... and that's why the lady is a tramp (Jimmy Page rips off Richard Rodgers & it prompts me to sully Robert Plant and Larry Hart. I'm just a bad person.)

And if that joke's not arcane enough I really really want to make a crack about our head spook being the guy in the middle. But the nexus of people who know that (a) John McLaughlin is a great & semi-famous guitarist, (b) the former director of the CIA was named John McLaughlin, and (c) who recognize the guitarist is rather limited. In fact I may be all by my lonesome at the nexus. Which means I need my silly obscure jokes to keep me company. -- Signed, Strange and Off-Putting

but provides an mp3 that sounds like it's from the eighties or nineties.

Yeah, that's definitely not the treble-to-11, Chess Studio echo, maracas-shaking original. Bo's re-recorded "Who Do You Love" about ninety trillion times and that one definitely sounds 80s/90s. What's particularly odd in the context of this comparison is that Bo's original is the template for Thorogood's sound, particularly with the stinging, trebly guitar attack.

There's a lady who's sure all that glitters is gold... and that's why the lady is a tramp (Jimmy Page rips off Richard Rodgers & it prompts me to sully Robert Plant and Larry Hart. I'm just a bad person.)

Heh. No worse then me thinking about Larry Hart as a gay, cigar-chomping midget. (And he's one of my favorite lyricists of all time.)

You forgot "alcoholic, self-loathing" in that list.

Posting without comment:

This should be paired up as a double feature with that Journey Don't Stop Believin' Tribute to America, and shown every July 4 (or, for extra tackiness, 9/11).

It totally reminded me of the Tribute to America too!! Yet stranger in many ways.

(bounces into thread)

Peter Murphy is going to be playing at the Showbox in Seattle on May 23rd! Tickets go on sale next Saturday. Tickets will be mine mine, mine!

You forgot "alcoholic, self-loathing" in that list.

He's a songwriter. That's understood.