I don't recall the podcast I was listening to, but several years ago there was a discussion about Jerry Lee Lewis's album "Live At the Star-Club" as one of the best live albums ever recorded. It's a snapshot of a unique time and place in popular music and highlights Jerry Lee Lewis's controversial, but unique talent. The energy captured on the album (described by some as amphetamine-fueled) is remarkable. I recommend giving it a listen.
Sounds pretty clear and clean to me. Shame we couldn't have gotten as nice a recording of the Beatles at the Star Club just bit earlier :)
FWIW, it's a nice live album, but doesn't strike me as one of the great live albums of all times. Unless there's some other bootleg with more. The only one I've found is... 8 songs. Tame audience (or they just weren't recorded?)
If you can find a boot of Led Zeppelin's '69 recordings for the BBC you'll have the same impression: after each song the audience claps politely, as if they'd just heard some chamber music. I had an image of them all in short hair, dressed up, and sitting politely in wooden chairs or folding chairs.
Perhaps they new the recording was for BBC broadcast (was it broadcast?) or perhaps that's just how things were in those days. OTOH, I visited London as a small child in 67 or 68 and my memories, even now, are of a pretty swinging place.
There is some kind of legal issue with the recording. I didn't look too deep. There were sixteen tracks recorded. Thirteen were on the real album, and one that had a recording fault was released later.
I saw him at an outdoor concert about twenty years ago. He was still going completely nuts on stage, playing keys with his feet, belting out Great Balls of Fire and jumping around like a maniac. Not bad for 67 or so at the time.
Highly recommend the episode about him from Mike Judge’s Tales from the Tour Bus. A lot of overlap with the Rolling Stone article but a little more dynamic!
> “I was raised a good Christian,” he told Rolling Stone in 1979. “But I couldn’t make it. … Too weak, I guess. I can’t picture Jesus Christ doin’ a whole lotta shakin’.”
Let's not forget, since history is so in vogue right now
>Yes, it was 1958. But even back then, a 22-year-old marrying his 13-year-old cousin while still married to another woman was scandalous. And yet that's exactly what Jerry Lee Lewis, one of rock ’n’ roll's most important pioneers, did. It was in 1958 when British journalists learned of the tender young age of Myra Gale Brown, and the ensuing uproar caused Lewis to cancel his tour and spoiled his chance to dethrone Elvis as the king of rock.
>At 14, the couple had a child, who would die in a swimming pool accident three years later. Lewis' infidelity and drug use further strained the marriage, and they got divorced in 1971. Lewis, who is still alive, married for a seventh time in 2012. He kept it in the family again — she was reportedly his cousin's ex-wife.
Almost 10 years ago I built a music news platform for his son in law that he funded until he got in the news for marrying another cousin and cut out extra expenses. It was an amazingly stupid project but kind of a highlight of my career getting to talk to "The Killer" and do my best to explain the iOS app his son in law wanted. After Jerry pulled his cash they were scrambling to try to find other funding and wanted me to work for free, which I declined but they said if I did I could meet Kid Rock. Lol.
Yikes. I knew about him “marrying” his 13yo cousin, but the suspicious deaths of two of his later wives? Sometimes it’s worth it to separate the art from the artist… but in his case i have a hard time seeing any reason to
> Yikes. I knew about him “marrying” his 13yo cousin,
Much further down, the article clarifies that to "third cousin": "reporters learned that Lewis had married his third cousin, Myra Gale Brown, the daughter of his bass player."
Third cousin marriage is a) legal and b) not genetically risky.
This was rural Eastern Louisiana, so I wonder how odd this would have been to people at the time. Also, his own first marriage was at the age of 16, and he had always spent a lot of time with cousins apparently. To further develop the image, his parents mortgaged their farm to buy his piano.
I get an immediate sense of place and culture that was more similar to the victorian age than our modern world, or indeed other parts of the country at that same time.
13-year-old cousin seems worse than 13-year-old nonrelative, given no other information, because of possible undue influence. I.e., Lewis could have had some power over his future wife as her relative. Also as her father's employer I assume? All in all, quite sketchy.
also changes moral standards between that time and place then and here and now are very large. the past is a foreign country, in the rural deep south doubly so.
Just for the record, there is no foreign country where I think a 22 year old marrying a 13 year old is ok. It may be normal there, but it doesn't make it right. Keeping an eye on your cultural biases is fine and good, but there is a line - and child marriage is definitely on the far side of that line - and it always has been.
> "[Mother Teresa] was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty. She said that suffering was a gift from God. She spent her life opposing the only known cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women and the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction."
-Christopher Hitchens [0]
> In 2013, in a comprehensive review[8] covering 96% of the literature on Mother Teresa, a group of Université de Montréal academics reinforced [criticism of medical care], detailing, among other issues, the missionary's practice of "caring for the sick by glorifying their suffering instead of relieving it, ... her questionable political contacts, her suspicious management of the enormous sums of money she received, and her overly dogmatic views regarding, in particular, abortion, contraception, and divorce". Questioning the Vatican's motivations for ignoring the mass of criticism, the study concluded that Mother Teresa's "hallowed image – which does not stand up to analysis of the facts – was constructed, and that her beatification was orchestrated by an effective media relations campaign" engineered by BBC journalist Malcolm Muggeridge, who shared her anti-abortion views. [1]
I do miss Christopher Hitchens. He could have written a hit piece on anyone in the world. He later did one on Henry Kissinger, but not until he got Mother Teresa out of the way first.
That time she opened for the Von Trapps was amazeballs though. And I do not believe the rumors about MT trashing her room because they misplaced her rosary beads.
If by questionable you mean hedonism, hell yeah, I'm right there with ya. If you mean "marrying" 13 year olds and possibly murdering your wives... we've got beef.
Predating eye bats is Marie of Brittany's late 14th century marriage.[1] In 1937, Eunice Winstead (aged 9) married Charlie Johns, but it was noticed. Life Magazine did a story on it, "The Case of the Child Bride."[2] In 1971, at least one of two Florida judges would grant a marriage license for a pregnant 11yo bride and rape victim (which goes without saying).[3]
That was commonplace back in those days, especially where they lived, and in many parts of US and Europe.
What is more problematic wasn't the marrying to a 22 year old where both agreed to and loved each other, but much older people just sleeping with girls of same or close age (which, in rock, includes Led Zeppelin, The Beatles (yes, those), the Stones, and others), or arranged marriages of similar girls to 40 or 50 year old "respected" rich persons (also a common thing for poor families to ease their burden of supporting many childs and/or get some dowry and connections)
I don't know how this is controversial, but I don't think 13 year olds are emotionally and intellectually mature enough to know if they love someone enough to marry them, especially considered that their statements can very easily be pressured by family members who quite literally would still have legal authority over them at the time because they're minors.
Today not. Heck, today even 20 years olds are not emotionally and intellectually mature enough for most things (including marriage and love).
Back in the day perhaps was different, as people aged faster. Now, for example, the common person marries somewhere around 30 (and many even later). Back then you could very commonly be married with the first kid on the way (or ready) at 18-20, and that's for both men and women.
The biological rate of maturation of the human brain hasn't changed appreciably in the past 200 years. People were given a full range of adult responsibilities at a young age in the past, but that doesn't change the reality that a 22 year old and a 13 year old have a VERY serious power imbalance based on their brain's maturation thus far.
If you believe a 13 year old can consent to marriage, a LIFE LONG commitment at that time, why would consenting to a one night stand be worse? I think you might need to re-think your priorities on this one.
I mean, 13-year olds are actual children, so I don't know what "her side of the story" at the time would be. 7th graders don't typically have a great grasp on capturing narrative, or you know, basic geometry.
You missed the third party in that triumverate: pop/country artist and Houston saloonkeeper Mickey Gilley, who owned the (eponymous) night club setting for the film Urban Cowboy in Houston suburb Pasadena, Texas.
I was at a screening of a documentary in Rockefeller center about the liberation of Ahlem. Henry Kissinger was giving remarks afterward. Stopped speaking mid-sentence, and stared directly at me, locking eyes, in the front row for at least 10 seconds before resuming. Everyone around me was puzzled. To this day we don't know why, and my brother likes to tell people at parties that Henry Kissinger hates me.
Why are people shocked? Some people live well into their 90s.
Kissinger is 99. Jimmy Carter is 98. Charlie Munger is 98. Warren Buffett is 92. Mel Brooks is 96. Roger Penrose is 91. Willie Nelson is 90. Ed Thorp is 90.
I didn't remember that I made a bad joke replying to that. My second born child was a handful of days old at the time, must have been in that sleep deprived dad joke state.
