RSMurthi's DigiDips & SoundToyz

So, how did a monomaniacal Marxist terrorist become a universal cultural icon, or worse, a merchandising miracle? Well, you're not gonna get the answer by scratching your head or watching 'The Motorcycle Diaries'. You need to czech out theCHEstore.com for that! And while you're at it, get a load of this.

From Daily Mail: 'On Charlie's say-so, we gave this little rocker his first break. When he stepped out on to the stage we were a bit surprised because he was wearing a raincoat and stockings. The crowd was startled too, and started lobbing fruit and vegetables at the guy. "That's the trouble with conferring a title on yourself before you've earned it," said Keith Richards. That's how Prince became a star. Five years later, I guested for him at Wembley Arena. Backstage, I found a little girl who looked lost and asked her if she was all right. She said she was. I said: "Do you need help finding your parents?" She said she was fine. Turns out it was Kylie Minogue.' More

Link / MP3 excerpt (read by Sean Penn)

From Skydog: The Duane Allman Story by Randy Poe:

"After Duane had finished his two-concert tour with Derek and the Dominos, he met up with the rest of the Allman Brothers Band in Columbia, South Carolina on December 4th. The band opened for Johnny Winter And (the albino virtuoso's oddly named group with fellow guitarist Rick Derringer) at the Carolina Coliseum, and then moved on the next day to the Music Factory in Greenville, North Carolina. Dates at the Fillmore East were scheduled for the 12th and 13th, so Duane headed on to New York for a radio interview to promote the shows.

On December 9th, Allman arrived at WABC-FM to chat with disc jockey Dave Herman. The general idea for the evening was to discuss the Fillmore concerts, talk a bit about the Allman Brothers and Derek and the Dominos, spin a few records, and take phone calls from the listeners. But the interviewer's best-laid plans instantly flew out the window when Duane showed up late and out of it.

"I'm drunk, man," he told Herman. When Allman attributed his current state to a bottle of Jack Daniel's, the interviewer calmly asked, "Black label or green?" "Black label, of course, Allman responded indignantly. "I'm from Tennessee, man. My grandfather washed his feet in Jack Daniel's."

For the next hour, Dave Herman had his hands full. Allman, who usually spoke slowly and articulately, was in overdrive. One has to suspect that much more than Jack Daniel's was at play. Duane did manage to subtly plug the upcoming dates by bragging about Betts ("If you’ve never heard him play, come down to the Fillmore this weekend, man, and hear him. I'm the famous one, man. He's the good player."). But there were other, more personal things on his mind.

In the most brutally honest statement he would ever make during any interview, Allman talked openly - perhaps much too openly - about his recently failed relationship with Donna, and about his daughter, Galadrielle. "I got rid of my old lady and my kid. I said, 'No old ladies, no kids, man. Just guitars.'

"She's a teenage queen," Duane continued. No doubt sensing that he was losing control of an interview that was quickly turning into a monologue, Herman interjected, "Who's a teenage queen - your kid or your…?"

"My old lady," Duane responded before Herman could even finish asking the question.

"My kid is a kid. She's mine. She's part of me. You can see me in her. I look at her and say, 'Hey, me. How you doin'?'

"Children are good, man, if you love 'em - if you've got time to do it. It's not good if the old lady ain't nowhere, man. And my old lady…she's just, 'Do you love me, son?' 'No I don't love you. I just seen you. You come by the gig and asked me if I'd ball you, and I said, 'Okay, yeah.' And then ten months later, 'I’m pregnant. What'll I do? What'll I do?' I said, 'I don’t know what to do. So she comes down and she gets a crib, see, she gets an apartment and she says, 'Duane, here's your home! Here's your home!' And I said, 'Well, I’ve been looking for home. This must be it!' So I run on in the door, man, and right away I start getting pulled at and shoved at man. I don't want none of that, man. I don't want none of that. So I says, 'Okay, here's your bucks. Here's your car. Here's your trip. Hit the road.' So, it's just me and my old guitar."

Listening to the interview decades later, it is still a spine-chilling experience. Had Allman been a superstar at the time, his cruel confessional most likely would have been career wrecking front-page news in the tabloids. But in December of 1970, as far as the mainstream media was concerned, Duane Allman was just another guitar player in a rock 'n roll band.

Despite everything, the conversation wasn't short on levity. Duane was talking a mile a minute, explaining in an almost incoherent fashion about the formation of the Allman Brothers Band when Herman jumped in. "You do a two and a half hour interview in ten minutes," he told Allman. When the disc jockey added that he thought "people from the South are supposed to talk slow and mellow," Duane responded, "Oh, I am - but you get up here, you have to talk fast or somebody'll talk in front of you."

When phone calls started pouring into the station, one listener spoke of seeing the Allman Brothers open for Blood, Sweat & Tears at the Fillmore East the previous year, and then asked Duane what he thought of the group. After a lengthy silence, Allman finally responded, "My mother told me when I was a child, 'If you can't - don't.'"

Moments later, the interview was finally, mercifully, over. Through a haze of alcohol and whatever else was in his system, Duane Allman had once again found a way to - in the words of Paul Hornsby - "show his ass." This time, however, it wasn't in the privacy of an Hour Glass recording session. It was on a radio show with thousands of listeners.

Perhaps Duane just got drunk and high that night for the hell of it. It certainly wouldn’t have been the first time. Maybe all the Christmas decorations in Manhattan were a reminder that the anniversary of his father's murder was fast approaching. On the other hand, the upcoming Fillmore dates could have played some small part in his having gotten completely shit-faced before going on the air. On the 12th and 13th, the Allman Brothers would be second on the bill behind Canned Heat. Remarkably, Duane's old nemesis, Dallas Smith, had finally figured out how to make a blues-rock record. His production of Boogie with Canned Heat with its hit single, "On the Road Again," had turned Smith into a bona fide rock producer of no small renown. The irony wouldn't have been lost on Duane that the musically superior Allman Brothers Band had to open for a Dallas Smith-produced act."

So, the poor sods who spent decent money (if you're young and jobless, any amount you spend is a downer) to download tracks from Radiohead's new album In Rainbows are pissed off that they've ended up with nothing more than crappy 160kbps MP3s on their hard drives? Not only that, adding insult to their injury is the band's announcement that the putatively Web-only album will be available commercially in expanded CD form next year. So, is that ethical? What gives? More / Free rules!