2012, Day One gives big NFL action. Gives hanging with the one(s) you love, perhaps nursing a hangover. Gives the need for good food and just coolin’ out. And, of course, gives good tunes.

1-10 Happy New Year To You

Happy New Year.

[Photo Credit: Rona Keller]

Groove.

[Photo Credit: Eye of the Beholder]

Matt Blankman sent over the following excerpt from Greil Marcus’s new book on the Doors:

“In the mid-sixties, when the Doors began, when ‘Mystery Train’ first entered their repertoire, Elvis Presley was a joke. The shocking black leather blues he conjured on national television for his 1968 Christmas special was unimaginable after years of movie travelogues, of hula hoops and shrimp, of a world where a racetrack was just another beach–where, as Elvis himself once put it, he had to beat up guys before he sang to them. But in 1968, when Elvis sang ‘One Night’ — after climbing mountains and fording rivers all across the frontiers of ‘Tryin’ To Get To You,’ going back again and again to Jimmy Reed’s ‘Baby What You Want Me To Do’ as if it were a talisman of a treasure he couldn’t name, each time deepening it, dropping words in search of a rhythm the song didn’t even know it wanted and now couldn’t live without — what returned was the sense of awe, of disbelief, that greeted him when he first made himself known.”

[Illustration by Larry Roibal]

[Photo Credit: Vivian Maier]

Looking through some old papers last night I was reminded that yesterday was the anniversary of the first concert I ever saw. December 27, 1983. The Kinks, at Roseland Ballroom. Cyndi Lauper, opening act.

So sweet. Introduced in the 1925 Broadway production: “No, No, Nanette.” Performed here by Nat King Cole.

[Photo Credit: Amitti Rubati]

Seeing is believing.

[Photo Credit: A Spoonful of Sugar]

Speak, Memory. This is a song that played on the radio during the last years of my parents’ marriage. I don’t remember any specific memory, but when I hear the song–waiting on line at the drug store, through a car’s open window–I go back to the sadness of that time. It is a piece of my history, more lasting than the other fragments that I can barely remember: clothes, comic books, towels, silverware. A song is not a thing to own (and to risk losing) like a book or an album, it runs deeper. It doesn’t even matter if you like the tune or not. It’s there. And there is nothing to be done about it.

First:

Flipped:

Remixed:

[Drawing from Wonton Art]

Madlib the bad kid, all up in your ear hole.

Koolin’:

[Photo Via: Tush]

Two for Tuesday.

Always flippin’ it.

[Photo Credit: Kelly Marciano]

Coolin’ with Lee Morgan. Man, this feels good.

Coolin’ out on a Sunday morning with the paper and such.

[Photo Credit: Julia Iwo via Puckbox]

Keepin’ the faith.

[Photo Credit: Eric Rose]

You gots to chill.

You will be mine, you will be mine, all mine.

[Photo Credit: The Daily Life Happenings of Kluzzy]

True Indeed.

[Photo Credit: Through My Blue Eye]

Two for Tuesday.

Talk about a debut…

Fort Greene, represent.