Video Diary: The Breeders, "Saints"

Song of the Week: "Down In The Flood", Bob Dylan

Listen - Bob Dylan performs Down In The Flood

Happy Birthday Bob Dylan. The diesel engine that is Bob Dylan just keeps A-chugging along. Today we flip our hat to the man from Duluth with a 2002 live recording of Down In The Flood. The man has still got it.

Video Diary: Bob Dylan, "Blood In My Eyes"

From 1993, Bob Dylan does a major rework of the Mississippi Sheiks' original number, recorded in 1931, Blood in My Eyes.

Song of the Week: "Moonlight Mile", The Rolling Stones

Listen - The Rolling Stones perform Moonlight Mile

On these digital pages, we good folk at Flip-Central usually like to hip you to songs we think you have not heard before, such as Born Loser. But today's SOTW is a song that we think you most definitely have heard before. We're just betting that it has been awhile since you heard it.

The song is from a small band out of the UK that goes by the name The Rolling Stones. The album is called Sticky Fingers. The song is the closing number on that 1971 album and is called Moonlight Mile.

While the song is credited to the usual suspects of Jagger/Richards, rumors have long swirled that Brian Jones' replacement, Mick Taylor had a more than major hand in writing this song. The way I've always heard it is that Richards wrote the main guitar riff while on a Mississippi Fred McDowell listening binge. Then the two Micks stayed up late working the riff into a full-fledged song. Jagger fleshing out the lonesome road weary lyrics, Taylor, fleshing out a full song structure. The boys later went into the studio in England to record the number for their 1970s debut. Keith Richards plays the dominant open-tuned acoustic guitar as Taylor ads the subtle and muted electric guitar work from his Gibson SG. [Ed Note: It appears that Keith is not on the recording at all, and that Mick Jagger plays the acoustic.]

A favorite moment of mine is when Jagger reflects, around the 3:00 mark, "I'm hiding baby and I'm dreaming. I'm riding down your moonlight mile." Then the song breaks into an aggressive surge of strings with a Far-East feel, only to subside in a long, slow descent of loose instruments as the song falls off to it's close. Ian Stewart's piano work is particularly effective in this rag-tag completion to a beautiful song that always makes me want to hit the open road. [Ed note: damn, I hate being wrong. A commenter to this article has pointed out that it is probably one Jim Price on piano, not Stewart]

Made a rag-pile of my shiny clothes. Gonna warm my bones, gonna warm my bones. I got silence on my radio. Let the airwaves flow. Let the airwaves flow.

Busker Days: Mark O'Harps "Good Morning America"

As you might recall, I recorded our last Busker Days installment still underground in the Montgomery BART station. (Man that's a great song!)  Directly following that recording, as I made my way to the surface, some familiar sounds penetrated the early morning coldness. If I wasn't mistaken it was the masterful harmonica work of none other than one Mark O'Harps. He was the first busker I became familiar with back in 2004 when I started making the daily trip to SF for work. Back then I worked near Mission and First and it was on that corner that I would regularly stop and take in his ear-bending improvisational playing. I must confess that ever since I started this field recording effort I had hoped I might get a recording. Well, here was my chance.

Give a listen above to Mark O' as he delivers his (per)version of the classic "City of New Orleans", a song written by Steve Goodman and made famous in 1972 by Arlo Guthrie. It's just Mark O'Harps, his harmonicas, mic and amp, and some percussives on his shoe, playing on Market and Montgomery.