Portrait of Dr. Gachet is one of the most revered paintings by Vincent van Gogh.

 

Portrait of Dr. Gachet is one of the most revered paintings by Vincent van Gogh. It depicts Dr. Paul Gachet who took care of Van Gogh during the final months of his life. There are two authenticated versions of the portrait, both painted in June 1890 at Auvers. Both show Doctor sitting at a table and leaning his head on his right arm but they are easily differentiated in color and style. In 1890, the first version fetched a record price of $82.5 million ($75 million, plus a 10 percent buyer's commission) when sold at auction in New York.  ps: you can see by my banner, I happen to like this painting very much.

There is a great book about this painting. It’s called

“Portrait of Dr. Gachet: The Story of a Van Gogh Masterpiece"

 Only a few weeks before his 1890 suicide, Vincent van Gogh painted a portrait of Paul-Ferdinand Gachet, a local physician the painter had been fruitlessly consulting about his depression. Upon his death, the painting, like much of van Gogh's work, went to his brother, Theo. A few years later, Theo's widow sold it for 300 francs (worth, then, $58). In 1990, a wealthy Japanese businessman paid $82.5 million at a Christie's auction for it and promptly hid it away in a Tokyo warehouse, where it presumably remains to this day.

Cynthia Saltzman traces the painting's provenance through a century of art collecting and cultural politics. 

A Comment by Van Gogh:

(if Twitter existed then, this would have DEFINITELY been Vincent’s post)

“I think that we must not count on Dr. Gachet at all. First of all, he is sicker than I am,

I think, or shall we say just as much, so that's that. Now when one blind man leads anotherblind man,

don't they both fall into the ditch?”

Jim Jarmusch Movie About The Stooges Nov.2016

This is the band that first made me understand that Rock and Roll was going to be my life. I love this band! I don't remember much when I was 13 years old, but I do remember buying the first Stooges album at the local record store. I had been waiting for the release date as I was a White Panther (the same group of maniacs that managed their brother band, The MC5) and I knew all about the Stooges, but being 13 years old, I had not ever heard their music until that day I bought "The Stooges" album. And you can only imagine what an eye oping experience that was! One other thing that I remember about that day that I had rode my bike to to the record store and came home, locked myself in my room and put the album on, is my older brother banging on my door and telling me to turn it down. I remember him asking me "How can you listen to that? That's not even music! Well each to their own....right? Jim Jarmusch has made a documentary about the Stooges called "Gimme Danger" All I can say is "GO SEE IT!"

Almost every rock musician worth a damn over the last 45 years—and many who aren't—has claimed influence and/or inspiration from the Stooges. It seems odd that there aren't already a dozen documentaries about the Ann Arbor, Michigan group, with their nuclear-grade rock and charismatic, double-jointed übermensch frontman, Iggy Pop. But no. Jim Jarmusch's Gimme Danger is only the second one, and the trailer (view it after the jump) promises a real cool time. An especially entertaining part occurs when Iggy says, "When I was a little boy, the Ford Motor Company, they had a machine that engineered a drop [explosion sound], a mega-klang. I thought we should get some of that in our songs."

A huge fan of the Stooges, Jarmusch filmed eight hours of Iggy—who grew up in a trailer in Ypsilanti, Michigan—talking about the Stooges and himself. Gimme Danger also features some original, previously unheard music that Scott and Ron Asheton made, with Iggy putting vocals over it.

In one segment of the film, Iggy tells Dinah Shore (?!) on her TV show, "I think I helped wipe out the '60s," and anyone who's heard The Stooges, Fun House, and Raw Power can attest to the feeling that this music was ground zero for a new strain of rock rooted in savage lustiness, exhilarating nihilism, and an outrageous will to power. No band had more effectively laid down a mainline to the id than did the Stooges—and nobody's really equaled them in this regard since.

CHECK THESE GUYS OUT!

The Biters are a young rock and roll band from Atlanta GA. I recently found them just surfing the web. I started Jarvys Cafe' back in 2006 to pay tribute to Detroit Rock and Roll. As time went by, this blog morphed into just paying tribute to any "Great" rock and roll. Over the years, I have written about many bands that I thought fit that "great R&R description. But you know.....as the years have gone by, I have found fewer and fewer bands that even inspired me enough to write a post. This is the first time I have sat down to write a post in a very long time! And it is not because I haven't looked for new bands, it's just that there seem to be fewer and fewer. I have thought a lot about the fact that I have now listened to and loved rock and roll for over 45 years and asked the question "is it because I am just old, that I think the best rock and roll blossomed in 1965 through 1970". The answer is a resounding "NO"...those were just the best years for the "real deal". That is not to say there haven't been great bands through out the years after 1975 to today. There just plain is "the real deal" and "not the real deal". The Biters are the real deal. It reminded me of when I discovered the Sex Pistols or The Black Crows. You just hear immediately. It brings back all those feelings of my reasons for wanting to play rock and roll when I was 13 years old. CHECK THESE GUYS OUT!

CBGB / The Movie: Jarvy says "worth the price of a ticket"

I have been waiting for this movie! WHY????  Because I loved CBGBs, even though I had never stepped a foot inside it, I always wanted to say that I had actually been to CBGBs. WHY???? Because when CBGBs was at it's pinnacle..... a typical calender week would read like.... The Ramones on Wednesday, Blondie on Thursday, Talking Heads on Friday, The Police on Saturday.  I mean can you imagine? You would have 5 MAJOR rock and roll acts playing at this little club that had a fire code of like 80 people. And when I say "MAJOR", I mean these were bands that changed the direction of rock and roll.

There was this weird little magazine called "Rock Scene" and it always had stories about CBGBs and the bands that played there. "Rock Scene" was a very strange publication. It was not that easy to find. Usually you have to to buy your copy at a book and magazine store. Rock Scene always had a big portion of the content about the New York City underground rock scene. Which in 1978, "the Underground Rock Scene" became the "Punk Rock Scene". There were great stories about all my favorite bands of the time, like The New York Dolls, Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, and then a bunch more bands that I had never heard of....and that started with THE RAMONES.
Rock Scene was a black and white picture magazine edited by prominent rock writer Lisa Robinson (later of Vanity Fair) and her husband Richard Robinson (who produced Lou Reed’s first solo record and the Flamin’ Groovies’Teenage Head). They were a well-known power couple in New York rock circles and had easy access to any and every rocker they wanted to meet. Rock Scene was where you could read about superstar acts like Rod Stewart, Alice Cooper, David Bowie, Queen and Elton John.....BUT WHAT MADE ROCK SCENE GREAT WAS all the new bands that played at CBGBs and Linda Robinson was there every night, taking pictures of and writing about bands like the Ramones, Cherry Vanilla, The New York Dolls, Patti Smith, Richard Hell, Blondie, The Dictators, Suicide, Talking Heads, Iggy, Kim Fowley, the Dead Boys, Willy DeVille, John Cale, etc.
So the movie isn't a great piece of film-making  but it does bring back all the old memories of the late 70.s when rock and roll was re-born in the Bowery of NYC.
JARVY SAYS: THIS MOVIE IS WORTH THE PRICE OF ADMISSION. Just for the music , if nothing else. 
 It's not "Shawshank Redemption" or anything close.  But it is a couple of hours of great music 
and some funny fuckin' characters.  Check It Out!.

Detroit Rock City / If you love rock and roll....you will love this book!

DETROIT ROCK CITY /

The Uncensored History of Rock 'n' Roll in America's Loudest City

by: Steve Miller

I grew up in the suburbs of Detroit and was 13 years old when I purchased my copy of The MC5's uncensored version of "Kick Out The Jams". I have written other posts on this blog about being so lucky to have been an impressionable teenager living in Detrot in 1969!

http://jarvyscafe.blogspot.com/2012/04/detroit-rock-and-roll-in-1969.html

This book is an "oral history" of the Detroit Rock Scene. from the 60's all the way through to the new millennium. It's all here.....The MC5, The Stooges, Alice Cooper, Detroit, SRC, Ted Nugent, Bob Seger and many more.  Here is a great review of the book that I found on Amazon.

 By Suzinne Barrett VINE VOICE on August 23, 2013

Having long been a fan of Iggy and the Stooges and more recently have gotten hip to the under recognized MC5, this book was a natural choice for me. LOVE oral biography format, and Steve Miller's "Detroit Rock City" ranks among the very best. This book grabbed me on page one. Wish the photos were better (they're horribly printed), and a better job could have been done in identifying the players. Same mistake has happened in two other oral biographies I've read and enjoyed. Why not identify each and every voice, and even better give us a picture, even if it's a small one alongside each contribution? Not everybody knows who these people are. Also, if you were a fan of Creem Magazine, this book is a must read. Would have liked more about Creem and Lester Bangs, but various writers from Creem do contribute, like Dave Marsh and Jann Uhelszki. Creem, located in Detroit, offered the very best of rock journalism and music reviews and regularly blew its competitor Rolling Stone out of the water. Rolling Stone kissed a lot of butt, but Creem instead sported an authentic rock and roll attitude and never did.

Been a fairly serious music fan but even still was not aware of a good amount of the bands accounted for here. Much of the music remained central to Detroit and did not cross over to our other cities. The break out stars of the scene obviously were Alice Cooper, Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, Iggy and the Stooges, Bob Seger and Ted Nugent. Alice Cooper received the most airplay with Mitch Ryder not far behind. Much later on, Bob Seger has his moment in the sun with "Night Moves." One of the best stories, told by producer Bob Ezrin, recounts his trip to Alice Cooper and company's abandoned building rehearsal studio/hideout which reads as something out of a Steven King novel! Mitch Ryder, Wayne Kramer (of MC5), Alice Cooper and Iggy and the Stooges tell firsthand of all the craziness. Now, the next step would be a documentary because the stories in the book BEG for one. There was so much talent and energy going down in Detroit in the late 60s and also in the 70s - socially, musically and politically, and it's nothing less than a crying shame that bands like the MC5 saw very little glory for their outstanding efforts. Bad management, cheap and clueless record companies and drug abuse account for these failures. For the record, the MC5 were one of the greatest live acts ever, although that never directly translated to their records. Check them out live on youtube to see what I mean.

Anyway, a wonderful and much needed look at the Detroit rock scene. Over the years, so much attention has been given to the Motown phenomenon, leaving the co-existing rock scene in the dark. This book was seriously overdue.

Mitch Ryder (circa the band called "Detroit") 

Iggy and the Stooges (circa the Hollywood hazy daze

The Stooges 1969

The MC5

SRC

ROCK AND ROLL WILL NEVER DIE!!

There are going to be hundreds if unknown bands at this year's SWSX......just like every year. And there will be one little band from the San Francisco area that will pull into town in their old beat up van that carries the band and the equipment, who could famous overnight.  Ok....not really a possibility, but if it were 1990 and some powerful A&R guy or music manager just happened to stumble into the little bar that THE SOFT WHITE SIXTIES  were playing......well it's cool to dream, right?  But it's not 1990, it's 2013 and there is no "Record Business" really, iS there?  Who could have predicted that a little website call Napster would have started a chain reaction that killed the Record Business?  I talk a lot about "the good ole days"  here on my blogs (Jarvys Cafe and Cineblax)....and about how the kids today have no idea how amazing it was to go to the record store on allowance day and buy the "Stooges Funhouse", ride home on  my bicycle and sit down in front of the family console phonograph and drop the needle on "1970".  I really did that and remember it, like it was yesterday. I can still smell the printing of the album cover, after ripping off the cellophane.  Reading every liner note while listening to my new album on 10 (because no one else was home). The bad thing about music and the internet is also the good thing.  And that is, you would have never heard of The Soft White Sixties" in 1990, (unless that A&R guy did discover them), BUT in 2013, I do know about this great band because of the internet.  These guys "get it"!  For us "Old" music fans, it is gives us so much hope to come across a band like TSWS. The song "Queen of the Press Club" could have come on the radio in 1966 right after The Who's Substitute or The Count Five's Psychotic Reaction and it would have seemed perfect. Do yourself a favor, check these guys out.  TSWS is a GREAT rock and roll band. Just like The Rolling Stones studied their heroes, it's obvious that The Soft White Sixties studied theirs.  What is truly amazing though, is that the Stone's heroes were still alive and making music (in their beginnings), but the inspiration for TSWS music is music from 30 and 40 years ago. It is the same music that their grandparents were dancing to.
It is a bands like this one, that are more important than any Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. They are the true keepers of the flame.  Living proof that Rock and Roll WILL NEVER DIE!!

The Strokes Are Back!

 Well, this is more like it. “One Way Trigger,” the first song we heard from new Strokes album Comedown Machine, was a keyboards-and-falsetto curiosity, but now they’re back with the new “All The Time,” and they suddenly sound like the Strokes again. It’s not like the members of the band are ripping off their younger selves on “All The Time,” but they have tapped back into the ineffable swagger that made those first records such dorm-room staples. “All The Time” is a buzzing and muscular rock song with a deeply satisfying central thrum and just enough vulnerability. We already heard a quick burst of the song, and now the whole thing is below.
From Stereogum