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Friday, April 5, 2013

Brian Williams Unmasks the 'Marauders'

UPDATE:  Brian Williams just admitted he fell for the hoax--at age 20.  Sort of blames his older brother.  Plays a bit of "I Can't Get No Nookie" (see link below).  Claims its still rock's biggest mystery (what a stretch).   Interviews co-perpetrators, Greil Marcus and Langdon Winner. Brian calls himself a "victim, listening in a darkened room."  Winner says it was easy to fool folks then, pre-Web. Marcus predicts more hoaxes coming "down the road that we will fall for, if we're not already."  Album still available, see Rhino.  Brian closes by asking "fellow victims" to contact him via the show's Web site.  NOTE: Last time I saw Brian live it was at a Leonard Cohen concert in NYC.  Will he e there again on Sunday?  Brian?

Earlier: You may be amazed to learn that NBC's Brian Williams claims that he has long been obsessed with the 1969 "Masked Marauders" album--and is devoting a segment on his show tonight to it.  More likely you are simply thinking, "WTF?"  At the dawn of the "bootleg" craze--kicked off by Dylan's "Basement Tapes"--Greil Marcus reviewed for Rolling Stone (a few months before my first review appeared there) a new secretly-recorded though non-existent album featuring an all-star group led by unnamed Dylan, Jagger, Lennon, McCartney and Harrison.  Jagger, for example, sang "I Can't Get No Nookie." I read it myself at the time and don't recall if I believed it or just wanted to believe. 

In any case, many did fall for it (probably Bri W himself).  Eventually an actual faked album was released.  Here's Robert Christgau recounting it.  Marcus says Bri interviewed him for the segment.   "Dylan" sings here.  You might also find his epic "Season of the Witch"and "Cowpie."

Greg Mitchell is author of more than a dozen books.  His new book on Iraq and media malprctice is "So Wrong for So Long."   He has just completed a memoir on his days as #2 editor at the legendary Crawdaddy for nearly all of the 1970s.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I fell for it too, but not after listening to it a few times. Still have mu copy of it. Amusing and typical for the times as information was as available as it is now. Actually refreshing.