Everyone has a past. A history. A legacy. A backstory. I could not help but be reminded of this while watching Tuesday’s musical guests on late-night TV. Let’s start with the most obvious example (and the most layered): Jakob Dylan (you might have heard of his vaguely famous folksinger father, not to mention his own band The Wallflowers) and Jade Castinos (formerly of California hipster crew Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros) showed up on Jimmy Kimmel Live to perform Go Where You Wanna Go and Dedicated to the One I Love (which were both hits for The Mamas and the Papas, though the latter was also a girl-group classic by The Shirelles) from Echo in the Canyon, a new rockumentary about the ’60s Laurel Canyon music scene. Phew. That’s enough history for anybody. But it was just one example on this night. Here’s another: Pop singer Mabel — the daughter of singer Neneh Cherry and producer Cameron McVey, granddaughter of jazz legend Don Cherry and brother of singer Marlon Roudette — made her U.S. TV debut with the song Don’t Call Me Up on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. Need more? How about this: Indie-rock vet Mary Timony — whose credits include Helium and Wild Flag — performed Another Dimension and Cosmic Cave with her latest combo Ex Hex on Last Call With Carson Daly. And finally, as always, there was the exception that proved the rule: Montreal electro-funksters Chromeo trotted out Bad Decision from their year-old Head Over Heels album on Late Night with Seth Meyers. Which is about as deep into the past as those guys will ever get. Anyway, enough of the past. I look forward to tomorrow — or as the one and only Ed Wood would call it, the future!
https://youtu.be/RGlg-90rxGo
https://youtu.be/q7FpK0L1YFc
https://youtu.be/UTX-_j2psJY
https://youtu.be/EgLwDJrrNwc
https://youtu.be/dd10sz5hn5w
