The Desigual Fall-Winter 2023 collection is on sale 30% off at Angel until Dec. 17, including new Desigual styles designed by Christian Lacroix of Paris, now in his 11th year of collaboration with the wildly unique Barcelona brand.

Save up to 50% on Desigual for women from previous seasons.

Desigual created this Rolling Stones logo T-shirt, which has a vintage look, in grey and black.

Recently we’ve been choosing styles from the Summer 2024 collection. Here’s a preview of a few of next year’s line and a look back on Desigual so far this year:

Putting together the list of new Desigual styles — posting photos with descriptions and prices — is pretty tedious, so I listen to music as I put it together. It’s sorta happenstance – I’ll read something online and then click a link and listen to the music someone is referring to. For example, I just read this piece in the New York Times online, which was about Post Malone doing a Tiny Desk concert on National Public Radio (NPR) – they are small intimate concerts performed behind someone’s desk in an office at NPR headquarters in Washington, D.C.. “Tiny Desk is like one of my favourite corners of the Internet,” Taylor Swift said during her Tiny Desk concert. “It’s an opportunity for artists to decide a different way to showcase their music,” she added.

I don’t know much about Taylor Swift, other than hearing her songs on the radio, but her Tiny Desk concert gave me a sense of her creative process in writing songs. Similarly, I knew nothing about Post Malone (real name Austin Post); I didn’t know he had tattoos on his face until I watched Tiny Desk.

Sometimes I watch Tiny Desk to hear new artists, other times I’m drawn by big-name artists (Sting playing with Shaggy, and Chris Martin and guitarist Jonny Buckland of Coldplay singing with a nine-piece choir ). It’s great to see them performing in an intimate setting. Here is Mr. Post’s concert:

So as I’m putting together the Fall 2023 post above, I start searching out Post Malone songs and find this live performance of Malone and someone I’ve never heard of before, Noah Kahan, debuting a live version of Kahan’s song Dial Drunk. Of course, this is the first time I’ve heard the song so I have to go next to the lyrics video to be able to understand what’s they’re singing:

Then I get a prompt from YouTube, saying there is a new video of Joni Mitchell singing A Case of You – a live surprise performance at the Newport Folk Festival last year, her first public performance in 20 years, with Brandi Carlile singing the high parts Joni used to sing:

The studio version was on her masterpiece recording Blue, with James Taylor on guitar and Russ Kunkel on drums. She met Taylor while he was in the recording studio next door at Capitol Records, where he was recording his Sweet Baby James LP, with the hit song Fire and Rain; the first part is about the suicide of his friend Suzanne, and the second part was about his depression and dealing with fame and his heroin addiction – he wrote the song in rehab. At the time she met Taylor, Joni was recording her album Ladies of the Canyon. When she recorded Blue, Carole King was in the studio next door recording her seminal album Tapestry; Joni and Carole King sometimes argued about who could use the studio’s sole piano. A Case of You is believed to be about her two-year love affair with Graham Nash, formerly with British band The Hollies and then with Crosby Stills and Nash. (Neil Young joined later; he had earlier played with Steven Stills in Buffalo Springfield. He wrote one of CSNY’s most powerful songs, Ohio, about four students shot while protesting America’s involvement in the Vietnam war. The song was written the same day as the shootings and was recorded almost the same day. It was released 10 days later, which was unheard of at the time, recalled Graham Nash. Okay, I’ve digressed; I’m way off track. Back to Joni’s A Case of You. Canadians love it because Canadian-born Joni at one point in the song sings the opening line to Canada’s national anthem. She recorded the song on a dulcimer. And a local Vancouver musician and dulcimer player, Rick Scott, recalls how Joni came to own the dulcimer:

“In 1971, I was hitchhiking with my wife Sue, my friend JR Stone and my dog Mousse up the Sechelt (Sunshine) Coast of British Columbia. It was tough for three hippies with a dog to catch a ride, but after about half an hour a woman driving a beat up Ford Pinto pulled over. Big and shaggy, Mousse immediately climbed into the front seat and laid his head down in the driver’s lap. JR slid in next to him, Sue and I got in the back and we headed off down the road.

“The woman was patting Mousse’s head and complimenting us on what a nice dog he was. She asked us how far we were going… about 30 kilometers to Pender Harbour. Between her question and our ability to answer, there was a group realization that the driver was Joni Mitchell. Each of us took turns trying to articulate the name of our destination, but all that came out was stammering. When we finally managed to tell her, she said she could take us almost all the way but she had to stop off at Lord Jim’s Lodge to pick up a friend. She said they might go to the pub and if we were still hitchhiking when they came out they would give us a ride the rest of the way. I think we just sat there staring at Joni Mitchell stroking Mousse’s head. I was fantasizing that in the next life I might be lucky enough to come back as a dog.

“When we got to the turnoff she pulled over and as we were getting out she noticed my instrument case and asked what it was. When I told her it was a dulcimer she said, “Way out, can I see it?” The next thing I knew she was examining my dulcimer with great interest. JR Stone is a soft spoken North Carolina mountain man of few words, so I volunteered the information that he had built my instrument. She beamed at him and examined the dulcimer even more closely. After a few minutes she asked if he would build her one. With a great deal of difficulty he finally managed to answer. “Sure.”

“As Joni left us, she renewed her offer to take us further later and asked JR where she could find him. We told her where we would be for the weekend. We couldn’t believe what had happened and didn’t think we’d ever see her again. Nonetheless, we stopped hitchhiking and just stood by the road. An hour later she came back down the road with her friend in the passenger seat and stopped to pick us up. Paying no mind to the passenger, Mousse jumped onto his lap and settled back down with his head on Joni. We all squeezed in the back and she introduced us to Graham (Nash). She drove us to Pender Harbour and the next day came to visit to discuss dulcimer specifications with JR. I was amazed when she took up my dulcimer, tuned all the strings to the same note and proceeded to play, A Case Of You from her Blue album. It seems ‘less is more’ is a very dulcimer thing.

“Over the next three weeks JR built her an exquisite mountain dulcimer. But it took him another week to deliver it because he was so shy. She was so delighted she paid him a hundred dollars more than his original quote, which I think was $300. Over 20 years later, in 1996, I was reading a Rolling Stone article about Joni and in the accompanying photograph there she was with JR’s dulcimer hanging on the wall behind her. I must admit I felt a twinge of jealousy that JR got in Rolling Stone before I did. JR Stone still lives and builds amazing instruments in Boone, North Carolina. He has built me several four string dulcimers and a 6 string and bass dulcimer as well.”

At the time, Rick was in a Vancouver band with JR Stone (left in the photo below) and Shari Ulrich:

JR Stone died in 2013, When he left the group and returned to North Carolina, he was replaced by Joe Mock (he now lives in France) and the trio became the Pied Pumkin String Ensemble, a much-loved Vancouver band.

So since I posted those photos of Desigual Rolling Stones shirts, I’ve been thinking of the first concert I ever saw – the Rolling Stones at the Agodome in Vancouver (seating capacity: 2,500). The big hits at the time were Satisfaction and Get Off of My Cloud.

The first part of the Stones 1965 tour of the U.S. didn’t go well. The venues were half empty. They didn’t have a hit on the radio and the Beatles were dominating the airwaves. But in the middle of the tour, in a Florida hotel room, Keith Richards laid down an acoustic riff and a refrain on a portable tape recorder. Mick listened to it and finished the verses in a couple of days. A few days later, they were in Chicago and recorded the first version of Satisfaction at the studio that recorded Bo Diddley, Willie Dixon, Chuck Berry, Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, Buddy Guy, LittleWalter and many more.

The Stones weren’t happy with the recording. Richards initially imagined the opening riff would be played by horns – he was thinking of Martha Reeves & the Vandallas. So they recorded it two days later in Los Angeles, at RCA Hollywood Studios on May 12 – this time, Richards used a Gibson Fuzz Box to mimic the sounds of a sax. It was supposed to be demo, but the Fuzz Box added a frantic energy that everyone else in the band liked. The song was released less than four weeks after it was recorded. It became the Stones first Number 1 hit, leading to sold-out shows that year.

I was once at a Stones concert and the guy sitting next to me was T Bone Burnett‘ who produced the Robert Plant & Alison Krauss collaboration. That’s T Bone playing lead guitar during this Grammy performance. So I was chatting with T Bone and he asks “Did you see the guy sitting next to me during that last set [J Geils Band]? “The guy with the bucket hat?” I asked. “Yeah. You know who that was?” No, I said, but he looked familiar. “Mick Jagger,” he said. “What’s Mick doing in the Press Box?” I asked. “Watching the show in a secure environment” T Bone explained.