lluismiras video for "The Alcoholic"

I go in weird spurts in album buying. I'll buy an album from a band or artist, declare it one of my favorites of all time...and then not bother to buy the follow-up.

I have owned Röyksopp's Junior for years, but have never bothered to buy its follow-up, Senior.

But I did want to share one song from the album. Röyksopp, along with Genero.tv, sponsored a competition in which people submitted videos for the Senior songs. The winner was a video by Iluismiras for the song "The Alcoholic."



Also see this blog post in Spanish (Iluismiras is from Argentina).

Covers...

Metallica covers Bonnie Tyler (language warning).



(P.S. Not really.)

Shakira covers Metallica.



(P.S. Really.)

Renting out a song (Liza Minnelli covers Pet Shop Boys)

The nice thing about last.fm is that if you allow it to do so, it throws all sorts of songs at you. On December 27, 2009, it served up the song "Rent" to me. But not the original Pet Shop Boys version - it served up Liza Minnelli's cover.

Now I should explain my feelings about the Pet Shop Boys. I love the Pet Shop Boys. I also think that they are the best comedy band ever recorded. When a FriendFeed user shared a private post that included Pet Shop Boys' video of "West End Girls," I offered a comment about Chris Lowe's visual performance in that video - while Neil Tennant earnestly sings the lyrics, Lowe nonchalantly stares off into space. But Pet Shop Boys' true comedy stylings can be heard in the songs themselves - whether they're rearranging "Always On My Mind" as the direct opposite of anything Willie Nelson ever recorded, or whether they're throwing out such lyrics as "Violence, religion, injustice and death" or "What have I, what have I, what have I done to deserve this," the Pet Shop Boys are consistently as funny, if not funnier, than Monty Python.

In 1987, they scored a hit with their song "Rent" - a song that Minnelli later covered. What I didn't know was that Minnelli's cover version was part of a 1989 album produced by the Pet Shop Boys themselves. While it sounds like most of the "Results" of the album were an odd juxtaposition of Liza's voice with the usual Pet Shop Boys synthesizer backing, the cover of "Rent" was more in Liza's traditional style. And for some reason, I think that Minnelli's version is preferable to the original - perhaps because the title "Rent" was subsequently used for an unrelated Broadway musical.

You can hear Minnelli's version here.

Queen of the Road

There are certain people and bands who exhibit a variety of musical styles. One of those bands is Blondie. Blondie first came to my attention because of a shimmering disco song. During their years of popularity, they also released rock, calypso, rap, and probably seventeen other rock styles.

But it turns out that Deborah Harry's FORMER band exhibited a style that Blondie, to my knowledge, never attempted.

On Tuesday evening, Loren Feldman shared a Michael Pinto Google+ item about how paparazzi saw Deborah Harry coming out of a hotel and thought that she was Lindsay Lohan. Google+ user Dennis McCunney commented on the item:

I wonder how many Blondie fans knew her first band was a 60's group called The Wind In the Willows?

For the record, I did not know that. And Michael Pinto may or may not have known that, but he provided a link to the Wikipedia page on the band. I was reading the Wikipedia page, which described the band's one album release...

...and I stopped cold at track 4.

My Uncle Used To Love Me But She Died

You see, that particular song was originally written and performed by Roger Miller. In his career, Miller often balanced the serious and the silly in the same song, with devastating effect. "My Uncle Used To Love Me But She Died" had no such seriousness in it - as you can guess from the title, it's completely off the wall.

Which brings us to The Wind in the Willows' version.



If anything, TWITW's take on the song is even more outlandish than Miller's original. Miller never ventured into waltz tempo.

Now did Blondie ever do anything like that?

Davy Jones, 1945-2012

If I may paraphrase George Harrison, as far as I’m concerned, there won’t be another Monkees reunion as long as Davy Jones remains dead.

Yes, Davy Jones passed away early this morning in Florida.

Of course, as I noted in a September 2010 post in this blog about Jones' February 9, 1964 Ed Sullivan appearance, Jones realized that he and his contemporaries were getting old. This is what he said:

Ringo Starr sings, ‘I get a little help from Depends.’

In addition to Oliver! and The Monkees, Jones appeared in other productions, including numerous guest apperances on televisions shows.

tymshft - time, music, and everything else

Perhaps you've noticed my use of a label "empo-tymshft" on this blog. But I've used it elsewhere also.

You see, while I've been posting a lot of "empo-tymshft" stuff here in my music blog, I found that I've been posting it in some of my other blogs also. So I finally set up a single blog for all of my time-related posts, regardless of whether they're music-related, business-related, or whatever.

So what is tymshft? This is what I said:

[P]eople talk about new things and assume that they are new. Take the cloud. For some people, it’s a wondrous new thing, this ability to store data in the cloud and access it from anywhere. Some misguided souls probably even think that Steve Jobs invented the cloud. But some of the features of the cloud were present decades ago, in old time-sharing systems. iCloud is a CompuServe that begins with a vowel....

At the same time, there are things that have changed significantly over the years. For example, I remember when a “phone” was something that was attached to the wall, and came from “the phone company.”

Just this morning I posted a music-related item on tymshft: Do you own a radio?

If you're interested in such ruminations on time, and how things change or don't change over time, I strongly encourage you to go to tymshft.

If you're on Google+, be sure to include https://plus.google.com/b/110538760339914860505/# in your favorite circle.

If you're on Facebook, be sure to go to the https://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Tymshft/390937200923679?sk=wall page.

And I look forward to your comments and contributions.

I'm with the banda - where's my tuba?

If you live in the southwestern US, you can tune your radio around until you hear songs that prominently feature a tuba.

And the word "corazón."

And in the same way that a kid in the mid-1960s wanted a guitar to play rock music, and a kid in the early 1980s wanted a synthesizer to play synth music, kids of today want a tuba to play banda music.

Unfortunately, to meet the demand for these expensive instruments, people are using alternative procurement methods.

[F]our brass sousaphones were stolen in January from Mira Costa High School in Manhattan Beach, an affluent Los Angeles suburb; and Sycamore Junior High in Anaheim lost 20 instruments, including all its tubas, in a theft at the end of December that will cost the school in excess of $20,000.

Unfortunately, it's not really possible to design a cheap tuba - the large size of the instrument is required to play the bass sounds. (There's a reason why a piccolo is smaller than a tuba.)

On guest posting - ROBOTS DOT TXT

I have written posts in a number of blogs since October 2003, but in most cases the posts were written in my own blogs (or, in the case of a blog behind the Motorola firewall, a blog for which I was the primary contributor).

There have been very few exceptions to this, but there have been a few times in which I was a guest poster.

The first guest post (actually a series of guest posts) occurred roughly six years ago, when several people got together to conduct an online Bible study called "Word Search." I referred to the Word Search blog in item 7 of my 8 things post. As I noted, the blog has long since disappeared, but I did find one of my contributions in the blog of one of the other contributors.

My second guest posting opportunity occurred less than a couple of years ago, when Steven Hodson was conducting an experiment. Hodson was experimenting with the free version of Kapost, and wanted to try using it to allow others to contribute to his WinExtra blog. I contributed something, which ended up in the "Kapost" section of the blog. Hodson subsequently discontinued the experiment, but I quoted parts of my post in my own blog.

My third guest posting opportunity appeared this past weekend, but its history goes back decades. Back in the 1980s when I was writing SHUFFLEBOARD!, and C. Gin Populus was co-writing FROM EARS AND MOUTH (see my Google+ discussion), Mark Givens was writing a publication called THE BOWL SHEET while at the same time performing as part of Wckr Spgt (and, for a brief time, as part of Desperation Squad).

Times have changed, and I'm not sure if anyone still produces printed zines. Especially since online publications give you so much more. Mark Givens started MungBeing back in 2005, and has continued to publish it throughout the years. I didn't run across MungBeing until recently, and began wondering if I could contribute something to it.

Then, at the end of issue 41, Givens announced that issue 42 would be dedicated to robots.

As it turned out, I had been thinking about robots in some way or another for years. In fact, this June 15, 2009 post talked about robots, or one robot in particular.

However, MungBeing professed a preference for original work, so I revisited the topic and tried to come up with a new (for me) angle on it. The result?

ROBOTS DOT TXT

Here's a very short excerpt from my relatively short piece:

The scene that I am watching is not live – it's a previously recorded item, made available on YouTube, that was taken from an appearance on the Norwegian television show Senkveld several years ago. The person who posted it on YouTube advertised it as "the first live TV-performance by the norwegian band Röyksopp in seven years."

But is it?

Read the rest here, and be sure to peruse the entire issue 42 of MungBeing. I will probably be referring to other articles from this issue in my other blogs, but the issue presents a number of thoughts regarding what "robots" are, and the relationship (heh) between humans and robots.

P.S. Regarding the issue of the nature of "live" electronic performances, the subject goes well beyond a Norwegian TV show appearance. For example, I once attended a Devo concert in which one of the members' guitar strings broke - with absolutely no effect on the audio (or visual) experience. And of course, the issue predates electronica, as any viewer of "Soul Train" or "American Bandstand" can attest - just because singers and band members are on a stage doesn't necessarily mean that they're playing anything.

(empo-tymshft) The benefit of hindsight - what Whitney Houston was really doing during Brandy's and Monica's rehearsals

On Friday afternoon, the L.A. Times music blog posted an account of some song rehearsals by Brandy and Monica - rehearsals at which Whitney Houston was present. This is what the Los Angeles Times initially said in the post:

Pop & Hiss dropped by the Beverly Hilton Hotel to take a peek at rehearsals for Saturday's gala, which features Brandy and Monica as headliners (we also spotted a run-through for the tribute set to the Kinks led by the band's former frontman, Ray Davies). The two R&B divas recently reunited nearly 14 years after the success of their chart-topping duet "The Boy Is Mine" for a new single, "It All Belongs To Me," that will appear on their upcoming albums.

After a run-through of the massive hit that brought them together, a loose and lively Houston dropped by to give the girls vocal tips for the performance.

"Loose and lively." In another post, written after Houston's death, some more details emerged:

Press, including The Times, were in attendance for a junket with the reunited R&B divas and Davis. Though Houston greeted people her with a warm smile, she appeared disheveled in mismatched clothes and hair that was dripping wet with either sweat or water.

The visibly bloated singer displayed erratic behavior throughout the afternoon -- flailing her hands frenetically as she spoke to Brandy and Monica, skipping around the ballroom in a child-like fashion and wandering aimlessly about the lobby. It was mentioned by a Grammy staffer that security personnel received calls of the singer doing handstands by the pool.

After leaving rehearsals, Houston returned to the ballroom -- with her teenage daughter Bobbi Kristina in tow -- as camera crews set up for interviews. The singer smelled of alcohol and cigarettes. A Grammy staffer said that during the interviews with Brandy, Monica and Clive, Houston was dancing just off camera to make the singers and Davis laugh. Grammy personnel expressed concern that she'd be caught on camera, and that reporters would write about her behavior.

Well, luckily for everyone, I guess, reporters didn't write about this...other than using words like "loose and lively."

With the benefit of hindsight, it's easy to point fingers and scream about a massive cover-up by the entertainment industry. And if you look at the comments posted in response to the second article, people are doing just that.

But if I were there, I'm not sure that I would have gone ahead with a "stoned Whitney" story, even if I smelled alcohol on her breath. I would have been worried that I didn't have enough information to make the accusation.

Now perhaps I'd feel differently if it had been a Whitney Houston rehearsal, in which she was the focus of the afternoon. But it was a Brandy/Monica rehearsal, and as far as we know neither of them were stoned.

What are your thoughts?

(empo-tymshft) Flexible records and music distribution in the 20th century

Rob Michael was discussing something on Google+ on Wednesday.

Only us Old-Skool guys will remember this.

Soundpages from Guitar Player Magazine. Playable records that were part of the back cover of the magazine.

Remember that back in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, there was no way to download songs. Also during much of this period, the primary way to listen to your own music was via a record player, which would spin discs at 33 1/3 RPM or 45 PM (or sometimes at other speeds). These discs were usually made of vinyl, but why not make them out of other materials? As long as the material was shaped so that a needle could read the data, you could make discs out of all sorts of material - including a piece of plastic or cardboard that was attached to the back of a magazine.

Or a cereal box. As a kid, I vaguely remember owning a copy of Bobby Sherman's smash hit "Little Woman" that I got from a breakfast cereal. I can't remember how robust the record was, but it certainly brought a whole new meaning to "disposable pop."

But the record format could also be used to distribute non-musical material. One thing that I valued much more than the Bobby Sherman record was a recording that I obtained via MAD Magazine. It was an audio version of one of the stories in the magazine, "Gall in the Family Fare." Milk and Cookies describes the piece:

In the early '70s, Mad Magazine did their parody on the show "All in the Family" calling it "Gall in the Family Fare". At one point, they recorded an audio version of this and put it on an old flexi-disc record as a bonus insert in a special issue. This record is a rarity and it hasn't seen the light of day since 1973.

And for those who didn't live during the 1970s, Milk and Cookies had to print a warning:

Archie Bunker's character says a lot of horrible ethnic slurs.

This was also true of the real show. It's quite possible that "All in the Family" couldn't air on one of the broadcast networks today.

If you go to the Milk and Cookies page, you can see a YouTube video that includes both the printed and the audio versions of "Gall in the Family Fare." You'll notice that the two aren't exactly the same. Part of this is because of the distribution media involved (the audio version has to include someone announcing the name of the World War II buddy, while the printed version just shows a picture of the man). I've been wondering about some of the other differences for almost forty years - for example, why was the word "Meathead" changed to "Ding-a-Ling" in the audio recording?

So that's how music professionals like Rob Michael, and music fans like me would get free recordings back in the day. Eventually these became compact discs, and eventually those became downloads...

If you're interested in this topic, be sure to check out The Internet Museum of Flexi / Cardboard / Oddity Records. It covers the MAD magazine records, as well as musical records from the likes of the Dave Clark Five and Guns N' Roses.

The Ultimate 80s Super Duper Group - The Traveling Highwaymen

Normally when one thinks of 80s music, one things of "boys" with makeup and pianos that are smaller than a breadbox. But there were two 80s supergroups that didn't have much to do with the 80s.

The first was the (1980s, not 1950s) version of the Highwaymen. This four person supergroup brought Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, and Kris Kristofferson together. Their initial album had a cover that reminded one of Mount Rushmore, and to outlaw country fans the album was that important. In truth, only part of that first album is truly a four-person collaboration - much of the album is a set of Cash-Nelson duets.

A few years later, a supergroup called the Traveling Wilburys appeared. Technically it wasn't a supergroup, since it didn't have famous names on it, but the five performers on the album looked and sounded like Roy Orbison, Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Jeff Lynne, and Tom Petty. Their first album followed on the footsteps of some recent successes for George Harrison, and met with some success itself.

Both supergroups released subsequent albums which did not meet the same success as their initial releases.

Sadly, many of the members of these groups have passed away - the Roy Orbison lookalike passed away just after the first Wilburys album was released.

But what if you were to take the surviving members - Nelson, Kristofferson, and the lookalikes for Dylan, Lynne, and Petty - and form a super duper group around them? These four could clearly find some musical common ground, and a Dylan/Nelson duet would certainly raise eyebrows.

Reed College radio station KRRC leaves Federal control

In connection with the FM transmitter that I now have in my car to broadcast netbook output over my car radio, I recently noted that I am again an FM broadcaster.

Again, because in my college days I was a deejay on Reed College's campus radio station, KRRC.

Therefore, I was sad to learn that KRRC gave away its license a couple of months ago.

Add THE REED INSTITUTE to the list of educational institutions selling their radio stations. REED (better known as liberal arts institution REED COLLEGE) is transferring noncommercial Variety KRRC/PORTLAND to COMMON FREQUENCY, INC. for no consideration. The college moved its programming to online-only in NOVEMBER.

I went to Reed's website, but learned little more:

The campus radio station, KRRC, moved to a strictly online format in November 2011. Check here for access information once it is up and running. This station has been entirely student-run since 1955. While it has changed call letters and its location on the dial over the years, it has retained the same independent and creative spirit. KRRC plays a wide range of genres and formats day and night during the school year. Among the many genres you will hear on the station are pop/rock, hip-hop, bluegrass/country, jazz, reggae, funk/disco, punk/hardcore, and indie rock/postpunk.

Unfortunately, as of today there is no additional information on KRRC's online broadcasting. But it's an interesting move, since by going online and by relinquishing its place on the public airwaves, KRRC is no longer under U.S. government control. Well, except for U.S. government control of the Internet.

And yes, this is not the first time that I talked about KRRC online. This post quotes a 1982 mention of the station that I made on Usenet.

Don Cornelius is dead

Just yesterday I was in a conversation on Google+, and I recalled something that Bernie Brillstein had said about Los Angeles. Brillstein was John Belushi's manager, and after his death Brillstein observed that people came out to beautiful Los Angeles and got all messed up. Except I don't think Brillstein used the phrase "messed up."

Then this morning I read this about Don Cornelius:

A person at the producer’s house on Mulholland Drive in the Sherman Oaks neighborhood called the police and reported that shots had been fired just before 4 a.m., a police spokesman, Chris No, said. When officers arrived, they were let into the house and found Mr. Cornelius lying lifeless on the floor. He was rushed to a local hospital where he was pronounced dead. He was 75 years old.

Anyone of a certain age will recall Don Cornelius' voice, and while Dick Clark did the whole "play music and show people dancing" thing before Cornelius did, there's no doubt that his show "Soul Train" was influential throughout music, television, and society.

I just wonder what demons drove someone to kill Don Cornelius - or what drove Don Cornelius to kill himself. (As I write this, the circumstances of his death are still under investigation.)

This report suggests that Cornelius suffered from dementia, but I don't know if this has been confirmed.

About the REAL ethnomusicologist

I recently wrote a parody post of the typical biography of some forgotten blues musician, including the obligatory part where some guy from up North comes down to the South to record the blues genius.

Well, the New York Times reports on efforts to disseminate the work of one of the REAL field recording pioneers, Alan Lomax. Perhaps Lomax never recorded Boney Eyes McGee, but he didn't do too badly:

[H]is vast archive [included] some 5,000 hours of sound recordings, 400,000 feet of film, 3,000 videotapes, 5,000 photographs and piles of manuscripts....

Starting in the mid-1930s, when he made his first field recordings in the South, Lomax was the foremost music folklorist in the United States. He was the first to record Muddy Waters and Woody Guthrie, and much of what Americans have learned about folk and traditional music stems from his efforts, which were also directly responsible for the folk music and skiffle booms in the United States and Britain that shaped the pop-music revolution of the 1960s and beyond.

The Times noted that the Cultural Equity website is expanding is online collection; soon Lomax's entire collection will be available in digital form, for streaming or for online purchase.

Boney Eyes McGee (1899-1952)

Boney Eyes McGee (1899-1952) was born in Moscow, Alabama, the fourth of seven children. After his parents died in a mule accident, Boney lived with his father's fourth wife in Lea, Mississippi. It was his stepmother who originally taught him the ukelele, which he would play on Sundays outside of the church where the rest of his family worshipped. Since he worked six days a week (sometimes seven) as a cotton farmer, he never thought of making music his career.

However, after he spent two years in prison for killing his stepsister's lover, Boney came to the attention of Frederick C. Watkins III, an audio historian from the Smithsonian who made the first field recordings of Boney. This resulted in a recording contract with Mortimer Zehnder's Field Sweetheart Records. While Boney recorded several sides for the label, Zehnder never paid him, citing business difficulties, and Boney eventually died penniless in Brooklyn.

While his talents were appreciated in northwest Alabama and among post-doctoral musicologists, he remained unknown to the world at large until Rebecca Black sampled Boney's song "That Woman Can't Cook" as part of Black's comeback single "I Want to Dance All Spring." The resulting royalties were paid to a descendant of Mortimer Zehnder, an unidentified woman who reportedly lives in Mississippi.

Musicologists agree that the early version of "That Woman Can't Cook," recorded by Watkins, is superior to the subsequent commercially released version. The original lyrics went as follows:

Oh that woman, she burned the corn
Oh that woman, she sleeps all morn
When that woman done cooked the hog
It tasted worse than a mossy log
No that woman can't cook at all
But she treats me fine

For some unknown reason, Watkins' recording ended in mid-song.

P.S. Regrettably, this item originated from a private Google+ share, so I cannot point you to the source that inspired this biography. However, I can direct you to a public posting of the "What's Your Blues Name?" calculator. And if you read the biography very closely, you may be able to figure out who let me know about this particular calculator...

Amazing Moments in Recording History - Breaking the Language Barrier

For those who missed the 1970s, you may not know the story of Silver Convention, a German group whose singers managed to master all of the words of this song, despite the fact that all of the lyrics of the song were in a non-German language. Hear for yourself.



Oddly enough, two of the three members of Silver Convention at the time adopted English stage names. Linda Übelherr went by the stage name Linda G. Thompson, and Gertrude Wirschinger went by the name Penny McLean. Ramona Kraft was using the name Ramona Wulf by the time Silver Convention became a band (previously studio singers had been used).

Apparently the song was subsequently covered by the band Static-X. I learned this via an entry at the songmeanings.net website.

Yes, the Song Meanings site has an entry for "Get Up and Boogie." Unfortunately, no one speculated about the meaning of the song. There is only one entry.

Sorry to say this but this is probably the worst song ever by Static-X or by any other metal band.

Metal? METAL? Yes.



Of course, Static-X had an unfair advantage. Unlike Linda, Penny, et al, Static-X are native English speakers.

And native English hearers. Presumably one of the reasons why Silver Convention's biggest hits had sparse lyrics was because the songs were intended for release not only in West Germany, but also in France, Spain, and a number of countries that spoke a number of different languages. In such an environment, it helps when the song includes easily-understood phrases such as "Get up and boogie" and "That's right."

(empo-tuulwey) How "Believe" by Cher Became an Auto-Tune Pioneer

I do not believe that tools are bad. I just believe that sometimes tools are badly used.

Take Auto-Tune. There have been some atrocious things done with that. But one of the first uses of Auto-Tune still stands up as one of the best - despite the fact that the tool was used on the voice of a singer who doesn't NEED Auto-Tune.

I am speaking of the Cher song "Believe." The song has an interesting history and took several years and a ton of songwriters to write it. But even after an acceptable version of the song was written, there was still something missing. Cher and her team got tired of struggling with the song, and took a break to listen to some music on a CD. (An explanation to my younger listeners: back in the 20th century, the "stores" at which people bought music were real physical stores, and music was sold on physical media rather than as downloads. Those were the days, my friend.)

On one song the vocals were processed through a vocoder to sound mechanical. Cher remembers suggesting that they add something like that to '"Believe.'"

English songwriter Mark Taylor tried doing something with the then-new Auto-Tune...and then he got cold feet. Anyone who has heard Cher knows that she has a strong, distinctive voice. How would she feel about her voice being altered?

"We high-fived," Cher said. "It was like some stupid 'Rocky' film."

Cher's admiration for the result, however, was not universal. But Cher has been around some forceful people in her life (Phil Spector, Sonny Bono) and knew how to wield power.

Cher said. "I said, 'You can change that part of it, over my dead body!' And that was the end of the discussion. I said to Mark before I left, 'Don't let anyone touch this track, or I'm going to rip your throat out.'"

And no one changed the track. That rough mix became the final version of the song.

And a successful final version it was. Hear it for yourself:



Once Cher's song became a hit, a lot of people began using Auto-Tune for a variety of reasons, so much that it became like the Comic Sans font - another tool that has its place in certain situations, but it not good for universal use.

This guideline from a Hometracked post has merit:

If an effect significantly changes the sound of a track, especially one so important as the lead vocal, be sure that change improves the song before committing it to the mix.

Take a look at this list of ten songs (including "Believe" and Daft Punk's "One More Time") and decide for yourself if Auto-Tune improved the songs listed.

Yes, Fab Morvan has some thoughts on auto-tune

A few days ago, Bruce Bates shared a Milli Vanilli video on Google+. I ended up doing some associated reading, and came across a two-year old interview with Fab Morvan. At the time, twenty years had passed since the revelation that Morvan and partner Rob Pilatus did not sing on the songs attributed to Milli Vanilli. But twenty years is a long time, so PopEater asked Morvan to share his thoughts on auto-tune.

I have to say something and be clear about it. When people say: "Well, you didn't sing on the record"... OK, cool. I didn't. But to be technical, when someone records in a studio and Auto-Tune does your job, it isn't you anymore. It could be anyone, because you're not doing it anymore, the machine is doing it. So, are you doing it? When it comes time to perform it live, you can't replicate it. So when people say 'You should sing on the record, man.' Well, yeah, but now technically a lot of the people who are singing on the record with Auto-Tune aren't doing their job.

I'm not criticizing anyone in particular, I'm just observing what's going on, that's all. I see some comments saying we didn't sing on the record, but I just want to be precise because I've never gotten a chance to say that clearly. It's like, what's the point of singing with Auto-Tune? It's not you! Then you got the video, but that's the way things are now. People don't seem to care. The new generation doesn't seem to care about music now, because a lot of people are stealing it ... but that's whole other thing.

Once your voice has been doctored to a point where we don't even know it's you -- I'm not talking about people who do it as a style or to fit a certain song, because the goal was to make it sound like that and it's a gimmick. I'm talking about singers, pop singers, who without it -- ain't nothing going, baby. I'm trying to have people look at them. I'm just trying to bring up another point for discussion. I'm tired of people always pointing the finger at me and criticizing when in fact, look a little closer at everyone out there and inform yourself more.

Valid point.

Spell Czech - knowing Billy Idol, perhaps Spinner got it right

Director David Fincher was interviewed at Moviefone, and portions of the interview were quoted at Spinner. Fincher has directed music videos, including one for the Billy Idol hit "Cradle of Love." Idol was in a motorcycle accident just before the video shoot, and Fincher commented on this. However, when Spinner reprinted Fincher's quote, they made a little typing error.

We shot him from the waste up....

Or maybe they didn't.

In Old England Town - a brilliant mess

I hate Jeff Lynne as a producer of other artists. Not as much as I hate Eddie Van Halen as a guitarist, but it's a close second. In my view, Lynne has the production "talent" to make artists as diverse as George Harrison and Roy Orbison sound like bad knockoff versions of the Electric Light Orchestra. And I like the Electric Light Orchestra; I just don't like bad imitations.

Electric Light Orchestra, or ELO, went through various phases in their career. Some of you probably recall the end of their career, when songs like "All Over the World" and "Xanadu" were pretty anthems for the disco era. But ELO's early pop songs were a little rougher.

And their earlier songs were rougher still.

I've never heard ELO's first album, but I used to own ELO's second album on cassette, back in the days when cassette was decidedly inferior to the then-dominant vinyl LP. ELO's second album contained five very long songs, and when CBS produced the cassette version, they didn't bother with things like proper sequencing - in fact, one of the songs began on side 1 of the cassette and ended on side 2 of the cassette. (At the time, no one realized that within a few years, with the appearance of the compact disc, albums wouldn't have sides any more.)

The second album is most famous for ELO's reworking of the old song "Roll Over Beethoven." With ELO's fairly unique lineup, they were obviously able to introduce classical elements into the song, but the final version was more than a rock-classical hybrid. It was, to use a technical musical term, a "mess" of various sounds, all merged together by Lynne's decidedly unsmooth voice singing "Roll over Beethoven!"

And that was one of the slicker songs on the album.

For a song that is the direct opposite of "Xanadu," take a listen to "In Old England Town (Boogie #2)". This live version, which is fairly close to the studio version, starts with an introduction that is nothing like what anyone else was doing in rock or even progressive music at the time. So enjoy the instrumental introduction, and brace yourself for what happens at about 1:40.



Now you may think that this is just a really off live performance, but again, this performance sounds pretty similar to what ended up on the studio recording. And what that studio recording had was Jeff Lynne, barking lyrics that sounded like they came from one of Monty Python's Flying Circus "Gumby" characters - you know, the ones that would scream "I hit me head on the table!"

So what the heck was Lynne barking about in the song? According to elyrics, the song begins like this:

Down, down, you can see them all
rising gaily to the top
keep on rising babe you know you got a long drop
you better cling cos it's the done thing

And then it gets really weird. Especially at the "ten thousand tons of waste" part. (Trust me on this one.)

For some reason, this song was not as commercially successful as "Xanadu." In fact, according to Wikipedia, the song appeared on the B side of an ELO single, but with the lyric portions omitted.

Going home? Gary, Indiana, home of the Jackson 5

While musing on the Randy Newman song "Baltimore," I ran across an account that claimed that by the time Newman's song was released, Baltimore was actually staging a comeback. Now the Baltimore of 1968 - THAT was bad. Kind of like a 300 year old version of Gary, Indiana, according to the account.

Which reminded me of the story of Gary's most famous residents - the Jackson 5. You will recall that the Jackson 5 hailed from Gary, Indiana, but left at the first opportunity. Which makes sense - one of the main reasons that Papa Joe put the band together was to keep his boys out of trouble. I'm sure it was an easy decision for the family to flee to southern California.

But the Jackson 5 were not done with Gary. As a publicity move (which resulted in a TV special and an album), they returned in 1971. The J5 Collector blog records the result. Excerpts:

It was reported with a photo spread in the March 22, 1971, issue of Soul. Check out the security guard looking directly at the camera on the far right side of the first photo, and again in the last photo on the far left side. It looks like he wasn't thrilled with the photographers.

Spec teen magazine reported on the return in their July 1971 issue, claiming it was "the happiest day of their lives!" All of the photos suggest otherwise. In fact, the J5 look about as happy as their security guard.

Someone visited Gary in 2010 with the specific intention of visiting sites crucial to the Jackson 5's development. However, the account sounds rather depressing in patches.

Michael and some of his siblings attended Garnett Elementary School. It was closed, then reopened as an adult education center called Martin Luther King, Jr. Academy. It was closed again, but appeared to be reopened as of March, 2010 as Images of Hope, Inc....

Horace Mann High School is reported to have housed the only contest in which the Jackson 5 lost. The school appears to be vacant now....

This is where Michael and his siblings were born. The building is now vacant....

Katherine, Michael's mother, worked at Sears in the late 1950s/early 1960s. The building appears to be vacant but looks exactly as it did when the story first opened.

For more pictures of abandoned buildings in Gary, see this 2006 collection and this 2011 collection. But you can expect this when a city's population declines from 178,320 in 1960 to 80,294 in 2010.

And even if ALL of the Jacksons had remained in Gary, that fact wouldn't have changed much.

Stuff you probably already knew about Elvis Costello's dad

I knew that Elvis Costello's real name was Declan MacManus, but I didn't know anything else about his family. Turns out his family was a musical one. Last month, The Music's Over published a post on Elvis' dad, Ross MacManus, who passed away on November 25. Highlight:

In 1997, he released the album Elvis’ Dad Sings Elvis, but in this case the Elvis he honored was Elvis Presley.

Dad and son appeared together on several recordings.

And yes, dad wore glasses also.