Morrissey's new song, "There is a Heater That Sometimes Goes Out"

Take me out tonight
Where there's music and there's people
Who paid to hear me live
Driving in your car
I never never want to go home
Because I haven't got one
Anymore

Take me out tonight
Because there are a bunch people
And they want to hear me live
Driving in your car
Oh, please don't drop me home
Because it's not my home, it's their
Home, and I'm welcome no more

And if a heater goes bust
Freezing both of us
To die by your side
Is such a heavenly way to die
And if a paper cut
Kills the both of us
To die by your side
Well, the pleasure - the privilege is mine

There is a heater that sometimes goes out
There is a heater that sometimes goes out

"Climbing"

You might have noticed a bit of public quiet on the Ontario Emperor front. After releasing at least one song every month, nothing at all has been released to the Ontario Emperor Bandcamp page (or the Wasp the Houseboy page, for that matter), since June.

If you are a member of the Ontario Emperor group on Facebook, you saw me hinting at the reasons.

...the June release of "Drains to Ocean" was hectic, with some after-the-last-minute changes (including the removal of the song "Drains to Ocean" from the collection "Drains to Ocean").

I characterized this as a #FirstWorldProblem - after all, I didn't die or anything.

But I haven't released any new material either.

Yet for some unknown reason, my OntarioEmperor Facebook page has been drawing attention lately, so I thought I'd start reposting some of the old stuff there.

As a result, I've found myself listening to the featured song from "Drains to Ocean" a lot lately. That song is called "Climbing," and I've reproduced it below.

Band on the march

I was in marching band in high school, and I remember how we would not only play your traditional Sousa-like songs at football games, but also then-contemporary songs. Our band's playlist included the Star Wars theme and "Disco Duck," and I still remember a trumpet player who would solo on "Rise" any chance he got.

Yes, the image of marching bands is true Americana.

Hold my wine.

A marching band performed at today's Bastille Day celebrations.

And, to the delight of some in the audience (but not others), this band continued in the "be contemporary" tradition by playing a medley of songs by French band Daft Punk.

While Spin makes a big deal about Trump's stone-faced reaction, that's not the only highlight of the video. My favorite occurs at about 1:22 into the video, as some older French veterans kinda sorta clap along to "Get Lucky."

And just think, nobody thought this would 'last"

In 1994, Mr. and Mrs. Michael Jackson appeared at the MTV Video Music Awards. Mr. Jackson commented on their marriage, saying, "And just think, nobody thought this would last." The couple then kissed. (Spoiler: it didn't last.)

Mrs. Jackson was, and is, better known by her birth name of Lisa Marie Presley. While she has recorded three full-length albums to date, her former husband (since deceased) had slightly more success in the music industry. While I don't think I've ever listened to a Lisa Marie Presley song, I have listened to Michael Jackson songs 158 times since 2007.

How do I know this?

Because I have gotten myself into ruts at times.

For several years after I graduated from college, I would repeatedly go to the Jack in the Box on Archibald and Arrow and order a side salad with ranch dressing.

For a nearly ten year period, I would record my whereabouts in a series of books. I can't remember how many, but I know it was less than 26; I had an "A" book, but never created a "Z" book.

For almost as long, I played in various Starfleet Commander universes.

And, since Thursday, July 26, 2007, I have repeatedly "scrobbled" many of the songs that I hear. Over 170,000 times.

Why?

Initially, scrobbling songs on last.fm allowed me to hear the songs. In those days, last.fm actually hosted the songs, and I was able to listen to the songs for free. A couple of years later, I even hosted six of my own songs on last.fm itself.

Then, over the years, last.fm reduced its functionality while other services such as Spotify increased theirs. I can't directly listen to songs on last.fm any more, but I can record ("scrobble") the songs that I listen to on Spotify, Bandcamp, YouTube, and other services...sometimes. My Bandcamp and YouTube scrobbles are dependent upon a Chrome extension, which works fine in Windows, but doesn't work on iOS. And many services don't support scrobbling at all.

So one morning while I was driving to work, Spotify scrobbling away on my iPhone, I asked myself, "What benefit am I receiving from giving last.fm all of my scrobbling data?" I could identify the benefits from giving certain data (such as this post) to Google, Facebook, and other services, but the value proposition for last.fm has disappeared over the years. What's more, my devotion to last.fm has led me to shun other non-scrobbling services for no good reason.

Often when I get into these ruts, I suddenly snap out of them. One day I didn't get a side salad at Jack in the Box. One day I put my book down and stopped recording where I was. One day I let my planets in the Starfleet Commander universes all die. These actions gave me a sense of freedom.

Well, after listening to one last song (the top one on thie list), I disabled my Chrome extension and turned off scrobbling in my Spotify app.

I may not keep scrobbling turned off forever. After all, I quit Foursquare at one point just to join it again a while later.

But now I have the freedom to listen to songs and not worry about the documentation of them.

Robert Smith, approved by the Comics Code Authority?

Continuing on the general theme of repurposing music, what would happen if my favorite Cure song, "A Forest," appeared as a comic book?

Yes, I can quibble about the cover, since Robert Smith didn't become Edward Scissorhands until AFTER "A Forest" was released, but it's still brilliant.

This is from a collection of Cure songs reimagined as comic book covers by Butcher Billy.

Butcher Billy has also reimagined love songs as Stephen King book covers. How deep IS your love? (H/T Laughing Squid.)

P.S. going off on a tangent: you'll note that Butcher Billy even went through the trouble of reproducing the "Approved by the Comics Code Authority" emblem on his comic book covers - which is definitely humorous. For a history of the Comics Code Authority, and how William Gaines and Stan Lee (working for Richard Nixon) reacted to it, read this.

This Charming Charlie revisited

So anyway, this happened some time ago. (I'm writing this post an unspecified amount of time before its publication.) One day, I was informed at work that a particular item, which was declared "final" at one point but had then gone through a second and third revision, had just gone through a fourth revision.

So I did the best thing I could do under the circumstances.

I took a walk. (I needed the steps anyway.)

So I put my earbuds in and started Spotify on my phone.

And what song came up?

The Smiths' "How Soon Is Now".

And yes, that's the song that includes the lyric published in the "This Charming Charlie" comic strip that I shared in 2013.

Musical skills are handy - or, how an optical organ manufacturer got caught up in Watergate

In business, there are many circumstances in which you will make one deal in order to get another deal. And while I was reading about various 1970s organs, I ran across an intriguing story.

Richard Nixon was well-known as a piano player, although as several sources note, Nixon often proclaimed that he could only play in the key of G. But he was clearly interested in the instrument, and although he wasn't going to join the German band Kraftwerk on stage, it would make sense for keyboard manufacturers to court the President.

This explains the series of letters documented here. In brief, Miner Industries offered to give President Nixon an Optigan (optical organ) for his enjoyment, and offered to have musical director Michael LeDoux personally install the Optigan at the Western White House in San Clemente, California.

By PMDrive1061 - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link
Sounds simple, right?

Except for the fact that this series of letters was written on July 24, 1974. (A stamp on one of the letters indicates that it was received in Orange, California on July 29.)

And the fact that LeDoux had extensive experience in audio, having worked on the Talking Barbie, as well as the discs used by the Optigan.

Now what would be the significance of having an audio expert visit the Nixon Administration in July 1974?

According to Pea Hicks' recollection of something that LeDoux said (he has since passed away), the delivery of the Optigan to San Clemente was a pretext for something else.

...apparently Mike was known by someone associated with Nixon as a skilled audio tape editor, and given the Optigan office’s fairly close proximity to the Western White House, he was recruited to consult on a possible editing job of the famous “smoking gun” tapes...

The entire story is here.

Of course, by the time LeDoux received the letters on July 29, the House Judiciary Committee was passing the second of three articles of impeachment. Two days later, on July 31, Alexander Haig and Ron Ziegler privately told President Nixon that the smoking gun tape was "devastating" to Nixon's cause. The next day, August 1, Haig would tell Vice President Gerald Ford about the "smoking gun" tape (and kinda sorta mention various things about pardons).

The time for consulting audio experts had passed.

New Ontario Emperor album "Drains to Ocean" now available on Bandcamp

Ontario Emperor's latest synthetica release is self-described as greatest electronic album ever

Empoprises announces that musical artist Ontario Emperor has released a new 12-song album entitled "Drains to Ocean." This newest instrumental collection is available electronically on the "ontarioemperor" page at Bandcamp (ontarioemperor.bandcamp.com).

This is Ontario Emperor's fourth Bandcamp release. Ontario Emperor's music was originally released on mp3.com in 1999 and 2000. After mp3.com ceased operations, Ontario Emperor released a free track on GeoCities. After GeoCities ceased operations, Ontario Emperor released a free collection of songs on last.fm. After last.fm ceased hosting music files, it was on to Bandcamp. As of June 2017, Ontario Emperor has not yet succeeded in closing Bandcamp down.

The marketing flack who is pretending to speak for Ontario Emperor put some new words in his mouth for this release. "Yes, I am self-proclaiming this to be the greatest electronic album ever," stated Ontario. "And in all honesty, the songs are more developed than the ones on my previous releases. Each of the twelve songs evokes a particular mood, although I will leave it to the listener to determine what these moods may be."

Empoprises' John E. Bredehoft also had some words put into his mouth. "Our experience with Bandcamp has been very fruitful," Bredehoft supposedly said. "We look forward to expanding our relationship with Bandcamp in the future."

The twelve songs can be previewed on Bandcamp. Purchase of the album, or of selected individual songs, allows unlimited streaming as well as download of the song files.

Other Ontario Emperor releases on Bandcamp include the six-song "Relusion," the ten-song "Salad," and the song "Bare Plate," all available at ontarioemperor.bandcamp.com. Empoprises also manages the musical career of Wasp the Houseboy, whose individual songs can be found at waspthehouseboy.bandcamp.com.

#empkamperz "Moonshadow Park," Jacob Walter

#emukamperz "Grimshaw Road," Durham County Poets

#emukamperz "Mermaid's Song," Janice Kephart & Stuart Lynch

#emukamperz "Family Says... (Refugees Welcome)," Helen Sventitsky

#emukamperz "Obnoxious Blocks," Poppy

#emukamperz "DO IT! (ft. Shia LaBeouf)," ΛDRIΛNWΛVE

#emukamperz "Plate," Ontario Emperor

My God is Color Blind...and has apparently visited Alexandria, Indiana

Years ago, I wrote about the rarity of my love for Eddie Murphy's song "My God is Color Blind."

In a world of billions of people, I was able to find a few (via YouTube comments) who shared my admiration for the song.

Via blog comments, I've found another one:

I was on the radio the other day & Eddie Murphy's singing career came up. Party all the Time was of course the first song mentioned. But it reminded of my youth back in the mid 80's and that I had this album (I may have had it on cassette, not real clear on that). Anyway, like you, I started thinking about that one song I REALLY liked on the album but drew a blank. I looked up the album on iTunes & BAM - there it was - My God is Color Blind! I immediately downloaded it & have been listening to it in the car over and over on the way to work! I then started thinking I was probably the only other person in the world who liked this song so I googled it & found this blog. I don't know you - I've never heard of your blog - but we shall forever be link together by the ballad of Eddie Murphy! Blue, black or white, you can be a friend of mine!

Steve Koester
Alexandria, Indiana

Note that Steve didn't say anything about the second side of "Total Devo," however. As I said in 2009, "So I can't win them all."

#emukamperz "Level Minus," Wasp the Houseboy

#emukamperz "Get Ready 2 Move," Rahsheen

#emukamperz "Ringed By Lovers," Helen Sventitsky

#emukamperz "Suburban Encyclopedia," Ontario Emperor

#emukamperz Introduction

Ever since I first became involved with Bandcamp, I've really like their embeddable music players - especially how they embed into blog posts (although the display of Bandcamp links in Twitter and Facebook isn't shabby either).

So, I thought to myself, why not just embed a bunch of stuff?

As the meme says, brace yourselves - embedded Bandcamp songs are coming.

And while I obviously won't be shy about sharing Ontario Emperor and Wasp the Houseboy songs, other Bandcampers are coming also.

And I call myself a...creator

It is a truism that there are many more consumers of content than creators of content. And now that I am not only a blogger, but also a publicized electronic music performer, I guess I can claim to be one of the few creators of content.

I took a break from creating for a few days after Ontario Emperor's "Relusion" was released, but I decided to plunge back in this afternoon. There are a number of songs that I'm working on right now, and I'm still tweaking a few of them before I convert them from MIDI form to a form for your enjoyment.

So I started working on the first song, "Older Rag," and tweaked a few things here and there. Sadly, I realized that the song is in no final shape. Things aren't sounding quite right.

I moved on to the next song, "Saint," and did some more tweaking. But that one isn't ready either.

On to the third song, "Curb." Same story. Before I took my break of a few days, I was under the impression that these songs were just about ready, but none of them sounded right.

So I moved on to the fourth song, "Initialism." I had been working on this one for a while - it's a mood piece, slightly similar to "Suburban Encyclopedia" from "Relusion," only with more (obvious) form. But as I started to listen to "Initialism," I realized that there was definitely a problem.

And it only took me a minute to figure out what the problem was.

I was playing the Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth sounds, not the improved Timbres of Heaven soundfont that I had loaded back in March.

No wonder the songs sounded so bad (or, if you don't like my music at all, why the songs sounded even worse than normal).

What had changed on my computer over the last few days? Well, for one, I had installed the Windows 10 Creators Update. I don't know if that was what caused the glitch, but it would be ironic if the Creators update interfered with my creating.

So first I went back to the Coolsoft Virtual MIDI Synth site, discovered that I had an outdated version of the software, uninstalled my old version, and reinstalled the new one.

Then I went back to the Timbres of Heaven site and re-read the instructions.

Next, create a new folder named "SoundFonts" in a logical place that you will not forget, e.g. "C:\SoundFonts".

I had forgotten, but luckily I followed Don Allen's suggestion and created a directory called "Soundfonts" on my C drive. The Timbres of Heaven files were still there. So I just had to follow the steps to add Timbres of Heaven to my new version of Virtual MIDI Synth, and I was back in business.

Back when I wrote my March post, the main reason that I wrote it was not for you, but for me. I figured that at some point I'd get access to a different computer and have to reload everything on that computer, so I wanted to remember how to do it. And what better place to stash the instructions than on my music blog?

I didn't realize that I would have to re-examine that post in less than three months.

In closing, I figured that I'd share the aforementioned "Suburban Encyclopedia" again. And by the way, while my songs usually sell for $1 each (with some discounts if you purchase the entire album), the song "Suburban Encyclopedia" has an official price of "name your price."

Which means that you could name a price of $0.00 and download it for free. I wouldn't complain.

Or you could name a price of $1,000.00. I DEFINITELY wouldn't complain.

Reminds me of a story from a fake Rolling Stone parody. In the story, which was set at about the time that everyone except Tom Petty was starting to charge an astronomical $9.98 for a 40 minute album, the Eagles were reportedly setting the price for their next album at $5 million. When asked who would buy an album at that price, the Eagles (according to the fake article) responded, "We only need one."

On to "Suburban Encyclopedia," which doesn't sound like the Eagles. Or Tom Petty.

Ontario Emperor Releases First Half-Length Album in Over Seven Years #relusion

I promised that I wouldn't write a ridiculous press release this time around, but I did want to let everybody know that Ontario Emperor has released a mini-album, "Relusion," as a follow-up to the full-length "Salad" album.

"Relusion" has six songs - not just the three songs "Relusion One," "Relusion Two," and "Relusion Three," but also the twin pieces "Sober Introspection" and "Toxic Rigidity," and the extra song "Suburban Encyclopedia."

I've already talked about "Relusion One" here, but I should probably share a few thoughts about "Suburban Encyclopedia." Yes, it's sort of named after a very popular website, while in essence being in opposition to everything about that site.

And everything about all of the other Ontario Emperor songs that have been released.

From my perspective, I have to worry about the Ontario Emperor songs getting formulaic - four measures of this, four measures of that, chorus! Back, jack, do it again.

So "Suburban Encyclopedia" throws form to the winds (on one level), taking various snippets from the other songs on "Relusion" and throwing them together to pleasure your little treasure (despite my thoughts on that particular Depeche Mode song). The song certainly strays far from verse chorus verse land, but doesn't quite get to ambient territory. Maybe I'll play with that at another time.

Oh, and one more thing about "Suburban Encyclopedia" - it's the "name your price" track on "Relusion," so you can download it for free if you're so inclined. (But I won't pay you to download it. I don't go that far.)

"Relusion" is at Bandcamp, and as before, you can preview the songs a few times before having to buy them. Once you buy them, you get unlimited streaming on bandcamp.com, plus the ability to download them to your favorite device.

Enjoy.



And now that "Relusion" is out of the way, I can return to working on my forthcoming full-length album. As of now, "For a Meaningful Apocryphal Animation" HAS made the cut (I completed it, adding and subtracting as I planned.)

P.S. If you're one of those people who takes the time to follow the links that I embed in my posts, you know how I feel about Waylon Jennings' cover versions. He has another good cover out there.

Why the Urban Dictionary is wrong about #relusion

(Yes, I'm breaking my no posts on Sunday rule. You'll see why.)

In the various gradations of real and fake news, Urban Dictionary sits somewhere between the BBC and Politicus USA.

But in this case I think they got it wrong.

Word usued (sic) exclusively by atheists to describe some who is ignorent (sic) to science and fact and convinced that the holy scriptures of their religion is fact

First off, the word "relusion" is not exclusively used by atheists. I am a theist, and I am using the term right now, and will use it very frequently in the coming weeks - as you will see.

Second, that meaning is incorrect. I need to go to Wiktionary and tell the world what it really means.

Or perhaps I'll just do it right here right now.

You see, relusion is not a portmanteau of religion and delusion. It is a portmanteau of reunivorce and illusion.

And now all of you are wondering what a reunivorce is.

Well, "Reunivorce" was a song that I wrote a few decades ago, back when I was more actively writing song lyrics. The song had a deeply meaningful chorus.

Mikey drink your cereal
It is good for you
Mikey drink your cereal
It is good for you

And you wonder why I've taken a break on writing lyrics.

And while the remaining lyrics of "Reunivorce" have a theistic background, you can't really say that they're based upon the factuality of the Bible. Heck, it's not like the lyrics to "Now the Green Blade Riseth" or anything.

Of course, "Now the Green Blade Riseth" can itself be interpreted in a non-Scriptural way, as just a fertility thingie. Who would comprehend? But some that do lay claim divine purpose blesses them, that's not what I believe and it doesn't matter anyway.

But I'm still not sure.

Do you see what I did there?

Well, pretty soon you'll be able to HEAR what I did there, because I've changed the Ontario Emperor song release order plan around a little bit. I think. You see, I've been dropping hints about the album that I've been working on, even as I'm completing songs for the album. Initially I planned to include three songs toward the end of that album - "Relusion One," "Relusion Two," and "Relusion Three." But I just decided to release those three songs BEFORE the other ones.

Stay tuned to ontarioemperor.bandcamp.com for updates on the appearance of "Relusion."

Now as to that song "Relusion One," parts of the song have the feel of my old song "Reunivorce." And the chorus appropriates the opening notes of "Now the Green Blade Riseth." And if you listen closely, you can also hear three notes from "Illusion." (Not enough to warrant a sharing of composing credits, IMHO.)

And then there's the ending of "Relusion Three." At one point toward the end, you hear some descending notes, then some ascending notes, then a mish-mash of stuff including some descending notes, and then descending/ascending notes again. It's almost like the song is trying to say something.

And not about how cereal improves your life.

(Incidentally, I don't plan a press release for "Relusion" when and if it does come out. Because of the anticipated shortness of the collection, it doesn't meet the press release criteria that I just made up and will forget about later. So, instead of getting the simulated interaction between a marketing expert and his clients, you get these song stories. And now you wish I had just done another press release.)

Now this is a playlist

I create roughly 4-5 playlists a month. For the most part, they follow my CDO[1]-inspired naming convention consisting of the letters "Emu" (standing for "Empoprise-MU," of course), followed by a four-digit year, a two-digit month, and a letter.

So, the first playlist that I created in the month of May, 2017 was named "Emu201705a."

Each playlist normally includes between 15 and 30 songs. Sometimes a few less, sometimes a few more.

And then there's my playlist Emu201705c.

And it's fair to describe this playlist as...varied. Here are just 10 of the 140 songs on this playlist:

"Whammy Kiss," the B-52's
"Underground Rocket," Bruce Wyman
"Wishing You Were Here," Chicago
"Under The Milky Way," The Church
"Fox On The Run," The Country Gentlemen
"My God Is Color Blind," Eddie Murphy
"Ringed By Lovers," Helen Sventitsky
"Ultraviolence," Lana Del Rey
"Plate," Ontario Emperor[2]
"Tumbling Tumbleweeds," Sons of the Pioneers

[1] Or, OCD in which the letters are in alphabetical order.
[2] This is a local file on my home computer, and thus playable by Spotify on that computer. Since the song is not on Spotify itself, you can't stream it. But you can listen to it via Bandcamp.

Driving While Musicing, even without Don Allen (and Wasp the Houseboy news)

You know those inspirational animations or videos that you see on the Internet? They're usually completely unsourced, but are designed to move your soul. Usually they have wording that reads something like this.

One day an elderly man was at the beach.
He was a veteran of the war.
No, not a military war.
He was a veteran of the War on Poverty.
He lost both his legs in the Second Battle of the Office of Economic Opportunity.
He lost his left arm in the Hearst Food Distribution in 1974.
He lost his right arm two decades later, during the Clinton Welfare Reform skirmishes.
So he was there at the beach, thinking about the twists and turns in his life.
Just then a stray dog wandered up to him.
The dog licked the man's wounds.
The dog gave the man his own dry dog food.
The dog used his nose to push his half-full water dish over to the man.
The man ate and drank, the first meal that he had had in two hours.
This allowed the elderly man to survive and face another day.
This reminds us that the dogs of war are always less powerful than the dogs of peace.

As these words scroll on the screen, they are superimposed upon a picture of something beautiful and inspirational. Something like this.

Yes, I've used a form of this picture before, for a song for my alternate music project, Wasp the Houseboy. (No, I haven't publicly mentioned this outside of Facebook before. So this is a scoop for the open Internet.)



And you may see a form of the picture again for my main music project, Ontario Emperor. Because while I am not assembling one of those inspirational thingies, I am working on the beautiful music that would go with one of them.

At the moment, the song is called "For a Meaningful Apocryphal Animation." Although it's not yet complete, I really like the way that it's sounding so far - so much so that I wanted to listen to it on the way to work this morning. But rather than haul my personal computer into my car and playing the song from there, I simply used the MIDI Opener app from my phone and played it that way.

Now this is not a perfect solution - among other things, I don't have Don Allen's Timbres of Heaven soundfont (previously mentioned) on my phone, so I was just using a pretty basic soundfont. But it still let me listen to the basics of the MIDI file, and since MIDI Opener can auto-repeat, I could listen all the way to work, hands-free.

In fact, the bad sound actually helped, because I could pay attention to some of the other details in the song. Like how I need to add three percussive sounds to transition from the chorus to the second (verseless) verse. And how I have too many danged notes in the first (verseless) verse, so I probably ought to get rid of a few of them.

I'll keep you posted on the progres of "For a Meaningful Apocryphal Animation," as well as other stuff, as appropriate. I can't really take five years off between albums, so you'll probably hear about this sooner rather than later.

Not-so-lurid tales behind the songs on Ontario Emperor's "Salad"

Originally I was going to entitle this post "Lurid tales..." but I couldn't make up any convincing ones. Not that I didn't try.

It took both Van Halen brothers AND Tommy Lee to drag Ontario Emperor out of the bathroom stall at Gazzarri's, the needle still sticking in the Emperor's arm. A gram of blow was enough to get Ontario going again, and he immediately stumbled to the piano and played the piano riff for "Let Us Take The Time" for the fourteenth time that evening, murmuring "I like it."

OK, how about the real truth, starting with the song I just named? "Let Us Take The Time" IS the oldest song on the album, although it was not originally composed anywhere near the Sunset Strip. As a matter of fact, I can't remember where I came up with the tune, but it's quite possible that I began writing it in Portland, Oregon in the 1980s. It was called "Those Who Dream By Day" at one point (something I may explain in more detail if I ever release the song(s) "Relusion"). Oh, and if you're wondering how a song with the title "Let Us Take The Time" made it onto an album called "Salad," just take a look at the alternate spelling of the song title: "Lettuce Take The Thyme." [1]



Many of the songs come in pairs: "Plate" and "Bare Plate" (the latter was published before the album itself), "Soup One" and "Soup Two," and "Cilantro" and "Muted Chinese Parsley." "Cilantro" was conceived first, and then I decided to come up with a shorter version that featured the "chorus" as it were. When it came time to come up with the title for the second song, I consulted the Wikipedia entry for Coriander.





Incidentally, while it costs a dollar to download "Cilantro," the download cost for "Muted Chinese Parsley" is "name your price," which means that you could name a price of...zero cents.

You're welcome.

[1](Not that I put thyme on my salad, but I won't judge you if you do.)

OK, so Aerosmith isn't as literary as I thought

So how long has the Aerosmith song "Dream On" been around? Over 40 years or something like that?

You'd think that I'd check a particular lyric in the song to see what it really was, but I just never got around to it.

No, I'm not talking about the line "Dream on" or the screamed line "DREAM ON." I was pretty sure I had those right.

I'm talking about the one that I heard as "All Athenians come back to you." I didn't think I was hearing that one right. After all, Steven Tyler is no Jim Morrison. For one thing, Steven Tyler survived.

So I finally Binged the lyrics to "Dream On," and discovered the lyric in question was

All these feelings come back to you

I still prefer my misheard version.

Although I guess it would be more appropriate for a Styx song.

Incidentally, I still think that "Dream On" is Aerosmith's best song - even better than "Janie's Got a Gun." It must be rough when you hit your songwriting peak early in your career.

P.S. Obligatory Ontario Emperor album promo below.

All through New York City straight to The Hague

When I'm not listening to you-know-what, I'm listening to other music, some of which is from the prior millennium.

For example, one of my favorite songs is an Eiffel 65 song. No, I'm not talking about Doobie Doobie Do or whatever it is, but the title song from that album, "Europop."



Within that song, Eiffel 65 endeavored to establish themselves as Italian dance music stars, in the same way that Falco had endeavored to establish himself as an Austrian music star in the prior decade. In an effort to link themselves to the dance music scene, "Europop" contains the lyric

All through Amsterdam straight to Italy

(Ironically, one of the most notable dance music figures is the Italian Giorgio Moroder, but I always think of him as a German because he was in Berlin when he was working with Donna Summer. But I digress.)

Recently I've been listening to another song - not from Eiffel 65's 1990s, nor from Falco's 1980s, but from the 1970s. I was younger then, and during that decade I purchased a compilation record from K-Tel ("Fantastic") and another one from Ronco ("Far Out"). One of those had the amazing song "Get Dancin'" from the greatest band of the 20th century (more or less), Disco Tex and his Sex-O-Lettes.

No, the leader of the band was not called Disco Tex. The leader was called Sir Monti Rock III. (Of course.)



If you've never heard the song before, be warned:

1975 was a strange time.

Strange indeed. While the Sex-O-Lettes sang some standard disco choruses, Disco Tex - I mean Sir Monti Rock III - would then interrupt with an early incarnation of rap. But the good Sir would not rap about chicken that tasted like wood, or about gritty urban life, or about mom throwing away your best porno mag. The good Sir would rap about - well, just about everything.

AllMusic:

Whether hairdresser, failed actor, or more or less or all combined, his screaming queen MC rants never fail to raise a smile -- the question is whether he realized the humor was unintentional or not. The title track provides some of his most memorable moments, screaming things during the instrumental breaks like "America needs you! We need you to go dance! We need you to get together, and boogie woogie woogie woogie! RADAR LOVE IS HERE!..."

Hold it. Stop right there.

Did he just say...Radar Love?



In the 1970s, "Radar Love" was the name of the international monster hit from Dutch band Golden Earring. Basically, nothing like the Disco Tex and his Sex-O-Lettes show. Golden Earring ROCKED.

Then again, Disco Tex did have the word "Rock" in his name.

(By the way, his birth name was Joseph Montanez, Jr..)

Why I should have called my album "Gonna Win a Grammy"

I was just researching for another post when I ran across the story of what happened to Dr. Hook.

For those of you who don't know, back in the early 1970s the magazine Rolling Stone actually devoted itself to music. (Kinda like how MTV actually used to show music videos.) At that time, a musical act could get some serious sales traction from being featured in the magazine. (Today, of course, the magazine talks about everything.)

Rule Forty Two:

In 1972, cartoonist and songwriter Shel Silverstein visited Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show in the studio with a question: would they like to be on the cover of Rolling Stone? Since they were struggling for a hit, they said absolutely, although they couldn’t imagine how he would manage the trick. Silverstein then proceeded to play them “The Cover of Rolling Stone,” a complaint of jaded rock stars who haven’t yet achieved their dream of appearing on the front page of this publication...

So they recorded it.

The song became popular as kids like me listened to it. And guess what happened next?

By Rolling Stone; web source:http://www.rollingstone.com/photos/gallery/5392215/1973_rolling_stone_covers/photo/7/large, Link
Yes, that cover says "What's-Their-Names."

But wait - it gets better.

You'll recall that the original song includes a line that says, "Gonna buy five copies for my mother." Well, Rolling Stone was based in San Francisco at that time, so three members of the band went to Rolling Stone's offices to get those five copies. As Rule Forty Two notes, the band encountered a receptionist who apparently wasn't clued in to the music world.

“We were in full hippie regalia, with about thirty pounds of hair between the three of us,” Elswit said. “The receptionist didn’t know who we were or why we were there, and furthermore, didn’t much care. We were frostily informed that we could buy some from the dispenser machines downstairs."

At that point, someone with a clue showed up and gave the band members exactly five copies.

Dreams do come true.

P.S. If you haven't heard about MY album, go here.

Or listen to this. Not quite the rollicking fun of Dr. Hook, though.

Ontario Emperor Releases First Full-Length Album in Over 17 Years

Ontario Emperor releases digital album "Salad" on Bandcamp

Empoprises announces that musical artist Ontario Emperor has released his first full-length album in over 17 years. The ten-song album, "Salad," is available electronically on the "ontarioemperor" page at Bandcamp (ontarioemperor.bandcamp.com).

Ontario Emperor's music was originally released on mp3.com in 1999 and 2000, including the full-length album "Digital Judge" that was released in November 1999. After mp3.com ceased operations, Ontario Emperor released a free track on GeoCities. After GeoCities ceased operations, Ontario Emperor released a free collection of songs on last.fm. After last.fm ceased hosting music files, it was on to Bandcamp, where the song "Bare Plate" was released last month.

"It's been a while since I've released a full-length album," said the marketing flack who is pretending to speak for Ontario Emperor. "I'm happy that 'Salad' is finally available, and those who love melodic synthetica will enjoy the songs on this album."

The marketing flack also put words in the mouth of John E. Bredehoft of Empoprises. "Empoprises has been primarily known for textual content, but we are happy to be associated with musical content also."

The ten songs can be previewed on Bandcamp. Purchase of the album, or of selected individual songs, allows unlimited streaming as well as download of the song files.

No, this isn't a new Pepsi ad, but it may have been a better one

I'm writing this after the fallout from the recent Pepsi ad in which Kendall Jenner saves civilization by sharing a Pepsi with a cop. By the time I got around to seeing the video itself, Pepsi had already pulled it.

After some thought, I decided that Pepsi should instead focus on the negative side of things - what crises would befall the world if people DIDN'T share Pepsi with others?

Well, as us older folk already know, that story was already told many years ago.

"Underground Rocket" by Bruce Wyman is now available on CD Baby and Spotify

So anyway, a few months ago my wife and I visited some friends at their home. At one point during the evening, I wandered out to the garage and admired the husband's music setup (which is, to put it mildly, much more extensive than my own). That visit was one of the things that prodded me to finally restart my Ontario Emperor project.

I chose to release the Ontario Emperor music on Bandcamp.

My friend Bruce Wyman chose CD Baby.

As I write this, only the song "Underground Rocket" is available, but Wyman has plans to release a full album later this year.

And one advantage of being on CD Baby is that Wyman's music is (unlike my own) also available on Spotify.

#oealbumreveal And the tentative title for the forthcoming Ontario Emperor album is...

..."Salad."

While the final track listing is yet to be worked out, one of the songs will be entitled "Plate." It may or may not bear a similarity to the already-released song "Bare Plate." (Less bare, presumably, although you can't really count on that.)

As of right now, "Salad" is NOT available. Stay tuned to https://ontarioemperor.bandcamp.com/ for further information.

P.S. While "Bare Plate" will not necessarily provide an indicator of what "Salad" will sound like, I can say that "Salad" sounds more like "Bare Plate" than, say, "Macarena." Here's a listen to the previously-released "Bare Plate."

The consequences of personal headspaces

For most of human history, music was a communal activity. All of the people in a particular room or small area would listen to the same music.

But over the last few decades, that has begun to change.

By Adamantios - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

As a result of this little invention, coupled with other items such as Walkmans and smartphones, a dozen people in a room may be listening to a dozen different things - and thus living in a dozen different headspaces.

This hit me over the weekend while I was out walking in my neighborhood, iPhone in my pocket, earphones in my ears. (This was not an iPhone 7, so such a configuration does not require workarounds.) From my perspective, I was walking down the sidewalk, and my ears were filled with the sound of Ladytron's "White Elephant." From the perspective of the gentleman in the front yard I was passing, he was standing in the grass, and his ears were filled with the sound of the water in his water hose.

But what if he had also been wearing earphones? (Watering the yard can be drudgery at times.) We would have an aural (rather than a visual) case of differing perspectives. My Helen Marnie would be his Robert Plant or whatever.

I've been thinking about headphones a lot lately, since the Ontario Emperor project is emerging as a "headphones" type of project. I don't think that I'll be performing "Bare Plate" in a live venue any evening soon - even if Renee Myara is singing along.

So what type of personal headspace am I creating for my listeners?

"Bare Plate" by Ontario Emperor now available on Bandcamp

If you've been reading the Empoprise-MU music blog recently, you've probably gotten an idea that something's up.

It started by my February 27 post about the temporary (or perhaps permanent) demise of last.fm's Music Manager, which once allowed me to host the entire "Brevity Is" music collection. The post concluded with the words

Of course, there are other music hosting services...

Then I wrote something a little over a week ago, along with a picture.

Then last Friday, I posted some instructions on how to replace the Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth in Windows 10.

Then yesterday (Sunday) I noted that Bandcamp songs scrobble to last.fm if you're using the last.fm Chrome extension, and I even embedded a song in the Sunday post - "Ringed by Lovers" by Helen Sventitsky, a long-time favorite song of mine that can be found on Bandcamp.

Well, tonight I'm going to embed another song that you can find on Bandcamp.



Yup. Tonight I can formally announce that for the first time in almost eight years, an Ontario Emperor song is now available on the tubes.

And, as you can probably figure out, it's on Bandcamp. This means that (at least for now) it's not available on Spotify, but (as noted above) I can still scrobble it to my heart's content.

And so can you.

"But wait a minute," you might be saying. The picture that you shared previously was in color, but the picture for 'Bare Plate' is in black and white. What gives?"

To be continued...

Bandcamp plays scrobble to last.fm

Well, at least when using last.fm's Chrome extension (which also supports scrobbles from YouTube, but the tags are sometimes messed up).

Good to know.



P.S. Apparently you have to go to the Bandcamp site for the scrobbler to work; it won't scrobble from an embedded player. But you should play this song anyway because I like the chords.

Replacing the Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth in Windows 10

I guess it's fairly obvious that I'm working on something in regards to my old Ontario Emperor music project. But as I got deeper into the project, I decided that I needed to address something.

You see, the very first Ontario Emperor mp3 files - i.e. most of the ones that I uploaded to mp3.com - were all created on a Macintosh. But the final ones - "Non Sequitur 15" and the entire "Brevity Is" collection - were created after I got rid of my Mac, and therefore were composed and assembled on various Windows computers.

And they were...lacking.

Finally, after a decade and a half of putting up with this, I thought that maybe I ought to explore the issue and understand why MIDI files on Windows (I convert MIDI to audio) didn't sound all that great.

On Windows, the system used to generate MIDI sounds is called the Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth. It was a good solution (back in 1991).

Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth is the MIDI Synth that is bundled with Windows releases. It is licensed by Roland and based off of the first release version of Virtual Sound Canvas, at the time a commercial product. It contains its SC-55-based sound set which, while more compact and downsampled, was considered to be high quality at the time. Though its limitations have caused it to age poorly, it is still used as a standard for MIDI composers.

It turns out that it's really easy to upgrade to a better MIDI synth on Windows 10 - so easy that I could do it. To do so, you need a different MIDI synth, as well as a different (i.e. bigger) soundfont.

For the MIDI synth, I followed Anvil Studio's recommendation and installed the VirtualMIDISynth from CoolSoft - although there are others available.

For the soundfont, I chose Timbres of Heaven from Don Allen - primarily because it had step-by-step instructions on how to use Timbres of Heaven with VirtualMIDISynth. Again, there are a number of soundfonts out there.

After that, the only thing that I had to do was to go into Anvil Studio and set my MIDI Out Device to be CoolSoft (in the View menu, I chose the "Synthesizers, MIDI + Audio Devices" menu item).

So after that was set up, I played one of my MIDI files through Anvil Studio - and noticed a significant improvement.

Time to redo some audio files...

The Ontario Emperor music project is set to announce...something

Back in 2009, I wrote a post about my Ontario Emperor six-song collection "Brevity Is" and how wonderful Anvil Studio was (although the free version limited songs to less than a minute) and how wonderful last.fm was as a host.

Then last month, I discovered that access to my last.fm uploaded files was disabled - for all I know, permanently. (Yes, I know that last.fm is supposedly working on something new and wonderful, but I've been down this road before.)

But what if I were to find another music file host, and if I were to start uploading stuff - perhaps an audio file, perhaps some artwork?

And what if (before uploading any audio files to that host) I were to finally get around to ordering Anvil Studio's Multi-Audio 1/8 accessory that would allow me to create audio files of more than a minute in length?

Yeah, that would be nice.

If Ontario Emperor rises again, it may not be on last.fm

Some of you know that before I blogged under my own name with the "Empoprises" brand, I blogged under the pseudonym Ontario Emperor. But Ontario Emperor dates long before I began blogging in October 2003. I won't take you back to the raw beginnings of Ontario Emperor, but back in 1999 (and until 2003), you could go to mp3.com and buy CDs with Ontario Emperor music. Track listings for a lot of the CDs are provided at my old Tripod site, but that site now has zillions of pop-up ads so I'll just reproduce the information here.

Besieged
October 2000
Rudy Left. Surround. Road Array. Nixon Landslide. Burning Coals. Days Summer Days. Firehose. Teasze Me. Non Sequitur 15.

Rudy Left
September 2000
Rudy Left. Windy Ridge. Bush League. Besieged by Reality. Transmission. Calculus Two. Veggie Stew.

Road Array
June 2000
Road Array. Facial. More Tea For Me. Tireless. Green Stream. Lost. Armsley Square. Flies.

Surround
March 2000
Latent Image. Surround. So Long I Sold You. Urban Plowman. Deeper in Debt (Jerry). You Want to Fly. Driving Two.

Digital Judge
November 1999
Finding My Anonymity. Or a Little Faster. Winter at Halfway House. Marooned with Mary Ann. Down the Pyro Lawn. Finding My Serenity. Gonna Walk. Deeper in Debt. November. Trashed Your Room. Finding My Tax Return. Run to the Snare. Football You Bet. I Demand a Japanese Car. Side of the Grove.

Or a Little Faster
July 1999
(deleted from CD catalog October 2000)
Or a Little Faster. Down the Pyro Lawn. Or a Little Rougher. Bucharest Sweat. Dial 911 at Boulder.

Firehose MaxiDisc
April 1999
(deleted from CD catalog October 2000)
Short Firehose. Taped Firehose. Ritalin Wail. Broken Beerlobe. Firehose. You Want to Fly. Fresh Firehose.

Firehose MiniDisc
April 1999
(deleted from CD catalog September 1999)
Short Firehose. Ritalin Wail. Broken Beerlobe. Fresh Firehose.

Cheating at Solitaire
February 1999
(deleted from CD catalog September 1999)
Burning Coals. Days Summer Days. Firehose. Teasze Me.

Of all of those, "Digital Judge" was my favorite, since I broke a rule that had existed for decades before my birth. This album had THREE sides (each of which began with a "Finding..." song).

All of the songs except "Non Sequitur 15" were instrumentals, and while I have CDs with the MP3s stashed away somewhere, I have long since lost the original lossless files (most of the songs were created on a Macintosh, and I haven't owned a Mac in over a decade).

After mp3.com went bye-bye, I preserved "Non Sequitur 15" on a geocities page...and then I uploaded a few files (including "Non Sequitur 15" and six new 2009 songs) to last.fm. The last.fm Music Manager worked out well for me, allowing me to upload both music and artwork for a collection that I called "Brevity Is."

Then geocities went bye-bye, and last.fm was the only site that hosted any of my mp3s.

I've been thinking about creating some new music again, and I began to check out various sites that could host my music. One option, of course, was to just upload the files to last.fm via the Music Manager.

But then when I went to my last.fm artist page to check my albums, I noticed something odd.

Yup, that's right - my "Brevity Is" album and its artwork are gone.

Things weren't much better when I got to the tracks page.

Yes, all the tracks are there (although they are no longer associated with albums)...but there's no way to play them from last.fm. I could play them if my songs were also on Spotify...but they're not.

So I went to the Music Manager page to sort this all out.

Of course, if I had checked Wikipedia earlier, I would have known all of this.

In January 2014, the website announced on-demand integration with Spotify and a new YouTube-powered radio player. Upon the introduction of the YouTube player, the standard radio service became a subscriber-only feature.

On 26 March 2014, Last.fm announced they would be discontinuing their streaming radio service on 28 April 2014. In a statement, the site said the decision was made in order to "focus on improving scrobbling and recommendations"....

In 2016, Music Manager was discontinued and music uploaded to the site by musicians and record labels became totally inaccessible; post-Spotify integration they could still be played and downloaded (where the option was given) but following this change not even the artists themselves are able to access their songs in the Last.fm catalogue.

From a business standpoint this makes sense, since last.fm in 2016-2017 is facing the same issues that mp3.com faced in 2003. The last.fm business model doesn't really allow support of someone with a couple of thousand plays.

Of course, there are other music hosting services...

Postscript: More on my song naming of mp3 and midi files (the midis are at that same ad-infested Tripod site).

Hard to #BoycottThe97 tech companies that united against the Presidential Executive Order

[OOPS - I POSTED THIS ON THE WRONG BLOG. BUT SINCE SPOTIFY'S ON THE LIST I'LL LEAVE IT RIGHT HERE.]

As USA Today reported early this morning, 97 companies filed a "MOTION FOR LEAVE TO FILE BRIEF OF TECHNOLOGY COMPANIES AND OTHER BUSINESSES AS AMICUS CURIAE IN SUPPORT OF APPELLEES." In essence, the companies objected to some of the immigration aspects of the executive order "PROTECTING THE NATION FROM FOREIGN TERRORIST ENTRY INTO THE UNITED STATES."

(DISCLOSURE: My employer has an interest in a separate portion of the executive order that is NOT cited in this particular court case, the "biometric exit" portion in section 7. I've briefly mentioned this section before.)

Those who support President Trump's position may choose to boycott these 97 companies, in the same way that companies such as Starbucks and 84 Lumber are being boycotted.

But 97 companies is a lot of companies.

If you're boycott-happy, here they are (Scribd link):

APPENDIX A
LIST OF AMICI CURIAE

1. AdRoll, Inc.
2. Aeris Communications, Inc.
3. Airbnb, Inc.
4. AltSchool, PBC
5. Ancestry.com, LLC
6. Appboy, Inc.
7. Apple Inc.
8. AppNexus Inc.
9. Asana, Inc.
10. Atlassian Corp Plc
11. Autodesk, Inc.
12. Automattic Inc.
13. Box, Inc.
14. Brightcove Inc.
15. Brit + Co
16. CareZone Inc.
17. Castlight Health
18. Checkr, Inc.
19. Chobani, LLC
20. Citrix Systems, Inc.
21. Cloudera, Inc.
22. Cloudflare, Inc.
23. Copia Institute
24. DocuSign, Inc.
25. DoorDash, Inc.
26. Dropbox, Inc.
27. Dynatrace LLC
28. eBay Inc.
29. Engine Advocacy
30. Etsy Inc.
31. Facebook, Inc.
32. Fastly, Inc.
33. Flipboard, Inc.
34. Foursquare Labs, Inc.
35. Fuze, Inc.
36. General Assembly
37. GitHub
38. Glassdoor, Inc.
39. Google Inc.
40. GoPro, Inc.
41. Harmonic Inc.
42. Hipmunk, Inc.
43. Indiegogo, Inc.
44. Intel Corporation
45. JAND, Inc. d/b/a Warby Parker
46. Kargo Global, Inc.
47. Kickstarter, PBC
48. KIND, LLC
49. Knotel
50. Levi Strauss & Co.
51. LinkedIn Corporation
52. Lithium Technologies, Inc.
53. Lyft, Inc.
54. Mapbox, Inc.
55. Maplebear Inc. d/b/a Instacart
56. Marin Software Incorporated
57. Medallia, Inc.
58. A Medium Corporation
59. Meetup, Inc.
60. Microsoft Corporation
61. Motivate International Inc.
62. Mozilla Corporation
63. Netflix, Inc.
64. NETGEAR, Inc.
65. NewsCred, Inc.
66. Patreon, Inc.
67. PayPal Holdings, Inc.
68. Pinterest, Inc.
69. Quora, Inc.
70. Reddit, Inc.
71. Rocket Fuel Inc.
72. SaaStr Inc.
73. Salesforce.com, Inc.
74. Scopely, Inc.
75. Shutterstock, Inc.
76. Snap Inc.
77. Spokeo, Inc.
78. Spotify USA Inc.
79. Square, Inc.
80. Squarespace, Inc.
81. Strava, Inc.
82. Stripe, Inc.
83. SurveyMonkey Inc.
84. TaskRabbit, Inc
85. Tech:NYC
86. Thumbtack, Inc.
87. Turn Inc.
88. Twilio Inc.
89. Twitter Inc.
90. Turn Inc.
91. Uber Technologies, Inc.
92. Via
93. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
94. Workday
95. Y Combinator Management, LLC
96. Yelp Inc.
97. Zynga Inc.

How many of these companies have provided products or services that YOU used in the last few days? I can count Apple, Automattic, Facebook, Foursquare, GitHub, Glassdoor, Google, Levi Strauss, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Spotify, SurveyMonkey, Twitter, Wikimedia, and probably a dozen others that I missed.

So why Levi Strauss? Its Bay Area location? Its place in Silicon Valley corporate attire?

Actually, something different.

Inventions and discoveries by immigrants have profoundly changed our Nation. Some, like alternating current (Nikola Tesla), power our world. Others, like nuclear magnetic resonance (Isidore Rabi) and flame-retardant fiber (Giuliana Tesoro), save lives. And yet others, like basketball (James Naismith), blue jeans (Levi Strauss), and the hot dog (Charles Feltman), are integral to our national identity.

And the brief doesn't even mention Albert Einstein or Wernher von Braun.

Semi-ambient hip-hop - Living Legends, "Never Fallin"

A Facebook friend shared a video, along with the comment

There's a special place in my heart for hip hop songs built on eno samples

But not just any Eno sample.

This sample comes from side 2 of "Before and After Science" - or the side that I call "After Science." Those who were around when vinyl records and cassettes were the norm know that albums of the day had two distinct sides - and on "Before and After Science," they are truly distinct. Side one closes with "King's Lead Hat," about a band that Eno liked with a lead singer who (in those days) truly WAS a burning building. But when you flipped the record or the tape over, the next song brings the tempo down a bit. But "Here He Comes" is only transitional, since the following songs bring the tempo down even more.

Until you reach "By This River."

Unlike "King's Lead Hat," "By This River" begins with the sparsest instrumentation imaginable - a single piano. And while the instrumentation builds up toward the end of the song, it remains a very simple song.



Well, how do you rap over a sample based upon THAT?

Speed it up a bit and add a drum beat.



The song "Never Fallin'" appears on the Living Legends album Classic.

When music becomes controversial - the songs Clear Channel tried to ban after 9/11

Things that seem completely innocent one moment can become controversial in the next, due to a change in circumstances.

9/11 was one of those "changes in circumstances" that altered our reactions to particular songs.

As a contemporary article from the New York Times notes, Clear Channel (now iHeartMedia) sent a list of recommendations to its radio stations regarding music playlists.

Back on September 10, no one would have given a second thought to playing the Gap Band song "You Dropped A Bomb On Me." After 9/11, that wasn't such a good idea.

The Neil Diamond song "America" also made the list. Why? Perhaps because the words "They're coming to America" frightened people at the time.

So why was I reading an old New York Times article? Because on January 20, 2017, radio station KFI - an iHeartMedia station - aired a brief story about "El Chapo" being extradited from Mexico to the United States.

A brief snippet of the Neil Diamond song "America" introduced the story.