Phil Collins revisited via @Joffi - and I do care

I previously discussed Phil Collins in this blog back on September 11, 2009, in a post that looked at his retirement from drumming due to spinal issues. It also looked at Collins' drumming work as a solo artist, in Genesis, and with Brian Eno.

It's time to revisit Collins again.

My lastfmfeeds room on FriendFeed tracks last.fm scrobbles by various music fans, and it caught this March 28 scrobble by Joffi222 (@Joffi on Twitter, Michael W. May in the real world). The song? "I Don't Care Anymore."

If you want to talk about interesting drum parts, here's a good place to start. When Collins shot the video for this song, he had a whole band behind him as the singer, but in reality Collins himself recorded all of the parts except for the guitar.



The song, incidentally, was written as the result of a breakup of a marriage. No, not the breakup with Orianne Cevey a couple of years ago that cost him millions, but from an earlier marriage to Andrea Bertorelli that ended in 1980. Collins is quoted as saying:

"I had a wife, two children, two dogs, and the next day I didn't have anything. So a lot of these songs were written because I was going through these emotional changes."

Despite this, the UK Biography Channel web site claims that Collins and Bertorelli "remain on friendly terms."

So presumably Berrtorelli doesn't think of Collins as a gorilla.

Bands encouraging covers - OneRepublic and Tamar Kaprelian

I spent one evening on YouTube listening to cover versions of the OneRepublic song "Apologize," including versions by SpongeBob SquarePants and a Chipmunks knockoff, and then I ran across this cover. One difference - this cover was selected by OneRepublic itself as the winner of a contest.



Not only did she win the cover contest, but OneRepublic's Ryan Tedder helped her get a recording contract with Interscope Records. Her first single, "New Day," ended up being used on the TV show The Hills.

More information can be found at Tamar Kaprelian's official website.

Wes Farrell and David Cassidy on...David Cassidy

For those who don't recall the name Wes Farrell, he was a producer and music businessman who, among many other accomplishments, produced the records of the Partridge Family.

Now I realize that some of you may not necessarily recall David Cassidy. He first achieved stratospheric fame as one of the actors, and the lead singer, in said Partridge Family. He has continued his involvement in music ever since, though not necessarily with screaming girls following his every move.

The Partridge Family, like the Monkees before it, was a band that was primarily created for a television show. Unlike their TV predecessors, who eventually exercised some control over their music, the Partridge Family remained firmly under the control of the music folks. Most of the actors in the Partridge Family didn't even appear on the records themselves. Cassidy of course was on the records, and his TV mother and real life stepmother Shirley Jones - a woman with an illustrious musical career of her own - was used as a backup singer.

When singer-to-be Cassidy met producer Farrell, two things were clear - Cassidy had never been in a recording studio before, and Cassidy's personal tastes in music did not necessarily coincide with what Farrell envisioned for the television show. Farrell, in a Tiger Beat interview before the release of the Partridge Family's second LP:

After talking with Paul Witt and Bob Claver, the show’s producers, the next step was deciding what is The Partridge Family? Who is it? Where is it? So we began with David, and it was funny because he was a bit unprepared. Not knowing who or what is a Wes Farrell, we arranged to meet at Paul Witt’s office. David came down with his guitar. He wasn’t really sure he could describe to me what he wanted to do vocally because he was a little hung up on certain kinds of music that weren’t necessarily the type I wanted to record.

Cassidy has subsequently described his musical interests at that time, and this Gary James interview (which occurred decades after the Partridge Family phenomenon) illustrates this:

You know, I had a lot of musical influences in my career, some of which were really juxtaposition to antithesis perhaps of what my public image was from the television show I did. Long before I was on television playing this character and doing music that was designed for that show. I'd seen Hendrix five times. I'd seen B.B. King, Clapton, Albert King, Muddy Waters and all kinds of Rock and heavy Blues influences. So, I was a guy that had a vastly different musical taste than just the stuff that I was performing.

But Cassidy was a professional, worked well with Farrell, mastered the recording process quickly...and became a bubblegum superstar. But Cassidy still felt stifled, and as a result was open to a 1972 Rolling Stone photo shoot which was anything but bubblegum.

Oh well...at least Yoko Ono wasn't in the picture.

Finale

Another post related to my father's death, and to music.

My father was a user of the Finale software package, which is published by MakeMusic, Inc. On February 26 he had a support question on the software, which he submitted via MakeMusic's automated customer support system. As it turns out, this is the ONLY way in which you can contact MakeMusic customer support. On the surface it seems like a reasonable way to do business, since 99.9% of all people who use the Finale software have Internet and e-mail access.

My father traded questions and answers with a MakeMusic representative, but his problem wasn't getting solved despite MakeMusic's attempts. One afternoon in early March my father sent an e-mail to the customer representative. The representative followed up with an e-mail message a few minutes later, and another the next day.

The representative, however, had no way of knowing that my father was unable to answer the messages.

Several days later, MakeMusic sent another e-mail to my father's e-mail address. This was the message that I saw when I accessed my late father's e-mail account. I forwarded this message to my own personal e-mail account and wrote a reply to MakeMusic (following MakeMusic's instructions to paste my reply between the two "Please enter your reply below this line" and "Please enter your reply above this line" messages). My reply basically stated that my father had died, that no one in my family would use the Finale software any longer, that this support ticket could be closed, and that all future correspondence should be directed to my e-mail address, not my father's.

My message was received by MakeMusic's automated customer support system, and I received this reply:

Your recent incident update was from an email address not associated with the incident. In an effort to maintain the security of information, we cannot update the incident using this email address. If you are the incident owner and your email address has changed, or you want to be able to update the incident using this email account, please update your contact information using the following link, then resubmit your update.

Again, there's probably a really good reason for MakeMusic to impose this level of security on customer support communications. You don't want someone sending spurious customer support reports in - for example, you don't want a person from Company X to falsely claim that a support ticket from Competitior Y can be closed.

But it's still disconcerting to find that MakeMusic's automated customer support system allows no exceptions whatsoever.

So I made one. I looked up the name of MakeMusic's COO/CFO and forwarded my original e-mail to her, along with an explanation.

Automated customer support systems are not equipped to handle extraordinary cases, so I am submitting this to you directly.

I'll grant that this case is a very rare case, but it only goes to prove that no single system can be designed that can handle every single possibility.

P.S. If you were a fan of the movies "Ratatouille" and "Elizabeth: The Golden Age," Finale software was used when working on those films' soundtracks.

You can't take it with you

No, I haven't been blogging for the last few weeks. This is due to personal issues - namely, the death of my father.

At one point, I found myself helping to make arrangement in a funeral home. Now funeral home directors are by nature caring, and this director certainly was caring. But in the course of our discussions, certain documents needed to be signed.

One of these documents involved our acknowledgment of our responsibilities to guard against copyright infringement. Basically, if we brought our own music into the funeral, the appropriate royalties would still have to be paid.

Afterward, the contractual clause reminded me of some words written by George Harrison, although Harrison's concerned the government rather than private entities. Perhaps you recall the words:

And my advice for those who die
Declare the pennies on your eye

Two ways to use "The Sun's Gone Dim and the Sky's Turned Black"

If you have a song, with lyrics, you would think that a video presentation of the song would be pretty straightforward.

But compare these two interpretations of a Johann Johannsson song.

Magnus Helgason:



Battle:Los Angeles:

Update on attempts to preserve the Pussycat Dolls brand

Remember the Sugababes? They were the band that had significant membership turnover, so that by 2009 there were no original members in the band, prompting one last.fm biographer to refer to the band as the Sugafakes. That particular edit has long since been removed from the Sugababes' last.fm biography, and life goes on.

Well, another band's last.fm biography has been edited, though not that dramatically.

You'll recall that in June 2010, I blogged about the Pussycat Dolls.

For those who are not familar with this band, they're a bunch of half-naked women who sing and dance. Actually, the Pussycat Dolls band is an extension of the overall Pussycat Dolls brand, which initially started as a dance troupe before any music was released. Now this sounds like it could be a formula for disaster, but they've actually put out some pretty good music.

But, as I noted in my post, there appeared to be two schools of thought concerning the band. On the one hand, band members such as Ashley Roberts were making public statements saying that the band had broken up. Band manager Robin Antin, however, denied that those words were accurate, even after most of the band members had left.

Note the semantic difference. If the Pussycat Dolls had broken up, then they would no longer exist and the brand would be dead. If the Pussycat Dolls merely changed 80% of its membership, then it would still be a going concern, no different than before.

So at the time of my June post, a new set of Pussycat Dolls was performing - lead singer Nicole, and new members Kherington, Rino, Vanessa, and Jamie. I figured that band manager Robin Antin would take steps to get the band into the studio, get some recordings out, and do whatever possible to ensure that people thought of the Pussycat Dolls as a brand, and forgot all about Kimberly, Melody, Jessica, and Ashley, just like most Beatle fans have forgotten about Tommy Moore (who?), who preceded Norman Chapman (who?) as drummer. Chapman was followed by Pete Best as drummer, but Best is primarily remembered by IBM Watson and other trivia maniacs. So if Antin could get an album out with the new Pussycat Dolls, all would be fine.

One night I was scrobbling stuff on last.fm, and I happened to peek at last.fm's Pussycat Dolls page, which included the following title:

The Pussycat Dolls

(2003 – 2010)

The biography included a December 11 edit from last.fm user wadamz:

On December 5 2010, Nicole Scherzinger, the lead singer of The Pussycat Dolls, announced that she is leaving the band to concentrate on her solo career and acting projects. Scherzinger follows the four other members - Kimberly Wyatt, Melody Thornton, Jessica Sutta and Ashley Roberts in exiting the group.

last.fm is not really set up to include citations in biographies, so I had to search for the story. I found a post in The A Music Blog, which referenced a News of the World interview. The interview is now behind a paywall, but Scherzinger reportedly said:

We had our time. Some of the girls left the group. That was out of my hands. I wouldn't want to be in a group with other girls -- we were like a tight family.

So I figured I'd get Robin Antin's side of the story, starting at the Pussycat Dolls' website. The site's news page, however, hasn't been updated since September 2009, and doesn't even mention new members Kherington et al. I did find a mention of the new members on the blog Homorazzi, but somehow I suspect that this wasn't an authorized press release from Antin:

The new line-up consists of a SYTYCD alum, ABDC alum, Girlicious reject and a Laker Girl. Warning girls, you don’t want to piss of the HBIC (Head Bitch In Charge) Nicole or else you might be the new Melody, Kimberly, Jessica or Ashley.

Read more at: http://www.homorazzi.com/article/pussycat-dolls-new-lineup-new-members-kherington-rino-vanessa-curry-jamie-lee-ruiz/#ixzz1EPE7a9ue


Homorazzi lists the Twitter accounts for the new members:






Because we're in the home stretch of the NBA season, I figured that I'd see what former Laker Girl Vanessa Curry was saying about Robin Antin's fabulous band. And I found a tweet in which Curry retweeted Antin:

Oh sugz so precious!RT @robinantinpcd: My little Sugar baby, she's such a Lady! ♥ http://yfrog.com/gzqxuqjj

The tweet goes to a picture of...a dog. I went through several weeks of tweets, and Curry never explicitly mentioned the band at all.

But Antin is keeping up the publicity, with this January 22 tweet about a Dolls performance. It links to a Twitpic, but unfortunately for Antin, someone chose to leave the following comment:

What the F*ck???? OMG They Are NOT PCD

Apparently Antin needs to do a little more work to sell this thing.

Beatles as hacks

I was thinking about the Lennon-McCartney songwriting team one night, and its ability to produce merchandising product.

Now this flies in the face of most of us who think of the Beatles as pure artists supreme, but the fact remains that they got their start by being very talented practitioners of Tin Pan Alley techniques.

Think about it, based upon what we know about the Beatles today. By late 1963, the Beatles and Rory Storm's Hurricanes (and their drummer Richie) had torn both Liverpool and Hamburg apart, playing for hours on end, getting smashed on booze and pills, and having an unknown number of sexual conquests. Lennon had already done the proper thing by becoming a married man so his son would have a father. And what were he and his songwriting partner writing about? What was the subject matter of the song that was about to dominate America?

Holding hands.

Now Lennon and McCartney could have written about Hamburg gangsters or who knows what, but that wouldn't have moved product for Parlophone and Capitol. Songs about holding hands, however, would be bought in mass quantities, so that's what Lennon and McCartney produced.

In short, the two were hacks. Very good hacks, but hacks nonetheless. It would be several years before Lennon, McCartney, and Harrison realized that they could write songs about any dang thing that they pleased. If Harrison had told the Parlophone brass in 1962 that he wanted to write a song about the tax rates in Britain, they would have been laughed out of Abbey Road.

Speaking of Abbey Road, the famous picture inspired a comment thread in Free Republic. And not surprisingly, given the political orientation of Free Republic, the Beatles were not universally admired by all.

I don't hate the Beatles as a group, during their time they were great.

What ticks me off tho is the accolades that have been thrown on the individual artists John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr after the Beatles. Individually they were hacks with nothing noteworthy being produced by themselves but because they were "Beatles", they were still idolized......

I happen to disagree, and in fact think that the reverse is true. Anything that Harrison, or Lennon, or Starr, or McCartney released on their own is often denigrated because the other three are not present. (For this reason, "Ringo" stands out as the best album ever among certain fans.)

But because of my age, and the fact that I was too young to catch the Beatles in their heyday, I personally was able to enjoy the ex-Beatles on their own terms, without immediately comparing it to what had gone before. During the early 1970s, AM radio was defined by the guitar work of George Harrison, songs like "It Don't Come Easy" were enjoyed by all, and that band called Wings was releasing stuff like "Nineteen Hundred and Eighty Five." Only later did I discover that these guys had all been in a former band, kinda like the Monkees but even more zany.

Now I'll grant that the solo Beatles never set out to do concept albums - unless you consider "Double Fantasy" a concept album, and that of course is a collaboration. But all four of them were clearly able to create some great songs on their own.

In fact, I much prefer Ringo's solo work to his work within the Beatles - "What Goes On" is outstanding, but much of the rest is good at best. "You were in a car crash and you lost your hair" over organ and fiddle? Suitably bizarre, but not something that a hackmaster would use to dominate the charts.

In fact, if the Beatles HAD reunited, I suspect that the best part of the reunion concerts would have been the Beatles playing post-Beatles songs. McCartney playing piano on "Imagine." Lennon taking Eric Idle's lines on "This Song." Or better still, a medley of two songs - McCartney's "Too Many People" and Lennon's response, "How Do You Sleep." Now that would make for riveting stagework as Lennon and Harrison joined guitars for McCartney's attack, followed by wild McCartney bass lines on Lennon's attack.

Why the music industry hates itself, part two (try watching the Grammys TODAY)

Presumably NARAL - whoops, I mean NARAS - wants people to know about their awards and how wonderful all of their music performers are. But they don't make it easy.

As I noted in a post that I shared this morning, the Grammy awards are broadcast live - if you live in the eastern half of the United States. If you live in the western half, NARAS would prefer that you lock yourself away from the Internet for three hours, and THEN watch the Grammy awards on tape delay.

But, as Peter Kafka noted in a post this morning, it gets even more ridiculous.

The official Grammy site, run by the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences, has plenty of clips, but none from the CBS broadcast itself–it’s all backstage, or red carpet or other footage I don’t care about. CBS.com doesn’t have anything, and neither does TV.com, CBS’s mini-Hulu.

Meanwhile, Google’s YouTube, the place where I really expect to see clips, is doing a very good/frustrating job of keeping the site scrubbed free of amateur uploads. You can find some stuff, but it takes work, and the quality is poor, and I’m pretty sure it’s getting removed quickly after it goes up.

So not only were west coasters such as myself forced to wait three hours to see the Grammy awards - it turns out that was the only time that we could have seen the Grammy awards.

Way to go, NARAS.

So if I wanted to see how this danged egg thing actually played out, I need to rely upon the people who tweeted about it.

At least until NARAS and the RIAA try to shut Twitter down for distributing copyrighted material.

P.S. It's illustrative to compare the entertainment industry with the sports industry. Sure, the leagues put up some roadblocks so that I can't watch a Redskins game any time I want, but at least all (well, most) sporting events are shown live no matter where you live. Can you imagine the furor if the Super Bowl organizers decided to delay the west coast feed for three hours?

And, unlike awards shows, there are certain sporting events that you can see online, for free. As I noted in an Empoprise-BI business blog post last Friday, I could have watched the Lakers basketball game on ESPN3 had I chosen to do so. ESPN3 could have gotten my eyeballs and could have bombarded me with online commercials.

But apparently that's too edgy for NARAS. Maybe Grammy winners Jethro Tull could talk NARAS into it.

Why the music industry hates itself (Grammy tape delays tell you all you need to know)

On Sunday evening, Dave Winer (who is currently residing in New York) tweeted the following):

So much fun to watch west coast people tweeting the grammies three hours late. #not

You see, there are a number of Twitter users on the west coast of the United States, and all of these people (not including me) had to wait three hours to watch the Grammys, even though they took place on the west coast.

This reminded me of something that I wrote several years ago in another context. This mrontemp post, written under my Ontario Emperor pseudonym, has been cited as one of the semi-important documents in the development of hashtagging. No, it's not like I'm Stowe Boyd or Chris Messina or anything like that, but I did contribute an interesting observation to the discussion - what happens if two people are using hashtags to describe an event that occurs at different times? My example was the Rose Parade, and people observing the parade from two different vantage points on the parade route. In my example, I was tweeting about stuff happening at the beginning of the parade route, while Philip Hodgen was tweeting from the end of the parade route. Because hashtagged text is presented in a linear fashion, my tweets and Hodgen's tweets were juxtaposed against each other, giving a false impression of the parade.

In a similar fashion, Sunday night's Grammy tweets, when taken in toto, gave a false impression of the Grammy awards, since things appeared out of order.

And why did that happen? Because The Powers That Be determined that the Grammy awards should not be shown live on the west coast. Theoretically this ensures that they will get the maximum viewing audience on the west coast by having a prime time slot, but the whole thing rests on the assumption that people on the west coast are either (a) unable to figure out how to get on the Internet and find out who won three hours in advance, or (b) disciplined enough to stay away from all Internet feeds, just to make sure that they're surprised when the television shows the announcements of winners that were already announced three hours ago.

This model may have worked in 1971, but it's not going to work in 2011.

This is especially ironic because these are music awards, and much of the music industry is based in the Los Angeles, California area. Granted that the top names in the music industry were actually at the awards, but many of the worker bees who actually do the work in Los Angeles' music industry were unable to see the awards live.

But the music industry believes that it's perfectly fine to keep the awards presentation locked up and make people wait to see it.

Then again, the music industry likes to lock up a lot of stuff and make people wait to hear it, so why should the industry's awards show be any different?

Oh, and by the way, my early 2008 post discussed the tape-delaying of televised events:

This [discussion of two Rose Parade vantage points] is probably a strange example, since most disasters/events occur at the same time for all people (exceptions being parades, and certain televised events which are tape delayed on the West Coast). However, in the odd case in which people are using the same hashtag for events occurring at different times in different locations, how is one to make sense of the mess?

How, indeed?

Another version of "One"

I was working on a post about one Inland Empire and ended up searching for a YouTube video. I couldn't find the buffalo (or bison) (or buffalo), but I found this Bono/Edge/Eno/orchestra version.

Home and Dry

Earlier this week I found myself thinking about Gerry Rafferty songs for no apparent reason, and remembered the old song "Home and Dry." Here's a video of the song, created by hodgepig007.



Then on Wednesday morning, I read the news of his death.

Oh boy.

Before my mind meanderings earlier this week, I had only thought of Rafferty a couple of times in the last few years - when I heard Blacksteel & Badger's "Toxic Jerry,", and when I heard the odd stories about Rafferty's disappearance.

Obviously the song "Home and Dry" (lyrics here) was written decades before Rafferty's more recent troubles, or non-troubles, but at least now Rafferty is at peace.

The Gifford Children's Choir in Racine, Wisconsin presents "A Christmas Trololo"

A brief history - back in March, I wrote about a video performance that appealed to both the Tall Ships (Keith Andrew is a member of that band) and Josh Haley (who used to be one of the ukelele players in the Ffundercats). That performance, which could be found on YouTube and elsewhere, was sung by Soviet-era singer Edward Anatolevich Hill. Although the name of the song is something along the lines of "I Am So Happy to Finally Be Back Home," it is commonly referred to today as the "Trololo" song. See my March post for more extensive details about the song and the singer.

It turns out Andrew and Haley weren't the only musicians who enjoyed the song. If you scroll down to the comments for my post, you'll see a comment from Jack Senzig, who was trying to find an orchestral score of the song. I wrote about Senzig's search in September. Senzig is with the Gifford Children's Choir at Gifford Elementary School in Racine, Wisconsin, and he wanted the orchestral score so that the children's choir could perform the song.

As it turns out, Jack Senzig received responses to his request:

A man named Alexander Kuznetsov from Russia was very helpful in finding a piano vocal score of the piece. Alexander surprised the choir earlier this year by donating a few dollars on our blog. I emailed him a thank-you and asked if he could help find the score. What an amazing world we live in where people who don't know one another are willing to help with out thought of reward! The choir has had many experiences like that in the past 6 months. We are still looking for the orchestral score and for the copyright holder.

Senzig forged ahead, and now you can see the result - "A Christmas Trololo" as performed by the Gifford Children's Choir. Arkady Ostrovsky's song has been married with costumes and children's dancing moves.



Also note the audience participation. As Senzig notes in the Gifford Children's Choir blog, he was very pleased with the result:

What an incredible event! The kids did an amazing job, the audience participation was great, the band played so well, props and solos went as planned. We had three hours to rehearse and record....

Live, this was nothing short of incredible. I think you are going to be treated to an unique entertainment!

However, Senzig's enthusiasm was topped by the comment from one of his readers:

Did everyone remember their lyrics?

So a hearty congratulations to Jack Senzig, Alexander Kutznetov, Donovan Senzig, Jeni Balch, Keri Bieri, The Gifford Children's Choir, members of the Gilmore Middle School Choir, members of the Racine Community Choir, members of the St. Louis Church Choir, students from other schools (Case H.S., Walden III, 21st Century Prepatory School, and Gifford Elementary), Katie McCormick, Angela Janota-Peavler, Ken Norman Kathy Gabbey, Eric Weiss, Russell Skewes, Mike Cobb, Hallie Senzig, Brad Karas, Jeff Eben (the principal!), Santa Claus, Brett Halladay, Lance Peavler, Gary Alvarado, the Gifford PTA, the parents, and Chris Janus.

Now I have to share this with both Keith Andrew and Josh Haley...

What difference does it make? The ease of making some sort of music

One of the wonderful things about music is that it's very easy to create it. Now it's hard to create professional-quality music, but it's very easy to create music in general.

Let me cite an example.

As my friends know, I'll often get in moods in which I listen to a single song over and over. Last weekend, the song in question was "What Difference Does It Make?" by the Smiths. I found a YouTube video of a performance of the song on Top of the Pops, and just listened to the video (embedding disabled by request) again and again.

Then I had to go gas up my car.

So, as I was driving alone to Costco to gas up, you can guess what I was doing in the car.

Yes, I was creating music.

And even though I was facing several handicaps, I was still able to create music.

The first handicap that I faced was that I don't know all of the lyrics to the song "What Difference Does It Make?" In fact, I only know five of the words in the lyrics. (No extra credit if you can guess those five words.) So my vocal performance sounded like this:

What difference does it make?
What difference does it make? Oh oh oh...
Da da da,
Da da da da-da da...

At this point, I encountered the second handicap - I did not have a guitar with me in the car. And even if I had a guitar with me in the car, I was driving and therefore unable to play it. And even if I were parked and had a guitar, my guitar skills are, to put it mildly, deficient. (I can play a C chord, and I could probably pick out the riff to "What Difference Does It Make?" but it would be at a VERY slow speed.

So you can guess what I did next:

Da da da da
Da da-da da da
Da da da da
Da da-da da da...

So, as you can see, it's very easy to create music. And it's even possible to expand on it. When Morrissey sang the chorus, he had a hint of a yodel in it. As a lover of Slim Whitman, I wondered what would happen if that were converted into a full yodel, with an octave jump.

What difference does it ma-AKE...

And obviously I'm not the only one. All sorts of people, with all sorts of musical skills, have a desire to perform a song that they like. In the car on your morning commute, in the shower before your morning commute, or in your cubicle or dorm room with the headphones on, many of us are creating music.

And some people create videos of themselves making music. For example, here's a video of laydjay (Jacqueline Sinclair of All About the Dots on MySpace and Facebook), possibly in someone's apartment, singing the song (unfortunately, without any Slim Whitman touches, although she does some interesting vocals toward the end). I'm not sure who is accompanying her.



Here's a video of a guy who started playing the Smiths' recording of the song, then played along on the lead guitar part.



Here's another video of another guy who did the same thing.



Here's yet another guy who not only videoed himself playing "What Difference Does it Make?" but also played a bunch of other riffs. ("Difference" is about four minutes into the video.) His name's Johnny.



Seriously, this guy Johnny shares some interesting observations about guitar sound and guitar culture. I guess he knows what he's talking about.

New Jersey

I was in one of my "Wanted Dead Or Alive" moods one evening and ended up finding this video in which Jon Bon Jovi sings "It's My Life." But Richie isn't playing the guitar on this performance; instead, some guy name Bruce is playing.



That video serves as a reminder that New Jersey produced both Bon Jovi AND Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. Oh, and Frank Sinatra also.

But when you're talking about New Jersey music, that's just the tip of the iceberg. Here are 10 other musicians who have been associated with New Jersey.

Count Basie
David Cassidy
George Clinton
Lesley Gore (see my 2008 post)
Ice-T
Wyclef Jean
Les Paul
Eddie Rabbitt
Patti Smith (see my 2003 post)
Gary Wright

Again, there are many more New Jersey musicians listed here.

Opposing views - people who think that Eddie Van Halen is the best guitarist ever

There are plenty of very good guitarists out there. For example, I have a high regard for the guitar playing of Martin Gore. I believe that Gore's guitar playing (beginning in the late 1980s) is a perfect complement to Depeche Mode's music.

But I wouldn't call Martin Gore the greatest guitarist ever.

In my view, the three greatest guitarists ever, in alphabetical order, are Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, and Jimmy Page. In my view, these three made their guitars sing, and were the equivalent of an excellent vocalist in that regard.

I do not include Eddie Van Halen in that rarefied company of guitarists. In fact, I don't rate Van Halen as great, or as good. In my view, the ability to play guitar really really fast does not necessarily indicate good music.

However, there are those who disagree with me. Let's start with 330 guitarists surveyed by Roadie Crew Magazine, who ranked Eddie Van Halen as the second best guitarist of all time. Ahead of Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Brian May, Slash, and everyone except for Hendrix.

Of course, any such list is going to have its detractors. Let's look at someone who thinks that Hendrix should not have had the number one spot:

I think Ed should be in the #1 spot. Jimmy droped some jaws but Ed re-invented the guitar.

And another one:

In a century’s time, Edward may very well take over that #1 position. Think about it.

And then there was one person who, while agreeing that Van Halen was only number 2, made his case for Van Halen occupying that position:

There has not been a more exciting guitar player since van halen. Edward is still the king. He is the Michael Jordan of our time on Guitar. Good luck to all the rest who are really cool to listen to…but not nearly as fun and as original as Edward.

But among the thoughtful (and less than thoughtful) comments regarding the greatest guitarist, there were some real groaners. Or some really bad jokers. Take Mark Johnson:

Who the hell is Yngwie Malmsteen? And whys isn’t Elton John on this list?

Is music with a purpose good music?

A lot of us live in this dreamworld that music is created by artists and is destined to become artistic.

To quote a songwriter or two, "dream on."

All music is written for a purpose. Perhaps a song is written specifically so that it will hit number one on the charts. Perhaps a song is written because the rent is due next week. Perhaps a song is written because the people in the indie club or the indie radio station will really really like it.

Regardless of why it is written, the song is written to appeal to some audience - if not the millions of people who purchase songs on iTunes or Amazon, then perhaps it's written for the 20 people that will gather at the local bar on Thursday night.

Lennon/McCartney, John/Taupin, Page/Plant, Gore, whoever - in the end, they're all hacks who are writing songs for a purpose.

Of course, there are more overt cases of writing songs for a purpose. For example, you might co-write a song to feed the world. When you write such a song, you want to make sure that it is most effective in achieving its purpose of feeding the world.

But is the song any good? Well, why don't we ask Bob Geldof?

I am responsible for two of the worst songs in history. One is Do They Know It’s Christmas? and the other one is We Are The World.

Any day soon, I will go to the supermarket, head to the meat counter and it will be playing. Every ****ing Christmas.

Spinner offered this critique:

Most of us have mixed feelings toward deathless charity anthem 'Do They Know it's Christmas?' -- on one hand, it has raised millions for good causes and become something of a yuletide institution, on the other, it features groan-worthy lyrics like "There won't be snow in Africa" and Bono's anguished yelp of "Tonight, thank God it's them, instead of you."

And let's face it, "We Are The World" will probably not be performed in formal live shows in the year 2200. Even when it was being recorded, there were misgivings:

Billy Joel told Rolling Stone in 2005, "Most of us who were there didn't like the song, but nobody would say so. I think Cyndi Lauper leaned over to me and said, 'It sounds like a Pepsi commercial.' And I didn't disagree."

Of course, "We Are The World" also suffered from its being recorded out here, in California. The British recording session for "Do They Know It's Christmas" was laid back, but when Geldof arrived in El-Lay to support the American effort, he noted that Los Angeles was not so casual. Or, to put it more accurately, some people were relaxed about the whole affair, while others were not:

Springsteen flew to L.A. immediately after his Syracuse shows to participate in the recording. Arriving at the Los Angeles International Airport, Bruce rented a Corvette, and drove to the studio, parking in a lot across the street. In a humorous anecdote from his autobiography, Is That It?, Geldof recalled that Kragen at one point walked in and said, "'Bruce Springsteen has just parked his car on the other side of the road and walked across -- by himself -- to the studio. Can you believe it?' I could believe it. 'No, I mean he drove himself, no chauffeur, no limo. Then The Boss walked across himself, no bodyguards, no security.'"

The whole scene was parodied by Billy Crystal, who performed (as Prince) the song "I Am Also The World."


Billy Crystal, Hulk Hogan & Mr. T
Uploaded by mjdwfan. - Sitcom, sketch, and standup comedy videos.

At the end of the day, both songs (and all of the related songs) were Events with a capital E.

Led Zeppelin, "What Is And What Should Never Be"

The reason for my posting this video will become apparent on Monday. But even if you don't care about what I'm going to say on Monday in my Empoprise-BI business blog, you have to admit that this is a good song, with a good Jimmy Page solo.

If @scobleizer were an AM DJ (MySpace and music)

After the Lakers loss on Wednesday night, I started fiddling around with my AM radio. After sunset, I am able to pick up radio stations from multiple locations, including northern California. While moving up and down the radio dial, I ran across a radio station in Half Moon Bay that I had never heard before. In fact, I'd be willing to bet that none of you has heard this station either. Because the deejay's discussion is germane to the Empoprise-MU music blog, I thought I'd reproduce it here.

Yes, this portion of the KRS Evening Show is brought to you by Rackspace. And we're back, and you're here with your evening deejay, Bobby Scoble the Scobleizer!

(SOUND EFFECT from James Earl Jones: "This is THE SCOBLEIZER.")
(SOUND EFFECT: standard AM zoo cowbells and whistles)

Yes, it's your good friend Bobby, the original Valley Boy!

(SOUND EFFECT from a Frank Zappa sound-alike: "Valley Boy, he's a Valley Boy")
(SOUND EFFECT: standard AM zoo cowbells and whistles)

And we're broadcasting and podcasting and videocasting live from Half Moon Bay, counting 'em up, counting 'em down, counting 'em left, counting 'em right, down for the count, up for the count, and did I mention we're counting?

(SOUND EFFECT from an old commercial: "Count Chocula!")
(SOUND EFFECT: standard AM zoo cowbells and whistles)

Now I know that you've been submitting your music requests to the @scobleizer Twitter account -

(SOUND EFFECT from a Gilbert Gottfried sound-alike: "FAIL WHALE!")
(SOUND EFFECT: standard AM zoo cowbells and whistles)

Hey, Patrick, let's stop the wacky AM radio sound effects for just a moment, because I want to talk about something. A lot of people accuse me of only pursuing shiny new things and ignoring anything old. And while I do like to explore new stuff, I also like to check out some things that have been around for a while. No, I'm not going to actively participate in FriendFeed again. But earlier this evening, some of you may have noticed that I began playing around with my MySpace account again. In fact, because MySpace can publish your data stream directly to Facebook, a lot of my Facebook friends saw all of the bands that I just liked on MySpace. Sorry about that, guys.

I figured that since I'll be interviewing MySpace's CEO at LeWeb next week, I should do my homework. And since MySpace has turned itself into a music center, I started listening to Neil Young and friending artists such as The Black Eyed Peas and The Doors.

So I know that you have some requests that you've been tweeting to me, but I'm going to close tonight's radio show with a song from one of my new friends. Here's Neil Young with "Walk With Me." And after this song's done, stay tuned for Techno Louie Louie, the Graymaster!This is Bobby Scoble, the Scobleizer, signing off!



My, my.

Hey, hey.

Incidentally, Scoble's session with MySpace CEO Mike Jones is scheduled for 8 December 2010 at 10:50 am local time.

Waylon Jennings cover versions

In some ways it's ironic that the early 70s "outlaw" country musicians spent a lot of time covering some decidedly non-country songs, but that's exactly what Waylon Jennings was doing.

On Wednesday night I was messing around with YouTube and blip.fm, and I found two Waylon Jennings cover songs that are highly recommended.

The first one that I found was a Waylon & Willie cover of the Fleetwood Mac song "Gold Dust Woman." (My blip of the song is here.) Perhaps Waylon's version isn't as mysterious as Stevie's original, and the drums aren't featured, but the vocals - especially on the chorus - are equal to if not better than the original. (And it's rare that people can vocally measure up to the "perfect" vocal harmonies of the mid-70s Fleetwood Mac.)

But hearing that song just left me craving another, so I found Waylon's cover of the Steely Dan song "Do It Again." (Here's my blip.) Depending upon your point of view, you could argue that Waylon's vocals here far exceed the original - especially when Waylon growls "Wheels turnin' ROUND and round."

But when looking over the Covers Project page on Waylon Jennings (which doesn't discuss "Gold Dust Woman," by the way, unless it's on a separate Waylon/Willie page or something), I was surprised to learn that one of Waylon's most famous songs, "Amanda," is itself a cover of a Don Williams song. (Here's that blip.)

Always learning...

P.S. If you want to see the songs that I blip, and the YouTube videos that I share, why don't you consider liking the Empoprise-MU Facebook fan page?

Families have parents - what preceded the King Family

As someone in the 1960s said, "I should have known better."

When I was a kid, one of the big TV shows was "My Three Sons." I was familiar with the later color version of the show, rather than the original black and white version. In this version of the show, oldest son Robbie (actually the middle son) was married to a woman named Katie who in real life was Tina Cole, part of a popular singing group called The King Family.


Tina Cole Pictures

When not running around with Fred MacMurray, the King Family was appearing on their popular TV show, singing ultra-psychedelic versions of Jimi Hendrix and Grateful Dead songs. OK, not exactly.



But I wasn't aware of the earlier history of this family until The Music's Over reshared a 2009 entry on Yvonne King Burch.

Yvonne King Burch was a member of the popular singing group, the King Sisters, who came to prominence during the swing era....

Considering their style of music, I shouldn't be surprised that their history predates the Beatles...and Elvis.

Be sure to read the rest of the Music's Over entry for more about Yvonne King Burch.

As it turns out, Tina Cole was Yvonne King Burch's daughter.

I can't escape the Electrical Parade - "Above the Northern Lights" (Gene Nery/Mannheim Steamroller)

Those close to me know that I usually equate Mannheim Steamroller with Disney's (Main Street) Electrical Parade.

I HATE Disney's (Main Street) Electrical Parade.

But on Monday evening I heard a Mannheim Steamroller song that I truly enjoyed - "Above the Northern Lights." The vocalist is Gene Nery. Yes, Gene Nery. Oh, you haven't heard of Gene Nery? Neither had Chip Davis:

The new album features vocals by Johnny Mathis, Olivia Newton-John and Gene Nery. Gene who? "Believe it or not, he was some random guy that a friend of mine knew — Ed Wilson, who wrote the words for the song 'Above the Northern Lights.' He sent a demo with Gene singing on it. I called and said, 'Hey, Ed, the words sound great. Who is this guy you've got singing it?' He sings in clubs and stuff. He lives on Orcas Island, off the coast of Washington State. We just met the other day when we played Everett, Washington."

For more about Gene Nery, see this article.

But back to "Above the Northern Lights." So anyways, I looked on YouTube for a video that included the song. And what was the first video that was listed? A video in which the song is linked to a Christmas lights display.



Well, at least there aren't twirling Disney figures.

Rob Michael "White Christmas" (solo, and with Rahsheen)

I missed these videos last year when they were originally shared, but it's about that time of year.

The first video is a Rob Michael instrumental solo of "White Christmas."



The second is the same guitar solo, with vocals from Rahsheen.



As far as I know, there is not a third version that incorporates Josh Haley's ukelele or Helen Sventitsky's keyboards.

Prey Before Prey Before Prey Before Prey

Continuing my previous thought, there's also Blacksteel & Badger's "Toxic Jerry," which obviously includes both Gerry (with a G) Rafferty's "Baker Street" and Britney Spears' "Toxic."

I wasn't familiar with one of the songs in the mix, so I looked into it and found out that it was Fatboy Slim's "Sunset (Bird of Prey)."

(Embedding disabled by request.)

The vocals are by Jim Morrison and were released posthumously.



But Jim Morrison wasn't involved with the next little bit in "Toxic Jerry." I don't know whether Fatboy Slim did it or Blacksteel & Badger did it, but someone mixed "Sunset (Bird of Prey)" with another Fatboy Slim song, "Star 69." And no, I'm not linking to that song - too much Wisconsin Tourism Federation for me, if you get my drift. And the Wisconsin Tourism Federation stuff is itself a sample from Roland Clark's "I Get Deep."

At this point I probably haven't identified half of the samples in "Toxic Jerry," but the ones that I know about include Roland Clark, Jim Morrison, Gerry Rafferty, and Britney Spears. Plus some instrumental music from Norman Quentin (Leo) Cook. Now that's an interesting...um...mix of people.

P.S. If you clicked through to the embedding disabled by request video and would like more information about the filmed flight sequences, go to http://www.flight-logistics.com/Bird_of_Prey.html.

Day After Day After Day After Day

I had been listening to "Toxic Jerry" by Blacksteel & Badger, and ended up going to last.fm to see what other downloads were available. There really weren't any details on what songs were included in the mashups, so I figured I'd listen to a 30 second sample of the song "Day After Day." Maybe there's some Badfinger in there, I thought.

I listened to the 30 second sample, and all that was in the sample was the Paul McCartney/Michael Jackson song "Say Say Say." That was enough for me to commit to the download.

I was pleasantly surprised to find Kelly Osbourne's "One Word" was a major component of the mix. It turns out that "day after day" are the last three words of the chorus.

No Badfinger though.

You can download the song at http://www.last.fm/music/Blacksteel%2B%2526%2BBadger/_/Day+After+Day. The Blacksteel & Badger website is no more, but their podcast blog is still online.

Control - the history behind "Love on the Run"

Back in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Human League had released two albums with minor success (despite highlights such as "Circus of Death"). Then the band ruptured into two parts, with the remaining Human League part achieving stratospheric success with "Don't You Want Me" and other songs such as "Seconds." The band continued to play with their sound, most notably on the guitar-based "The Lebanon," but the record label wasn't pleased because the band wasn't enjoying success similar to that of "Don't You Want Me." In other words, the record label was asking, "What have you done for me lately?"

That's when the "hot producers" idea kicked in, and an agreement was reached to have Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis produce the band. Jam and Lewis, ex-members of the Time, were the hot producers of the moment. Three facts about Jam and Lewis were pertinent:

First, they learned their chops under Prince, who was well known for his controlling nature over projects.

Second, they had just finished working with Janet Jackson on an album called "Control."

Third, the majority of the songwriting credits on the song "Control" were held by Jam and Lewis.

Even if you had never heard the story before, you can probably guess how it's going to end. Robert Windle:

Four solid months of stressful recording followed that were full of vocal retakes and some days would end in creative disagreements. In the end, session musicians and backing singers were brought in as Jam & Lewis sought a level of pitch perfection that was simply alien to the appeal of The League. The production team's trademark was that of polished soul with plenty of treble, whilst the League always favoured an understated and sometimes harsher sound of leftfield pop that would stray from obvious.

Adrian [Wright] eventually gave up on trying to record soul styled keyboard rifts that he was completely unfamiliar with and decided to spend the rest of the sessions playing table tennis....

The recording sessions reached breaking point when it became apparent that only six of the League penned tracks would make it to the album with Jam & Lewis adding a few tracks of their own.

Song writing credits were essential when it came to the bread and butter payments once an album was released.

Jam & Lewis were already receiving a huge production fee from Virgin, and the League felt they would receive little in the way of royalties that were so desperately needed.

As a result, the sessions ended in acrimony even though the personal relationship between the band and the production team had been a relatively good one.

The band reaped material success from the collaboration when the Jam/Lewis-penned "Human" reached number one. But was that the destiny for the Human League - to record songs that could have just as easily been recorded by any other male-female singing group?

However, the band wasn't COMPLETELY shut out of their own album, and the song "Love on the Run" is a bright spot for fans of the band.

Genius is pain - the whiners

Now that I've gotten the introductory post out of the way, I can get to my thesis.

Good music is painful. There is certainly pleasant, soothing music that is produced, but music doesn't really grab you unless there is an element of pain in it. While the pain is sometimes lyrical (for example, all of the tragic teenage death songs), the pain that is inflicted on the listener is often musical.

And that pain may be inflicted by the singer's voice. There are a number of examples of singers with voices that are not soothing, but attention-grabbing. In this post, however, I'm going to talk about the whiners.

One of the first whiners that came to mind was Tom Petty. While Petty sometimes sings in a fairly low register, he's often up in treble-land, and he can get pretty whiny up there. He first came to national attention with "Refugee," but Petty's whiniest performance is probably his duet with Stevie Nicks.



But Petty isn't the best whiner out there. He certainly has competition from Canada's contribution to supergroup-dom and grunge hero worship. I speak, of course, of Neil Young - a man who can whine with the best of them when in electrical mode, but who surpasses all when he's in an acoustic mood, as he was during Farm Aid.



Of course, the painfulness of this song, with its delivery and its references to Elvis Presley and the Sex Pistols, was made even more painful several years after this concert, when Kurt Cobain quoted it in his suicide note. (I briefly referenced this noted in a prior post about Steve Taylor, Jim Morrison, and Cobain.)

But Petty and Young, excellent whiners though they be, are exceeded in whining by a man named Billy. I could choose from a number of examples, but in this case I've gone for the song "Eye" by Smashing Pumpkins and lead singer Billy Corgan.



And now that I've presented Billy's whining ways, I can tell you of my dream duet - one that will surpass Petty and Nicks. If only Billy Corgan and Gwen Stefani would sing a duet, the world would truly be a magical place. (Yeah, I know that Moby and Stefani performed together, but it's not the same.)

Genius is pain - the origins

I plan to write a future music post that will emphasize the point that genius is pain, but some people may not be familiar with the origin of the line.

Back during the heyday of the National Lampoon (before the low days of the National Lampoon), one of their albums included a rather wicked parody of John Lennon's primal scream period, entitled "Magical Misery Tour." A downloadable MP3 of the parody can be found at this 2005 WFMU post.

Since it IS the Lampoon, it probably goes without saying that there is a language warning here. My favorite line, however, is "The sky is blue." Oh, and a reference to the "the Walrus was Paul" line from "Glass Onion." The latter song, of course, was the one that made fun of all the Beatles rumors...but a year later became the basis for the biggest Beatles rumor of all, the one about the death of Paul McCartney.

That's not funny, that's sick.

But returning to the other National Lampoon album, the lyrics to "Magical Misery Tour" were not written by the Lampoon, but by...John Lennon:

This is an unrelentingly brutal parody of John Lennon made all the more pointed due to the fact that the lyrics are Lennon's own words taken from an interview he granted to Jann Wenner of Rolling Stone in 1970. The interview itself is legendary. At the time it was conducted, Lennon was still hopelessly trapped under the vast, oppressive shadow of The Beatles, and he was angry, whiney, and petulant. With his characteristic cutting wit and candor, Lennon held nothing back and unearthed intensely personal details about his experiences with LSD, heroin, his petty ego issues with Paul and Mick Jagger, and the pain of seeing Yoko publicly maligned and almost universally hated.

Kinks reunion - if I may quote Romeo Void...

Stereogum recently ran something entitled Kinks Reunion Impossible Because “Ray Davies Is An Asshole”. The anatomical assessment of Ray came from his brother Dave; Stereogum notes that the Davies brothers were the "Mendelian blueprint for Noel and Liam’s bro-bickering" (Noel and Liam being the Gallagher brothers, formerly of Oasis).

But it's dangerous to bandy about the word "impossible." Remember that the Sex Pistols reunited (with Glen Matlock), the Eagles reunited (in the Hell Freezes Over tour), and that the death of John Lennon didn't stop the Beatles from reuniting.

Quoting Romeo Void, "never say never."

P.S. Although I haven't heard it, there is a link between the Kinks and Romeo Void - namely, the Queens of the Stone Age album Rated R (Deluxe Edition); the bonus disc includes covers of the aforementioned "Never Say Never" from Romeo Void, and the Kinks' "Who’ll Be The Next in Line."

It's just another town along the (Bermuda) road

I previously posted a link to an interview with Jon "Bermuda" Schwarz, long-time drummer with Weird Al Yankovic. In the interview, Schwarz took time to point out that a tour doesn't depend upon the musicians alone. First, Schwarz talked about road life for Yankovic and his band.

I wish I could tell everyone that it's vacation and that we have a lot of personal time for sightseeing or recreation, but traveling by coach to five or six cities a week is grueling and gets disorienting. A lot of time is spent just going from city to city, and most days off are better described as travel days; it's rare to have an entire day and night free in the same location.

However, we are pretty comfortable on the road. Al and the band have a coach with satellite TVs, videos, stereos, kitchen, lounge, and plenty of room to move. After each show, we're usually in a hotel to get some real rest, but most of our waking hours are spent traveling.

Then he told the rest of the story.

I have to also mention that the crew works VERY hard, and operates on a somewhat different schedule than the band. They are almost always traveling overnight after a hard day's work, so they can start all over again in the morning setting up the next show. I don't envy them but I do respect them, and we all get along well. There's no 'us' and 'them' in our organization.

Of course, then there are road crew members who will stab the artists in the back. Take Reno 911 refugees Tom Lennon and R Ben Garant, who joined Yankovic's road crew and released a lurid expose with shocking revelations:

Dr. Demento is not a real Doctor.

Three really good parodies

I was musing about parody songs, or cases in which someone takes a song originally written by someone else and modifies it, usually (but not always) for comic effect. I thought I'd list three of my favorite ones here.

I applied a rule to the list - Weird Al Yankovic would only appear once on the list. So what Weird Al song do I put here? I was originally leaning toward "Amish Paradise," but then decided to go in a different direction. Yankovic's mid and late period songs, whether parody or not, are always inventive, professionally done, and the videos are also executed well. But one song of Yankovic's that stands out is one of his early ones - his parody of Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust," called "Another One Rides the Bus." Unlike his later productions, this one consists of Al, his accordion, and a guy playing "drums" on an accordion case, all recorded during a live airing of Dr. Demento's radio show. The story of the recording can be found here. The randomness and exuberance of that event is more magical than the most complex device that is planned deep in the bowels of Cupertino.



For more information on that life, and how it changed Jon "Bermuda" Schwarz's life, see this interview.

My second parody is one of those which is not entirely comedic in nature, although it has its comedic elements - heck, when Cheech and Chong do something, there's bound to be comedy in there. The original song, Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA," was one that was misinterpreted as a patriotic jingle, but in actuality was a song about injustice. So it's fitting that Cheech and Chong's parody, "Born in East L.A.," also has a serious message embedded within it - namely, the fact that Mexican-Americans who have lived in the U.S. for multiple generations cannot always be equated with the newer arrivals. "Cheech" Marin later turned the song into a movie; here's the trailer.



And if you don't necessarily think of "Born in East L.A." as a serious song, note that Rosa-Linda Fregoso has written a scholarly article on it.

But since this blog (and all my blogs) are all influenced in some way by "The Beatles" (the album, not the band), it's fitting that my third parody choice should be off of that album. The Beatles and the Beach Boys - or, more specifically, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and Brian Wilson - had a friendly rivalry in the mid-1960s which led to such "top this!" masterpieces as Pet Sounds and Sergeant Pepper. Wilson began having problems after Pepper (or, more accurately, after other substances), so the rivalry had pretty much ended in the Beatles' favor by 1968, but the band played homage to their American label-mates by constructing a thematic parody of one of the biggest Beach Boy hits, "California Girls." Except, instead of talking about east coast girls, southern girls, and the like, the English version talked about Ukraine girls and Georgian girls (from the then-province of the USSR, not the US state). "Back in the USSR" was a literally wicked opening to the Beatle's double album, and as the Cold War began to thaw, many Western musicians got to sing the song in the USSR itself. McCartney eventually joined them in heading east, not only to Moscow, but to the Ukraine girls themselves, as this 2008 concert clip from Kiev shows:



For a little more background, including who played drums on the original recording and why, consult John T. Marck's site. (And if the Beatles inspired you to find a Ukraine girl, check the ads at the top of Marck's page; you just might get lucky.)

Taking the Beastie Boys literally

As long as I'm looking at literal videos, I should share this literal version of the Beastie Boys' "Sabotage." (Embedding disabled by request, so you'll have to follow the link.)

The original video itself is of course a homage to the Quinn Martin productions and other television fare of the Beastie Boys' (and my) youth, and the literal version plays this up with references to Greg Brady (although Screech is technically outside of the period in question).

Taking David Byrne literally

I recently wrote a post in my Empoprise-BI business blog that includes a lot of linktext. If you follow one of the links in the text, you ended up at a YouTube video of Talking Heads' "Once in a Lifetime."

While searching for that video, I happened to find another version of the song - the literal version.

Enjoy.

First Feldman posts videos...now Jesse Stay is posting mashups!

Although in this case, Stay has half a right to post this one. After all, Stay calls his blog "Stay N' Alive." (He also takes Staycations, even when he leaves the house.)

So what musical stuff is Stay placing in one of his latest blog posts? In his case, a mashup - one that he refers to as the Best. Mashup. Ever. This one required one of the songs to be sped up a little, but when you do that, you end up with a mashup of two of the 1970s biggest songs - "Stayin' Alive" and "Another Brick in the Wall":



According to the Wax Audio website, "Stayin' Alive in The Wall" was originally released in 2007, as part of a collection called Mashopolos:

It's a pop, hard-rock, metal, disco, movie-soundtrack, hindi-pop, bhangra type album put together using other people's music. Each pairing was achieved by loving cajoling and violent contortion of the source materials and was produced here in Athens, Greece (hence the album title) throughout February and March 2007. I was supposed to be resting and recouperating after 15 months hard overland slog across Asia - but just couldn't resist getting my hands dirty again.

I definitely want to check out Kate Rogers Nelson and "Mashing Up That Hill."

Loren Feldman posts Adele video - is he encroaching on Empoprise-MU territory?

I've written about Loren Feldman of 1938 Media many times in the past (here's an example and here's another, and here's a more recent example). For those of you who are not familiar with him, Feldman is a rare champion of realism in the world of social media - for example, in advocating that the social media tools should be used to provide a return on investment for the businesses who employ them. Feldman spreads his message through a variety of avenues, ranging from speeches at conferences to micromessages on Twitter to puppet shows on video.

In the past I've appreciated Feldman and his observations.

That is, until he started barging in on my territory.

You see, if there's one thing that I frequently do here in the Empoprise-MU music blog, it's the sharing of music videos that I find (primarily on YouTube). Some of them are original videos from the artists themselves, while others are fan videos - some creative, some not-so-creative.

So what does Feldman do? He posts a similar post - in this case, sharing a song from Adele.



OK, Feldman may be honing into my territory by sharing videos, but I'll tell you one thing that I do that Feldman doesn't do - I write about things even though I don't have the slightest clue about them.

Yes, I had to read up on this song, courtesy Wikipedia. To put it mildly, Adele isn't the only person who has performed this song. This Bob Dylan original has been performed by Adele, Billy Joel, Garth Brooks, Gamu Nhengu, Phil Keaggy, Trisha Yearwood, Neil Diamond, Joan Osborne, Timothy B. Schmit, Kelly Clarkson, Ronan Keating, Bryan Ferry, Taylor Hicks, Maria Muldaur, and many others.

Oh, and and if I'm going to be honest about things, Feldman has been sharing songs on his blog for YEARS - in fact, he was sharing songs before the Empoprise-MU blog even existed (this blog started in August 2008). For example, here's a March 27, 2008 video share of a song by the Shel Israel puppet. (Language warning.)

Oh George? (George Clinton Gone Country)

I found it.

Not embeddable, but George Clinton's performance of "What Time Is It" for "Gone Country 3" can be found here.

Oh Sheila? (or, where is Sheila E?)

Over the weekend, while not researching The Famous Al Gunn, I heard Ready for the World's "Oh Sheila" on the radio. Now I was never really impressed with Ready for the World back in the day, since they appeared to have Prince's smuttiness without the talent. "(pant) (pant) (pant) Oh Sheila," indeed.

But that got me thinking about another Sheila (who is supposedly not the subject of the song) - Sheila E. Directly associated with Prince, she was popularly perceived as the one Prince female protege who actually had talent. She certainly had her hits, but like most pop stars, she faded from view a few years later.

Where did she end up?

Well, like any self-respecting musician, she has her own website, http://www.sheilae.com/. And while she may not be topping the charts any more, she's certainly active. She's been out my way recently, appearing at the Thornton Winery in Temecula in August. And back in February, she appeared with her father, Pete Escovedo, in a concert in Ventura. And she's also performing with the purple one. As of now, their European appearances are as follows:

[PRINCE & SHEILA E. EUROPE TOUR DATES]

October 18th
Bergen, Norway

October 20th
Copenhagen, Denmark

October 22nd
Herning, Denmark

November 2nd
Rome, Italy

November 3rd
Milan, Italy

Her biography fills in the missing years between her 80s stardom and today.

After taking several years off for health reasons, Sheila's next project, the E-Train, started in 1994. The band that played a mixture of soul, Latin jazz, funk, fusion and gospel toured in Europe in 1994, and finally released a CD, entitled "Writes of Passage" in 1998.

In 1998, Sheila became the first female bandleader on late night television on Magic Johnson's variety show "The Magic Hour," and she co-wrote and co-produced the late night show's theme song.

Sheila has played on countless albums, including the soundtrack to "Prince of Egypt," featuring Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey, successful Japanese artist Namie Amuro (whom she also toured with in 1996 and 2002) and Gloria Estefan's hugely successful "Mi Tierra."

The complete biography is here. No word on whether Sheila officially played the conga when playing with Estefan. But the most interesting part of the bio was a cross-musical production with which I was not familiar.

Sheila E. participated in the third season of CMT's hit show, "Gone Country." With the goal of creating a hit country music single, each "Gone Country" cast member is uprooted to Nashville for an intense two-week challenge. Justin Guarini, Taylor Dayne, George Clinton, Tara Conner, Richard Grieco, and Micky Dolenz competed on the third season along with Sheila E. Each celebrity was paired with two of Nashville's finest songwriters with whom they wrote a country single. In addition to meeting with songwriters, the cast competed in challenges that tested them musically and physically to adapt to a life in country music, both on and off the stage. Sheila E. was the Grand Prize Winner of the third season and has gone on to release her first country single & video for her song, "Glorious Train.

When reading the cast list, all I can say is "wow." I still have to find George Clinton's country musings, but I did find "Glorious Train."

Nights With Alice Cooper radio show

I was reading a comment from my good Facebook friend Peter Frampton - oh, you've heard of him? - and he offered a comment about a website for a radio show entitled "Nights With Alice Cooper," found at http://nightswithalicecooper.com/.

The show isn't carried by any Los Angeles radio stations, but you can listen on selected radio stations that carry the show on their websites. (Including Canadian radio stations, allowing The Famous Al Gunn to listen.)

The website is jam-packed with pictures, video, trivia, and other information. And if you are scratching your head and wondering who this Alice is that I'm talking about, here's his (yes, his) bio.

Without Alice Cooper, there might never have been the NY Dolls, KISS, Marilyn Manson, Nine Inch Nails, Motley Crue, Slipknot or Rob Zombie ... maybe not even David Bowie, or at least not Ziggy Stardust. The iconic hard rocker...literally invented the concept of the rock concert as theater....

With a schedule that includes six months of every year on the road, Alice Cooper is bringing his own brand of rock psycho-drama to fans both old and new, and enjoying it as much as the audience does.

Known as the architect of shock-rock, Alice (in both the original Alice Cooper band and as a solo artist) has rattled the cages and undermined the authority of generations of guardians of the status quo, continuing to surprise fans and exude danger at every turn, like a great horror movie, even in an era where CNN can present real life shocking images.

The "bio" above is extremely edited, since 90% of it is devoted to Alice's 25th album, "Along Came a Spider." You know, one of THOSE bios.

Well, of course "The Safety Dance" comes to mind at four o'clock in the morning

Yes, it's about 4:00 am in California.

No, I'm not in France.

I couldn't sleep, so I woke up, and I had a mad urge to listen to this song:



Now when you see a guy, a short guy, and a woman, you can be forgiven for thinking that you're watching an ABC video. This is, of course, Men Without Hats, doing the Safety Dance. This, incidentally, is one of the songs by this band which includes a French interlude just to prove that they're from Quebec.

But "The Safety Dance" is not my favorite Men Without Hats song. That designation belongs to "Living in China," with the best line in all rock. Speaking of the then-current changes in China, Ivan and his cohorts talked about "the Gang of Four, trying to make it as a western band." Here's an unofficial video with images from the country itself.



So where are Men Without Hats today? This page offers the rundown on just about every person ever associated with the band:

Ivan lives in Montreal, Stefan lives in a small town in the Laurentian mountains of Quebec about an hour north of Montreal, Colin lives in Victoria on Vancouver island, teaches voice and sings with the Victoria Opera Company, Lenny lives in Montreal and works in computers, Marika lives in southern California, Heidi lives in New Jersey, Allan died of AIDS about 6 years ago, Jerry Arrobas is in telemarketing and living in Mtl, John Gurin is a university professor, Jean-Marc writes jingles in Mtl, the still Famous Al Gunn hasn't left the island of Montreal since the tour in 1985, Bruce Murphy's a dentist in Ottawa, and Tracy Howe lives in Ontario and recently retired from music.