So what did Ann Landers think of N'Sync?

Ann Landers got in trouble for recycling columns at one point. Because of this, I'm not going to recycle the entire post that I wrote in 2009. Just part of it.

After talking about the Backstreet Boys and using the phrase "Bye Bye Bye," I interjected a bold comment:

WE INTERRUPT THIS POST WITH THE FOLLOWING MESSAGE TO 'N SYNC FANS. YES, I JUST INCLUDED AN 'N SYNC REFERENCE WHEN TALKING ABOUT THE BACKSTREET BOYS, AND I WAS WELL AWARE THAT I DID IT. SO DON'T MAKE ANY COMMENTS THAT READ "BACKWARD BOYS SUX" AND STUFF LIKE THAT.

Sadly for the reader, I kept on going:

WE AGAIN INTERRUPT THIS POST WITH THE FOLLOWING MESSAGE TO CLAYMATES. YES, I JUST MENTIONED TWO MUSICAL ACTS WITHOUT MENTIONING CLAY AIKEN. SO DON'T MAKE ANY COMMENTS THAT READ "CLAY IS THE SUPREME ENTERTAINER BAR NONE," BECAUSE BEFORE THIS POST IS OVER I'M GOING TO DRAG MICHAEL JACKSON INTO IT. SO THERE.

WE AGAIN INTERRUPT THIS POST WITH THE FOLLOWING MESSAGE TO ADAM LAMBERT FANS. YES, I FAILED TO MENTION ADAM LAMBERT BEFORE CLAY AIKEN, AND EVEN THE "SAVE THE BEST FOR LAST ARGUMENT" WON'T WORK BECAUSE I ALREADY SAID THAT I'D TALK ABOUT MICHAEL JACKSON LATER. DEAL WITH IT.

AND ONE LAST TIME - I PROMISE - WE INTERRUPT THIS POST TO APOLOGIZE IN ADVANCE TO MICHAEL JACKSON FANS WHO ARE INCENSED THAT THE JUST-BURIED JACKSON IS NOT THE SOLE SUBJECT OF THIS POST. AND IT GETS WORSE, SINCE WHEN I DO FINALLY GET AROUND TO MENTONING JACKSON, I WILL DO IT IN THE CONTEXT OF ALL OF THE JACKSON BROTHERS EXCEPT JERMAINE. DEAL WITH IT. GO HEAL THE WORLD OR SOMETHING.

If you want to read the entire post, including my discussion of most of the Jackson brothers, go here.

Can you take me back?

Since my blogging style is heavily based upon the album entitled The Beatles, it's probably surprising that I haven't paid more attention to that album (which you probably know as "the White Album").

Certainly I have paid attention to the album at times, for example in my post about "Back in the U.S.S.R."

But I'm going to partially rectify the lack of White-ness by devoting this post to one of the other songs on the album - the song "Can You Take Me Back."

Now if you consult the liner notes for the album, you won't find any song by that name. But if you listen to the album, you'll hear John sing the ending chorus of "Cry Baby Cry." Then you'll hear Paul sing a bluesy fragment. After that there is some very low conversation, followed by the words "Number nine."

Yep, sounds like my blogs.

Well, while the world at large has ignored "Can You Take Me Back," Alan W. Pollack has not. Pollack has published an analysis of the song, although he initially questioned whether he should do so:

"Can You Take Me Back" stands on the borderline for me in terms of whether it should be included in the official canon of Beatles songs. It's performed over a static single chord, presented to us in fragmentary form, and isn't even included on the printed track list of the album on which it appears. On the other hand you can't really argue that it is any less substantive or discretely distinctive than the other White Album fragments or bonsais that do appear on the track list.

Pollack provides a little of the history of the song:

The officially released portion of "Can You Take Me Back" was skillfully excerpted from a longer performance to isolate the best 28 seconds of the entire performance, and create the illusion that the remainder is as special; kind of like an artfully cropped photograph. What we experience as a haunting fade-out verse in mid-course of what we assume is a second verse turns out to be part of a dinky, complete ending coda if you bother to check out the readily available bootlegs of longer excerpts of the session.

For example, listen here (youtube.com).

And yes, even such a short song (as formally released) can cause controversy of its own, especially when some people think that the lyrics include "Robert" rather than "brother." Between that little misunderstanding and the whole "Paul is dead" thing, there are a number of interpretations of what this song actually means.

No wonder Paul eventually went into hiding.

Regarding the Alan W. Pollack excerpts in this post:

Copyright © 2001 by Alan W. Pollack. All Rights Reserved. This article may be reproduced, retransmitted, redistributed and otherwise propagated at will, provided that this notice remains intact and in place.

While I suspect that my excerpts are fair use, I've reproduced the copyright notice here. Go here to read the whole thing.

Devo and interviews

Oh, another Devo post.

Well, this one was inspired while I was writing a post (which will subsequently appear in my Empoprise-BI business blog) that cited Al Yankovic's song "Dare to Be Stupid." In the course of research, I ran across a Mark Mothersbaugh description of a VH1 interview. Apparently the interviewer asked Mark about the band's most famous song, "Whip It."

We just did a VH1 thing. I made a joke, I had my 2 pugs with me and I got interviewed and kept referring to them as my whippets. Talked about cruelty in the animal world and the importance of recognizing animal rights. I just went off on that for a while. I got a call afterwards and they were upset. They wanted to know why I didn't do the interview right.

Sounds like he did it right to me. What did the interviewer expect?

Devo and progressive rock

I suspect that every new wave band, with the possible exception of Huey Lewis and the News, does not want to be associated with the term "new wave."

At the same time, there are a lot of so-called punk bands that probably don't want to be associated with punk.

Take Devo, for instance. They were probably an art project before they became a band, and my favorite Devo album happens to be their dance album. But at times, they exhibit the qualities of a '60s band.

Take the song "Gut Feeling," from their first full-length album. When you listen to the studio version, initially you think that you're on the campus of Kent State before any shots were fired. As the album version progresses, things start to fall apart and get faster and faster until you get to "Slap Your Mammy," which would give any punk band a run for their money.

But "Gut Feeling"/"Slap Your Mammy" wasn't created in the studio. The live version has a different take. This July 1977 performance is reputed to be the first live performance of the medley.



Now there's always a difficulty in reproducing Devo-like music live, which is why in later years they didn't. (I remember attending a Devo concert in Portland circa 1981 in which one of the guitar strings broke, resulting in no difference whatsoever in the overall sound.) And this live performance took place in a club environment. So it was obviously more difficult to emphasize the soft, "Dove the band of love" beginning of the song.

But the most notable thing about this version is the long introduction. The very long introduction. A three-plus minute introduction that is much longer than most entire punk songs of the time. An introduction that is as long as - are you sitting down? - the introduction to a progressive song. I'll grant that Rick Wakeman probably wouldn't have come up with this particular introduction, but it's almost a parody of punk - taking the same repetitive riff and playing it over and over and over. (Again, the...um, progression in the studio version of the introduction is entirely lost in the club version.)

One thing is common to both the studio and live versions - the wild guitar solo at the end of "Gut Feeling," followed by Mark's high-pitched screams. This, of course, is the antithesis of the '60s feel in the beginning of the song. Even in their wildest, drug-induced moments, Pete Townshend or Jimi Hendrix would never have played a guitar solo like this.

P.S. Here's how I described the song back in 2005:

It starts off underneath a tree on the Kent State campus, on a nice peaceful afternoon (with no National Guardsmen present yet) with a hippie plucking the strings on his guitar, playing some mellow stuff. Then the bass player joins, sounding not at all hippie-dippie, but good nonetheless. Then you get your drummer (remember real drums?) joining in, and the mood gets a little repetitive and you realize you're NOT at Woodstock. Then your keyboards enter the picture, and the keyboardist's fingers keep on creeping farther to the right on the keys, finally slamming some chords to close out the instrumental portion of the song as the drumgs and bass and guitar get more frantic. A guitar chord slams in there, and Mark starts singing the most hateful and spiteful lyrics possible, as the song gets faster. And wait, the guitar is chugging along now, and things are getting faster and faster, and the drums are beating, and Mark is shrieking the second verse. Then he gets to the chorus, and what's the guitar doing here? Now we're in the noise realm, and things are clunky and junky and the hippies are slam dancing and I don't think the people at the coffee jazz club are going like this and now Mark's SCREAMING and they're starting a new song that's even faster and now Mark is just slapping mammies!

Say what? Sylvia Robinson in perspective

Back in April 2004, I published a fake interview with the band known as the Seldom Scene. The point of the fake interview was to illustrate the possible confusion between Sugar Hill Records and Sugar Hill Records. In the fake interview, I asked a number of questions of these bluegrass recording artists:

Have you ever eaten chicken at the record label?

Did it taste like wood?

Did you ever stay in motels/hotels with Big Bank Hank?

As people of a certain age would know, there is a difference between bluegrass and early rap. One of the Sugar Hill Records (the one NOT associated with Lawrence Welk) had an in-house rap band called the Sugarhill Gang, who made it big with "Rapper's Delight." The record was produced by Sylvia Robinson, who passed away on September 29.

But she was not universally admired:

In addition to being remembered as an artist, songwriter and producer, Sylvia Vanderpool Robinson was an entrepreneur and hustler who ruffled some feathers during her career as a record label executive. Was Sylvia Robinson a crook? If you were an underpaid artist on Sugar Hill Records, you’ll probably feel she had shady business practices.

For example, see item 9 in this list of 10 things about Robinson:

9. Sylvia understood that publishing was where the big, long dollars were in the music business. A shrewd businesswoman whose practices were not always equitable, she earned a reputation for underpaying and micromanaging that, according to Dan Charnas, author of The Big Payback, had “Grandmaster Flash split from the rest of his crew over creative differences and lack of payment.”

More of the story can be found at this biography of Grandmaster Flash & Melle Mel:

Name of the artist here should actually be "Grandmaster & Melle Mel". This unique wording was the result of an ugly legal suit between Melle Mel (Melvin Glover) and Grandmaster Flash (Joseph Saddler). When Flash was essentially pushed out of his own group - especially in the fact that he was a non-player on the breakthrough Grandmaster Flash & Furious 5 track "The Message" - Melle Mel (with the encouragement of Sugarhill Records label head Sylvia Robinson) decided that he would take Flash's place in the band - and essentially take his name as well. During this time, the definitive singles "The Message II" and "New York, New York" were released under the name of Grandmaster Flash & The Furious 5, even though Flash had nothing to do with these releases.
The net result of the lawsuit forced Sugar Hill and Melle Mel to cease the theft of Flash's name - which resulted in the White Lines singles all being pressed with the name "Grandmaster & Melle Mel", with Melle Mel's name in larger type than "Grandmaster".


However, Sugar Hill Records can't be blamed - or maybe they can be - for what happened next:

White Lines eventually proved to be Sugar Hill's downfall, as the famous bassline and much of other components of the song were stolen from the sub-underground (but now much more justifiably well known) track "Cavern" by Liquid Liquid, which resulted in another lawsuit - of which Sugarhill would never recover from.

And this happened AFTER the whole "Good Times" thingie.

But on the other hand - there's always an other hand - what would the music of the 1980s and today had been like if Sylvia Robinson had merely retired after Mickey & Sylvia's fame went away? Without the crossover success of "Rapper's Delight," it's quite possible that Run D.M.C. and the Beastie Boys would be completely unknown to us today.

Tracking sounds

One day, I was surprised to hear the Air song "Alpha Beta Gaga" in my house. I was surprised because, although I love the song, I don't actually own it. I was also surprised because it was coming from a room in which my wife was located. (My wife hadn't even heard of Air.)

Turns out that she was watching one of the C.S.I. shows, and "Alpha Beta Gaga" had been incorporated into the show's soundtrack.

Kind of fitting, since Air's original video for the song has a law enforcement theme, sort of.



Television and movie producers all have people who pay attention to the music incorporated into their shows/movies. Their goal, whether recycling an old song or commissioning a new one, is to find music that complements the action on the screen. (In some cases, their goal is to find music that will attract an audience; there are certainly cases in which the soundtrack for a movie is much better than the movie itself.)

But often the use of a song in a television or movie soundtrack will attract people to the song who had never heard it before. A prime example - somehow I went through the entire twentieth century without hearing the Cure song "A Forest." But then one day I was watching something on the Fox Soccer Channel and was intrigued by the music at the tail end of a show. (When you think about it, the guitar-driven choruses in "A Forest" lend themselves well to a TV show about the English Premier League.) Since then, that has become my favorite Cure song (Fascination Street, schmasination street).

Rocky Mountain red tape

I was trying to find some information on proposals - specifically, the types of business proposals that I write for a living. Instead, I found out about a different type of proposal - a petition to rename a mountain peak after John Denver. It probably isn't a surprise to any of you that the mountain peak happens to be in the state of Colorado. While Denver is sometimes identified with West Virginia and Virginia, he is most associated with the state that he immortalized in "Rocky Mountain High." His contributions extend beyond that; among other things, he donated 1,000 Colorado acres to the Windstar Land Conservancy, according to Mother Nature Network (MNN). MNN also records the effort to name one of two peaks on Mount Sopris after Denver. J.P. McDaniel, who started the petition, believes Denver's environmental work should be praised as well, with the simple act of naming a mountain peak after the singer the perfect gesture. “He won many different awards for his conservation work, his environmental work. I think some people don’t realize this, how active he was with environmental causes,” she told The Daily Sentinel. Only one problem: According to Lou Yost of the U.S. Board of Geographic Names, the Wilderness Act of 1964 limits new names to wilderness areas, so as not to detract from the "experience that future generations will have." He said exceptions are generally only made for cases involving educational or safety reasons or "an overriding need." The policy is understandable. In the commercial world, naming rights are sold and re-sold every few years. We don't want to go to a park and see John Denver Peak one year, followed by Bono Peak the next year. But John Denver fans aren't happy. P.S. This post is the first time that I've used the new Blogger interface, and this interface allows me to set a location for each post. Mt. Sopris was the obvious location for this post. I wonder what effect this location designation will have - maybe if I'm lucky, this post will show up on Google Maps...

Was Frank Zappa a rocker?

For better or worse, we love to categorize music. On the one hand, it helps us to sort between the thousands upon thousands of songs that are out there. On the other hand, these categories can be awfully constraining.

Back when I was a Boy Scout in the early 1970s, Frank Zappa released an album entitled Apostrophe. If you were to go into a record store at the time, it would probably be filed in the rock section. Zappa had long hair at the time, so he looked like a rocker. He played guitar, so he really looked like a rocker.

Recently I had the opportunity to listen to the song "Don't Eat The Yellow Snow" again. (Yes, The Sound made it from the B's to the D's.) Now from my dim memory of my Boy Scout years, I only really remembered the chorus. But when you take some time to actually listen to the song, it becomes very clear that labeling Zappa as a rocker unfairly constrains what he was about.

In some ways it's difficult to judge Zappa because of the nature of some of his lyrics. Just when you start considering the jazz influences in his work, you hear him singing about dog doo snow cones. Or perhaps you fast forward a few years to his three-album epic about the evils of the music industry, which includes songs such as "Why Does It Hurt When I Pee?"

Well, that's why Zappa is missed by almost everyone - even Tipper Gore.

P.S. Via a Steven Hodson post, I happened to find the perfect illustration for this post. Unfortunately the artist, Viktor Hertz, chose to copyright the image rather than sharing it under Creative Commons. So I had to use this picture instead.

Songs embedded in the recesses of our brains

So anyways, I was driving to work one day, busily working on some parody lyrics to the Smashing Pumpkins' "Eye" (first words: "I whine. A lot."), when a song popped up on the radio.

I knew that I had heard the song a long time ago, but I couldn't place what the name of the song was, or who sang it.

All that I knew was that the title of the song probably began with the letter B or the letter C. You see, the radio station (The Sound 100.3, KSWD) was playing its end of summer 2000 songs from A to Z thingie, and they were early in the B's yesterday afternoon. Since the thingie is going on until the United States Labor Day holiday, I knew they had a long way to go on their list.

Afterwards, I was reflecting on all the songs that are in the recesses of my brain. I've heard tens of thousands, or perhaps hundreds of thousands, of songs over my lifetime. I can divide these songs into four categories.

Category 1 includes songs that I can pretty much hear on demand, any time I want. A prime example is Royksopp's "The Girl and the Robot"; even if I don't have my netbook with me, the song is loaded on my phone.

Category 2 includes songs that I've heard recently, perhaps on the radio, or perhaps on one of the many streaming services that I use. An example out of this category is Rob Dougan's "Furious Angels."

Category 3 includes songs that I haven't heard in years, or perhaps decades, but if I hear the song, I'll immediately remember everything about it. An example out of this category is the Supremes' "Love Child." This is a pretty fun category; when my daughter was very young, I'd hear one of these songs and say to her, "That song was a hit 21 years ago." Sadly, I never managed to sell my daughter on Madness or the Buggles or Foghat or whoever.

Which brings us to Category 4, which includes songs that I haven't heard in years, or perhaps decades, but if I hear the song, I end up saying "I know I've heard this before." For whatever reason, the song made an impression on me when I heard it, but it didn't make THAT big of an impression. An example out of this category is the song that I heard that one morning while driving in to work - "Breakdown" by the Alan Parsons Project. This song originally appeared on the I Robot album in 1977, and it's probably safe to say that I haven't heard it since the 1970s. "Breakdown" was never released as a single, but I probably heard it on one of the Washington, DC rock stations, since it went into heavy rotation on those types of stations (which is why The Sound included it in their playlist).



So what happens when a song such as this goes from the recesses of your brain and ends up at the forefront of your brain? Will it soon be forgotten again, or will this supplant "Time" as my favorite Alan Parsons Project song? Who knows?

P.S. Speaking of whining, the next song played by The Sound was the Tom Petty song also known as "Breakdown." But they played the live version, in which the first verse was sung by the crowd, not by Petty.

Live, then not so live

You remember the 1970s, don't you? Remember the band that released a bunch of studio albums that went nowhere, and then released a live album that received all sorts of attention? And then the band released a studio album that did sort of well? And then the band disappeared from the public consciousness?

No, I'm not talking about Peter Frampton. See Martin for that, even if he didn't explicitly mention Frampton's post-Alive hit "I'm in You."

I'm talking about Cheap Trick. You know, the guys who released Dream Police. And a massive live album before that.



The best part of this band? Their bass player is named Tom Petersson, which holds a certain resonance for people who lived in Portland, Oregon in the 1980s.

What's scrobbling? (plus a bit on turntable.fm)

Whenever you get involved in any specialized field, you often end up using a language that is incomprehensible to others. I've previously discussed some of the terms that I used in my prior job as a product manager. Now some of my co-workers know a lot of these terms, and one of my co-workers (let's call her Kim, since that's her name) knows a lot of them (she actually writes TRSes, so she knows them better than I do).

But when I'm not working, I use an entirely different language, talking about scrobbling things from blip.fm to last.fm, and abusing people for not putting proper ID3 tags in their mp3 files. And you can't CCB an ID3 tag. (Believe me, I've tried.)

After reading a post entitled Scrobble Turntable.FM to your Last.FM recently listened tracks, I installed the Turntable Scrobbler and tested it in my vanity Empoprise-MU room at turntable.fm.

I then made an announcement on my personal Facebook page:

I'm in The Empoprise-MU Room on turntable.fm
Come join me and let's listen to music together
Now playing: Darkel - Be My Friend

Then I said:

And, most importantly, it's now scrobbling to last.fm. This should be interesting.

Looking over that announcement, I now realize that many of my Facebook friends have no idea what I'm talking about. Now certainly some of my friends, such as Louis Gray and Josh Haley, understand the wording very well. But another of my Facebook friends - I'll call her Kim - asked a very important question:

What's scrobbling?

Perhaps I should write a whole series of posts about all of the things discussed above, but Kim's question is a good one for starters.

Last.fm defines scrobbling as follows:

Scrobbling a song means that when you listen to it, the name of the song is sent to Last.fm and added to your music profile.

This, of course, assumes (1) that you actually have a music profile at last.fm, and (2) that you're listening to music in a way that scrobbles can be recorded. For example, if you pull out your transistor radio and tune it to KIIS-FM, the songs that are played on the radio can't be recorded on your last.fm profile.

Yet.

But there are a number of ways that you can listen to music and have it recorded by last.fm. The first way, obviously, is to listen to music on last.fm itself while you're logged in to the service. All of those songs are automatically recorded on your last.fm profile page.

The second way is to play music that is stored on your hard drive in a way that last.fm can scrobble it. I have a netbook with Windows 7, and I've set it up so that if I'm logged in to last.fm, everything that I play on Windows Media Player is automatically scrobbled.

The third way is to listen to music on some other service that is somehow compatible with last.fm. There are a number of examples of this. In addition to turntable.fm, it is also possible to listen to music on blip.fm and have it appear on your last.fm profile.

In case you're curious, my last.fm profile is here, and my blip.fm profile is here. You can probably see Darkel's "Be My Friend" on the latter (although if you're reading this post long after I wrote it, you'll probably have to scroll down) - so you can listen to the song also.

And if you want to see the last.fm scrobbles of a bunch of different people, go to http://friendfeed.com/lastfmfeeds.

Let's argue about the greatest songwriting team

Jerry Leiber recently passed away, and The Music's Over opened its post on the topic as follows:

Jerry Leiber along with partner, Mike Stoller was arguably the greatest pop songwriting team of the second half of the 20th century if not all time.

As I read those words, the first thought that popped into my mind was "Lennon/McCartney." Obviously Lennon and McCartney had the benefit of performing their own songs, but both Leiber/Stoller and Lennon/McCartney were responsible for hits by multiple artists (and yes, certain Lennon/McCartney songs were given directly to other artists, such as Cilla Black).

Why are Leiber and Stoller so important? The Music's Over cites Leiber/Stoller's song catalog:

The list of their early hit songs includes “Hard Times” by Charles Brown, “Kansas City” by Little Willie Littlefield, and “Hound Dog” by Elvis Presley by way of Big Mama Thornton. They also penned “Jailhouse Rock,” “Yakety Yak,” “Stand By Me,” “Love Potion No. 9,” and “Searchin,’” to name just a few.

Clearly an impressive list. But The Music's Over also cites one other thing in Leiber/Stoller's favor:

Leiber and Stoller are largely credited for taking rhythm and blues music out of the black clubs and spreading it to white America and beyond.

To put it another way - if there never was a Leiber and a Stoller, would there have been a Lennon and a McCartney? Perhaps - Elvis Presley was not 100% dependent upon Leiber and Stoller - but maybe the young Lennon and McCartney would have had fewer inspirations.

I will certainly grant that Leiber and Stoller tremendously influenced popular music in the last half of the 20th century. But I'd argue that Lennon and McCartney were just as influential, if not more so.

What did John and Paul do that Jerry and Mike didn't?

• First off, John and Paul absorbed multiple influences. While they were not (at least initially) influenced by the true rhythm and blues artists that inspired Leiber and Stoller, Lennon and McCartney were initially open to American country music, as well as traditional English popular music. As time passed, they were influenced by the Motown sound, a variety of sounds from California (beach boys to hippie girls), and an assortment of classical and avant garde composers.


• Second off, John and Paul wrote songs that were performed in multiple styles, by themselves and others. My favorite album of all time is the 1968 album The Beatles (a/k/a The White Album), which zooms between a few of the aforementioned styles (Beach Boys rock in "Back in the U.S.S.R.," traditional English music with the non-wild "Honey Pie," avant garde with "Revolution #9," country with "Rocky Raccoon") and throws in a half dozen other styles besides. Even if you ignore Harrison's and Starr's songwriting contributions, Lennon and McCartney alone provide three album side's worth of musical adventures. And that's just one album.


• Third off, Lennon and McCartney have yielded more interesting cover versions. "Hound Dog" is going to be "Hound Dog," unless it's covered by Daniel Miller or something. But you can rest assured that a "Yesterday" cover by Ray Charles and a "Yesterday" cover by Frank Sinatra are going to sound a little different. And when Joe Cocker records with his friends, he doesn't sound like Ringo.


• Fourth, in a related way, Lennon and McCartney have been more inspiring to others. Obviously this is because Lennon and McCartney were also famous for performing their songs, and not just writing them. However, it cannot be argued that there are millions of people who have said to themselves, "I want to be in music, just like Lennon and McCartney!" And some of those people have also said, "I want to write songs, just like Lennon and McCartney." The number of people who have said "I want to write songs, just like Leiber and Stoller" is far fewer.

So at the end of the day, I'd argue that it is Lennon and McCartney, not Leiber and Stoller, who stands as arguably the greatest pop songwriting team of the second half of the 20th century.

But I'd give Leiber and Stoller a close second.

Of course, I've consigned the following teams to 3rd place or below: Bacharach/David, John/Taupin, Holland/Dozier/Holland, King/Goffin, Mann/Weil, and Jam/Lewis. (I excluded Rodgers/Hammerstein, even though their career lapped into the second half of the 20th century.) Let's throw Jagger/Richards in there for good measure. I'd argue that none of these teams had the impact of Lennon/McCartney or Leiber/Stoller.

Am I wrong? Who would you nominate as the greatest pop songwriting team of the second half of the 20th century?

(empo-utoobd) Enjoying Lena Katina without relying on the service that permanently disabled me

Lena Katina's new song "Never Forget," courtesy PopCrush.

Two "Sound of the Crowd" covers

Human League's "Dare" was a departure from what the band had done before, primarily because of a radical change in the band's membership. One of the songs on that album was "Sound of the Crowd."

And people have covered it.

I recently ran across a cover from Mindburner that pretty much sticks to the original.



But I was pleasantly surprised to find out that another artist had covered the song - Kelly Osbourne. What's more, her cover version appears on her "One Word" single. As you may know, I like "One Word."

Osbourne's version can be heard here (YouTube video which is pretty much an audio track).

Between this B-side and the Visage-ish A-side, it's clear what decade Osbourne was residing in at the time.

Well, they have similar hairstyles

There are huge, overwhelming, incredible, massive amounts of music that are released all the time. A ton of music was released this year. A ton of music was released when I was 20. A ton of music was released the year before I was born.

Because of this huge volume of music, it's no wonder that we get confused at times.

As you know, Liz is in the middle of listening to 1001 albums. Liz is significantly younger than I am, and she is therefore discovering some of these albums for the first time. This allows her to offer a refreshing take on the quality of the music, unaffected by what else may have been going on at the time that the albums were originally released.

In that spirit, she recently reviewed the R.E.M. album Document. Here is how her review began:

So, R.E.M. is one of those bands that I've never entirely cared for. A while back I watched "Man on the Moon" and they did the theme song for it. That was my first real taste of R.E.M. and there's just something about the tone of Moby's voice that I never really latched onto.

This album was more of that good ol' Moby. Wikipedia says that they're "college rock" whatever that means. They have a sound that is a little bit psychedelic with the wailing guitars and the constant and Doors-like hypnotic drum beat. There is also the mumble-y sound of Moby's voice that makes me feel like on a smidge bit of mushrooms while I listen.

Now I can agree with most of what Liz wrote...with one exception. Because of her unfamiliarity with the band, she got a teeny bit confused about one itsy bitsy detail. Some of you spotted the error immediately. Some of you have no idea what I'm talking about. Some of you are surprised to learn that Moby was the lead singer for R.E.M. before launching his solo career.

He wasn't. For those who don't know, the lead singer of R.E.M. is Michael Stipe.

The whole episode got me thinking. There are some obvious differences between Moby and Stipe, but there are also some similarities - and I'm not just thinking of the hairstyles.

Both artists, in their own ways, are willing to experiment with different musical styles.

Both artists, in their own ways, are extremely open to collaboration.

And guess what? They've both performed together, along with some guy named Bono (no, not Sonny Bono).



And I find it entirely appropriate that when Stipe and Moby got together, they performed a Neil Young-Bob Dylan medley.

It's too bad that Bono didn't shave his head for the event.

When music is dated

Wow...only one post in the Empoprise-MU music blog for the entire month of July! I'll try to double that this month.

I don't know about you, but old songs go through my head all the time. So one day an old song was going through my head, and one of the lyrics stopped me cold:

She's the kind of a girl that makes the News of the World

The lyric, if you don't recognize it, comes from the song "Polytheme Pam," part of the song suite on side two of the Beatles' Abbey Road. Well, albums don't have sides any more, and we don't have a News of the World any more either.

When I first heard the song in the early 1970s, I had no idea what Lennon was talking about. Back in the early 1970s, the only way that you could really know about foreign newspapers would be to go to your local library and see if they had a copy. And as far as I know, the Shirlington Branch of the Arlington County Public Library never stocked that particular paper.

I'm not the only person who thinks of the passing of News of the World from a musical perspective. Reason.com incorporated a reference to Polythene Pam into its obituary. And the Bangkok Post went one step further:

Polythene Pam was reportedly a combination of a couple of dodgy people Lennon knew in Liverpool, and he knew quite a few. There's some debate whether the character in the song was a transsexual or just a Merseyside tart.

So which of your favorite songs refer to things that no longer exist?

An easy trivia question for Missing Persons fans

Whenever I see a Duran Duran biography - and I recently saw an old "Behind the Music" on the band - I end up thinking of a particular song. This gives rise to the following trivia question:

Which Duran Duran band member is mentioned in the Frank Zappa song "Catholic Girls"?

Answer here.

Fan is short for fanatic - or fatale

I was driving around one afternoon and saw a car with writing on the windows. Since we just had graduation season, it isn't all that unusual to see that stuff.

The message on the window?

Honk if you (heart) Britney

Now this isn't necessarily a reference to Britney Spears, since (especially after her appearance) there are probably a number of people who spell their names "Britney."

Except that there was one other thing written on the window.

Femme Fatale

Now that just happens to be the name of an album by Britney Spears. And a tour. And for all I know a fragrance or a dessert topping or something.

"But John," you're saying to me, "you live in El-Lay where they do all sorts of weird promotions on Hollywood billboards."

Yes, but I was far away from Hollywood when I saw the car. Specifically, I was in an industrial park in Orange County.

Now perhaps the car belonged to the 2nd Vice President (Publicity) of the Orange County Britney Spears fan club, and the driver was going to her daddy to ask him to please please please get her tickets for a Britney show.

Or perhaps the 2nd Vice President actually works in the industrial park, and she was heading home because HER daughters were begging her to please please please get them tickets for a Britney show.

Either way, this again shows that "fan" is short for "fanatic."

Don't let your kids go to contemporary music concerts

MOM, I WANNA GO SEE METALLICA.

Not on your life, child! It's too rowdy and dangerous. Go see a nice classical music performance instead.

In the early 21st century, a clear dividing line has been drawn between popular music and serious music. Popular music is where you wear your jeans and drink beer and shout at the top of your lungs, while serious music is where you wear an uncomfortable suit and walk very quietly and sit in a chair with a serious expression.

Usually.

But so-called "avant-chamber music" is not always calm and sedate. The New York Times describes a recent evening of music in San Francisco, in which JHNO was performed "Untitled," a piece for viola and electronics.

Partway through the performance, someone began hissing at JHNO. Then the person began clapping inappropriately and causing other distractions.

Now if this were a standard rock concert, no one would even notice. But in the rareified atmosphere of a concert hall - kind of like golf, actually - the noises did stand out, and as a result JHNO became exasperated, threw down his viola and broke it (Pete Townshend couldn't have done it better), and stormed off the stage.

The heckler? An octogenarian viola player named Bernard M. Zaslav, who subsequently recounted his experience at being heckled himself in the late 1940s while performing a 12-tone piece with the Cleveland Symphony.

The reason for Zaslav's outburst? The song was too danged loud.

Well, at least some things are consistent.

(empo-tymshft) Yeah, Mark Mothersbaugh was in a band

I was born at an interesting time - the early 1960s, which made me just a little bit young to experience Beatlemania. I remember hearing that there was a band that was just like the Monkees, only zanier, but it wasn't until the early 1970s that I really began to learn more about the band that the guy in Wings used to be in.

To most people, it's odd to discover someone who knew about the Monkees and Wings before the Beatles, but that's the way things turned out.

Of course, in my life (I've loved them - never mind) I'm now running into people who surprise me. To people of a certain age, this statement is shocking:

I had no idea Mark Mothersbaugh was in Devo!!

My jaw nearly dropped when I read that. For all intents and purposes, Mark Mothersbaugh was the public face of Devo. But then the commenter explained:

I became a fan through his soundtrack work, namely the Royal Tennenbaums score.

Once you read the comment, the original statement makes sense. Mothersbaugh has made a living for the last couple of decades writing music soundtracks, and has built up such a reputation in that regard that some people are not aware of his former career.

I'd be willing to bet that some people don't realize how movie star Will Smith got his start. Even those who know about his TV show may wonder how he got cast in the role. (For the record, Smith was a successful rapper who made the transition to television and eventually film.)

One other thing - the comment above came from Songfacts. I just discovered that Songfacts has an extensive set of interviews with various songwriters, including Mothersbaugh and Jerry Casale. I highly recommend the interview with Thomas Dolby.