Almost two decades ago, Montell Jordan released a song called "This is How We Do It." The phrase has entered our cultural lexicon, as evidenced by two recent examples.
I attended a training seminar last month in which B.J. Lownie presented to fellow proposal professionals. His presentation title? "This is How We Do It."
This week, the blog MyBrownBaby published a post about detangling, washing, and conditioning black girl hair. The post subtitle? "This is How We Do It."
I set myself a task that seemed nearly impossible.
I was trying to find a song in the key of D minor with a female singer that was probably released in the 1980s.
Oftentimes I can find a song just by searching for a particular lyric.
Unfortunately, for this particular song I could only remember one snatch of the chorus: "Cross my heart, hope to die." Inasmuch as there are tons of songs that happen to include that particular lyric, it appeared to be a hopeless task.
But I kept on plugging away at it, and finally discovered that the song that I was looking for was called "Blowing Kisses in the Wind," by Paula Abdul.
This reminded me of another song that I've been listening to on last.fm over the years, "Crazy Cool."
I remember "Straight Up" and "Rush Rush" from Abdul's pop heyday, but for some reason I didn't discover "Crazy Cool" until years later. And I never associated "Blowing Kisses in the Wind" with her.
Part of the explanation is that "Blowing Kisses in the Wind" was released in 1991, as a later single from Spellbound (which also included "Rush Rush"), while "Crazy Cool" came out several years after that, in 1995. This was some time after Abdul hit it big in 1989 with "Straight Up."
Peter Lord worked with Abdul on her 1991 and 1995 albums, and gave an interview about his work with Abdul (and others). Excerpts:
"Rush, Rush" actually began as a dare or a joke with my Family Stand bandmate, Sandra St. Victor. Babyface was one of the top songwriters/producers at that time, and I told her I could write one of his type of hit ballads in my sleep (no disrespect). I ran to the piano and playfully played the first chords that would begin "Rush, Rush" and sang "You're the whisper of a summer breeze... You're the the kiss that puts my soul at ease..." I then looked at her and said, "Wait a minute, that's not bad!"...
"Blowing Kisses In The Wind" is actually one of my favorite songs I've ever written. It really should be covered again I think. The right country artist could give it a wonderful vibe. Are you listening Allison Cross, Taylor Swift?
Of course, for Taylor Swift the song would require a rewrite to become "No Longer Blowing Kisses In The Wind"....
It's kind of odd, because Paula Abdul doesn't necessarily have the most stellar reputation as a musician. But she was responsible for some pretty good songs.
I was listening to a song on Spotify, and I was curious how much the particular artist would make from my streaming.
As it turns out, this very topic was discussed by The Next Web and other publications a few months ago. The answer? For Spotify, less than a cent per stream.
The Next Web and others characterized this as a terrible state of affairs.
But is it? Not always.
The song that I was listening to on Spotify was the Wolfsheim song "I Don't Love You Anymore." I do not own this particular song, but I purchased the Wolfsheim song "Once in a Lifetime" from Amazon a few months ago, paying about a dollar for it. A portion of that dollar went to Wolfsheim (and presumably they had to split it in half). I have listened to "Once in a Lifetime" numerous times since on my phone and on my computer, and Wolfsheim will never get another penny from me for that song.
But for "I Don't Love You Anymore," I am not paying anything - but Spotify is. Of course, I have to listen to Flo from Progressive every once in a while, but after I hear some more Wolfsheim I feel better.
I happen to like the song "I Don't Love You Anymore," so I'm listening to it a lot. Here are my last.fm statistics for the song; most if not all of the 2012 plays which are from plays on Spotify.
As you can see, if Wolfsheim gets around a penny per play, they've made a lot more from my streams of the song than they would have made if I had bought it in the first place.
Food for thought.
P.S. If you're not signed up with Spotify, you can probably find the Wolfsheim song on YouTube, although YouTube didn't pay a lot in 2009, and they still apparently pay less than Spotify.
[9:30 - MORE IN A POST IN MY EMPOPRISE-BI BUSINESS BLOG.]
I find that I often associate particular songs with particular places.
On July 25, 2000, I was visiting family friends in Switzerland. Although the family friends spoke English, the television usually did not. My command of the German language was mediocre, and my command of the French language at the time was non-existent. (Today, despite working for a French-owned company for over three years, it's not much better.) In fact, I recall that I was paying attention to the Italian language items because they were at least somewhat similar to Spanish, a language frequently heard in southern California. (And no, I didn't try to decipher Romansh - or Klingon.)
Despite the language barrier, I was able to deduce that something had gone horribly wrong in the airplane world. A Concorde, which until then had been one of the safest airplanes ever, had crashed:
The Air France jet, bound for New York, crashed into a Relais Bleu hotel in the town of Gonesse, 10 miles north of Paris just before 1700 local time (1500 GMT).
It is understood the aircraft, which had taken off from Roissy Charles de Gaulle airport just two minutes earlier, plummeted to the ground after one of the left-hand engines caught fire on take-off.
Some time later, after I had returned to the United States, I was listening to U2's new song. (Ironically, I had been listening to the Passengers album a lot while I was in Switzerland.) U2's new album took a turn away from the experimentation of the past decade, and returned somewhat to the band's earlier sound, with ringing guitars and earnestly sung choruses.
Actually, I wasn't listening to U2's new song - I was watching it. For, you see, U2 had released a video.
The most eye-catching part of that video was when U2 was performing on an airport runway, with planes flying overhead. And guess where that was filmed?
Scenes from CDG airport have been seen on album covers and in movies. The band U2 filmed the video for their song "Beautiful Day" at the airport just after the Concorde crash occurred. The Concorde was Air France Flight 4590 that was headed for New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport. The flight crashed in Gonesse, France on July 25, 2000. All passengers and crew as well as four people on the ground were killed.
Because the verses of the song were so melancholy, the staging of the video at that very airport seemed in some way appropriate.
But while I associate that song with the airport at which the video was filmed, David Churchill has a different association. Initially he also associated the song with Charles de Gaulle Airport:
In June 2001, my wife and I were lucky enough to have a four-day weekend in Paris, France. It was a magical trip that was great on almost every level....Upon my return, I managed to maintain those good feelings, at least once a day, by listening to U2's "Beautiful Day" off their All That You Can't Leave Behind album.
Churchill would play the song at work every day. As he put it, "I must have driven my work colleagues nuts." Apparently he didn't have headphones.
He continued this routine for a few months, until one day he arrived at work a little late after a subway ride. He got to his desk and started playing his favorite song when one of his co-workers approached him.
"Did you hear about the airplane that crashed into the World Trade Centre?"
Churchill, who had been on the subway, hadn't heard about that plane, or about the second one. After that, the song took on a new meaning for Churchill.
On that morning, the meaning of U2's "Beautiful Day" was changed for me. From that day forward, it was no longer just a romantic song used to bring back happy memories of a wonderful trip, but now it was a sad, mournful, grief-filled song that became the soundtrack of that awful day...
Incidentally, ten years after U2 had filmed their video, I myself landed at Charles de Gaulle airport. Without incident.
The changes in the music industry over the last few years have certainly caused some debate. Take Taylor Swift. I don't know if Drew Olanoff is never ever ever going to listen to her again, but he's clearly not happy that Swift's most recent album is unavailable for streaming on Spotify. Olanoff focuses on the benefits of Spotify and other streaming services as promotionsl tools:
Seriously though, since the album is so good, it makes me want to share it, and maybe, just maybe, catch one of her upcoming shows. It’s that good. But not now. Why would I shell out a bunch of bucks to see an artist that doesn’t want to connect with me and her other would-be fans? Does she have enough fans? Nobody ever has enough fans, since we’ve all seen the rise and fall of many artists.
Olanoff also shares an infographic that points out, among other things, that interactive streaming services such as Spotify are projected to return $588 million to copyright holders in 2012. Compare that to traditional radio stations, where Swift's latest hit is widely available. How much revenue are the copyright holders getting from terrestrial radio? $0.
Olanoff's post elicited a number of comments, but one comment from Ketan Anjara caught my eye. Anjara shared a link to a November 2011 post from Henry "Hollywood" Cedeno. This post paints a different picture.
Based upon the U.S. Federal minimum wage, which translates to a monthly income of $1,160, Cedeno calculated how many units would have to be sold via various music distribution media to earn that monthly minimum wage.
If you take an artist with a major label deal but with, “low royalty points,” meaning they are a new artist and have signed an agreement entitling them to a low royalty profit on their CD sale (possibly due to not having leverage during the negotiation process) It would take the sale of 3871 units to equal a minimum wage salary.
Now, let’s look at a self-pressed CD. It would take 145 units (the info-graphic says 143, but that is incorrect) to equal the same $1,160 minimum wage salary for the month (145 units x $8 profit = $1,160), A profit ratio of 27:1 in favor of the indie artist....
Again, using $1,160 minimum wage as a benchmark for artist revenue, let’s analyze how many streams it would take an artist just to make a minimum wage salary.
Rhapsody 849,817 streams
Last.FM 1,546,667 streams
Spotify 4,053,110 streams
A whopping four million plays for an artist to see $1,160 in revenue!
Granted that this doesn't paint a full picture either - it ignores the fact that Swift is never ever ever going to get a penny from terrestrial radio, and it doesn't really address the promotional effects of the various services - but it's certainly something to be considered.
Back in 1990, A.S. Van Dorsten described (among other things) how Television scored its first regular venue.
In March 1974, Verlaine and Lloyd were walking towards Chinatown and came upon a place that the owner was outside fixing up. They asked Hilly Crystal to let them try out a weekly series at his Bowery bar, called CBGB-OMFUG (Country, Bluegrass, Blues, and Other Music for Uplifting Gourmandizers). When he asked them what kind of music they played, they responded with “A little rock, a little country, a little blues, a little bluegrass . . . ” said Lloyd. Television ended up playing every Sunday night for six months.
More - much more - here.
There are a number of songs that have names that we know and love, but I have an uncanny talent for revealing the real names of songs. For example, over the weekend I revealed on Facebook that the real name for Kaskade's song "Be Still" is actually "This is not 'Finlandia.'" Those who know a little bit about Kaskade's background and about Jean Sibelius will recognize the rationale for this.
However, this is not the only song that has benefited from my "revelation" of its real name. Years ago, Client released a song that was supposedly called "Diary of an 18 Year Old Boy." But when said song included the lyrics "Make me tremble," it became obvious that the real name of the song was "Diary of a 30 Year Old Woman Pretending to be an 18 Year Old Boy."
But my oldest discovery of a song's true name was a Tom Tom Club which has the real name "Gratuitous Name Dropping." You've probably heard the song, which concludes with Chris Frantz repeating the name "James Brown" over and over.
"Fox on the Run." I remember it well.
You see, around the time that I wrote this post, I favorited the Country Gentlemen's version of the song on my YouTube account. Shortly after that, my YouTube account was permanently disabled, and I haven't had access to it since (although I can still access YouTube, as you will see).
For those who missed my August 2009 post, the history of the song can be summed up in one sentence from this article about bluegrass covers of non-bluegrass songs.
"Most people today think of 'Fox on the Run' as a bluegrass standard, but it actually started as a British rock song," Dan Hayes, executive director of the International Bluegrass Music Association, says of the 1960s hit by Manfred Mann.
The fact that people think of the song as a "bluegrass standard" is something that I should explore in my tymshft blog some day. For now, suffice it to say that I've heard the song performed three different ways - the way Manfred Mann did it, the way Tom T. Hall did it, and the way the Country Gentlemen did it.
This version is slightly different, with the instrumentation of the Country Gentlemen, but sung in Tom T. Hall's key and his version.
But that's not why I'm sharing it.
I'm sharing it because of where the Zac Brown Band performed the song. The venue used for this song is older than - well, it's older than Manfred Mann (although tour buses have improved since the days that Manfred Mann and the Beatles used them).
I doubt we will ever hear Anne Murray singing a song entitled "I Eat Zombie Brains."
Nor do I think that we will hear Billy Idol covering the Partridge Family hit "I Think I Love You."
And Hank Williams Jr. will probably never sing a "We Love Barack Obama" ditty.
Notice that I qualified all of the statements above. After all, it seemed extremely unlikely that Pat Boone would cover Ozzy, Deep Purple, Van Halen, and Led Zeppelin - until he did it. Although I could find no mention of "In a Metal Mood" at Boone's official website, which lists no releases between 1995 and 2002.
There's been some chatter on this side of the pond about TIME Magazine's list of smart musicians, ranging from Queen's Brian May (Ph.D. in astrophysics) to Laurie Anderson.
Anderson is the only female on TIME's list, which raised a question for me - what of Ladytron's Mira Aroyo?
To find information on Aroyo, I went to another list, this one compiled by Daily Top 10.
The Bulgarian born Aroyo is a keyboardist, singer and songwriter for the electropop/New Wave band Ladytron, and also a research scientist with a PhD in molecular genetics from Oxford University.
One of my co-workers, Norm Luckett, spends his days configuring automated fingerprint identification systems and his nights in various musical endeavors. Luckett is one of the members of the Moonlight Jazz Quartet, based in Orange County, California.
You can hear music samples here.
I write proposals for a living. This requires research, discussions, and (argh) meetings, but at some point you have to actually sit down and start writing. When I write, I often put on headphones, attach them to my smartphone, and start streaming music.
Certain music can be very good for proposal writing. When you're up against a deadline, loud music (such as some Nirvana songs) works very well. At other times, calmer music such as Air is called for. (DISCLOSURE: I work for a subsidiary of a French company that has another office in the state of Washington.)
But because of the nature of pop lyrics, there are certain songs that should be avoided during proposal writing.
Take the Pink Floyd song "Have a Cigar," which started playing one day while I was working on a proposal. If you're unfamiliar with the song, it is sung from the perspective of a music industry executive - a know-nothing. (This is the song that includes the famous question "Which one's Pink?")
In his skewering of the executive, lyricist Roger Waters trots out more cliches and double-speak than you can shake a stick at. When you're trying to write a high-quality proposal, it can be counterproductive to hear lyrics like this in your ears:
Well I've always had a deep respect,
And I mean that most sincerely...
It could be made into a monster
If we all pull together as a team...
I shudder to think of the executive summaries that have been written while Waters' lyrics were playing. "If we all pull together as a team, WidgetCorp will help MegaCorp optimize its synergies - and we mean that most sincerely."
Note that Waters was writing these lyrics intentionally. Think of all the popular music lyrics in which the lyricist unknowingly writes junk. There are a lot of them (although I should defend my alumni association friend by noting the Dr. Demento did not write "Fish Heads").
There are a vast number of videos on YouTube, and each one has its own story. This video, which had been viewed approximately 300 times when I first saw it today, shows a guy playing the drums while two women are making tortillas. The title of the video is "Darrell Jenks Diplomat Drummer."
In the summer of 1979 I received a short letter from a forest ranger outside of Burns, Oregon. This person was not a full-time forest ranger; he was a student at Reed College who was about to begin his senior year, and he was going to be my dorm advisor in the fall. (In Reed College terms, he was a "dorm dad.") He wrote identical (OK, Kaz, nearly identical) letters to the six incoming freshmen who would be in his dorm (at that time, Eastport consisted of two triple rooms, a bathroom, and a single room for the dorm dad).
A month or two later I met my dorm dad, Darrell Jenks, who frankly looked like a forest ranger, with a huge beard. And he played the drums - in fact, a Reed College band, Daryl Jenks, was named after him (although, unlike John McVie who had a band named after him, Darrell Jenks never officially joined Daryl Jenks).
But the guy was brilliant. I've known several people who can speak multiple languages with ease, but with all due respect to my former co-worker Alex and my German daughter Anni, Darrell topped them all. Here's what the New York Times said about Jenks:
Darrell, a brilliant linguist...spoke nine languages including Japanese, Korean, and Chinese. In 2007, Darrell volunteered to serve in Maysan, Iraq, where - largely self-taught - he picked up the basics of his fourth super-hard language, Arabic.
In the spring of 1980, the beard magically disappeared. Jenks was about to graduate, and he had a job interview. He eventually ended up with the U.S. State Department, and spent thirty years serving his country.
Now take another look at that video of the Diplomat Drummer. Notice the medical equipment behind the drums, and the cot over to the side. Jenks was dying. That New York Times article that talked about Jenks was his obituary.
There are a vast number of videos on YouTube, and each one has its own story.
P.S. Thanks to Polly for letting me know.
P.P.S. Here's an obituary video.
100 NORMAL AVERAGE CAR OR HOUSE STEREO AT MAXIMUM VOLUME
117-123 HOME STEREO SYSTEM, A VERY LOUD AND POWERFUL 200-2000 WATTS
120-130 FRONT ROW AT A ROCK CONCERT- UP TO 200 REFRIGERATOR SIZE SPEAKERS AND 50000-300000 WATTS OF CLEAN, FULL FREQUENCY SOUND
130 (N)MARCHING BAND-OVERALL LEVEL AT A DISTANCE, 100-200 MEMBERS
142 (P) INSIDE A CAR WITH TWO PRO 18 INCH WOOFERS AND 300 WATTS EACH
150 (N)ROCK CONCERT “THE WHO” TWO 10 STORY STACKS = 144 DOUBLE REFRIDGERATOR SIZED SPEAKERS, ACTUAL LEVEL REACHED 120 DB AT A DISTANCE OF 32 METERS FOR THIS NORMALIZED READING OF 150 DB.CONTINOUS LEVEL 114-118db (P) AT 32 METERS
156 (P)IN A MINI-VAN WITH TWENTY 12” WOOFERS AND 19,000 WATTS OF AMPLIFIER POWER. EACH SPEAKERS IS DISPLACING (PUMPING BACK AND FORTH ) 0.75 INCHES IF LONG HAIR WOMEN SIT IN IT, HER HAIR WILL FLY OUT OF WINDOW WITH BASS WINDSHIELD WIPERS FLY OFF VEHICLE 1/2 TO 2 INCHES, DOOR AND FRONT WINDSHIELD FLEXION MAY BE UP TO +-2 INCHES OR 4 INCHES PEAK TO PEAK EVEN WITH EARPLUGS (-30 DB) AND HEADMUFFS (-24 DB) = -54 DB IT’S STILL LOUD
158 (P)INSIDE A ROCK CONCERT SPEAKER BOX REFRIDGERATOR SIZE AT MAX. 5000 WATTS
162 U.S. FESTIVAL ROCK CONCERT 1983. 10 SEPARATE STACKS, AMPS = 400,000 WATTS (N)
194.09(P) = 1 (ONE) AIR ATMOSPHERE = 14.6962 POUNDS PER SQUARE INCH = 14.6962 P.S.I.= 1 ATM SOUND WAVES DISTORT AND ARE NOW DEFINED AS SHOCK WAVES AND THEY BEGIN TO FOLLOW SHOCK WAVE BEHAVIOR. PARTICLE VELOCITY (BLAST WIND) = 590 FEET / SECOND = 180 METERS PER SECOND = 402 MILES PER HOUR.
320 (N)VOLCANO ERUPTION, TAMBORA INDONESIA,1815, EJECTED 36 CUBIC MILES.APPROXIMATELY EQUAL TO 14,000 MEGATON NUCLEAR BOMBS OR A 14 GIGATON BOMB BASED ON EJECTED VOLUME,CHANGE IN MEGATONS TIMES 1.345 EQUALS VOLUME EJECTED CHANGE.IF WAS A NUCLEAR BOMB IT WOULD CREATE A CRATER ABOUT 12.4 MILES WIDE AND 1.33 MILES DEEP.INTERNAL PRESSURE IS BELIEVED TO BE ABOUT 47 MILLION P.S.I. = 347 DB (P)
In some cases, the original artist or his/her representatives objected to the appropriation, and actually threatened or initiated legal action. The "Sweet Little Sixteen"/"Surfin' USA" dispute was settled relatively quickly, as was another dispute that I will get to shortly. On the other hand, the "He's So Fine"/"My Sweet Lord" dispute involved twenty years of litigation.
In some cases, the original artist provided no comment on the appropriation. Most notably, Ludwig van Beethoven never provided a comment on Electric Light Orchestra's version of "Roll Over Beethoven." In its original form (another Chuck Berry song, by the way), the song only mentioned Beethoven, but by the time ELO recorded it, a significant excerpt from the Fifth Symphony had been included. Not that Beethoven cared. (Not only had Beethoven expired by the time "Roll Over Beethoven" first appeared, but his copyright had expired also.)
In some cases, the original artist was a willing participant in the appropriation. Daft Punk has actually appeared on stage with Kanye West when West has performed "Stronger," his version of "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger."
But there's one thing that unites all of these new versions of old songs. In my opinion, these new versions are better than the originals. Vocally, the Beach Boys blew Chuck Berry out of the water, and the instrumentation was more inventive. And while I have personal problems (religious issues) with Harrison's lyrics, I love his guitar work from that period. "Roll Over Beethoven" has been recorded in many different versions, but the one from the Electric Light Orchestra stands out as a successful attempt to marry classical and rock music. And Kanye (while I again have issues with some of the lyrics) is a much better singer than the Dafts, and again he provides better instrumentation.
But my best example of a re-visitation being better than the original was Kelly Osbourne's take on Viisage's "Fade to Grey." Her version is called "One Word," and while Viisage certainly had a notable take on the song, Osbourne's beats the original.
In my opinion.
I've talked about Kelly Osbourne before. And Electric Light Orchestra.
This particular video is not only notable in its own right, but it directly resulted in the Untouchables' recording contract. Marco on the Bass:
[T]hey invested an additional $7,000 to produce a video for the song 'Free Yourself' which started to generate television airplay. As a result the EP sold 40,000 copies and the video won the 1985 award for best independent video from Billboard Magazine....
Though the EP was selling and The UTs were getting great reviews, none of major record labels located on [Wilshire] Boulevard in Los Angeles were interested in signing the band....
"'Free Yourself' was a different story. We shot our first video to 'Free Yourself.' The song and video were really special. The video was very groundbreaking in it's usage of black and white imagery shifting into bright color and then back to B&W. It was produced by Tina Henry and John Lee and eventually won honors as Billboard Magazine's 1985 'Best Indy Video Of The Year'... 'Indy', as in: 'we weren't signed.'...nobody wanted to take a chance with us. Except Dave Robinson."
As in Dave Robinson of Stiff Records. The story continues:
Well, that was certainly $7,000 well spent.
The song "No Rest On Venus" was one of the songs from my 2009 collection "Brevity Is," so named because each of the songs was under a minute in length.
"No Rest On Venus" can be heard (and downloaded) by going to the URL http://www.last.fm/music/Ontario+Emperor/_/No+Rest+On+Venus.
