All politics is not local
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I write about ESRI in this blog on occasion - most recently, in March 2016.
And ESRI just made the news again - not a local news outlet, and not a geo
news...
By day, I perform strategic marketing duties for...well, as of August 2020, for nobody. By night, I manage the Empoprises blogging empire, as well as various portals in Ingress and other games. Formerly known as Ontario Emperor (Ontario California, not Ontario Canada). LCMS Lutheran. Former member of Radio Shack Battery Club. Motorola Yellow Badge recipient. Top 10% of LinkedIn users.
Public Image Ltd. isn't the only old band that's resurrecting. The Bee Gees are also re-forming...but they're not reforming as the Bee Gees. Bang, in the Inquisitr:
Robin and Barry Gibb are “getting back together” six years after the death of their brother, Maurice, who died of a heart attack following surgery for an intestinal blockage in 2003....
Robin and Barry...announced shortly after Maurice’s death they would not use the Bee Gees name anymore when performing, although Robin wouldn’t rule out the possibility last summer.
He said: “We decided that on an emotional level. Whether or not that will change, we don’t know. It’s a personal thing and we’ll do it when the time is right”.
I had always figured that they had formed as a band just before NEMS employee Robert Stigwood found them, but their history as a band goes back to the 1950s:
The trio made their performing debut in 1955 as the Blue Cats, performing a brief set of Lonnie Donegan and Tommy Steele covers at the Manchester club where their father's group was playing. In 1958 the Gibb family emigrated to Brisbane, Australia. There the boys regularly played at area talent shows and other amateur showcases, occasionally performing songs composed by Barry. They changed the name to 'The Brothers Gibb' but soon shortened this to simply 'the Bee Gees'. In 1959 they were spotted by disc jockey Bill Gates, who soon became the group's manager and played their demo tapes on his radio show. An 18-month residency as the house band at the Beachcomber Nightclub in Surfers Paradise allowed the group to hone a set of original material composed by Barry, and in 1962 they signed to Festival Records.
But I was aware that the band, shortly after hitting it big after returning to England, broke up:
Internal friction and problems with drugs and alcohol were, however, tearing the Bee Gees apart, and in the middle of 1969 Robin left to begin a solo career. He had a major hit with 'Saved By the Bell'. In the meantime, Barry and Maurice, the latter of whom had recently married singer Lulu, continued alone, working on film Cucumber Castle and the country single "Don't Forget to Remember". Drummer Peterson left also and filed a lawsuit claiming rights to the Bee Gees name. The year-long court battle which followed prevented the Bee Gees name being used and the group lost virtually all of its chart momentum.
Both Barry and Maurice issued solo singles, neither being a hit.
Eventually Robin returned, and the Bee Gees released one of their best songs, "Lonely Days." Then they got bigger, with "Jive Talkin."
Then, in case you didn't know, they got really, really big with "Saturday Night Fever." This clip of "Stayin Alive" doesn't include John Travolta, but it certainly shows the Bee Gees' image during the peak of their fame.
While Rick Dees was an RSO artist, and there were other RSO artists (such as younger Gibb brother Andy), the Bee Gees were clearly the largest stars on RSO.
While their super-fame passed, as super-fame always does, they still hold a place in musical history, not only for their massive disco hits, but for their work before and after, which was often of high quality.
With one exception. Every band releases a clunker, and I have a personal distaste for the song "I Started a Joke." And the joke is on you if you dare to listen:
OK, I'm going to share one more Gibb-related video - one in which the Gibbs don't appear, and one which wasn't an RSO release. Here are Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton:
And you have to admit that Dolly looks better in a high-slit dress than Maurice ever did.
John Lydon, a/k/a Johnny Rotten, never took Neil Young's advice of burning out rather than fading away. He persists, and occasionally resurrects his old glories. The Sex Pistols (with original member Glen Matlock replacing the late Sid Vicious) have re-formed and toured, and now it's Public Image Ltd's turn. Stereogum links to a pilofficial.com press release:
Public Image Ltd Return Press Release: September, 7th 2009
PiL December 2009 Live Dates
Public Image Ltd are set to return for a series of very special performances for the first time in 17 years.
London’s Brixton Academy will play host to one of the most innovative and influential bands in music history on Monday 21st December, over 20 years since they last played the famous venue.
John Lydon, Lu Edmonds, Bruce Smith and Scott Firth will also tour nationwide in celebration of the 30th year anniversary of the groundbreaking ‘Metal Box’ album, kicking off at The Birmingham Academy on December 15th.
John Lydon- “I sound like a bag of kittens thrown down the staircase”
Public Image Ltd will not only be celebrating the anniversary of ‘Metal Box’ but also showcasing the unique sounds of singles such as ‘Public Image’, ‘Death Disco’ and ‘This Is Not A Love Song’, to ‘Rise’ and ‘Seattle’, with many further surprises in store.
After fronting the Sex Pistols John Lydon formed Public Image Ltd in 1978 with their experimental sound fusing Rock, Dance, Folk, Ballet, Pop and Dub PiL are regarded as producing some of the most diverse music of the post-punk era. As a band the music and vision constantly evolved like no other, culminating in an incredible live experience.
Now these 2009 December shows are set to re-create the Christmas vibe that was at the forefront of PiL’s first ever UK gigs on Christmas Day and Boxing Day in 1978 at The London Rainbow Theatre.
Lu Edmonds- Multi instrumentalist and former guitarist in The Damned Lu joined PiL in 1986 recording and playing on the album Happy? and co-writing the album ‘9’ adding yet another dimension to the PiL sound.
Bruce Smith- Former drummer in The Pop Group and The Slits became percussionist for PiL also in 1986 playing and recording on the albums Happy? and ‘9’. Seen as a drumming virtuoso Bruce Smith brought his unique style into the fold.
Scott Firth- A bass player/multi instrumentalist that has collaborated and played with a variety of top musicians and bands including Steve Winwood, John Martyn, Elvis Costello, and The Spice Girls.
Birmingham, 02 Academy, December 15th 2009 Leeds, 02 Academy, December 16th 2009 Glasgow, 02 Academy, December 18th 2009 Manchester, Academy, December 19th 2009 London Brixton, 02 Academy, December 21st 2009
Tickets go on sale 9am Friday, September 11th. Buy online at Livenation.co.uk or Tel 0844 576 5483 (24hrs)
There will be a special ticket pre-sale via PiLOfficial.Com. Details will be announced Tuesday, 8th September...
For Press Enquiries please contact Adam Cotton at The Outside Organisation Ltd
So you have Lydon, two people who joined PiL in 1986, and one person who has played with the Spice Girls (among others). Paul Lester has a problem with that:
Public Image Ltd's debut single, Public Image, was released in October 1978, making it, along with Magazine's Shot By Both Sides, Gang of Four's Damaged Goods and the Banshees' Hong Kong Garden, one of the records that ushered in the post-punk era. It was a period of incredible musical expansion that saw white rock bands dabble for the first time with disco and dub. John Lydon's second outfit played a pivotal role in that exciting development.
Or, at least, the early incarnation of PiL did. There were many versions, featuring a series of drummers, but it was when Lydon teamed up with guitarist Keith Levene and bassist Jah Wobble that the group produced their most groundbreaking work.
On my Facebook account, I just wrote a parody note entitled "What if President Carter had spoken at Wakefield?" It consisted of a long look back to high school events from other 30 years ago, and in the course of the post-note comments I made a shocking admission:
I am not proud to say that I owned the entire Rick Dees album. (On cassette.)
Several years after I graduated from Wakefield, I moved to the Los Angeles area and had the opportunity to listen to Rick Dees on a daily basis, if I so desired. As time went on, I desired to listen to him less and less, and was very happy when Ryan Seacrest replaced Rick Dees at KIIS-FM...only to be disappointed when Rick's tired routines popped up elsewhere on the radio dial.
But back in the 1970s, Dees' routines were fresh and new...at least to me. (Maybe people in Memphis were getting tired of him.) And yes, I did own the Rick Dees album that included "Disco Duck."
I figure that some of you are familiar with the title track, a novelty track in which a guy with a duck voice was enjoying the disco beat - "get down mama!" This gave Dees a healthy dose of national fame, which he used to appear on "The Midnight Special".
The album included some other songs in the same vein ("Dis-Gorilla," anyone?), but two of the other songs still stand out in my mind today. Let's start with "Barely White," in which a man with a deep voice is completely unsuccessful in picking up a woman..."I stuck out tonight, even though I'm Barely White." I actually enjoyed the song, and still enjoy it today, but Wilson & Alroy (who, as you may know, have very high standards) absolutely despised the song:
Ostensibly a parody of a certain R&B singer, with the Caucasian-American Dees performing both the egotistical seducer and his reluctant female prey in mock "black" accents, it manages to be at once incredibly offensive and totally unfunny... a magic combination. It's definitely worth a spin just to hear how ill-conceived and clueless an attempt at humor can be: the concluding watermelon reference is jaw-dropping.
The thing that strikes me, though, is that Rick Dees, a working DJ at the time the song was released, emerged unscathed from the experience, and is working in radio to this day.
For the...um, record...I don't even recall the watermelon reference. Maybe my opinion would change if I did.
The other song that I recall fondly is called "The Peanut Prance." Coincidentally, my Facebook parody obviously focused on President Carter, and Rick Dees used his same formula - put a duck, gorilla, or whatever into a disco situation - and did the same with Jimmy Carter. I'd say more about the song, but I already wrote about it, and one of its co-authors, in an October 2, 2008 post. And that post referenced a July 11, 2005 post. But I'll repeat the joke with which Dees closed the song...and the album.
kissing 2 girls with mononucleosis will not give you stereonucleosis.
But those are just some of the highlights from this album. All Music Guide has the complete track listing:
1 Disco Duck 2 Barely White (That'll Get It Baby) 3 Bionic Feet 4 Flick the Bick 5 Disco Duck (Instrumental) 6 Dis-Gorilla 7 Doctor Disco 8 Bad Shark 9 He Ate Too Many Jelly Donuts 10 The Peanut Prance
I can't even recall some of these songs any more, but "Bad Shark" managed to parody both "Jaws" and "Shaft" simultaneously, and "He Ate Too Many Jelly Donuts" was about another Memphis resident.
Oh, and you know how kids moan about how their moms throw away their old baseball card collections? Well, someone has retained this album, and is selling it new...for $73.58.
Of course, I happen to consider the Clash and the Sex Pistols as pop music bands, but that's beside the point for this post, because I'm starting off by talking about the Backstreet Boys. While many of you probably said "Bye Bye Bye" to them years ago...excuse me for a moment...
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.
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.
Where was I? Oh, yeah, the Backstreet Boys. As I was saying, I like their stuff, and I haven't shared "Incomplete" in a while, so here goes.
But according to PopEater, this song, like their previous ones, suffered from a lack of control by the band. They've rectified that:
Despite the benefits of success, some pop stars still don't have a say in their creative process. With their seventh studio album, 'This Is Us,' the Backstreet Boys are trying to change all that....
Instead of being told who they were going to work with and what songs they were going to sing, Backstreet started calling their own shots and personally contacted the producers they wanted to work with. Nick Carter called T-Pain to see if he was interested, while the whole band reached out to RedOne, Jim Jonsin and others.
Artists taking control of their own music is nothing new - as time went on, the Beatles exerted greater control over their music, and Jimmy Page ensured that Led Zeppelin controlled their sound throughout their career - but it's rare for boy bands to get that type of power. But then again, the Backstreet Boys are not unique in that regard.
Enter (I told you this was coming) the Jacksons.
Throughout their young lives, the Jackson Five were pretty well restricted in what they could do, first by their father, and then by the Motown machine. Even when the Jacksons (minus Jermaine) broke free of Motown, they found themselves under the control of Gamble & Huff - an updating in their sound to be sure, but not necessarily a Jacksons sound. So they insisted on artistic control, left Gamble & Huff, and recorded Destiny. And while some of the songs were written by outside songwriters, the biggest hit, Shake Your Body (Down to the Ground), was written by Michael and Randy Jackson and produced by the band itself. And Destiny was followed by Triumph and Victory, and while one could argue that the success of Victory was partially due to the incomparable success of one band member at the time of the band's release, the fact remains that this former controlled boy band was able to carve out a successful career while being in (using the words of their younger sister) "control."
Will the Backstreet Boys carve out a comparable level of success as they call their own shots? Time will tell.
Yeah, now THIS blog is talking about Second Spin, and I haven't even set foot in the store yet. If you don't know, Second Spin is a store that has just expanded and opened a location in Ontario, California at Ontario Mills. See this post and this followup for information.
SecondSpin.com, which is a new used CD/DVD store at the mall, was promoting an in store performance by Boys Like Girls (yes that is the band's name) on Monday.
I guess someone needs to tell Liset that they also have vinyl.
Remember the dispute between YouTube and the Performing Rights Society in the United Kingdom? The one that kept music off of YouTube in that country? If you don't, then you may not have read my previous posts on the topic - back on June 2, April 22, and March 10. Yes, the dispute has been going on that long.
Google (GOOG) executives wouldn’t disclose how much they’re paying songwriters for the rights to play videos that feature their songs, but said they would be cutting PRS for Music a single check that covers the length of the deal. The new pact will extend through June 2012 and will retroactively stretch back to the beginning of this year.
The German dispute (see my April 2 post) isn't settled, but there's a glimmer of hope:
The deal may provide a blueprint for resolving a similar dispute between the video site and a German rights society.
Peter Kafka expressed no such hope for the Warner Brothers tussle (see my Feburary 7 post). But at least SOMETHING is moving forward.
I've previously discussed whether records are obsolete. What about singles?
This thought struck me as I read an Inquisitr post that catalogued the Beatles' top 40 selling singles in Britain.
The top five positions were all occupied by songs that were released in the first part of the Beatles' recording career, when Beatlemania was at its peak.
For the...um...record, those songs are:
1 She Loves You 2 I Want To Hold Your Hand 3 Can’t Buy Me Love 4 I Feel Fine 5 Day Tripper/We Can Work it Out
From there you notice little anomalies. For example, number 6, "Hey Jude," was released as a single in 1968 and, to my recollection, was never put on a regular album in Britain, which meant that the single was the only way to get it.
Which brings up a point - namely, by the time that the fourth Beatle (Paul) had left the band (the other three had left at times, but only John left permanently), singles mattered a bit less than they did when "She Loves You" topped the charts. If you just judge the Beatles on their single career, for example, you miss "Sgt. Pepper" entirely.
Not that singles ceased to matter to the Beatles - at least three of the singles on the list were issued after the Beatles broke up.
23 Free as a Bird 25.Beatles Movie Medley 30 Strawberry Fields Forever (re-issue)
Missing - "Got To Get You Into My Life," a US single in the mid-1970s that may not have been released on the other side of the pond.
"Free as a Bird," of course, was the song that was released with the most hype, since it was a Beatles song in which one of the Beatles was dead.
Of course, if you're just looking at individual singles, you're missing the albums, which were significant even in the Beatles' early recording period. For me, the best part of the album entitled "The Beatles" isn't the song "Back in the U.S.S.R." - it's the fact that "Back in the U.S.S.R." becomes "Dear Prudence," which becomes "Glass Onion," which eventually becomes "Cry Baby Cry," followed by "Revolution #9," followed by "Good Night."
Then again, I don't listen to music radio as much as people did in the 1960s. Times have certainly changed...
Last Friday, I ran a post in my Empoprise-MU music blog entitled NTN Buzztime is on Facebook. It began as follows:
I should have thought to search for this before, because Facebook has everything. But I happened to run across NTN Buzztime's Facebook page recently.
Well perhaps I should repeat the same introduction all over again. I was looking at thejadekitsune's StumbleUpon account (she reviewed my Empoprise-BI business blog 3 months ago) and noticed that she has recently selected di.fm as one of her favorites.
Although I like di.fm (especially on my mobile phone, since it's the only available option on my older phone), I admit that I haven't visited the site in a while. So I was pleased to discover that di.fm, like everyone else, now has a Facebook fan page.
Oasis evolved from an earlier band called The Rain....Liam suggested that the band name be changed to Oasis. This change was inspired by an Inspiral Carpets tour poster which hung in the Gallagher brothers' bedroom. One of the venues the poster listed was the Oasis Leisure Centre in Swindon.
Yeah, Oasis in the Gallagher brothers' bedroom. Odd beginning, and an odd end.
It was a throwaway line, and not necessarily germane to Stereogum's discussion of a Foo Fighters greatest hits collection, but it got me thinking nonetheless.
While they were more of a necessity in the pre-MP3 era, Greatest Hits collections will be around as long as music needs marketing.
This is another example (perhaps it belongs in my Empoprise-BI business blog) of the way in which people in different eras will think of things differently. People of my age still refer to "record stores," and still think of times when albums had two sides. (When I released the Ontario Emperor MP3 "Digital Judge," I purposely designed it to consist of three, rather than two, sections. No one cared.) And if we wanted to collect all of the best songs of an artist on a single...um, "record," we'd have to shell out money and buy something that the...um..."record" company offered to us.
But now we have the power to assemble our own greatest hits collections by buying and downloading individual songs. And these collections can be suited to our own personal tastes - if I don't like "Philadelphia Freedom," I can leave it off my Elton John collection. Similarly, if I want to throw "Stairway to Heaven" onto my Elton John collection, I have the power to do so.
So what purpose do corporate-produced greatest hits serve? Well, for one thing, there are still a lot of people (admittedly, myself included) that don't download a whole bunch of music. For another thing, it allows the artist to mark a milestone - "I guess I had a career; Sony was able to cobble together a greatest hits collection."
As I write this, some former students from my high school are celebrating at our 30th anniversary reunion. I initially planned to fly to the East Coast to attend, but our family vacation and various other commitments and potential commitments interfered. But the reunionists are reunioning, beginning with a get-together on Friday night, continuing with the major event on Saturday evening, and concluding with a picnic on Sunday afternoon.
Because of the reunion, my brain has been in a reminiscent mood. But not completely. On Friday evening, when I cued up a last.fm radio combination of Novaspace radio (yeah, fly bluesmen dropped out, but Eurodance is still in) and Wolfsheim radio, the thought struck me - shouldn't I really be listening to songs from 30 years ago?
So I began thinking about the music from my high school years in the late 1970s, or more specifically the music that I was listening to during my high school years in the late 1970s. Your musical tastes are largely influenced by the people around you, and if my high school classmates were listening to Eno or the Clash or whatever, I certainly wasn't aware of it.
What I was aware of, however, were the geographical bands. Geographical bands have been around forever (one could argue that after Mayor Daley forced a name change, Chicago was a geographical band), but there seemed to be more of them in the late 1970s. I never personally got into New England, but I joined many people in listening to Boston and Kansas. I've told my daughter that if I hear certain songs from those two bands, I can predict what the next note will be in the guitar solo or whatever.
And both bands had links to the geographical areas for which they were named. Tom Scholz wasn't born in Boston, but ended up going to college there:
Tom Scholz '69, SM '70 never expected his passion for music to be much more than a hobby. After graduating from MIT, he worked as a senior product design engineer at Polaroid by day and spent his nights composing and recording demos in his basement studio and playing in local bands.
The late Brad Delp, however was a Massachusetts native.
Kansas was more of a true band (rather than a de facto solo project) than Boston was, and the band's roots are truly in Kansas - specifically, Topeka.
Dave Hope (bass), Phil Ehart (drums, percussion), and Kerry Livgren (guitars, keyboards, synthesizers) formed a progressive rock group named Kansas in 1970 in their hometown of Topeka, Kansas, along with vocalist Lynn Meredith from Manhattan, Kansas, keyboardist Don Montre, keyboardist Dan Wright, and saxophonist Larry Baker.
Vocalist Steve Walsh, on the other hand, originally came from a distant location...Missouri.
P.S. Since I took both of those videos from mtv.com, it's worthwhile to mention one more thing. Some of you will recall that MTV didn't exist when I graduated from high school in 1979. I do remember, however, going to Alan Carter's house one night. He had cable, and that night we noticed that HBO had some type of jukebox with visuals between the movies. They showed the band Raydio obviously lip-syncing to their song "You Can't Change That." As I've previously noted, I thought it was the funniest thing in the world, and couldn't imaging that the whole "video" thing would take off just a few years later. (Sorry, Michael Nesmith; I didn't have the faith.)
P.P.S. Yes, the picture at the top of this post is a bit of an inside joke. Not only does it show a "Boston" band that was a little more traditional than the Boston band that Tom Scholz created, but it also shows people playing flutes - and I was a flute player in high school. If I had a flute today, I'd play the Wakefield Warriors fight song for you...
Whatever one may say about Madonna, she's certainly not shy, even when it can potentially cause her trouble. PopEater:
Thousands of Romanian concertgoers made their displeasure known with Madonna on Wednesday, after the singer paused her show to speak out against the persecution of Gypsies in that corner of Europe.
"It's been brought to my attention that there's a lot of discrimination against Romani and Gypsies in general in eastern Europe, and that makes me very sad," she told the crowd of 60,000 in Bucharest. As she spoke, a vocal minority began booing her words. She did not acknowledge the jeers.
There is a video. Note the changing reaction of the crowd - happy, then troubled, then positive again.
I'm not familiar with the song that she sings in the closing minutes of the video, but it is a nice one. Can someone identify it?
Either on her own or with such songwriting partners as her one-time husband, Jeff Barry, Greenwich penned such gems as “Be My Baby” (The Ronettes), “Then He Kissed Me” (The Crystals), “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” (Darlene Love), “Hanky Panky” (Tommy James & The Shondells), “River Deep, Mountain High” (Ike & Tina Turner), and “Do Wah Diddy Diddy” (Manfred Mann).
The New York Times, while mentioning another song ("Leader of the Pack"), talked about the environment in which Greenwich worked:
Ms. Greenwich was among the songwriters, music publishers and producers working at the Brill Building, at 1619 Broadway in Manhattan, which (along with 1650 Broadway, across the street) became a center of pop music in the early 1960s. The buildings were home to Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, Burt Bacharach and Hal David, and Carole King and Gerry Goffin, among many others, and from their offices and studios came a flood of teenage anthems, story songs and achy love songs fraught with the hormonal angst of the young.
*To all the High School students performing "Leader" across the country, don't be shy about contacting me (See link on the Home Page), you'll get my personal response; just give me some time.
Sadly, there's no time left to take advantage of her insight. And her webmaster is obviously consumer with other duties at this point.
If I were to compile a list of 100 things that I should be doing, one of them is to listen to radio deejay Jeff Pope more often. I've loved his work on KGGI (andbefore, when he was on X 103.9). Even though his station is an Inland Empire station, I get good reception on it even in Orange County. Which is more than I can say for our Los Angeles ESPN affiliate; why did the Lakers have to switch stations?
But I digress.
So anyways, one of the reasons that I like to listen to Pope is to introduce some new songs into my music mix. Let's face it - my normal music listening habits don't often veer into whatever the danged urban kids are listening to these days (or, for that matter, the suburban kids - ask my daughter). So if I listen to KGGI for a bit, maybe I'll hear a song that captures my fancy, and if I can figure out what it is, I'll introduce it into my music mix.
About my music mix - I'm still working on my "reduce the long tail" project in my last.fm library. Basically, it goes like this - if any artist in my last.fm library has only one play, I either listen to the artist again so that it has two or more plays, or I delete it the artist from my playlist altogether. (Goodbye, Diddy.) At the same time, I'm working on broadening my library, so during the last week, I've been listening to songs that are similar to songs by Novaspace, Baby Bash, and Charley Patton. Or, in other words, Eurodance bluesmen that are so fly.
Incidentally, according to this biography (which details where Madcon actually comes from - is a Röyksopp collaboration in the works?), the song itself is a Frankie Valli cover. Here's how the Jersey Boys did it.
Sadly, no version by the Four Seasons, the Jersey Boys, or any other related entity is in last.fm. So I have to rely on the African-Nordic version for my scrobbling.
Postscript - when I have time, I like to add Creative Commons commercial licensed pictures to my blog posts. While trying to think of a perfect picture for this post, I wondered if there were one that somehow gave a musical slant to the word "fly" (from Baby Bash, natch). Well, I found one, but it kinda sorta distracts you from the content of the post itself. Therefore, I've placed it at the bottom of the post, rather than the top. (If Mr. Pope does vanity searches, I'm not sure how he'd react to THIS. Then again, maybe he'd try to put it on the air somehow. "The new way to listen to music...")
Malaysia’s conservative Islamic party on Monday called for the Danish band Michael Learns to Rock to be banned from performing next month, saying it was an insult to Muslims during Ramadan....
“We are opposing this concert because holding it does not respect Muslims as it is the fasting month of Ramadan, a time for holiness and cleanliness,” PAS youth wing chief Nasrudin Hassan Tantawi told Agence France-Presse.
“It is an insult to Islam for the government to allow such a concert to take place and we urge all groups to follow our lead in demanding the concert be banned,” he said.
Now before you dismiss this out of hand by saying that conservative Muslims are unenlightened kooks, take a look at your own views and those things that you hold precious. Perhaps you'd object to a Klan concert on Martin Luther King's birthday. Or perhaps you'd object to a Christian concert during an official secular holiday.
While many of us, especially those who are inclined to read this blog, are music lovers, there are times when we believe that certain types of music - or any music at all - are not appropriate.
I had jury duty service on Tuesday which ended before the day ended so, rather than driving an hour to work, I got drafted to pick up my daughter from Ontario Mills. As I was waiting for her, I noticed some display screens and photoblogged about it.
After I wrote the blog post, I began interacting with Akoo. My location is "ONT," so when I wanted to know what video was playing on the screen at the time, I'd simply text the following to 33123:
Ont?
As I sat there, I got responses regarding artists that I know next to nothing about:
What's playing now? Jordin Sparks - Battlefield!
What's playing now? Kristinia DeBarge - Goodbye!
What's playing now? Esmee Denters - Outta Here!
I confess that I have NEVER heard of Kristinia DeBarge or Esmee Denters, but they're obviously popular.
At the same time, as I mentioned previously, they flashed various seven digit codes on the screen to allow you to request a video. None of the suggested videos interested me until I saw a reference to Sublime's "Santeria." Since I like the song, and I had never seen the video, I requested that one. Within five minutes, the video played.
I was intrigued by the appearances of Bradley Newell in the video, which made it obvious that Newell had already died before the video was made. A similar technique was used in the video for Traveling Wilburys' "End of the Line,", which was made after Roy Orbison's death.
But back to Akoo. After getting back home, I had the opportunity to visit http://myakoo.com/ (although I subsequently discovered that the site worked on mobile phones, including my older model). After entering the appropriate code for my location (in this case, "ONT"), Once I did that, I was presented with a screen with several options (Most Requested, Artist Spotlight, Music Channels, Search Music), along with the opportunity to register by using my mobile phone number as a login.
The available artists are not numerous, and are obviously targeted to a younger audience than myself (although it may be possible that different artists are available at different locations). On a whim, I checked to see if they had Flash and the Pan. Here are all of the available artists under the letter F:
Fair To Midland Faithless Fall Out Boy Fatboy Slim Fefe Dobson Feist Fergie finger eleven Fiona Apple Firehouse Five For Fighting Flobots Flyleaf Foo Fighters Fountains of Wayne Frankie J Franz Ferdinand Freemasons Fuel
But this is just one of the services offered by Akoo. The main website describes their mission:
Akoo's interactive networks enable any mobile phone to act as a remote control, empowering viewers to activate video entertainment programming and immersive band experiences on HD LCD-TV screens in out-of-home environments.
So why would a mall implement this? As it turns out, I have an understanding of this. Some of you may know that one of the Empoprises blogs is called Empoprise-NTN and is devoted to the interactive trivia games offered by NTN Buzztime. Their claim is that if you put their online trivia game into your bar or restaurant, people will play the trivia, stay in the bar/restaurant longer, and spend more money.
It's no accident that Akoo was installed in a food court at Ontario Mills. Presumably the same principle is in play here - get your teens with their text-ready phones (or web-ready smartphones), get them sitting in the food court for longer times, and get them to order more fast food, and maybe spend a few more hours at the mall like shopping and stuff.
If you live in the US, and have both a Pandora and last.fm account, you can do something really nice for Kol.
It turns out that Kol, being British, is adversely affected by Pandora's geotarding, so April requested that we listen to a particular Pandora station, then take any song played by the station, go to last.fm, and tag the song on last.fm with the tag "kol pandora." This way, Kol could kinda sorta get the Pandora effect from last.fm, which people in the United Kingdom CAN access.
Well, I got temporarily distracted after the second song that I tagged - Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here" (which, ironically, isn't currently on last.fm, but I tagged the entry anyway in case it is added later).
"Wish You Were Here" is the title track on Pink Floyd's 1975 album Wish You Were Here. The song's lyrics encompass writer Roger Waters' feelings of alienation from other people. Like most of the album, it refers to former Pink Floyd member Syd Barrett and his breakdown.
Rolling Stone, which labeled the song as the 316th greatest song of all time, shared a sad story about the recording of the song:
Syd Barrett...mysteriously appeared in the studio in such bad shape nobody recognized him....
But that isn't the saddest story that I heard. After I shared the story of how I was distracted by the Pink Floyd song, April Russo shared two things with me.
The first was a story that appeared on a website called The Cosmic Gift. The writer mentions how he had lost track of an old friend of his named Steve Bresnahan. By the time the writer found Bresnahan, he had already passed away ten years previously. Steve's father explained the circumstances:
"[Steve died in an] Auto accident. I suppose you know Steve worked with the homeless in Florida. There was a woman that he had helped get an apartment. She needed money and the day it happened, he went to work, picked up his paycheck, cashed it and took her some money. On his way back to work a van broadsided his car on the driver's side. The impact severed an artery to his heart and although they worked on him in surgery for hours trying to save him, it was too late. I'm an atheist, but Steve was a born-again Christian. If you believe the story in the New Testament about the Good Samaritan, then doing what he did was just about a guarantee of instant sainthood. The people I met in Florida at his memorial service all seemed to act as if they believed that. Even for an atheist, stuff like that strikes me as pretty cool."
If you read to the end of the item, to the obituary, you will see why this was shared with me.
On a happier note, April also shared a three-part tribute to Pink Floyd on YouTube, performed by Shadow Gallery. The first part is here. (Warning: the video portion of the third part is NSFW.)
But I don't crowd source EVERYTHING; I do a bit of discovery myself. Not finding the original "Wish You Were Here" on last.fm, I began searching for cover versions - and discovered that many of the last.fm songs entitled "Wish You Were Here" bear no relation to the original, although Kosheen used the song as the basis for something else that they did.
Wyclef Jean, however, shared a cover version that was very nice, and included an extra verse that personalized the song for him. This one's on YouTube also.
