Update on Reed College's online radio station KRRC

Remember my February 3 post that chronicled the demise of licensed radio station KRRC?

Well, I found a little more information, courtesy of an Andrew Choi blog post.

There's a website - http://www.krrcfm.com/.

And it has a "Listen" button, but when I clicked on it, I got an "Under Construction" message.

Based upon the news on the main page, it looks like shows are taking place, but that the streaming may not be working yet.

So now I guess that people have to go to NRQ's headquarters and hold a Reds for Reagan protest.

The Scottie Pippen of Gary, Indiana

Last week I attended a high school end-of-year choral concert. One of the songs that was performed was "I'll Be There." The kids that performed the song weren't even born when Mariah Carey released her remake of the tune, and obviously weren't around when the original Jackson Five version was released.

My mind wandered back to that original 1970 hit, which was remarkable on so many levels. When some people think of that song, they think of co-author Berry Gordy or lead singer Michael Jackson. The song was a high point in both their careers, scoring major sales for Motown while including Gordy's and Michael's tribute to the Four Tops. (The history of music was obviously very important to both of them.)

But as my mind wandered, I thought about a different story related to the original hit. Because just as Michael Jordan had his Scottie Pippen, Michael Jackson had his vital supporting cast. And no, I'm not talking about guitarist Tito.

When you listen to "I'll Be There," one of the most striking parts is Jermaine Jackson's second lead vocal - a middle eight that serves as a contrast in many ways (voice, key, melody) to his younger brother's portions.

I plead ignorance about much of Jermaine Jackson's musical career - he had other hits with the Jackson Five, more as a solo artist, and still more when he returned to the Jacksons in the 1980s - but if "I'll Be There" had been Jermaine's only contribution to the musical world, it would be a stellar contribution indeed.

All the more so when you consider that Jermaine was still in high school when "I'll Be There" was recorded - the same age as the kids that I heard in a high school cafeteria last week. But Jermaine's vocal is a little more famous. Here's a live performance.



Also see Wikipedia.

Spurred to greatness - Donald "Duck" Dunn

After hearing of Donald "Duck" Dunn's passing, I took some time to read his biography on his website. (At the time I first read the biography, it hadn't been updated to reflect his death.) It explained why Dunn took up the bass:

Although a grandfather he never knew played fiddle, there was no music in Duck's immediate family. "My father was a candy maker. He made peppermints and hard candies. He didn't want me to go into the music industry. He thought I would become a drug addict and die. Most parents in those days thought music was a pastime; something you did as a hobby, not a profession." Duck tried to conform: "I worked for my dad in the candy factory for a while. I also had a job with an electrical company repairing long range air raid sirens." In his heart, though, Dunn always knew where his talents lay. I picked up a ukulele when I was about 10 and I started playing bass when I was 16. I tried the guitar but it had two strings too many. It was just too complicated, man!

And then he said:

Plus, I grew up with Steve Cropper. There were so many good guitar players another one wasn't needed.

Where are they now? Cosma Shiva

You know how songs pop into your head at the oddest times?

Well, that happened to me over the weekend, when the old Nina Hagen song "Cosma Shiva" popped into my head.

This song is from 1982, and was written by Hagen in honor of her baby daughter.

I sought the song out on YouTube, and discovered (via video) that the baby had grown up.



It turns out that Cosma Shiva Hagen is an actress - mostly in German-language films.

So what about Nina's other songs? New York has had its problems but is still standing.

And the white punks are still on dope.

(empo-utoobd) Life is even less easy in Germany - YouTube lost, Grooveshark gone

Over three years ago, I wrote a post that described how YouTube had stopped showing music videos in Germany because of a dispute with GEMA, a German agency collecting music royalties. It turns out that the stoppage was temporary, but the legal fight dragged on. Helen Sventitsky-Rother shared a link to a BBC article with the results of the German court case.

In short, YouTube lost.

A court in Hamburg ruled that YouTube is responsible for the content that users post to the video sharing site.

It wants the video site to install filters that spot when users try to post music clips whose rights are held by royalty collection group, Gema.

In essence, this means that YouTube will have to take longer to review uploaded videos to ensure that they do not violate German law.

The BBC article notes that one company has previously taken action as a result of GEMA:

Music streaming site Grooveshark pulled out of Germany claiming licencing rates set by Gema made it impossible to run a profitable business in the country.

Here is what Grooveshark says about the matter:

Due to the excessive cost of operation, Grooveshark discontinued access from Germany on January 18, 2012.

Feel free to write to us if you have any questions. If you are a premium subscriber, please contact our billing team to arrange a refund for any time remaining on your subscription.

If you'd like to help lower the cost of operation for services like Grooveshark, you can contact GEMA:

Email: gema@gema.de

Postal Mail:
Bayreuther Straße 37
10787 Berlin
Postfach 30 12 40
10722 Berlin

Telephone:
+49 30 21245-00


GEMA has a different view:

Contrary to its statements, the provider Grooveshark did not discontinue its services in Germany due to disproportionately high operating expenses.

The fact is, as a service provider Grooveshark fundamentally refuses to pay compensation in any shape or form at all for the service. As of this writing, Grooveshark has also not contacted GEMA in any way.

After detailing the many lawsuits against Grooveshark and other issues, GEMA concludes as follows:

If you as a user of Grooveshark have suffered any monetary damages, please contact the provider of this service directly with your complaints:

http://www.grooveshark.com/about
http://twitter.com/#!/grooveshark

It took me a while to find this statement. I searched the GEMA website, but was told that search was not working.

Perhaps Google can help GEMA with that. Or not.

Lena Katina "Never Forget" remix hits Number 1 on Billboard dance/club chart

You may recall that I wrote about Lena Katina's song "Never Forget" last August.

Well, Dave Audé has remixed the song, and Lena just announced that the remix has reached #1 on Billboard's Dance/Club play songs chart.

If you haven't heard the remix, here's a remixed video.

Whole Lotta Helter Skelter

In the fall of 1968, the Beatles released a very unusual song - at least for the Beatles. With inconsequential lyrics about an amusement park ride, the song "Helter Skelter" was a complete rock assault. Singer Paul McCartney brought his Little Richard voice into the psychedelic era, the guitarists and bass guitarist were zooming all over the place, and drummer Ringo Starr was at the absolute center of the madness, resulting in his famous shout "I've got blisters on my fingers!"

In the fall of 1969, a relatively new band called Led Zeppelin released a very unusual song - for anybody. The instruments used were, for the most part, similar to those employed in the Beatles' earlier song, and John Paul Jones laid down some bass lines comparable to McCartney's. But the drummer, John Bonham, had a different set of skills from Ringo, and was known for his power. The vocalist, Robert Plant, wasn't as well known as McCartney, but his English wails would distinguish him in this song and in years to come. Oh, and the guitarist, Jimmy Page, was a madman, taking old blues songs and converting them to eleven volume rock anthems. And the lyrics? Well, they weren't about an amusement park ride.

Two roaring rock songs, both in the key of E. To mashup artist Soundhog, it was obvious what needed to be done.



H/T Rob Michael.

P.S. See Soundhog's own account of the mashup.

I prefer the English exercise styles

Rodney Bingenheimer, the Mayor of Sunset Strip who hates the 90s, received a huge amount of fame from his early 1970s club, Rodney Bingenheimer's English Disco, formerly located at 7561 Sunset Boulevard.

But that club closed over 35 years ago.

What's there today?

A gym.

And while people in the early 1970s devoted themselves to getting their bodies in motion, people at the location today do...well, they do the same thing:

Fit Arts’ unique training program provides efficient methods to building long, lean, and toned bodies. The program uses a natural approach by using the body’s own weight, as opposed to heavy weights and bulky gym equipment. Bodyweight Training is natural and practical for your body. The body is more capable of handling its own weight, as opposed to outside forces like heavy weights, producing more natural looking results.

I prefer the English clothing styles

Let's say you're a real estate agent in the Westside of Los Angeles. (Empoprise-MU link.) When working with Brentwood clientele, you need to look your best, so you may do your clothes shopping at Theodore in Beverly Hills. You would prefer to deal with someone who knows Los Angeles well.

When you walk into the store, you realize that the manager looks familiar. You've seen her somewhere before, but you just can't place it. Perhaps you might recognize the manager from a recent night in Hollywood.

Or perhaps you recognize her from years ago.

The music industry does not offer lifetime employment. Far from it. And if you're on the periphery of the music industry - perhaps you're the wife, or mother, or girlfriend of someone in the industry - your time in the spotlight can end even more quickly than the time that the musicians themselves spend in the spotlight.

Those who continue to thrive after the spotlight disappears, such as Marilyn Wilson Rutherford and Lori Mattix (Lori Maddox), are the true winners.

Reading beyond the title - "American Woman"

Have you ever run across a song with a particular title and liked the song for its title - and then found out that the song itself has nothing to do with the title?

Take The Guess Who's song "American Woman." Perhaps a guy from a foreign country might hear the song title, see a beautiful woman from the United States, and think to himself, "I'll impress her by singing this song to her!"

But then he starts to learn the lyrics to the song and realizes that it is not a love song to an American woman. After all, the song begins:

American woman, stay away from me
American woman, mama let me be

Let's face it, this is NOT "California Girls."

And as you continue to read the lyrics to the song, you realize that it's not about a woman at all.

I don't need your war machines
I don't need your ghetto scenes
Coloured lights can hypnotize
Sparkle someone else's eyes

And yes, I know that the transcriber at songmeanings.net wrote "Colored," not "Coloured." But I suspect that the spelling with a "u" is correct, since the song was written by Canadians. After all, it was conceived in a curling rink.

And when you read those lyrics from the perspective of a 1960s Canadian writing about the United States, the song makes sense - a sense that can't be discerned from its seemingly innocuous title.

Incidentally, this song entered my head one day after finding this post in a blog called "War Machine." Perhaps it was the George Harrison in Haight Ashbury stuff that I had been reading previously, but seeing the title of the blog took me on a musical, um, trip.

Drifting along

My Monday evening was certainly interesting.

I was eating dinner with relatives, and someone observed that it was windy out. This led me to comment that you could tell that it was windy if you saw tumbling tumbleweeds drifting by. The fifteen year old who heard the comments is certainly familiar with tumbleweeds, but does not understand the significance of the phrase "tumbling tumbleweeds." Long-time readers of this blog, of course, know that this is a reference to a Sons of the Pioneers song that has been covered by other people, such as Todd Baio.

A few hours later, I received some upsetting news. I will not be discussing this news publicly, other than to say that it involves another relative (one who was not present at the dinner), and that it's very sad.

After receiving this news, I found myself thinking about the tumbling tumbleweeds some more.

Since I had some credits on Amazon, I ended up buying an MP3 of the song. And, as is my custom, I began scrobbling it repeatedly. It appears that I bought a 1950s version of the song, but it's still a good version.

I haven't searched for "Old Man Atom" yet.

For Technorati

D9WDQWVA6KJK

Steve Taylor, Essayist

Time for another piece on Steve Taylor.

Since I last blogged about Mr. Taylor in depth, Sarah Gibson has created an interactive website about the musician/producer/filmmaker. (You can see the story of the creation of the website here.) I'm still navigating around the place, but I was struck by this essay, written in the 1980s while Taylor was on tour.

Sometimes it's funny.

Glen (my bass player--may not be his real name) has awakened from a deep sleep with the perfect imprint of a corduroy seatcover across his face--looks like one of those tribal warriors in National Geographic. Everyone's hair is a memorable sight after an all-nighter (reminds me of the guys in Undercover).

(This was written before Gym Nicholson played guitar on a Steve Taylor album.)

Sometimes it's thought-provoking.

The concert promoter introduces himself, immediately asks that I tell tonight's audience not to dance, and wants to know if I'll be doing an [altar] call. I question him extensively on the preparation he's done for counseling and follow-up, and decide that he is ill-prepared. He insists that even if thirty make a commitment to Jesus tonight and only two are committed Christians a year later, that's better than none. I ask him about the twenty-eight who will think from lack of follow-up that they tried Christianity and it didn't work for them. The subject is a very touchy one for me, because after five years as a youth pastor, I've learned how easily young people can be manipulated into doing something they neither understand nor want. I'm interested in using my music to communicate Christian truth to my culture. I'm not interested in using an emotionally-charged rock concert to get numbers streaming down the aisles in order to justify a "ministry".

And sometimes it's REALLY thought-provoking.

I'm beginning to understand what makes the road such a struggle. It's not fatigue, it's not unprofessional promotion, it's not malnourishment. It's the constant battle I have with pride. All the rationale for doing concerts and insisting on quality publicity and staging make perfect sense. But there's times when the medium begins to take over the message, and even when I'm maintaining a Godly perspective on it all, my ego keeps sneaking up on my blind side. There's no room for selfish ambition and pride in Christian service, but the battle can be exhausting.

Be sure to visit http://tobeaclone.com/.

OK, here's one case in which music downloading WAS a bad idea

If you believe the RIAA and its allies, illegal music downloading is a multi-trillion dollar industry that directly led to the 2008 financial collapse.

If you believe that SOPA no people, downloading of music results in multiple trillions of dollars of benefits for the music industry (plus a whole lot of Facebook likes).

The truth is somewhere between these two extremes. However, I've run across one case in which music downloading truly was bad.

Since it's an Associated Press article, I won't directly quote from it. (On the other hand, I won't like to it again in this post.) But the article concerns the Arab Shooting Championships, which were recently held in Kuwait. I have never heard of these championships, but competitive shooting is certainly a popular sport that requires a lot of skill. So the Arab Shooting Championships honored the winners with a traditional medals ceremony, in which the national anthems of the winners were played.

According to AP, the people responsible for the ceremony (reportedly contractors) downloaded the national anthems from the Internet.

So when Maria Dmitrienko won a gold medal, the awards ceremony was held, and the national anthem of Kazakhstan was played.

Well, it was supposed to be played. Unfortunately, the wrong music file was downloaded, and instead of hearing the real Kazakhstan national anthem, a song that appeared in the film "Borat" was played instead.

This literally resulted in an international incident. As you may know, the Sacha Baron Cohen character Borat is not all that popular in Kazakhstan.

And I'm sure that some RIAA lawyer is saying, "See, we told you so."

The RIAA and the First Amendment

To begin, we should note what the RIAA is, and what it is not. The RIAA is the Recording Industry Asociation of America, and its members are

legitimate record companies with main offices in the United States that are engaged in the production and sale, under their own brand label, of recordings of performances for home use.

Individual recording artists cannot join RIAA. And there's one category of businesses that is specifically prohibited from joining:

Eligibility is not extended to companies that are currently engaged in, have within five years of application been engaged in, or are controlled by any person, firm or corporation which has within 5 years of application been engaged in the unauthorized creation, duplication, sale, importation, or other use of sound recordings in violation of state or federal law.

So if Megaupload starts a U.S. record label, it need not apply for RIAA membership.

But while RIAA is focused on the needs of the record labels, it expresses its care for the artists that work for those labels. Not to the extent of arguing for higher royalty rates, of course, but it clearly cares about the content of the artists' recordings.

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) takes an uncompromising stand against censorship and for the First Amendment rights of all artists to create freely. From the nation’s capital to state capitals across the country, RIAA works to stop unconstitutional action against the people who make the music of our times--and those who enjoy it.

So what does the First Amendment mean to RIAA? According to this blog post:

RIAA has long been on the front lines in defense of the First Amendment, challenging government censorship and restrictions on the ability of artists to freely express themselves.

It is important to note what the First Amendment itself is, and what it isn't. The First Amendment only covers actions by Congress (and, by extension, to other branches of government). It (usually) does not extend to industry; if an employer fires an employee for calling his/her boss a jerk, the employee's First Amendment rights are not being violated.

This distinction is important when considering the RIAA's primary First Amendment battle - the PMRC hearings.

Ironically, the philagora.org site linked above apparently does not believe in the Fair Use Doctrine, but suffice it to say that the RIAA, rather than agreeing to government regulation of the music industry, instead proposed that the music industry regulate itself - thus ensuring that artists can freely express themselves.

Of course, critics have asked whether the RIAA believes in the First Amendment for anyone else. For example, take a 2007 case in which the RIAA asked the University of Oregon to identify seven students that the RIAA accused of file-sharing. Daniel Solove wrote:

One issue involves students’ First Amendment rights. Although the Supreme Court has held that copyright infringement isn’t protected under the First Amendment, Harper & Row, Publs. Inc. v. Nation Enters., 471 U.S. 539 (1985), protected speech may be involved in some cases. According to the Court, copyright has “built-in First Amendment accommodations” via the fair use doctrine. Eldred v. Ashcroft, 537 U.S. 186 (2003). Copyright protection is thus compatible with the First Amendment because of the existence of fair use. What this means is that it is possible that in any given case, some of the uses of the music may be fair use, and that is protected by the First Amendment. Moreover, a person may have made statements online along with engaging in piracy. So, for example, an anonymous person might maintain a website where he posts music files for trading along with the statement that “the RIAA is a big bad bully.” That statement is protected speech, and identifying an anonymous speaker triggers heightened First Amendment standards for the subpoena.


The RIAA might argue something like this: “But the people whose identities we’re seeking are engaging in illegal piracy. They’re trading music files. There’s not a strong argument that any protected speech is involved.” Even if they’re right about this, it still doesn’t extinguish the First Amendment interests of the individuals suspected of piracy. Suppose, for example, a person anonymously posted a comment about another person that looked clearly defamatory. The fact that it might look like a slam-dunk case still doesn’t obviate the need to establish the heightened First Amendment standards for subpoenas. Copyright should be no different.

Score one for the First Amendment. Now if only we could ensure that Congress doesn't establish a religion AND doesn't prohibit the free exercise of religion...

Lack of Data - Aramis Estevez vs. Deathwatch Beetle Repairman?

I have scrobbled the Big River soundtrack to last.fm, which means that Aramis Estevez is one of the artists that I have scrobbled. I wanted to listen to Estevez some more, so I began playing Estevez's station on last.fm - and was greeted with a song by Those Damn Twins.

And then was greeted with a song by Deathwatch Beetle Repairman.

This seemed odd, until I realized that I was one of the few people on last.fm who has actually scrobbled songs by Aramis Estevez - and that therefore last.fm had concluded that all of the artists on my playlist were similar to Estevez.

I confirmed this by looking at Estevez's similar artists page.

As of this evening, the third artist listed - one with a "super similarity" to Estevez - is P.D.Q. Bach.

"Very high similarity" artists include Helen Sventitsky, Ontario Emperor, and Mocksession.com.

However, once last.fm gets more data on the artist, these types of things will be straightened out.

For example, a couple of years ago, last.fm thought that Sventitsky and Ontario Emperor were similar - primarily because both artists were listened to by FriendFeeders.

But now that a couple of years have passed, last.fm has figured out that Helen sounds nothing like me. And with this additional data, people who like Helen's music aren't being subjected to synthetic instrumentals.

lluismiras video for "The Alcoholic"

I go in weird spurts in album buying. I'll buy an album from a band or artist, declare it one of my favorites of all time...and then not bother to buy the follow-up.

I have owned Röyksopp's Junior for years, but have never bothered to buy its follow-up, Senior.

But I did want to share one song from the album. Röyksopp, along with Genero.tv, sponsored a competition in which people submitted videos for the Senior songs. The winner was a video by Iluismiras for the song "The Alcoholic."



Also see this blog post in Spanish (Iluismiras is from Argentina).

Covers...

Metallica covers Bonnie Tyler (language warning).



(P.S. Not really.)

Shakira covers Metallica.



(P.S. Really.)

Renting out a song (Liza Minnelli covers Pet Shop Boys)

The nice thing about last.fm is that if you allow it to do so, it throws all sorts of songs at you. On December 27, 2009, it served up the song "Rent" to me. But not the original Pet Shop Boys version - it served up Liza Minnelli's cover.

Now I should explain my feelings about the Pet Shop Boys. I love the Pet Shop Boys. I also think that they are the best comedy band ever recorded. When a FriendFeed user shared a private post that included Pet Shop Boys' video of "West End Girls," I offered a comment about Chris Lowe's visual performance in that video - while Neil Tennant earnestly sings the lyrics, Lowe nonchalantly stares off into space. But Pet Shop Boys' true comedy stylings can be heard in the songs themselves - whether they're rearranging "Always On My Mind" as the direct opposite of anything Willie Nelson ever recorded, or whether they're throwing out such lyrics as "Violence, religion, injustice and death" or "What have I, what have I, what have I done to deserve this," the Pet Shop Boys are consistently as funny, if not funnier, than Monty Python.

In 1987, they scored a hit with their song "Rent" - a song that Minnelli later covered. What I didn't know was that Minnelli's cover version was part of a 1989 album produced by the Pet Shop Boys themselves. While it sounds like most of the "Results" of the album were an odd juxtaposition of Liza's voice with the usual Pet Shop Boys synthesizer backing, the cover of "Rent" was more in Liza's traditional style. And for some reason, I think that Minnelli's version is preferable to the original - perhaps because the title "Rent" was subsequently used for an unrelated Broadway musical.

You can hear Minnelli's version here.

Queen of the Road

There are certain people and bands who exhibit a variety of musical styles. One of those bands is Blondie. Blondie first came to my attention because of a shimmering disco song. During their years of popularity, they also released rock, calypso, rap, and probably seventeen other rock styles.

But it turns out that Deborah Harry's FORMER band exhibited a style that Blondie, to my knowledge, never attempted.

On Tuesday evening, Loren Feldman shared a Michael Pinto Google+ item about how paparazzi saw Deborah Harry coming out of a hotel and thought that she was Lindsay Lohan. Google+ user Dennis McCunney commented on the item:

I wonder how many Blondie fans knew her first band was a 60's group called The Wind In the Willows?

For the record, I did not know that. And Michael Pinto may or may not have known that, but he provided a link to the Wikipedia page on the band. I was reading the Wikipedia page, which described the band's one album release...

...and I stopped cold at track 4.

My Uncle Used To Love Me But She Died

You see, that particular song was originally written and performed by Roger Miller. In his career, Miller often balanced the serious and the silly in the same song, with devastating effect. "My Uncle Used To Love Me But She Died" had no such seriousness in it - as you can guess from the title, it's completely off the wall.

Which brings us to The Wind in the Willows' version.



If anything, TWITW's take on the song is even more outlandish than Miller's original. Miller never ventured into waltz tempo.

Now did Blondie ever do anything like that?