Disney music, pain, and suffering

Disney World and Disneyland attractions often incorporate musical themes. These can be fine if you are only exposed to them for a few minutes. For me personally, one exception is the "Electrical Parade" music - since the parade can take a half hour to pass by, the music seems to go on forever.

But what if you are stuck on an attraction for more than the usual few minutes?

And what if that attraction is "It's a Small World"?

A lawsuit could result from this, and the music could be part of the lawsuit:

Disneyland has paid disabled man Jose Martinez $8,000. Their crime? Not evacuating him from It’s A Small World after the ride broke down in 2009, leaving him listening to that song for half an hour....

Geffen [Jose Martinez's lawyer] said that half of the award was for pain and suffering, while the other half is for violating disability laws.

There have been a number of legal cases in which the major media companies, including Disney, have tried to get money from people who listen to their music (or watch their movies). This is the first case that I know of in which Disney had to pay someone else to listen to Disney music.

It's a world of suffering, a world of pain,
But the Mouse has promised not to do it again...

Glen Campbell, 1963

I recently re-read my 2009 and 2008 posts about musician Glen Campbell (not to be confused with others who have the same name). The earlier post opens with the following words:

Glen Campbell has had a varied career.

When you've been involved in acts ranging from the Champs to the Beach Boys, and when you've covered Green Day as a small part of your successful recording career, it's difficult to pigeonhole you into those categories that some in the music industry like. But Campbell is no pigeon.

Part of the difficulty in pigeonholing Campbell is that he emerged in an era before the pigeons were caged. It's hard to separate between country and rock when the stars of the time were equally comfortable in either genre. When the Beatles issued their most famous single ("Yesterday"), a Buck Owens song was on the other side ("Act Naturally").

A couple of years before "Yesterday," Glen Campbell appeared as a backing guitarist and singer on a TV show called "Star Route," accompanying George Morgan on the song "My Window Faces the South."

During the instrumental break, the band members take turns on various solos. Campbell's guitar solo comes last, and he treats the audience to a rockabilly-country lick festival.

But a musician has to eat, so one year later, Campbell adopted a Beatles haircut and appeared on Shindig.

Ignore the screaming girls and the haircut for a moment. Campbell's music doesn't sound all that different from his appearance with George Morgan.

I was unable to find a video of Campbell's touring days with the Beach Boys, but when you think about it, that music was similar in sound also - except perhaps for the vocal arrangements, which of course were not unique to surf and car music.

As to why Campbell's hit records from later in the decade were more countrypolitan than rockabilly...as I said, a musician has to eat. Do you think a rockabilly song would go over in 1969?

Mindy McCready, 1975 - 2013

As I've previously noted, in the 1990s I joined a Yahoo! group that talked about country singer Mindy McCready. During the 1990s, McCready news focused on music. During the next decade, it seemed to focus on everything EXCEPT music.

I last wrote about McCready in October 2008, when she was scheduled to serve a jail sentence on a drug conviction. This post followed an April 2008 post that included the following:

But by the time I started to write the Ontario Empoblog, the story began to unravel. By August 10, 2004, I was blogging about her arrest for OxyContin prescription fraud. I followed up on August 16 and August 29, and subsequently (February 4, 2005) reported on McCready's plea and community service.

By May 6, 2005, McCready had been arrested again, and charged with drunken driving.

Then the story started to get weird.

You may recall that April 2008 was the time that McCready's relationship with Roger Clemens hit the news. Clemens denied it. (Of course, Clemens has denied a bunch of stuff.)

After October 2008, I hadn't blogged about McCready any more. I hadn't heard about her late 2008 suicide attempt, although I recall reading about the whole custody issue with her son in 2011. But I hadn't been paying attention to the McCready news over the last month.

That's when the story started to get weird. Taste of Country:

[I]n January...her boyfriend and the father to her youngest son was found dead at a home the couple shared in Arkansas. Initially reported as a suicide, officials later suggested they weren’t sure about the cause of his death and would wait until autopsy reports were returned.

McCready tearfully denied any involvement in David Wilson’s death during a ‘Today’ show appearance on Jan. 29. Ex-husband Billy McKnight soon filed several motions with regards to his son with McCready, 6-year-old Zander. The singer entered a treatment facility and had her two children taken from her, but was released a short time later.

Now reports are coming out that McCready is dead of a gunshot wound. The current assumption is that it was self-inflicted.

When I first heard about this on Google+, there was a discussion about whether Dr. Drew's Celebrity Rehab show was inflicting pressure on the people who appeared on it. The thread mentioned a number of Celebrity Rehab people who are dead today.

Mark Smith (who started the thread) offered the following comment:

I don't blame the show for their deaths by any means, but I do blame the show for exploiting their addictions for ratinigs. It's sad but people love to tune in to see a train wreck, and MTV finds people close to the edge to pay for them to attend their "Celebrity Rehab" shows.

Sadly, I suspect that McCready would be dead today even if Dr. Drew had never ventured beyond KROQ radio. The death of a loved one via presumed suicide can put all sorts of pressures on you, especially if you're fragile to begin with.

It's hard to recall, but at one time it was all about the music.

Budokan

If you say the word "Budokan" to an American of a particular age, a particular image is conveyed.

To many middle-aged Americans, "Budokan" conveys images and sounds of Cheap Trick, or perhaps of Bob Dylan, or perhaps (for older folk) of the Beatles, the first rock artists to perform at this particular Japanese venue.

But Budokan (actually, "Nippon Budokan") was not originally designed as a place for real guitar heroes to hang out. It was initially built for the 1964 Summer Olympics to function as a martial arts hall. But when you have a venue that holds over 14,000 people, you end up finding other uses for it, ranging from martial arts to professional wrestling to all sorts of musical acts (the stage at Budokan has not only held the Beatles, Cheap Trick, and Bob Dylan, but also Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber).

More information here.

F--- tha Police...and Sting, too

I was listening to the Police's "Walking on the Moon" on Spotify, and it reminded me about something I had read a few days previously. Someone had published a rant about Sting, and the rant continued to complain about Sting's former band, the Police.

I couldn't find that particular rant, but there are enough rants about the Police if you look around. Check this one:

"Packed like lemmings"? A very close second in badness, from the same song, is the line "Every single meeting with his so-called superior is a humiliating kick in the crotch." Bad, bad, bad. But oh, so earnest. And then to couple these first-draft images of suburban misery with scenes from a mysterious "dark Scottish lake" just makes it worse.

The author (not of the lyrics), rain_rain, said more in the comments to the post:

The closest thing to punk about the Police was their hair, and even that was clearly (you should excuse the expression) a put-on. They were a classic pop band, only occasionally raging vaguely and reflexively against some machine or other because it was the thing to do, and hey, man, isn't that long commute soul-killing? Da doo doo doo was really more their strength.

But Grant Miller Media adds other complaints:

The Police jumped on the late 1970s punk bandwagon even though each member was an accomplished musician and came from a decidedly non-punk background. Sting was a bassist in a jazz band. Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland were in various prog-rock outfits....

People who write songs about teachers that have affairs with teenage girls are creepy....

When the Police were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame, they performed "Every Breath You Take" with Steven Tyler, Gwen Stefani and John Mayer.

If you like those, go here. There are 101 listed reasons to hate Sting.

Why do I like many of the worst songs of all time?

I had occasion to mention the Doctor Orange song "Taco Taco Taco" on Facebook, which led me to a very long message board thread in which people named the worst songs of all time.

The thread is a VERY long thread - I've only read through a small portion of it - but as I looked at the suggestions, it became very apparent that the definition of "worst song" is in the eye of the beholder. For example, I love "Taco Taco Taco," the third song mentioned in the thread.

Here are some other "worst songs" that were mentioned that I actually like - or at least do not dislike:

• "Muskrat Love" by the Captain & Tennille - I think the synth effects are cute, not atrocious.
• "Fly" by Sugar Ray - I think it's a fun song.
• "We Are Family" by Sister Sledge - although even I will admit it was overplayed at sporting events for a while.
• "Disco Duck" by Rick Dees - if you subtract everything you know about Dees, and if you listen to the song in the context of the times in which it was recorded, it's not bad. But then again, I liked "Peanut Prance" (Dees' impersonation of Jimmy Carter).
• "Sugar Sugar" by the Archies - my favorite song at the age of 7, and the soul stylings at the end stand up today. Soul stylings?
• "Blue" by Eiffel 65 - but then again (again), I like "Europop."
• Staying on the European continent, "Waterloo" by Abba - some songs were better than others, but their Eurovision hit was one of their better ones.
• "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" by Guns 'n' Roses - no, it's definitely not Dylan, but I think it's a great reworking.
• "Emotional Rescue" by the Rolling Stones - I can see why some would hate it, but just think of it as a comedy track and you'll be fine. That's what I do with anything recorded by Pet Shop Boys.
• "Sex" by Berlin - but I do likes me some synthetica, especially when live guitar is mixed in.

I'm sure that at least one of those songs completely offended and horrified you. You're welcome.

I do, however, agree with the commenters on one thing - Whitney Houston's version of "I Will Always Love You" is far inferior to the original. I like much of Houston's work, but her cover version has none of the subtlety of Parton's version. Houston's take is as subtle as Spinal Tap's famous amplifier that goes to 11.

I cannot judge one particular entry, because I have never heard it - and, most likely, you've never heard it either.

A few months back [in 2005], I heard a singer perform one of her own compositions at an open mic event in Camden in north London. A composition she'd written on the bus to the pub. About writing a song on the bus to the pub where she would sing it. Opinion was strongly divided amongst the listeners as to whether she was merely a spoof act or whether she was blithely unaware of how bad she was. I've since heard that the management took the latter view and has banned her from ever appearing again, even on similar occasions, on the grounds that she was so terrible.

OK, we know the last time, but when was the first time?

Take a listen to the song in this video:

Now some of my real young readers are saying, "So?"

Some of my slightly older readers are wondering why I'd post an instrumental version of a Verve song with a weird part in the middle.

Then I have some readers - those who know who Andrew "Loog" Oldham is - who realize that this is the former Rolling Stones producer's instrumental version of the Stones song "The Last Time." A song that the Verve appropriated for "Bittersweet Symphony," resulting in a lot of bittersweet court actions.

So the wonderfully pure Oldham was thwarted by the evil copycat Verve, right?

Well, when you think about it, Oldham's version itself obviously isn't original, since it is a rearrangement of the original Rolling Stones song "The Last Time." Yes, presumably Mick and Keith got the proper songwriting credit, but Oldham wouldn't have been able to take his orchestra flights of fancy if the Stones hadn't written the original song in the first place.

So now we get to the Stones themselves. And perhaps you'd better sit down while I tell you this.

SOME BRITISH ROCK BANDS HAVE BEEN KNOWN TO RIP OFF OTHER BANDS.

Now I know that this is a complete shock to some of you, but you had to learn the truth sooner or later. And in this particular case, Who Sampled cites a Staple Singers song "This Will Be The Last Time" and claims that it is a source for the subsequent Stones track.

Judge for yourself.

There's certainly a similarity between the chorus of this song and the chorus of the Stones track. But as the YouTube poster notes:

The Rolling Stones have been accused of ripping this off, and of course they did, but if they owe anyone it is really the arranger Shirley Joiner. The song itself is traditional.

And a commenter noted the following:

The Stones took from this to make the Last Time, after which Andrew Oldham made a symphonic version of it. Then in 1997, the Verve decided to sample the symphonic version of the Last Time in order to make Bittersweet Symphony. And in turn, Jason Derulo sample Bittersweet Symphony in order to make Ridin' Solo. Good music, what happened to you?

At least Derulo isn't a dangerous pedestrian.

Storm, part two (Phildel's "Storm Song")

In my previous post, I noted that the absence of any mention of music in the woman's 2005 interview was unusual. Over the next few years, the woman's love for music would manifest itself in a very big way.

StevoMusicMan:

[W]ay back in 2008 I first encountered [her] sound checking in a Soho venue playing a track entitled ‘Ghost’, it totally mesmerised me.

And Stevo wasn't the only person who was mesmerized. In the course of his interview with the woman, he noted this:

You’ve been very lucky in having not one track but two used for commercials ‘Piano B’ for Expedia and more recently ‘The Kiss’, used by both Marks & Spencer and Apple’s new I-pad? How did they come about? Has the income helped your bigger picture?

The woman - whose name is Phildel (a combination of her natural father's name and her mother's name) - responded:

Four of my tracks have been used in commercials around the world, two of them in the UK. They all came about in different ways, through different individuals, agencies or publishers. But my publisher Warner Chappell have been very proactive in the realm of pitching my music for advertising. I re-invest whatever I income I make into top-of-the-range studio equipment and cameras for documenting everything and creating visuals. So, it all goes back into my music.

In addition to signing with publisher Warner Chappell, Phildel has also signed with Decca, and in the process has recorded an album that fleshes out some of her songs with dramatic instrumentation and production. As an example, compare this solo ukelele performance of "Storm Song."

A powerful voice singing a quiet song.

But Phildel has now released another video of the song, with the track that will be released on her forthcoming 2013 album.

The result is a much more dramatic piece. Phildel spoke about this with Stevo:

I would tell Ross Cullum, the producer, all of my ideas – from the large-scale concepts of how the choirs represented ethereal water spirits in the sonic landscape, down to the smallest details of how I thought a cymbal should be EQ’d, when I thought specific sounds were too metallic. He listened carefully and we worked together to create the best album we could. He had the experience, intuition and technical ability, to enhance all of my creative thinking. Out of my music career so far, working with Ross was undoubtedly my greatest highlight.

We should all be able to judge for ourselves.

Her debut album "The Disappearance of the Girl" is set for UK release in January 2013.

She continues to have her champions, including Stevo. I first heard "Storm Song" when he shared it on This is My Jam. As I write this post, it's my jam also.

A final note - I intentionally separated this blog post into two separate parts (the first is here if you didn't see it). While those who have read both parts understand the connection between the two, and why Phildel writes about storms and girls who disappear, it's also quite possible to enjoy "Storm Song" on its own merits.

Storm, part one (no music in Alabama, Iran, or England)

John Bredehoft of Total Plumbing Services is not the only Bredehoft with an Alabama connection. Several of my relatives hail from Guin in Marion County, northwest Alabama, which is where you will find Liberty Christian Academy, a ministry of the First Free Will Baptist Church in Guin. Students at Liberty Christian Academy must meet conduct standards that are foreign to many of us:

A sense of the need for spiritual growth in the light of these principles has led Liberty Christian Academy to adopt the following standards which are conducive to the environment that will best promote the spiritual welfare of the student. The school, therefore, requires each student...whether at home, school, or elsewhere...

1.to refrain from swearing, attendance at movie theaters, indecent language, smoking, drinking, alcoholic beverages, the abuse of drugs, gambling, dancing, involvement in rock music, touching or over familiarity with the opposite sex.

For those who thought that the movie Footloose was a complete work of fiction, read that last paragraph again. But these sentiments are not unique to Guin, or to the 20th and 21st centuries. If you go back several centuries, you can find similar views in certain Christian circles.

The Puritan minister Cotton Mather wrote in the 17th century that dancing was a creation of the devil, and warned that a “CHRISTIAN OUGHT NOT TO BE AT A BALL” [capitalization from original].

But before you completely condemn Liberty Christian Academy and Cotton Mather, note that they did not ban ALL music.

Ali Khamenei, the supreme religious leader of Iran, has made several pronouncements regarding music.

Q: What type of music is forbidden?

A: Music performed exclusively in debaucherous (lahw) circles is forbidden.

Q: What is the ruling on teaching various musical instruments to children at or near the age of puberty?

A: The matter of teaching music relates the basic ruling on music. In a general sense, the teaching of music is not compatible with the goals of an Islamic order. To teach music during the most suitable ages for learning is not devoid of corruption and sedition (mofsedeh).

Q: With regard to the teaching of music, I note respectfully that, replying to the above question, you stated in writing that the teaching and propagation of music is inconsistent with the goals of the blessed order of the Islamic Republic. Is the above ruling one of guidance, or an official governmental ruling? It is worth noting that some responsible parties recommend the teaching of music, especially for the youth. My humble question is: What is the concensus opinion between yourself and those who favor the teaching of music to the youth?

A: The teaching and playing of music to and by the youth causes them to deviate and results in corruption, and thus, is not permissible. In general, the propagation of music in not compatible with the goals of the Islamic order. It is not permissible for people to use their own preferences and inclinations in the name of culture and the art of teaching and training the youth.

These restrictions on teaching music to youth are not restricted to Iran. They can also be found in England. There you can find the story of an eight year old girl whose mother remarried. Her new stepfather "banned music from their household, claiming it to be an unholy waste of time." Since the girl loved music, this became too much to bear, and she left home at age 17. Several years later, in 2005, the girl (now a grown woman) spoke about this decision.

Despite the times when my step-father did help with my homework and attempt to lift my spirit, which I am grateful for, the values of my mother and stepfather in general were very different to my own and this certainly led to tensions. I continued to live at home for almost 10 years but during my A-levels I knew it would be best to leave. So I began living at my father’s house.

I felt very unhappy about leaving my sister because I knew my decision would be hardest for her to accept. I had to rely on the hope that, remembering how diffi cult it had been for me, she might understand. Luckily for me, she does and I know we will always have the bond that first made me feel less alone all those years ago. As for my mother and stepfather, our relationship actually improved dramatically once I had moved out. I feel closer to both of them now than I ever did before. I think this is partly because there is less stress on the family as a whole.

The 2005 interview does not mention music...in retrospect, a curious omission.

To be continued.

(Postscript: if you were a member of the Empoprises Public Community on Google+, you would already know what I'm going to be saying in the next post, and what the "storm" is that I'm talking about in the title.)

When the rap wars got a little TOO heavy

For ignorant Americans like myself, I should clarify that this headline didn't really refer to the Compton-based rap group, but to North Waziristan. The article ran in the Pakistani newspaper The Nation.

But if the violence from the 1990s had continued unabated, who knows what could have happened?

On page 5, Leonard Bernstein

I found this floating around on Facebook.

P.S. This happens to be post number 666 in the Empoprise-MU music blog. Go figure.

Rebecca Black's career resurrection continues

Despite my recent comment at the end of this post, I actually like Rebecca Black. In my view, she got herself into a bad situation by putting her trust in the wrong people. However, there are a lot of young people (and a lot of old people) that have made similar mistakes.

Therefore, I was pleased to hear that Black will be performing at the House of Blues in Anaheim on December 23. (And yes, it's on a...Sunday.)

For those who haven't been following the Rebecca Black story, she has been working on rebounding from the negative reaction to the "Friday" video. Her first step was proving that she could actually sing (hint: the U.S. national anthem is not the easiest song to sing). Her second step was to get better management. Her third step was to start getting better material (which isn't a hard thing to do). For example, here is a video that she posted last month for the new song "In Your Words."

The new song, which received advance coverage on noted online music publication Mashable, is somewhat more mature-sounding than her previous releases. Purists will argue that it's not blues, but there are purists that will argue that Eric Clapton isn't blues, either. It's a good song.

I do have a quibble with House of Blues, however. "In Your Words" hadn't been released when the show page was posted, but House of Blues did post three other song samples - "My Moment," "Person of Interest," and one other. Part of me understands why they listed that other song sample first - after all, that's the song that she's known for - but I don't think I would have made that choice. If you want people to come to your venue to hear Rebecca Black, you want to give them a reason for coming, and therefore you'd want to promote her newer, better material.

And yes, this is an all ages show. Otherwise, the performing artist herself wouldn't be able to get in.

"This is How We Do It" enters the cultural lexicon

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."

Why Paula Abdul is the greatest artist of the 20th century

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.

Is it better for the artist if a music fanatic streams rather than buys?

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.]

Was it a beautiful day?

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.

Where can artists make money today?

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.

Sounds like Donny and Marie - how Television got its CBGB's gig

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.

The real names of songs

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.

Blinded by the bluegrass, revisited

"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).