Fire Hydrant of Freedom
Politics, Religion, Science, Culture and Humanities => Science, Culture, & Humanities => Topic started by: Crafty_Dog on November 13, 2006, 01:55:15 PM
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Those of you old enough, know who promoter Bill Graham (Fillmore, Fillmore East) was and his pivotal role in pyschedelic music and much more. Recently it has come out that his massive vaults of concert tapes was sold by his estate and has been put up on the web! See the major piece ono the front page of the business section of the LA Times on Sunday Nov. 12, 2006 for more ( LATimes.com )
http://concerts.wolfgangsvault.com
I am totally blissed out at the moment listening to old Jefferson Airplane concerts!
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Connections
Is It Live ... or Yamaha? Channeling Glenn Gould
A “reperformance” of Glenn Gould’s famous 1955 mono rendition of Bach’s “Goldberg” Variations played at the Yamaha piano studios in New York on March 7.
By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN
NY Times
Published: March 12, 2007
Was that relief I felt as the piano was playing? A feeling that some worry had been alleviated or a fear quieted? Why then was it also mixed with disappointment, as if some deep yearning had been thwarted? Not yet, not yet, not yet: relief and frustration intertwined.
For months I had deliberately avoided listening. A technologically oriented, musically sophisticated company, Zenph Studios (zenph.com), claimed that it could bring the voices of the musical dead back to life. It could achieve, that is, what technology has long dreamt of: It would make light of the material world and all its restrictions.
Zenph claimed it could take a 50-year-old mono recording and distill from its hiss-laden, squished sound all of the musical information that originally went into it. It wouldn’t “process” the recording to get rid of noise; it wouldn’t pretend to turn mono into stereo; it wouldn’t try to correct things that were sonically “wrong.” Instead the claim was that it would, using its proprietary software, learn from recorded sound precisely how an instrument — a piano, for starters — was played, with what force a key was struck, how far down the sustain pedal was pressed, when each finger moved, how each note was weighted in a complex chord and what sort of timbre was actually produced.
Then it would effectively recreate the instrument. A digital file encoded with this information would be read by Yamaha’s advanced Disklavier Pro — a computerized player piano — and transformed into music. A recorded piano becomes a played piano. This would be sonic teleportation, monochromatic forms reincarnated as three-dimensional sound — not colorization but re-creation.
Zenph also announced it had accomplished this feat of technological legerdemain with one of the most remarkable recordings of the last century: Glenn Gould’s 1955 mono rendition of Bach’s “Goldberg” Variations. Gould, who retreated from performance into the private realm of the recording studio where he could splice and fiddle with sound and phrase, would be posthumously pulled back into the realm of public performance.
Gould believed technology liberated performer and listener. Here this pianist, who died in 1982, would be freed from the ultimate constraint.
And indeed, last September in Toronto, Zenph gave a public “reperformance” of Gould’s “Goldbergs” on a specially prepared Yamaha Disklavier. Zenph’s “Goldbergs” inspired a standing ovation from the audience members, many of whom knew Gould and some of whom had heard him play live. The press reports glowed.
Then one day last week Zenph — which took its name from “senf,” the German word for mustard — brought a press demonstration of its “Goldbergs” to Yamaha’s New York piano studios, playing portions of the work both on the Disklavier and from its recording, due to be released at the end of May on Sony BMG Masterworks.
Before the demonstration I returned to the 1955 recording, which I had not heard for several years. I was swept away again. This is not spiritual playing, plumbing the profundity of Bach’s meditations; it is ecstatic, uncanny in its intoxication. The recording is skittish, illuminating, thrilling and extraordinarily physical: the playing seeps into muscles as well as ears; every phrase exerts the pressure and play of dance.
John Q. Walker, Zenph’s president, knows this as well. He is a brilliant software engineer (who did important work in computer networking) and a musician who speaks of his enterprise with impassioned fervor. Last week, when he started the Yamaha instrument playing his encodings of Gould, something thrilling really did take place. The piano produced sounds that were indisputably human and unmistakably Gouldian. The playing could not have come from any other pianist.
But wait. ... Gould’s recorded piano sound is dry, as if each note were squeezed free of moisture. The phrases quiver; connections between notes are tensile, as if they were being held together by sinews. But at the demonstration the sound was often plump, rotund, even bell-like. That is partly the character of Yamaha pianos. And isn’t that a problem? Any great pianist will adjust a performance to the instrument, treating one with a “wet sound” differently from one with more sharply etched qualities, phrasing differently, even adjusting tempo. This difference in instruments limits Zenph’s claims; it also seemed to slacken the music’s sinews.
Presumably though the recording — done on another Yamaha that the piano technician, Marc Wienert, voiced to resemble Gould’s old Steinway — would have a better effect. Yet it leaves a similar impression. Is this some psychoacoustic phenomenon then, some disorientation caused by close familiarity with the old mono sound? When recordings were first becoming widely available at the turn of the 20th century, there were demonstrations in concert halls in which singers would begin a song, and a hidden gramophone with its amplifying horn would complete it. One London newspaper reported: “The most sensitive ear could not detect the slightest difference between the tone of the singer and the tone of the mechanical device.”
Bizarre. But am I experiencing something in reverse, treating sonic antiquity with reverence and not recognizing musical similarities? We all learn languages of listening, ways of interpreting reproductions, imagining full-size orchestras emerging from clock radios, ignoring hisses or distortions, compensating for flaws.
Does the new instrumentation seem less convincing because it disrupts the old familiar language of listening? I don’t think so. In Zenph’s recording, the music’s tensile line really is loosened. I admire what I hear and might not even realize what was missing without comparing, but I am not intoxicated with Gould’s exuberance or infected with his ecstatic amazement. The music is the same, yet not the same.
Of course one might say, “How could it be otherwise?” Think of the kinds of processing and analysis that had to be done: filtering out Gould’s hums or groans, isolating the sound of the piano with all its intricate overtones, taking into account the way sound was compressed or altered by every microphone, processor or wire it passed through.
Then there’s another step: “reverse engineering” the sound, as if reconstructing the instrument that created it. Then another: producing the music from yet another instrument, Yamaha’s Disklavier. And another: recording the music yet again.
The process is mind-bogglingly complex. And at every moment there are also human decisions — adjustments of the piano, musical alterations. Perhaps over time both human practice and technological possibilities will evolve further, leaving fewer distinctions. A recording by Art Tatum is due next from Zenph, along with other recordings from Sony BMG Masterworks’ rich archives.
But why all this effort? (Five man-months for a “reperformance,” as Mr. Walker explained.) Partly perhaps because contemporary sound is considered preferable and marketable. Partly because, as Zenph’s Web site points out, the great recordings of the past are passing into the public domain. The European Union allows just 50 years of protection — and this is a way of maintaining proprietary control.
But is the result really musically superior? It could only be that if there were absolutely nothing lost and every difference were an improvement; neither is the case. This is a disappointment then, though one that is exhilarating in its enterprise and promise.
The disappointment is also a relief. For had Zenph succeeded, there would have been a severe price. Had that really been Gould’s sound coming from the piano, it would have dealt a severe blow indeed to an ancient prejudice: that music, in all its complexity, is beyond the reach of the merely technical, and that it belongs, in creation and interpretation, to humanity’s ever-shrinking domain. Relief: no Gouldian robotics. Yet.
Connections, a critic’s perspective on arts and ideas, appears every other Monday.
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A nice clip of the live version of Chan Chan by the Buena Vista Social Clip
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoQNj2tlZhg
Well I know there was a documentary so I dont know if this is from it, there are some other clips of the Buena Vista Social Club on youtube as well.
Here is a clip that is from February of 2007:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leWA3_ISwas
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I really dig the drums by Brent Lewis on the DBMA videos as well as the other music...
I sent some time goofing around on youtube and found some cool Tahitian Drums.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c14Giadx_sQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTaG5J8pR_s
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I have been playing every day for two years. Now I know how to hit those impossible cords. LOL http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xPGqWt3L7A&NR
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That was a nice tune, it reminded me of that one movie which has some great music in it too "O Brother Where Art Thou"
Man of constant Sorrow - Hot Damn! These the Soggy Bottum Boys
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfTUvFj6kvc
The Sirens
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxlyKA9O9LA
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plays "Little Wing" :-o
http://www.youtube.com:80/watch?v=jwm-vxGgFf4&mode=related&search
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That was amazing!
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There's clips on the webpage where this article appears, but don't know how long they will be there
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721.html
Pearls Before Breakfast
Can one of the nation's great musicians cut through the fog of a D.C. rush hour? Let's find out.
By Gene Weingarten
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, April 8, 2007; Page W10
HE EMERGED FROM THE METRO AT THE L'ENFANT PLAZA STATION AND POSITIONED HIMSELF AGAINST A WALL BESIDE A TRASH BASKET. By most measures, he was nondescript: a youngish white man in jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt and a Washington Nationals baseball cap. From a small case, he removed a violin. Placing the open case at his feet, he shrewdly threw in a few dollars and pocket change as seed money, swiveled it to face pedestrian traffic, and began to play.
It was 7:51 a.m. on Friday, January 12, the middle of the morning rush hour. In the next 43 minutes, as the violinist performed six classical pieces, 1,097 people passed by. Almost all of them were on the way to work, which meant, for almost all of them, a government job. L'Enfant Plaza is at the nucleus of federal Washington, and these were mostly mid-level bureaucrats with those indeterminate, oddly fungible titles: policy analyst, project manager, budget officer, specialist, facilitator, consultant.
Monday, April 9, 2007 1 p.m. ET
Post Magazine: Too Busy to Stop and Hear the Music
Can one of the nation's greatest musicians cut through the fog of a D.C. rush hour? Gene Weingarten set out to discover if violinist Josh Bell -- and his Stradivarius -- could stop busy commuters in their tracks.
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Each passerby had a quick choice to make, one familiar to commuters in any urban area where the occasional street performer is part of the cityscape: Do you stop and listen? Do you hurry past with a blend of guilt and irritation, aware of your cupidity but annoyed by the unbidden demand on your time and your wallet? Do you throw in a buck, just to be polite? Does your decision change if he's really bad? What if he's really good? Do you have time for beauty? Shouldn't you? What's the moral mathematics of the moment?
On that Friday in January, those private questions would be answered in an unusually public way. No one knew it, but the fiddler standing against a bare wall outside the Metro in an indoor arcade at the top of the escalators was one of the finest classical musicians in the world, playing some of the most elegant music ever written on one of the most valuable violins ever made. His performance was arranged by The Washington Post as an experiment in context, perception and priorities -- as well as an unblinking assessment of public taste: In a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?
The musician did not play popular tunes whose familiarity alone might have drawn interest. That was not the test. These were masterpieces that have endured for centuries on their brilliance alone, soaring music befitting the grandeur of cathedrals and concert halls.
The acoustics proved surprisingly kind. Though the arcade is of utilitarian design, a buffer between the Metro escalator and the outdoors, it somehow caught the sound and bounced it back round and resonant. The violin is an instrument that is said to be much like the human voice, and in this musician's masterly hands, it sobbed and laughed and sang -- ecstatic, sorrowful, importuning, adoring, flirtatious, castigating, playful, romancing, merry, triumphal, sumptuous.
So, what do you think happened?
HANG ON, WE'LL GET YOU SOME EXPERT HELP.
Leonard Slatkin, music director of the National Symphony Orchestra, was asked the same question. What did he think would occur, hypothetically, if one of the world's great violinists had performed incognito before a traveling rush-hour audience of 1,000-odd people?
"Let's assume," Slatkin said, "that he is not recognized and just taken for granted as a street musician . . . Still, I don't think that if he's really good, he's going to go unnoticed. He'd get a larger audience in Europe . . . but, okay, out of 1,000 people, my guess is there might be 35 or 40 who will recognize the quality for what it is. Maybe 75 to 100 will stop and spend some time listening."
So, a crowd would gather?
"Oh, yes."
And how much will he make?
"About $150."
Thanks, Maestro. As it happens, this is not hypothetical. It really happened.
"How'd I do?"
We'll tell you in a minute.
"Well, who was the musician?"
Joshua Bell.
"NO!!!"
A onetime child prodigy, at 39 Joshua Bell has arrived as an internationally acclaimed virtuoso. Three days before he appeared at the Metro station, Bell had filled the house at Boston's stately Symphony Hall, where merely pretty good seats went for $100. Two weeks later, at the Music Center at Strathmore, in North Bethesda, he would play to a standing-room-only audience so respectful of his artistry that they stifled their coughs until the silence between movements. But on that Friday in January, Joshua Bell was just another mendicant, competing for the attention of busy people on their way to work.
Bell was first pitched this idea shortly before Christmas, over coffee at a sandwich shop on Capitol Hill. A New Yorker, he was in town to perform at the Library of Congress and to visit the library's vaults to examine an unusual treasure: an 18th-century violin that once belonged to the great Austrian-born virtuoso and composer Fritz Kreisler. The curators invited Bell to play it; good sound, still.
"Here's what I'm thinking," Bell confided, as he sipped his coffee. "I'm thinking that I could do a tour where I'd play Kreisler's music . . ."
He smiled.
". . . on Kreisler's violin."
It was a snazzy, sequined idea -- part inspiration and part gimmick -- and it was typical of Bell, who has unapologetically embraced showmanship even as his concert career has become more and more august. He's soloed with the finest orchestras here and abroad, but he's also appeared on "Sesame Street," done late-night talk TV and performed in feature films. That was Bell playing the soundtrack on the 1998 movie "The Red Violin." (He body-doubled, too, playing to a naked Greta Scacchi.) As composer John Corigliano accepted the Oscar for Best Original Dramatic Score, he credited Bell, who, he said, "plays like a god."
When Bell was asked if he'd be willing to don street clothes and perform at rush hour, he said:
"Uh, a stunt?"
Well, yes. A stunt. Would he think it . . . unseemly?
Bell drained his cup.
"Sounds like fun," he said.
Bell's a heartthrob. Tall and handsome, he's got a Donny Osmond-like dose of the cutes, and, onstage, cute elides into hott. When he performs, he is usually the only man under the lights who is not in white tie and tails -- he walks out to a standing O, looking like Zorro, in black pants and an untucked black dress shirt, shirttail dangling. That cute Beatles-style mop top is also a strategic asset: Because his technique is full of body -- athletic and passionate -- he's almost dancing with the instrument, and his hair flies.
He's single and straight, a fact not lost on some of his fans. In Boston, as he performed Max Bruch's dour Violin Concerto in G Minor, the very few young women in the audience nearly disappeared in the deep sea of silver heads. But seemingly every single one of them -- a distillate of the young and pretty -- coalesced at the stage door after the performance, seeking an autograph. It's like that always, with Bell.
Bell's been accepting over-the-top accolades since puberty: Interview magazine once said his playing "does nothing less than tell human beings why they bother to live." He's learned to field these things graciously, with a bashful duck of the head and a modified "pshaw."
For this incognito performance, Bell had only one condition for participating. The event had been described to him as a test of whether, in an incongruous context, ordinary people would recognize genius. His condition: "I'm not comfortable if you call this genius." "Genius" is an overused word, he said: It can be applied to some of the composers whose work he plays, but not to him. His skills are largely interpretive, he said, and to imply otherwise would be unseemly and inaccurate.
It was an interesting request, and under the circumstances, one that will be honored. The word will not again appear in this article.
It would be breaking no rules, however, to note that the term in question, particularly as applied in the field of music, refers to a congenital brilliance -- an elite, innate, preternatural ability that manifests itself early, and often in dramatic fashion.
One biographically intriguing fact about Bell is that he got his first music lessons when he was a 4-year-old in Bloomington, Ind. His parents, both psychologists, decided formal training might be a good idea after they saw that their son had strung rubber bands across his dresser drawers and was replicating classical tunes by ear, moving drawers in and out to vary the pitch.
TO GET TO THE METRO FROM HIS HOTEL, a distance of three blocks, Bell took a taxi. He's neither lame nor lazy: He did it for his violin.
Bell always performs on the same instrument, and he ruled out using another for this gig. Called the Gibson ex Huberman, it was handcrafted in 1713 by Antonio Stradivari during the Italian master's "golden period," toward the end of his career, when he had access to the finest spruce, maple and willow, and when his technique had been refined to perfection.
"Our knowledge of acoustics is still incomplete," Bell said, "but he, he just . . . knew."
Bell doesn't mention Stradivari by name. Just "he." When the violinist shows his Strad to people, he holds the instrument gingerly by its neck, resting it on a knee. "He made this to perfect thickness at all parts," Bell says, pivoting it. "If you shaved off a millimeter of wood at any point, it would totally imbalance the sound." No violins sound as wonderful as Strads from the 1710s, still.
The front of Bell's violin is in nearly perfect condition, with a deep, rich grain and luster. The back is a mess, its dark reddish finish bleeding away into a flatter, lighter shade and finally, in one section, to bare wood.
"This has never been refinished," Bell said. "That's his original varnish. People attribute aspects of the sound to the varnish. Each maker had his own secret formula." Stradivari is thought to have made his from an ingeniously balanced cocktail of honey, egg whites and gum arabic from sub-Saharan trees.
Like the instrument in "The Red Violin," this one has a past filled with mystery and malice. Twice, it was stolen from its illustrious prior owner, the Polish virtuoso Bronislaw Huberman. The first time, in 1919, it disappeared from Huberman's hotel room in Vienna but was quickly returned. The second time, nearly 20 years later, it was pinched from his dressing room in Carnegie Hall. He never got it back. It was not until 1985 that the thief -- a minor New York violinist -- made a deathbed confession to his wife, and produced the instrument.
Bell bought it a few years ago. He had to sell his own Strad and borrow much of the rest. The price tag was reported to be about $3.5 million.
All of which is a long explanation for why, in the early morning chill of a day in January, Josh Bell took a three-block cab ride to the Orange Line, and rode one stop to L'Enfant.
AS METRO STATIONS GO, L'ENFANT PLAZA IS MORE PLEBEIAN THAN MOST. Even before you arrive, it gets no respect. Metro conductors never seem to get it right: "Leh-fahn." "Layfont." "El'phant."
At the top of the escalators are a shoeshine stand and a busy kiosk that sells newspapers, lottery tickets and a wallfull of magazines with titles such as Mammazons and Girls of Barely Legal. The skin mags move, but it's that lottery ticket dispenser that stays the busiest, with customers queuing up for Daily 6 lotto and Powerball and the ultimate suckers' bait, those pamphlets that sell random number combinations purporting to be "hot." They sell briskly. There's also a quick-check machine to slide in your lotto ticket, post-drawing, to see if you've won. Beneath it is a forlorn pile of crumpled slips.
On Friday, January 12, the people waiting in the lottery line looking for a long shot would get a lucky break -- a free, close-up ticket to a concert by one of the world's most famous musicians -- but only if they were of a mind to take note.
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Bell decided to begin with "Chaconne" from Johann Sebastian Bach's Partita No. 2 in D Minor. Bell calls it "not just one of the greatest pieces of music ever written, but one of the greatest achievements of any man in history. It's a spiritually powerful piece, emotionally powerful, structurally perfect. Plus, it was written for a solo violin, so I won't be cheating with some half-assed version."
Bell didn't say it, but Bach's "Chaconne" is also considered one of the most difficult violin pieces to master. Many try; few succeed. It's exhaustingly long -- 14 minutes -- and consists entirely of a single, succinct musical progression repeated in dozens of variations to create a dauntingly complex architecture of sound. Composed around 1720, on the eve of the European Enlightenment, it is said to be a celebration of the breadth of human possibility.
If Bell's encomium to "Chaconne" seems overly effusive, consider this from the 19th-century composer Johannes Brahms, in a letter to Clara Schumann: "On one stave, for a small instrument, the man writes a whole world of the deepest thoughts and most powerful feelings. If I imagined that I could have created, even conceived the piece, I am quite certain that the excess of excitement and earth-shattering experience would have driven me out of my mind."
So, that's the piece Bell started with.
He'd clearly meant it when he promised not to cheap out this performance: He played with acrobatic enthusiasm, his body leaning into the music and arching on tiptoes at the high notes. The sound was nearly symphonic, carrying to all parts of the homely arcade as the pedestrian traffic filed past.
Three minutes went by before something happened. Sixty-three people had already passed when, finally, there was a breakthrough of sorts. A middle-age man altered his gait for a split second, turning his head to notice that there seemed to be some guy playing music. Yes, the man kept walking, but it was something.
A half-minute later, Bell got his first donation. A woman threw in a buck and scooted off. It was not until six minutes into the performance that someone actually stood against a wall, and listened.
Things never got much better. In the three-quarters of an hour that Joshua Bell played, seven people stopped what they were doing to hang around and take in the performance, at least for a minute. Twenty-seven gave money, most of them on the run -- for a total of $32 and change. That leaves the 1,070 people who hurried by, oblivious, many only three feet away, few even turning to look.
No, Mr. Slatkin, there was never a crowd, not even for a second.
It was all videotaped by a hidden camera. You can play the recording once or 15 times, and it never gets any easier to watch. Try speeding it up, and it becomes one of those herky-jerky World War I-era silent newsreels. The people scurry by in comical little hops and starts, cups of coffee in their hands, cellphones at their ears, ID tags slapping at their bellies, a grim danse macabre to indifference, inertia and the dingy, gray rush of modernity.
Even at this accelerated pace, though, the fiddler's movements remain fluid and graceful; he seems so apart from his audience -- unseen, unheard, otherworldly -- that you find yourself thinking that he's not really there. A ghost.
Only then do you see it: He is the one who is real. They are the ghosts.
IF A GREAT MUSICIAN PLAYS GREAT MUSIC BUT NO ONE HEARS . . . WAS HE REALLY ANY GOOD?
It's an old epistemological debate, older, actually, than the koan about the tree in the forest. Plato weighed in on it, and philosophers for two millennia afterward: What is beauty? Is it a measurable fact (Gottfried Leibniz), or merely an opinion (David Hume), or is it a little of each, colored by the immediate state of mind of the observer (Immanuel Kant)?
We'll go with Kant, because he's obviously right, and because he brings us pretty directly to Joshua Bell, sitting there in a hotel restaurant, picking at his breakfast, wryly trying to figure out what the hell had just happened back there at the Metro.
"At the beginning," Bell says, "I was just concentrating on playing the music. I wasn't really watching what was happening around me . . ."
Playing the violin looks all-consuming, mentally and physically, but Bell says that for him the mechanics of it are partly second nature, cemented by practice and muscle memory: It's like a juggler, he says, who can keep those balls in play while interacting with a crowd. What he's mostly thinking about as he plays, Bell says, is capturing emotion as a narrative: "When you play a violin piece, you are a storyteller, and you're telling a story."
With "Chaconne," the opening is filled with a building sense of awe. That kept him busy for a while. Eventually, though, he began to steal a sidelong glance.
"It was a strange feeling, that people were actually, ah . . ."
The word doesn't come easily.
". . . ignoring me."
Bell is laughing. It's at himself.
"At a music hall, I'll get upset if someone coughs or if someone's cellphone goes off. But here, my expectations quickly diminished. I started to appreciate any acknowledgment, even a slight glance up. I was oddly grateful when someone threw in a dollar instead of change." This is from a man whose talents can command $1,000 a minute.
Before he began, Bell hadn't known what to expect. What he does know is that, for some reason, he was nervous.
"It wasn't exactly stage fright, but there were butterflies," he says. "I was stressing a little."
Bell has played, literally, before crowned heads of Europe. Why the anxiety at the Washington Metro?
"When you play for ticket-holders," Bell explains, "you are already validated. I have no sense that I need to be accepted. I'm already accepted. Here, there was this thought: What if they don't like me? What if they resent my presence . . ."
He was, in short, art without a frame. Which, it turns out, may have a lot to do with what happened -- or, more precisely, what didn't happen -- on January 12.
MARK LEITHAUSER HAS HELD IN HIS HANDS MORE GREAT WORKS OF ART THAN ANY KING OR POPE OR MEDICI EVER DID. A senior curator at the National Gallery, he oversees the framing of the paintings. Leithauser thinks he has some idea of what happened at that Metro station.
"Let's say I took one of our more abstract masterpieces, say an Ellsworth Kelly, and removed it from its frame, marched it down the 52 steps that people walk up to get to the National Gallery, past the giant columns, and brought it into a restaurant. It's a $5 million painting. And it's one of those restaurants where there are pieces of original art for sale, by some industrious kids from the Corcoran School, and I hang that Kelly on the wall with a price tag of $150. No one is going to notice it. An art curator might look up and say: 'Hey, that looks a little like an Ellsworth Kelly. Please pass the salt.'"
Leithauser's point is that we shouldn't be too ready to label the Metro passersby unsophisticated boobs. Context matters.
Kant said the same thing. He took beauty seriously: In his Critique of Aesthetic Judgment, Kant argued that one's ability to appreciate beauty is related to one's ability to make moral judgments. But there was a caveat. Paul Guyer of the University of Pennsylvania, one of America's most prominent Kantian scholars, says the 18th-century German philosopher felt that to properly appreciate beauty, the viewing conditions must be optimal.
"Optimal," Guyer said, "doesn't mean heading to work, focusing on your report to the boss, maybe your shoes don't fit right."
So, if Kant had been at the Metro watching as Joshua Bell play to a thousand unimpressed passersby?
"He would have inferred about them," Guyer said, "absolutely nothing."
And that's that.
Except it isn't. To really understand what happened, you have to rewind that video and play it back from the beginning, from the moment Bell's bow first touched the strings.
White guy, khakis, leather jacket, briefcase. Early 30s. John David Mortensen is on the final leg of his daily bus-to-Metro commute from Reston. He's heading up the escalator. It's a long ride -- 1 minute and 15 seconds if you don't walk. So, like most everyone who passes Bell this day, Mortensen gets a good earful of music before he has his first look at the musician. Like most of them, he notes that it sounds pretty good. But like very few of them, when he gets to the top, he doesn't race past as though Bell were some nuisance to be avoided. Mortensen is that first person to stop, that guy at the six-minute mark.
It's not that he has nothing else to do. He's a project manager for an international program at the Department of Energy; on this day, Mortensen has to participate in a monthly budget exercise, not the most exciting part of his job: "You review the past month's expenditures," he says, "forecast spending for the next month, if you have X dollars, where will it go, that sort of thing."
On the video, you can see Mortensen get off the escalator and look around. He locates the violinist, stops, walks away but then is drawn back. He checks the time on his cellphone -- he's three minutes early for work -- then settles against a wall to listen.
Mortensen doesn't know classical music at all; classic rock is as close as he comes. But there's something about what he's hearing that he really likes.
As it happens, he's arrived at the moment that Bell slides into the second section of "Chaconne." ("It's the point," Bell says, "where it moves from a darker, minor key into a major key. There's a religious, exalted feeling to it.") The violinist's bow begins to dance; the music becomes upbeat, playful, theatrical, big.
Mortensen doesn't know about major or minor keys: "Whatever it was," he says, "it made me feel at peace."
So, for the first time in his life, Mortensen lingers to listen to a street musician. He stays his allotted three minutes as 94 more people pass briskly by. When he leaves to help plan contingency budgets for the Department of Energy, there's another first. For the first time in his life, not quite knowing what had just happened but sensing it was special, John David Mortensen gives a street musician money.
THERE ARE SIX MOMENTS IN THE VIDEO THAT BELL FINDS PARTICULARLY PAINFUL TO RELIVE: "The awkward times," he calls them. It's what happens right after each piece ends: nothing. The music stops. The same people who hadn't noticed him playing don't notice that he has finished. No applause, no acknowledgment. So Bell just saws out a small, nervous chord -- the embarrassed musician's equivalent of, "Er, okay, moving right along . . ." -- and begins the next piece.
After "Chaconne," it is Franz Schubert's "Ave Maria," which surprised some music critics when it debuted in 1825: Schubert seldom showed religious feeling in his compositions, yet "Ave Maria" is a breathtaking work of adoration of the Virgin Mary. What was with the sudden piety? Schubert dryly answered: "I think this is due to the fact that I never forced devotion in myself and never compose hymns or prayers of that kind unless it overcomes me unawares; but then it is usually the right and true devotion." This musical prayer became among the most familiar and enduring religious pieces in history.
A couple of minutes into it, something revealing happens. A woman and her preschooler emerge from the escalator. The woman is walking briskly and, therefore, so is the child. She's got his hand.
"I had a time crunch," recalls Sheron Parker, an IT director for a federal agency. "I had an 8:30 training class, and first I had to rush Evvie off to his teacher, then rush back to work, then to the training facility in the basement."
Evvie is her son, Evan. Evan is 3.
You can see Evan clearly on the video. He's the cute black kid in the parka who keeps twisting around to look at Joshua Bell, as he is being propelled toward the door.
"There was a musician," Parker says, "and my son was intrigued. He wanted to pull over and listen, but I was rushed for time."
So Parker does what she has to do. She deftly moves her body between Evan's and Bell's, cutting off her son's line of sight. As they exit the arcade, Evan can still be seen craning to look. When Parker is told what she walked out on, she laughs.
"Evan is very smart!"
The poet Billy Collins once laughingly observed that all babies are born with a knowledge of poetry, because the lub-dub of the mother's heart is in iambic meter. Then, Collins said, life slowly starts to choke the poetry out of us. It may be true with music, too.
There was no ethnic or demographic pattern to distinguish the people who stayed to watch Bell, or the ones who gave money, from that vast majority who hurried on past, unheeding. Whites, blacks and Asians, young and old, men and women, were represented in all three groups. But the behavior of one demographic remained absolutely consistent. Every single time a child walked past, he or she tried to stop and watch. And every single time, a parent scooted the kid away.
IF THERE WAS ONE PERSON ON THAT DAY WHO WAS TOO BUSY TO PAY ATTENTION TO THE VIOLINIST, it was George Tindley. Tindley wasn't hurrying to get to work. He was at work.
The glass doors through which most people exit the L'Enfant station lead into an indoor shopping mall, from which there are exits to the street and elevators to office buildings. The first store in the mall is an Au Bon Pain, the croissant and coffee shop where Tindley, in his 40s, works in a white uniform busing the tables, restocking the salt and pepper packets, taking out the garbage. Tindley labors under the watchful eye of his bosses, and he's supposed to be hopping, and he was.
But every minute or so, as though drawn by something not entirely within his control, Tindley would walk to the very edge of the Au Bon Pain property, keeping his toes inside the line, still on the job. Then he'd lean forward, as far out into the hallway as he could, watching the fiddler on the other side of the glass doors. The foot traffic was steady, so the doors were usually open. The sound came through pretty well.
"You could tell in one second that this guy was good, that he was clearly a professional," Tindley says. He plays the guitar, loves the sound of strings, and has no respect for a certain kind of musician.
"Most people, they play music; they don't feel it," Tindley says. "Well, that man was feeling it. That man was moving. Moving into the sound."
A hundred feet away, across the arcade, was the lottery line, sometimes five or six people long. They had a much better view of Bell than Tindley did, if they had just turned around. But no one did. Not in the entire 43 minutes. They just shuffled forward toward that machine spitting out numbers. Eyes on the prize.
J.T. Tillman was in that line. A computer specialist for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, he remembers every single number he played that day -- 10 of them, $2 apiece, for a total of $20. He doesn't recall what the violinist was playing, though. He says it sounded like generic classical music, the kind the ship's band was playing in "Titanic," before the iceberg.
"I didn't think nothing of it," Tillman says, "just a guy trying to make a couple of bucks." Tillman would have given him one or two, he said, but he spent all his cash on lotto.
When he is told that he stiffed one of the best musicians in the world, he laughs.
"Is he ever going to play around here again?"
"Yeah, but you're going to have to pay a lot to hear him."
"Damn."
Tillman didn't win the lottery, either.
BELL ENDS "AVE MARIA" TO ANOTHER THUNDEROUS SILENCE, plays Manuel Ponce's sentimental "Estrellita," then a piece by Jules Massenet, and then begins a Bach gavotte, a joyful, frolicsome, lyrical dance. It's got an Old World delicacy to it; you can imagine it entertaining bewigged dancers at a Versailles ball, or -- in a lute, fiddle and fife version -- the boot-kicking peasants of a Pieter Bruegel painting.
Watching the video weeks later, Bell finds himself mystified by one thing only. He understands why he's not drawing a crowd, in the rush of a morning workday. But: "I'm surprised at the number of people who don't pay attention at all, as if I'm invisible. Because, you know what? I'm makin' a lot of noise!"
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He is. You don't need to know music at all to appreciate the simple fact that there's a guy there, playing a violin that's throwing out a whole bucket of sound; at times, Bell's bowing is so intricate that you seem to be hearing two instruments playing in harmony. So those head-forward, quick-stepping passersby are a remarkable phenomenon.
Bell wonders whether their inattention may be deliberate: If you don't take visible note of the musician, you don't have to feel guilty about not forking over money; you're not complicit in a rip-off.
It may be true, but no one gave that explanation. People just said they were busy, had other things on their mind. Some who were on cellphones spoke louder as they passed Bell, to compete with that infernal racket.
And then there was Calvin Myint. Myint works for the General Services Administration. He got to the top of the escalator, turned right and headed out a door to the street. A few hours later, he had no memory that there had been a musician anywhere in sight.
"Where was he, in relation to me?"
"About four feet away."
"Oh."
There's nothing wrong with Myint's hearing. He had buds in his ear. He was listening to his iPod.
For many of us, the explosion in technology has perversely limited, not expanded, our exposure to new experiences. Increasingly, we get our news from sources that think as we already do. And with iPods, we hear what we already know; we program our own playlists.
The song that Calvin Myint was listening to was "Just Like Heaven," by the British rock band The Cure. It's a terrific song, actually. The meaning is a little opaque, and the Web is filled with earnest efforts to deconstruct it. Many are far-fetched, but some are right on point: It's about a tragic emotional disconnect. A man has found the woman of his dreams but can't express the depth of his feeling for her until she's gone. It's about failing to see the beauty of what's plainly in front of your eyes.
"YES, I SAW THE VIOLINIST," Jackie Hessian says, "but nothing about him struck me as much of anything."
You couldn't tell that by watching her. Hessian was one of those people who gave Bell a long, hard look before walking on. It turns out that she wasn't noticing the music at all.
"I really didn't hear that much," she said. "I was just trying to figure out what he was doing there, how does this work for him, can he make much money, would it be better to start with some money in the case, or for it to be empty, so people feel sorry for you? I was analyzing it financially."
What do you do, Jackie?
"I'm a lawyer in labor relations with the United States Postal Service. I just negotiated a national contract."
THE BEST SEATS IN THE HOUSE WERE UPHOLSTERED. In the balcony, more or less. On that day, for $5, you'd get a lot more than just a nice shine on your shoes.
Only one person occupied one of those seats when Bell played. Terence Holmes is a consultant for the Department of Transportation, and he liked the music just fine, but it was really about a shoeshine: "My father told me never to wear a suit with your shoes not cleaned and shined."
Holmes wears suits often, so he is up in that perch a lot, and he's got a good relationship with the shoeshine lady. Holmes is a good tipper and a good talker, which is a skill that came in handy that day. The shoeshine lady was upset about something, and the music got her more upset. She complained, Holmes said, that the music was too loud, and he tried to calm her down.
Edna Souza is from Brazil. She's been shining shoes at L'Enfant Plaza for six years, and she's had her fill of street musicians there; when they play, she can't hear her customers, and that's bad for business. So she fights.
Souza points to the dividing line between the Metro property, at the top of the escalator, and the arcade, which is under control of the management company that runs the mall. Sometimes, Souza says, a musician will stand on the Metro side, sometimes on the mall side. Either way, she's got him. On her speed dial, she has phone numbers for both the mall cops and the Metro cops. The musicians seldom last long.
What about Joshua Bell?
He was too loud, too, Souza says. Then she looks down at her rag, sniffs. She hates to say anything positive about these damned musicians, but: "He was pretty good, that guy. It was the first time I didn't call the police."
Souza was surprised to learn he was a famous musician, but not that people rushed blindly by him. That, she said, was predictable. "If something like this happened in Brazil, everyone would stand around to see. Not here."
Souza nods sourly toward a spot near the top of the escalator: "Couple of years ago, a homeless guy died right there. He just lay down there and died. The police came, an ambulance came, and no one even stopped to see or slowed down to look.
"People walk up the escalator, they look straight ahead. Mind your own business, eyes forward. Everyone is stressed. Do you know what I mean?"
What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
-- from "Leisure," by W.H. Davies
Let's say Kant is right. Let's accept that we can't look at what happened on January 12 and make any judgment whatever about people's sophistication or their ability to appreciate beauty. But what about their ability to appreciate life?
We're busy. Americans have been busy, as a people, since at least 1831, when a young French sociologist named Alexis de Tocqueville visited the States and found himself impressed, bemused and slightly dismayed at the degree to which people were driven, to the exclusion of everything else, by hard work and the accumulation of wealth.
Not much has changed. Pop in a DVD of "Koyaanisqatsi," the wordless, darkly brilliant, avant-garde 1982 film about the frenetic speed of modern life. Backed by the minimalist music of Philip Glass, director Godfrey Reggio takes film clips of Americans going about their daily business, but speeds them up until they resemble assembly-line machines, robots marching lockstep to nowhere. Now look at the video from L'Enfant Plaza, in fast-forward. The Philip Glass soundtrack fits it perfectly.
"Koyaanisqatsi" is a Hopi word. It means "life out of balance."
In his 2003 book, Timeless Beauty: In the Arts and Everyday Life, British author John Lane writes about the loss of the appreciation for beauty in the modern world. The experiment at L'Enfant Plaza may be symptomatic of that, he said -- not because people didn't have the capacity to understand beauty, but because it was irrelevant to them.
"This is about having the wrong priorities," Lane said.
If we can't take the time out of our lives to stay a moment and listen to one of the best musicians on Earth play some of the best music ever written; if the surge of modern life so overpowers us that we are deaf and blind to something like that -- then what else are we missing?
That's what the Welsh poet W.H. Davies meant in 1911 when he published those two lines that begin this section. They made him famous. The thought was simple, even primitive, but somehow no one had put it quite that way before.
Of course, Davies had an advantage -- an advantage of perception. He wasn't a tradesman or a laborer or a bureaucrat or a consultant or a policy analyst or a labor lawyer or a program manager. He was a hobo.
THE CULTURAL HERO OF THE DAY ARRIVED AT L'ENFANT PLAZA PRETTY LATE, in the unprepossessing figure of one John Picarello, a smallish man with a baldish head.
Picarello hit the top of the escalator just after Bell began his final piece, a reprise of "Chaconne." In the video, you see Picarello stop dead in his tracks, locate the source of the music, and then retreat to the other end of the arcade. He takes up a position past the shoeshine stand, across from that lottery line, and he will not budge for the next nine minutes.
Like all the passersby interviewed for this article, Picarello was stopped by a reporter after he left the building, and was asked for his phone number. Like everyone, he was told only that this was to be an article about commuting. When he was called later in the day, like everyone else, he was first asked if anything unusual had happened to him on his trip into work. Of the more than 40 people contacted, Picarello was the only one who immediately mentioned the violinist.
"There was a musician playing at the top of the escalator at L'Enfant Plaza."
Haven't you seen musicians there before?
"Not like this one."
What do you mean?
"This was a superb violinist. I've never heard anyone of that caliber. He was technically proficient, with very good phrasing. He had a good fiddle, too, with a big, lush sound. I walked a distance away, to hear him. I didn't want to be intrusive on his space."
Really?
"Really. It was that kind of experience. It was a treat, just a brilliant, incredible way to start the day."
Picarello knows classical music. He is a fan of Joshua Bell but didn't recognize him; he hadn't seen a recent photo, and besides, for most of the time Picarello was pretty far away. But he knew this was not a run-of-the-mill guy out there, performing. On the video, you can see Picarello look around him now and then, almost bewildered.
"Yeah, other people just were not getting it. It just wasn't registering. That was baffling to me."
When Picarello was growing up in New York, he studied violin seriously, intending to be a concert musician. But he gave it up at 18, when he decided he'd never be good enough to make it pay. Life does that to you sometimes. Sometimes, you have to do the prudent thing. So he went into another line of work. He's a supervisor at the U.S. Postal Service. Doesn't play the violin much, anymore.
When he left, Picarello says, "I humbly threw in $5." It was humble: You can actually see that on the video. Picarello walks up, barely looking at Bell, and tosses in the money. Then, as if embarrassed, he quickly walks away from the man he once wanted to be.
Does he have regrets about how things worked out?
The postal supervisor considers this.
"No. If you love something but choose not to do it professionally, it's not a waste. Because, you know, you still have it. You have it forever."
BELL THINKS HE DID HIS BEST WORK OF THE DAY IN THOSE FINAL FEW MINUTES, in the second "Chaconne." And that also was the first time more than one person at a time was listening. As Picarello stood in the back, Janice Olu arrived and took up a position a few feet away from Bell. Olu, a public trust officer with HUD, also played the violin as a kid. She didn't know the name of the piece she was hearing, but she knew the man playing it has a gift.
Olu was on a coffee break and stayed as long as she dared. As she turned to go, she whispered to the stranger next to her, "I really don't want to leave." The stranger standing next to her happened to be working for The Washington Post.
In preparing for this event, editors at The Post Magazine discussed how to deal with likely outcomes. The most widely held assumption was that there could well be a problem with crowd control: In a demographic as sophisticated as Washington, the thinking went, several people would surely recognize Bell. Nervous "what-if" scenarios abounded. As people gathered, what if others stopped just to see what the attraction was? Word would spread through the crowd. Cameras would flash. More people flock to the scene; rush-hour pedestrian traffic backs up; tempers flare; the National Guard is called; tear gas, rubber bullets, etc.
As it happens, exactly one person recognized Bell, and she didn't arrive until near the very end. For Stacy Furukawa, a demographer at the Commerce Department, there was no doubt. She doesn't know much about classical music, but she had been in the audience three weeks earlier, at Bell's free concert at the Library of Congress. And here he was, the international virtuoso, sawing away, begging for money. She had no idea what the heck was going on, but whatever it was, she wasn't about to miss it.
Furukawa positioned herself 10 feet away from Bell, front row, center. She had a huge grin on her face. The grin, and Furukawa, remained planted in that spot until the end.
"It was the most astonishing thing I've ever seen in Washington," Furukawa says. "Joshua Bell was standing there playing at rush hour, and people were not stopping, and not even looking, and some were flipping quarters at him! Quarters! I wouldn't do that to anybody. I was thinking, Omigosh, what kind of a city do I live in that this could happen?"
When it was over, Furukawa introduced herself to Bell, and tossed in a twenty. Not counting that -- it was tainted by recognition -- the final haul for his 43 minutes of playing was $32.17. Yes, some people gave pennies.
"Actually," Bell said with a laugh, "that's not so bad, considering. That's 40 bucks an hour. I could make an okay living doing this, and I wouldn't have to pay an agent."
These days, at L'Enfant Plaza, lotto ticket sales remain brisk. Musicians still show up from time to time, and they still tick off Edna Souza. Joshua Bell's latest album, "The Voice of the Violin," has received the usual critical acclaim. ("Delicate urgency." "Masterful intimacy." "Unfailingly exquisite." "A musical summit." ". . . will make your heart thump and weep at the same time.")
Bell headed off on a concert tour of European capitals. But he is back in the States this week. He has to be. On Tuesday, he will be accepting the Avery Fisher prize, recognizing the Flop of L'Enfant Plaza as the best classical musician in America.
Emily Shroder, Rachel Manteuffel, John W. Poole and Magazine Editor Tom Shroder contributed to this report. Gene Weingarten, a Magazine staff writer, can be reached at weingarten@washpost.com. He will be fielding questions and comments about this article Monday at 1 p.m.
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BEGGING A PARDON: Florida Governor Charlie Crist stating that he is seriously considering pardoning Jim Morrison's 1970 indecent exposure and profanity convictions stemming from a 1969 concert in Miami. The Doors frontman was appealing the convictions at the time of his death in 1971, when he was only 27. "Trying to clear his name and then he dies. If you have a heart pounding in your chest, that has to tug at you a little bit," Crist said.
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www.charlestelerant.com
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Charles Telerant trains in the FMA as well. Apparently he attended Datu Worden's camp in 06 and had a great time.
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EAR CANDY : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKBkmb0VcL4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Kjw16H8b1I&mode=related&search=
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Another classic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=je9O-VdrZ0E&mode=related&search=
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Robert:
I know-- he started training with me recently. Cool guy, he's a jazz drummer too, showed me a couple of beginner's basics.
Tom:
This was the last track of a movie on Jimi which I saw when it came out. When it was over, sat there a very long time.
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Excellent, I didnt know he is a Jazz Musician. I wonder if that could be another thread.... the relation between Martial Arts and Musicianship / Art. I mean there are many people who express themselves through Martial Arts and through Music \ Art in various forms including dancing.
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Interesting idea. Please feel free to start such a thread in the MA forum.
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Cool vid's. 8- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZ9jrBg4Lwc&mode=related&search= http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-2fKi9Zu5o&mode=related&search=
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Im not sure if this clip is at Charles Telerants site, for some reason his site taking forever to come up but it is probably an issue on my end.
http://www.guzer.com/videos/white_man_rapping.php
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Washington Post
June 12, 2007
Pg. 1
Amid The Chaos Of War, Gifts Of Music
Thanks to Couple's Efforts, Troops in Iraq Get Instruments
By Peter Slevin, Washington Post Staff Writer
FERGUS FALLS, Minn. -- The e-mail from Iraq started this way:
"So, a friend in my battalion received a Fender Stratocaster from you guys. It was amazing! . . . It's been about 6 months since I have played and it was so awesome playing the guitar my friend got. He told me about you guys, so I thought I would see if maybe I can get my own guitar."
And that is how Sgt. Jason Low received an acoustic guitar from Steve Baker, a Vietnam veteran of modest means and powerful purpose. Baker and his wife, Barb, run Fergus Music, a shop here in a rural patch of Minnesota not far from the North Dakota line. Together, they have shipped more than 300 guitars, mandolins, harmonicas, drums and wind instruments to Iraq to ease the strain of the soldiering life.
Fifty more will soon be on the way, thanks to $800 raised at an Elks club spaghetti dinner and $1,500 chipped in by two local businesses. In response, the Bakers receive notes such as this one, sent April 17 by Luis Rivera:
"Yahooooooooooooooooooooooooooo! I have something to look forward to. Thank you very much."
Steve Baker served as an Army Ranger in Vietnam in the mid-1960s. Wiry and mustachioed at 62, and tending toward T-shirts and jeans, he moves between the music shop and the crowded back room where he keeps guitar-ready cardboard boxes and his computer, which seems constantly abuzz with e-mails from Iraq.
"This started as a fluke," Baker said.
In 2004, his stepson, a soldier in Iraq, requested a guitar, so he sent one. The stepson's friend wanted one, so he dispatched another. Pretty soon, the requests were coming faster than the newly christened Operation Happy Note could respond. The waiting list is now more than 150 names long.
The store does not generate enough income to do all the things the Bakers would like to do, but they manage. Steve Baker, who says he previously owned a music store before losing it in a divorce, had been repairing commercial refrigerators before he bought Fergus Music in 2003.
"I didn't realize how much of a going concern this wasn't," he says now. And that was before Happy Note.
"When you do something like this, you're not making money, you're losing it," Baker said of the volunteer project. He added, "I don't care."
The operation to send free instruments has benefited from the generosity of others, such as a woman in Elbow Lake who printed posters, no charge. Then there was the lucky moment when Barb Baker spotted a garage door company giving away bubble wrap. She filled their Jeep with it. In March 2005, the Bakers held their first fundraiser, and have brought in about $13,000 since.
The Bakers have boxed up violins, clarinets, bongos, harmonicas and stringed instruments, along with picks, extra strings and teaching guides created by Steve, who gives lessons in Fergus Falls and has a weekly band gig. When someone asked for cymbals for a military chapel, he took an $800 pair from the shop's wall and packed them up.
A soldier wrote to say that his wife wanted to buy him a Bach Stradivarius trumpet as an anniversary present. The Bakers found one and shipped it off. The acoustic guitars come from the factory, six to a box, for $31 apiece. The Bakers repack them in individual cartons. Postage is $20.80 and travel time is seven to 15 days. Attempts to find a political sponsor to lobby for free postage have so far failed.
"If we didn't have so much postage," Steve Baker said, "we could send more instruments."
As for who receives them, all he knows is that they're American fighting men and women: "I don't care where they're from. They're wearing the uniform. They're protecting us."
Baker's passion for the project has its roots in his experience in the Vietnam War and the years that followed.
"When I was in, nobody cared. I mean, Vietnam, my God," he said, recalling how some Americans swore at troops. "All I got was hooting and hollering, and I remember that to this day. There's no way I'm going to allow that to happen to these kids."
Happy Note is hardly the sole provider of musical instruments. Army Sgt. 1st Class Charles Covey, who asked the Bakers for help, explained in an e-mail that budget constraints have made it necessary for his 25th Infantry Division unit to appeal to private organizations for donations to support base recreation centers.
Between Baghdad and Tikrit, Covey said in response to e-mailed questions, soldiers have received about 100 acoustic guitars, "along with a couple of electric guitars, a bass and an old drum set. They were donated by Fender and the Charlie Daniels Band. (He is a big supporter of the Troops.)" Recent requests range from mandolins to a piano.
Camp Speicher, a military base north of Baghdad, holds informal jam sessions on Wednesdays and Fridays, Covey said, and the division band performs. He reported an increasing desire for electric guitars and keyboards, bass guitars and fiddles, and large amplifiers.
Alas, "these instruments are neither cheap nor easy to store," Covey wrote.
Robert Thierfelder filled one of the more unusual requests relayed to the Bakers. He sent to Iraq three practice chanters, similar to recorders, that bagpipers use to perfect their craft, along with instruction CDs and books. Thierfelder, who runs a bagpipe company, said, "It's the least I can do."
Army Spec. Nathan J.J. Hoskins sent word to the Bakers that two guitars had reached the 1st Air Cavalry Brigade at Camp Taji and were gratefully received. He told the Bakers they were doing "an awesome job. You bring joy to many troops that otherwise may be down in the dumps."
One glad recipient was Spec. Mark Gordon, who could hardly believe that a stranger thousands of miles away would send him a gleaming guitar just because he had asked. "Yet here I sit with mine," he wrote in an e-mail from Baghdad. To relieve stress, he said, he had played every day before he deployed -- so often that he felt it had become a way of life. But when he mobilized, carrying a guitar was out of the question.
After learning of Happy Note from an officer in his unit, he e-mailed the Bakers and quickly received an affirmative reply. He had to read it twice before it sank in. When the guitar arrived in a 3-foot-by-2-foot box, he considered it "satisfying and overwhelming that the kindness of the world has not diminished and people still care about us over here."
Now that he has the guitar, Gordon wrote, friends and battle buddies cram into his room to listen and play.
"The uplifting rhythm of all jazz and blues riffs calm my soul and warm my heart," he said. "It only takes one song to feel like I'm at home."
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Notice how Toby Keith has these stories on his website about how he came up with the lyrics for some of his songs. I *allege* this all made up. I believe he is posting this because it is one of his ways of "documenting" something. I have good reason to believe it is alll made up. I have reason to believe this guy didn't write these songs. I guess he is worried enough he feels he has to come up with stories that he believes will help legitimize his claims. I was telling an Indian colleague of mine how I believe that all the top singers who claim they write their songs are full of baloney and that they don't. The songs are stolen and transferred or sold to them or the people stealing them are silent partners who get a piece of the action. His response was you are kidding? You mean they all lie here like in India! Everyone in India knows the songs are not written by the stars who claim them. People here just don't know the same is true here! Well as is said - live and learn. Corruption is world wide. I emphasize these are just my allegations and my beliefs.
http://tobykeith.musiccitynetworks.com/index.htm?id=1341&loc=4#7132
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Does anyone here play the didgeridoo?
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Amazing Mahavishnu Orchestra concert for free at
http://concerts.wolfgangsvault.com:80/ConcertDetail.aspx?id=20052898%7C4363&utm_source=NL&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=070919
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Not really about music per se but related to the music "industry".
Clear Channel owns billboard as well as other adverstising outlets along with other probably other connections throughout the media industry. People who know my posts know I've posted how my wife and I are stalked because she is a genius at writing music lyrics that sell and she has had hundreds stolen in many different ways.
Well when we were in Florida I used to carry a weapon with me when I would walk the dogs around the gulf course at night. One time a leaned over to adjust my dog's lease and I suddenly realized my shirt tail popped up exposing the handgun in the back of my pants. Well as I pulled down my shirt I saw this guy driving around and turning the corner behind me and leaning over in his car watching what I was doing. I saw this guy several times drive by my house. I also saw him standing by my car at a gas station when I saw them trying to get into my car where I would usually stop for coffee and a roll on the way to work. I also saw his vehicle several states away while my wife and I were driving up North and they were attempting to break in our Uhaul. They were even following us with another Uhaul to try to make a swicth but that didn't work. So I know this guy was stalking me.
Anyway a week after this guy saw me inadvertently exposed my concealed weapon while driving home from work I pass a billboard.
On the way to work I would pass several billboards many of them advertising the country singers all of whom were singing and many claiming to have written my wife's music lyrics. This day on the billboard was a message that was clearly and undeniably to me. It stated that even simply pulling a gun was an automatic sentence of years (if forgot the number) in jail and using the gun would be like 25 years plus.
It all fits. Clear Channel whose radio outlets are tied in with "charts" and the club of people who control what gets on the air also owns and controls thousands of billboards around the country. They also are networked with other advertisers and obvioulsy have contacts all over the industry as well. Where do their "writers" get their ideas from? Well my wife and I say things in our house where we are certain we are being listened to by professional thieves whose job it is is to watch us and think of ways to get to my wife's lyrics. Many of the jokes we say or lines we come up with we later hear on commercials, occasionally (since we don't ordinarily watch cartoons we don't know for sure) in cartoons, and even other places. some of these may well be coincidences but some are not. I wonder how many other people these "writiers" monitor to get "ideas" from for their advertising?
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/pr?s=CCU
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Oh, and by the way we've also seen the obvious tie between and auto makers who use music extensively in their advertising. Especially for and gm who love to use the coutnry stars and their music to sell to trucks to the red neck crowd.
Is it beyond the thoughts of a rational person to think GPS systems could not and are not being used to track people of interest? Maybe not at the top coporate level, but how much would it take to bribe one of their people to do this? I don't have Onstar or related GPS in my vehicle (unless covertly placed there), but it ain't hard to think this isn't being used for other purposes than just safety data:
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/070926/gm_research.html?.v=4
The companies would of course deny it. But say if it were true who is going to know and don't think any law enforcement would even give a hoot about it were happening. People like to express worry about the Feds watching us. The real danger is the private industries that do IMO.
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This is an extemely important question that you raise. May I suggest/ask that you do so in the Technology or Libertarian threads?
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eom
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I can't get the Great American Country station in my location.
I am interested in hearing about the reality show "hitmen of music row".
Has anyone seen their show which started end of September?
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I love the article RE: Josh Bell in DC. ...for SO many reasons!
Really dig that clip of Jimi, too.
Here's an underground wizard for flamenco fans:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gk5p_mA7jZs
YouTube - POM
And here's a classic:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnamP4-M9ko
YouTube - Santana - Soul Sacrifice (Woodstock 1969)
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"The history of ancient and modern republics had taught them
that many of the evils which those republics suffered arose
from the want of a certain balance, and that mutual control
indispensable to a wise administration. They were convinced
that popular assemblies are frequently misguided by ignorance,
by sudden impulses, and the intrigues of ambitious men; and that
some firm barrier against these operations was necessary. They,
therefore, instituted your Senate."
-- Alexander Hamilton (speech to the New York Ratifying Convention,
June 1788)
Reference: The Works of Alexander Hamilton, Henry Cabot Lodge,
ed., II, 43.
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Alexander Hamilton :mrgreen:
Just when you didnt think alexander hamilton couldnt rock out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMaQTW0M4Jg (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMaQTW0M4Jg)
Way better than school house rock!
Crutch
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Katchafire - Sensimillia
http://youtube.com/watch?v=jfD6UgcgMwQ (http://youtube.com/watch?v=jfD6UgcgMwQ)
"I aint go no enemies but if you test me I will retaliate"
Sometimes I listen to this song before I get to the park.
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That is interesting - all of a sudden we get the GAC station. Just noticed it a few days ago.
Who was listening?
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Towards the end of the day, I enjoy the soothing sounds of some new (to me!) artsits in the 'ambient' genre.
One of my personal picks is a gent by the name of Robert Rich.
If you haven't heard of him, but enjoy the ambient genre, this artist has quite a background along with an education level that explains a few things about the complexities and subtleties of his work. He's also been around for a long time.
Most of his work is available through iTunes. Note: this is not meant to advocate or promote Apple, iTunes or iPod. It's simply what I happen to have and use for my own personal entertainment presently.
To siphon off the day's static, I put my headphones on -sometimes as I lie in bed- and dial up Mr. Rich's playlists. His sounds, along with deep breathing, truly put the meaning of relaxation back into my vocabulary; and it had been quite a while before finding this artists' body of work that I was able to relax to such a level (without being asleep).
If decompression by way of ambient music is something you might be interested in, here are my personal favorite albums by Robert Rich:
Trances and Drones.
Yearning (Woodwind, strings, very Asian sound).
Calling Down the Sky.
Echo of Small Things.
Desert Triptych (This is for brave souls, be warned).
A Troubled Resting Place.
Somnium.
Inner Landscapes.
I hope this helps you as much as it has helped me. Certainly these sounds have become one of my favorite tools readily available to promote mental fitness.
There are, of course, other genres that are not what I'd call 'Decompression,' which I use during workouts or drills, but I will post my thoughts on those in the near future.
:-D
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The mention of early Jefferson Airplane in the first post reminded me: I've gotta dig up some of the old Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span songs on my hard drive and give 'em a spin. It's been a while.
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I liked Fairport Convention-- good memories. Pentangle I liked even more.
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What a joke. These bozos friends don't only steal the songs from Katherine they then steal them from each other.
http://news.aol.com/entertainment/music/music-news-story/ar/_a/daughtry-caught-in-plagiarism-scandal/20080410124709990002?icid=100214839x1159312959x1080115074
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I still allege this chick couldn't write lyrics or come up with a melody to save her life. Why No One has sold can only be testiment to finanically storng backers because 'no one' can tell me this is a good song. The melody is obviously so strained. So much a melody from someone who can't come up with a decent melody so goes up and down octaves trying to make it sound different.
I say there is something going here with this turn around about her shifting gears to policitics. Even her mother is shocked at this stuff. The reason I believe she is pouting this stuff is because she can't get anymore material other than this. If she really could write she could and would be writing about whatever she chooses. So now she has to play the game. Make up stories about versatility. That her interest has shifted focus and that explains this total change. But I believe the truth is - that this is all the material that was stolen so this is what she has to use. Anyway, that is the fraud behind the music "industry".
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20080411/D8VVUAHG0.html
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Shameless plug for my friend \ old bandmate's music, I really dig it and I think others may enjoy it as well.
http://www.myspace.com/arabesqueent (http://www.myspace.com/arabesqueent)
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I haven't heard or do I care much about it or that Dolly is "humilialted". I alledge Parton has for years sung and claimed to have written songs she never wrote. Blue Ridge Mountain Boy it was known in Nashville was said to be written by Kathy Mateo not Parton as she claimed.
Of course she also seems to be singing and claiming songs that are exactly like my wife has written. She also claims to have 3000 copywritten songs and writes exactly the way my wife writes. Ideas pop into her head and she just keeps notes on her all day long later finishing the song. Wow! Years ago she said that to wirte lyrics she would have to go off to a cabin in the woods where there was total piece and quiet to be able to concentrate and not be distracted to be able to come up with anything. Now her story is changed. It is amazing how all these Country stars claim they have hundreds or even thousands of songs written. Well where are they? So why is Shania Twain delaying her album from January to March and now November?
Whatever excuse they will use, and they can make up anything, who will know otherwise, I know the real reason. Look up a song she claims called shoes. Why isn't it released here in the US? They must not have finished the "clean up".
So Dolly, as far as I am concerned you a phoney full of crap mannequin:
Parton "shocked" at Howard Stern radio segment
Wed May 14, 2008 3:51pm EDT
08 May 2008
By Jonathan Cohen
NEW YORK (Billboard) - Country music star Dolly Parton has hit back against Howard Stern's satellite radio show, which last week manipulated recordings from one of her audio books into seemingly racist and sexually graphic sound bites.
"I have never been so shocked, hurt and humiliated in all my life," Parton said in a statement on Wednesday. "I cannot believe what Howard Stern has done to me. In a blue million years, I would never have such vulgar things come out of my mouth. They have done editing or some sort of trickery to make this horrible, horrible thing. Please accept my apology for them and certainly know I had nothing to do with this."
She concluded: "If there was ever going to be a lawsuit, it's going to be over this. Just wanted you to know that I am completely devastated by this."
"The Howard Stern Show" frequently utilizes audio book recordings in this fashion; altered clips from "Star Trek" actor George Takei became a staple of the program in recent years.
Reuters/Billboard
© Thomson Reuters 2008 All rights reserved
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****Jessica Back in Country on Multiple Levels
05/23/2008 5:58 PM, E! Online
Jessica Simpson hopped off her flight from Mexico and jumped right back to work.
The pop star, who returned to Los Angeles yesterday after spending a few days unwinding (from what, we wonder) with her family south of the border, apparently isn't in the mood for more R&R.
She was on the move today, making a quick stop at a Marriott hotel in Sherman Oaks and then holing up in a West Hollywood recording studio.
A source close to the songstress told E! News that Simpson planned to spend six to eight hours at the studio working on material for a "country crossover" album.
Sounds about right for a little lady who's been suspiciously without her Cowboy for awhile.****
My guess. A group of crooks stole her the "material" got her up to the studio ASAP to record it in secret before someone else can steal it. I just hope the lyrics are not Katherine's. And Simpson the dope she appears to be gets the singing credits. Somehow her and her poppa have an "in" in the "business". It ain't because he's a genius and obviously not she.
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Another coincidence. After her first bomb album in 1993 there were rumors of a split with her guy Mutt Lange who it is no coincidence goes out of his way not to be seen in public (how many pictures have we seen of this guy?). Then after being at a hotel and realizing that songs she and Mutt supposedly wrote were "hits" like, wow, it dawned on us that all these lyrics we wrote were the hits we were waiting for, their marriage was suddenly not a question. Then the next few years are history when they came out with their hit albums with lyrics that were what I remember we had on our dell computer back in '95.
Then they again later had some problems until they came out with "Up", again with lyrics exactly like those we had on a computer.
Now the album that she was supposed to come out with in January is delayed to later in the year. This the same time we stopped letting *anyone* into our house. The same time the game is finally up with my "mother"-in-law who I told Katherine years ago was robbing her and not until some weeks back she said sadly she finally overcame her denials and realized it is true - her own mother - is robbing her.
Her mother's first house that she ever owned, she had fixed up and now traded in another and has the other one fixed up and all ready to sell for her move to Vegas. This from someone who is now over 65 and never made money in real estate before. She works as an aid in a nursing home but suddenly has all this cash to fix up houses at bargain rates from guys who offered to come all the way down from far upstate NY to central NJ to help us with our house. (Aren't they swell?) That is one way the crooks in the music business pay off people. They send their union tradesman over to fix up the houses of those that participate in scams to steal songs. The same neighbors that watch when you leave the house, that walk by and grab your mail from your porch, or live on your garbage man's route and bribe the garbage man to give them your garbage (when they thought Katherine was throwing out discarded song lyrics), follow you to the store, or post office(when Katherine or I were mailing in Copyrights that for whatever reason never went throught the system like they were supposed to or were tampered with by the time you see the finished processed document) and wave while they are watching your every move (as though they are your friendly neighbor). And in return your neighbor gets a pool, another who was in financial trouble suddenly has a new car, others have new roofs, the expensive PVC fences, new siding, grounds that are made to look like french or Italian villas (in a lower working class neighborhood), garages completely redone, etc.
Now the news is Twain's guy is cheating. Well golly gee - is that why no album? Is that the reason why the album that was supposed to be out in January is now delayed and won't be out till the end of the year?.
My wife has not left our house in two fucking years because she would rather die than give up the rest of her songs and she knows that there is almost no person on this Earth who she can trust and who is beyond being bribed. Even her own low life dirt ball white trash mother.
About 2 years ago I heard her mother slamming draws and doors upstairs once while Katherine was out of the house. I told her her mother was searching the bedroom upstairs. I told her once and for all I was certain her mother was robbing us. She was in denial - "my own mother" couldn't do that. Now she realizes that her mother who would come down from upstate and stay with us was leaving the house with hard drives for copying and on at least two occasions let someone or some ones into the house. They would go to our computers, discs, etc and tamper with them and always leave it or replace them as though nothing ever happened. So it would be weeks or months before Katherine could figure it out. All the while, Kenny Chesney, Tobay Keith, Shania Twain,Brad Paisley, parton, squirt and jerk (I mean big and rich or big and little dick) Gretchen of red neck woman fame, and most of everyone in (especially country) the commercial music "bus" would be claiming to have come up with lyrics that they in a million years couldn't have dreamed of.
And Katherine's genius talent has been for her a total curse, her life is in ruins, and these lying scum in the music business are admired and loved by their fans - all the while they would spit on these same fans if it would make them a buck.
did anyone see the Trump apprentice show when he had Twain on. They sat in a board like room to have a chat with the "great" Shania to learn who to make it in business. The great pseudo phoney genius advice was with careful thought and the realization she couldn't think of anything else to say, "never give up". Well folks there you have it. Thanks Shania you personality - less jerk. This is the "great" one. Folks I allege this person couldn't write a decent song to save her life. As for the melodies perhaps Lange did come up with some of those - I have no idea.
Now that I got that off my chest - Thank you.eom
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I always wondered how music is related to brain function. How does music connect with our brain neurotransimission?
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080601/ap_on_re_us/music_s_healing_power;_ylt=AoY2XEdQpE1De9tb3G.cftqs0NUE
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My girlfriend is Indian (as a smart-ass friend of ours puts it: Dot not Feather) and she recently saw a poster for one of her favorite musicians coming to town: Zakir Hussain and the Masters of Percussion. It was near her birthday, so we made an evening of it. He is an Ustaz of the Tabla and good Lord did that man have magiacl hands and fingers! I was so incredibly blown away-not only by his skill but also by every one of the musicians that played with him. I was particularly stunned by Dilshad Khan, the Sarangi player (I had never heard of the Sarangi before that evening). All in all, it may have been one of the most transcendental concerts that I have attended in the past decade. If you are a fan of Indian drumming or the Tabla (or are more familiar with the Sarangi than I was, check out The Masters of Percussion or any Zakir Hussain solo stuff if just drumming is your thing).
Of course, no good deed goes unpunished, so in return for turning me on to one of the most amazing musicians that I've seen live, I thought I should introduce her to some of my favorite Western music (West as in the Hemisphere, as opposed to the Coast or the style of music). The punk band X was in town for their 30th anniversary tour, and I thought that some good old-fashioned country-punk music would offest the magic of the Hussain show. They kicked some serious ass for aging punks-and it was great to see the original line-up! Gotta say, the two very divergent shows a week apart was quite the enjoyable experience as far as concert attendance goes.
Just thought I would share the fun concert experiences,
~Scott
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Well, I allege they are singing stolen lyrics on at least one or two of the first hits (that Katherine is aware of). OF course theydeny that they stole this other bands song. Try proving it. As for their excuses:
1) ***First, on the night in October when the band say Chris Martin was watching them, he was actually working at the Air Studio in London*** Maybe *that* is true but we are talking about the big time well financed music business. They can get receipts made up or bribe witnesses to say what they want.
2) ***second, even if he had been at the gig, "Viva la Vida" was written and demoed seven months before the night in question, so it couldn't possibly have been copied*** Oh comon - again the music industry is loaded with tech geeks, or they have the money to bribe computers experts who can fabricate evidence. We had one "professor" from the University of Central Florida who we hired but through phone tapping was known to the people who were robbing us and bribed. Try proving it. Try getting anyone to do anything about it. The only ones who give a hoot are the people who get robbed. I can tell you the entire music industry is filled with people like coldplay who are playing stuff they didn't write, that they claim they write and have far less or no real talent like they go around saying. All the while Federal and State laws are broken all day long while material gets transfered to these lying trash.
Additionally, it is not usually the phoney "frontmen" who are running around stealing the material. There is a whole army of middlemen who scour others in music and steal the material to give to *their* people - those that are "let in" to the business.
The song they didn't write? Coldplay are accused of plagiarism by American band
By Guy Adams in Los Angeles
Thursday, 19 June 2008
It was all going so predictably well. Coldplay's new album went straight to No 1 on Sunday, selling 300,000 copies in three days; concerts sold out; that iTunes ad was everywhere. Even their notoriously sniffy critics in the music press seemed, with the odd exception, unusually muted.
Then, things took a sudden turn for the worse – with a plagiarism row. Yesterday, the band was forced to issue a categorical denial of allegations that they copied the title track to their new record, Viva La Vida Or Death and All His Friends from a little-known US group, Creaky Boards.
In a video posted on the video-sharing website YouTube, Andrew Hoepfner, Creaky Boards' singer and songwriter, claimed that the melody of Coldplay's song, "Viva La Vida", is pinched from a track he wrote last year called, ironically, "The Songs I Didn't Write".
He blamed Chris Martin for the alleged artistic theft, saying that Coldplay's frontman attended a Creaky Boards concert in New York last year. "We were flattered when we thought we saw Chris Martin in the crowd," said Mr Hoepfner. "He seemed pretty into it... Maybe TOO into it?"
The clip, which was first posted on Sunday, rapidly went viral. By last night, it had been watched by nearly 300,000 people, many thousands of whom had typed comments remarking upon the various similarities between the two tracks. In an industry where even small chord sequences can become subject of costly copyright disputes, allegations of plagiarism are as potentially damaging to a musician's finances as they are to their reputation.
Little surprise, then, that Coldplay responded with a vigorous denial. "We totally refute their claims, and there are two facts that make it easy to disprove them," said the band's spokesman Murray Chalmers. "First, on the night in October when the band say Chris Martin was watching them, he was actually working at the Air Studio in London, and we can prove that. Second, even if he had been at the gig, "Viva la Vida" was written and demoed seven months before the night in question, so it couldn't possibly have been copied."
Sources close to the band said they were unlikely to pursue legal action against Creaky Boards, since it would "look bad" to start a David versus Goliath lawsuit against a group of young musicians. They are, however, pushing for them to publicly withdraw the allegations of plagiarism.
The two tracks have different lyrics, say the Coldplay camp. Although certain elements of their melody sound remarkably similar, the band say this is due to simple coincidence rather than a case of artistic theft.
Either way, the trite nature of Mr Hoepfner's video clip has succeeded in gaining a new following for his band, and was driving traffic to their MySpace page. The YouTube video concludes: "I wish Coldplay the best of luck. If they ever want to collaborate, I've got some microphones we could use in my bedroom."
Creaky Boards' video outlining the similiarities between the two songs
Coldplay are recording several live TV performances to promote their record in the US, but are steering clear of major interviews, following last week's incident on BBC Radio 4 when Martin walked out of an interview with the arts show Front Row, saying he did not like "having to talk about things".
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While listening to NPR today there was a little feature about the following band called Homemade Jamz Blues Band
The guitarist \ singer is 15 years old, the bass player is 14 and the drummer is 9.
Check out the clip!!
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXEKx0jH3KU[/youtube]
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For those of you from the old board may remember I allege Wilson sang many song lyrics that disappeared out of our house including her signature song "red neck woman". From where I sit FWIW I claim she is lying about writing her songs just like her buddies Big and Rich lie about writing theirs. The melodies are probably lifted.
For those of you Wilson fans who don't think Wilson would actually lie and steal you might want to think again:
****Music Blogs > Video Ga Ga > Doesn't That Song Sound Familiar? The Black Crowes Vs. Gretchen Wilson!
Doesn't That Song Sound Familiar? The Black Crowes Vs. Gretchen Wilson!
Posted Thu Jul 31, 2008 1:15am PDT by Dave DiMartino in Video Ga Ga
It's hard not to feel a tiny twinge of pity for the Black Crowes.
Only months ago they caused a stir when they accused Maxim magazine of running a lukewarm review of their latest album Warpaint without actually hearing it.
And just yesterday, the band issued a notice of copyright infringement against colorful country singer Gretchen Wilson, her record label, her music publisher, and Turner Network Television--claiming her song "Work Hard Play Harder," currently airing to promote the TNT show Saving Grace, "wrongfully exploited" the band's 1991 debut single "Jealous Again."
While it's possible the alleged infringers can successfully argue that Wilson wrongfully exploited the composition without actually hearing it--hey, it happened before!--there's no need for any of us to wade through any legal mumbo-jumbo.
You make the call. Check it out yourself.
First up, here's the Crowes, from their 1991 multi-platinum debut album Shake Your Money Maker--which, er, coincidentally took its title from a very famous song recorded by blues guitarist Elmore James in 1961.
Next, here's Wilson's "Work Hard Play Harder"--which, as a special bonus, can be enjoyed in the context of this commercial for actress Holly Hunter's acclaimed TNT series Saving Grace.
So, let's see. On one hand we've got a band that--in a presumably non-infringing manner--borrowed its debut album's title from Elmore James, and then saw that same album get reviews systematically comparing it to the music produced by arena-rockers like the Faces and Humble Pie two decades earlier.
On the other hand we've got Ms. Wilson, a popular, newish country singer whose record sales have been on the downslide since her 2004 debut album Here For The Party, and who is now essentially doing commercials for a television program that is supposed to pretty good if you watch it, but I'm a guy.
In short: Ms. Wilson is being accused of ripping off a ‘90s band that was accused of ripping off several ‘70s bands who were accused of ripping off blues artists of the ‘50s and ‘60s who generally never got paid for their work in the first place.
According to Black Crowes manager Pete Angeleus, "We find the music verses of Wilson's song to be such an obvious example of copyright infringement that I expect all parties to reach a relatively quick resolution to avoid litigation."
Well, of course he'd say that, he's their manager. According to me, these songs sound like things you'd hear in a really bad bar about 10 minutes before deciding to go home and watch TV.
But what do you think?
2 Comments | Post a Comment »
2 Comments
1. Lyndsey Parker - Thu Jul 31, 2008 1:33am PDT
Wow. They're the same song. I am Team Crowes on this one.
Report abuse
2. Yahoo! Music User - Thu Jul 31, 2008 5:20am PDT
Shame on G. Wilson, her producers, songwriters... whoever didn't step in to differentiate the verses of her song from "Jealous Again." It clearly is a blatant ripoff.
But the Crowes should drop the lawsuit and take it as a compliment, after all they have been around for almost 20 years now and Gretchen is fading fast****
Well she is fading fast because we put a stop to their friends who steal them the songs from people like Katherine and get it to them by keeping Katherine's mother out of the house. She robbed her *own daughter* for years.
Finally Katherine has come to terms with that.
Remember Gretchen has claimed John Rich, alias the little prick, has hundreds of songs. Dolly Parton has claimed she has written thousands. Mellencamp has claimed he has hundreds and is turning to song writing. The list goes on.
So why are we not hearing these things? They are waiting to get the evidence from us before they will come out with any of this stuff. They obviously fight amongst themselves for the stolen goods. They get copies of it sift through it, fight over who gets what and wait for the professionals to get back in and get rid of any evidence. They take their time. There are people who moved into the neighborhood to stalk us. They have many different scams. Lawn gardners are always a favorite. Pest control. Why they even infest us with ants or mice to get us to call pest control. We can never get anything related to music in the mail, UPS, or FEDEX. Several steps along the delivery process give them ample ways to get at it. Copyright is tougher for them but they have people bribed at the CRO. Things do disappear or are swicthed. In fact we found out there are very few people in the World who even know the goings on there.
So where are all these hundreds and thousands of songs they claim they wrote? I can guarantee you that if they had all the evidence free and clear these low class trash (yes Parton too) would be singing them. These people live for the glory and cash of being on stage getting praise.
Why does the Rich, imo, a little prick have to sit on Nashville Star as a judge? You don't htink if he really had hundreds of songs (free and clear of someone else who evidence he didn't write them as he claims) wouldn't be out there selling album after album. although his melodies are all starting to sound the same because he can't come up with any new ones so they then will lift one from the 70's or so. Oh and by the way, Jeff Steele who is also a judge as well as Jewel all sing *and claim they wrote* songs just like stuff that disappeared out of our house.
The response is we "are crazy". Or it is "just coincidence". "Or prove it!"
Anyway the above article on Wilson alleged lifting of a Crowe's song will be the last you will ever hear of this. It will just "fade away" probably from a back room deal.
Next thing we might see is the Crowes doing a music deal with G Wilson.
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Sugarschmucks the girl with the voice that needs a nose job and her lacky sidekick with the dumbest looking hat in memory - why even the rappers who wear their ball caps on sideways look cooler then this guy.... Sorry my anger spills out.
This group, though, I can say the same for most of the country singers in the last 8 years (though we realize this went back to probably at least 1992), who claims they wrote songs that were exactly like writings stolen from Katherine. Well here it states they were part of a larger band that apparantly went no where. Suddenly in 2002 the remaining two members became musical/lyrical geniuses and became big stars. Doesn't it sound more plausible that they were given the lyrics, someone else came up with the melodies (crummy anyway IMO) and they got "in" with the right group of thugs that control the industry and as the front people are promoted all over the place. They weren't just discovered with incredible talent that they possessed in secret for years, they didn't just become creative geniuses, but, I allege, made deals with the band of thugs who steal the material to be the front people for the behind the scenes group of scumbags that rip off others.
The previous member of the group could easily come out and say she has no idea where in tarnation thes other two suddenly started writing hits but she won't. She wants in so she will play along.
****Sugarland founder files $1.5M lawsuit against band
52 minutes ago
ATLANTA - A founder of the country band Sugarland is suing the two current members of the popular group for $1.5 million.
ADVERTISEMENT
According to a lawsuit filed late last month in U.S. District Court in Atlanta, Kristen Hall was to get a cut of the group's profits even after she left in 2005 for a solo career. The lawsuit says Hall, who founded the band in 2002, has an agreement with Jennifer Nettles and Kristian Bush to equally share profits and losses.
Hall says in the lawsuit that she has been excluded from the group's profits since she left.
Sugarland's publicist referred calls to the band's attorney, Gary Gilbert, who was unavailable for comment.
The band's album, "Love on the Inside," released last month, is No. 1 on Billboard music charts.****
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A Jazz Artist Goes Back to His Roots Music
By JIM FUSILLIArticle
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For the renowned jazz bassist Charlie Haden, his new country album "Rambling Boy" (Decca) isn't a departure. It's a return to the music of his youth. Long before he played alongside Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Carla Bley, Keith Jarrett, Pat Metheny and others, he was Cowboy Charlie, who first appeared at age 2 on his parents' country-music radio show "Uncle Carl Haden and the Haden Family." On the new disc, a clip from the show features 2-year-old Cowboy Charlie singing and yodeling, with gentle prodding from his dad.
For "Rambling Boy," which includes references obvious and obscure to his childhood influences, the 71-year-old Mr. Haden is united with another generation of the Haden Family: his triplets, Rachel, Petra and Tanya; son, Josh; and wife, Ruth Cameron. They're bolstered by an impressive collection of friends, including Sam Bush, Jerry Douglas, Stuart Duncan, Mark Fain, Vince Gill, Ricky Skaggs and Bryan Sutton -- surely the country equivalent of the jazz musicians with whom Mr. Haden usually keeps company.
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Charlie Haden
Rosanne Cash sings "The Wildwood Flower," a song popularized by Maybelle Carter, a frequent visitor to the Haden family home in Springfield, Mo., back in the 1940s. Dan Tyminski -- who provided the singing voice to George Clooney's character in the Coen Brothers' film "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" -- is onboard, as is pop's Elvis Costello and Bruce Hornsby. Mr. Metheny, with whom Mr. Haden collaborated in 1996 on the lovely "Beyond the Missouri Sky," plays guitar on, and helped arrange, many of the tunes on the new album.
"I thought originally it was going to be the kids with my dad," Petra Haden told me when we met in New York. "But it turned into one big party."
When I met with Charlie Haden later in the day, he told me he began thinking of recording a country album with his family about 20 years ago when they gathered in rural Missouri to celebrate his mother's 80th birthday.
"Ruth wanted everybody to be together," said Mr. Haden, whose four children were joined by his brothers and sisters. "At some point, we were sitting in mom's cabin and Ruth said, 'Why don't you sing something?' We hadn't sung in decades."
The kids joined in. "Josh and the girls were experimenting. They hadn't sung with me before," he recalled. "It really sounded great."
As well it might have. All the Hadens are musical. Tanya is a cellist and vocalist, Josh leads the band Spain, and Rachel played bass with Todd Rundgren and sang with Beck. Petra, who's played violin with the Foo Fighters, has recorded several wonderfully idiosyncratic vocal albums, including a version of the Who's "The Who Sell Out" in which she sings every sound. Her latest is "Hearts & Daggers" (FU:M) by Miss Murgatroid & Petra Haden, her two-person project with accordionist and singer Alicia Rose.
Though he kept busy -- fruitfully so -- with his jazz career, Mr. Haden seemed, after that party at his mother's cabin, to be creeping toward a return to the music of his youth. He sang a traditional country tune in public for the first time since childhood on "The Art of the Song," which he cut with his band Quartet West in 1999. Three years earlier, he and Mr. Metheny added a bit of country to "Beyond the Missouri Sky" with "The Precious Jewel," written by Roy Acuff; the traditional tune "He's Gone Away," which Mr. Haden's mother sang on the old radio program; and Josh Haden's composition "Spiritual."
“My dad knew so many people: Hank Williams, Jimmie Rodgers. I was privileged in my family. It was a normal thing for me to be with famous people.”
Charlie Haden
On the new album, Josh sings "Spiritual," and in what may be its most affecting track, Tanya delivers a fragile, heart-wrenching "He's Gone Away." Fans of "Beyond the Missouri Sky" will love the version of "The Fields of Athenry" on "Rambling Boy," in which Petra's voice gives way to a skittish, dazzling solo by Mr. Metheny.
Mr. Haden said he had to cajole at least one member of his family into participating. "I had to really talk Tanya into it," he told me. "She's really, really shy. She's not into the music scene like Rachel and Petra. She's a mother and a painter. But she doesn't picture herself a singer. I told them, 'I want each of you to do a song of your own.'" Tanya's married to actor Jack Black, who delivers a rousing reading of the traditional tune "Old Joe Clark" on the album. Ruth Cameron sings the Irish folk tune "Down by the Salley Gardens" with delicate grace.
The triplets' sweet harmonies are featured on "Voice From on High," "Single Girl, Married Girl" and "Seven Year Blues." "I hadn't sung with my sisters in so long," Petra said. "When we sang together, we were really locked in. It was really relaxed. Rather than having really strict rehearsals, we just watched my dad directing everybody. He had the vision. He said, 'I'm getting the best players' -- and here comes Bruce Hornsby and Pat Metheny, who's my favorite guitarist."
Petra remembers her father's stories about the country legends he met as a boy. "He would always refer to Mother Maybelle. She really meant something to him. He really has a deep connection to this music." As a tribute, guitarist Bryan Sutton plays Carter's introduction almost note for note on "The Wildwood Flower."
Mr. Haden said, "My dad knew so many people: Hank Williams, Jimmie Rodgers. I was privileged in my family. It was a normal thing for me to be with famous people." Which made it easier for him to infiltrate the highest level of modern jazz as a young bassist: "When I decided to play jazz, I made it a priority to meet the people I wanted to meet." He said he could see through the veneer of fame and celebrity to appreciate their true gifts.
"Rambling Boy" concludes with a tender reading of "Oh Shenandoah" sung by Mr. Haden, who was born in Shenandoah, Iowa. "It brought back all the time with my dad and mom and brothers and sisters, first in Shenandoah and then in Springfield. I talked to my sister Mary, and she said, 'Charlie, if only mom could've heard this.'
"And what a treat it was for me to be playing music behind my children," he added. "It was nice to be with both families again."
Mr. Fusilli is the Journal's rock and pop music critic. Email him at jfusilli@wsj.com.
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I heard the interview with Charlie Haden on NPR a while ago, they played a song or two from the album and they had the girls sing live, it was great!!
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Nick Cave, Charlie Haden and Toots Thielemans - Hey Joe
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmuGAP8iCuM[/youtube]
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Been listening to Matisyahu alot lately....
King without a Crown
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0oHAgfVgiw
Chop em down
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lO3ca5FshCY
Youth
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PVt4Yix02A
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Early S.F. Doors show breaks on through to CD
Joel Selvin, Chronicle Senior Pop Music Critic
Monday, November 17, 2008
Only a few tables of curious spectators showed up at the club each night, so the musicians pretty much played for themselves. In between two weekend engagements at the Avalon Ballroom, a little-known rock group from Los Angeles called the Doors played Tuesday through Friday at a 100-seat Marina district club called the Matrix. Even the musicians might have forgotten all about the gig if the club manager hadn't decided to tape the shows.
The Doors were making their second trip to the thriving San Francisco ballroom scene in March 1967. It was an unseasonably chilly end of winter before the Summer of Love and just three months after the little-noted release of the band's now-historic debut album.
"We were on the lip of great success and we didn't know it," drummer John Densmore says. "Neither did the audience, which was very cool."
"Light My Fire" wouldn't break the group on radio for another three months, so the Doors were playing that weekend second-billed to Country Joe and the Fish at the Avalon, and almost no one showed up at their midweek Matrix engagement.
Matrix co-owner Peter Abrams had only recently installed a tape recorder in the sound booth, but it would be his custom over the next five years to record every show at the club. His tapes have been made into albums before; his live recording of the Velvet Underground is one of the few records of that landmark band's stage show. The Doors' tapes have been passed around in the underground world of bootleg recordings for years, including a set of "horrible, horrible sounding" Italian CDs that Doors producer Bruce Botnick heard.
Botnick, who has engineered and produced virtually every Doors recording in the band's history, finally dusted off the tape copies in the band's vault, cleaned them up and put together a two-CD set, "Live at the Matrix," complete with a cover by '60s San Francisco poster artist Stanley Mouse, to be released Tuesday on Rhino Records. Botnick says he thinks the Matrix tapes contain "one of their best recorded performances."
"They were young, enthusiastic, out to have fun," he says. "They experimented a lot, changed arrangements around and played things they never did before."
"We looked at it as a paid rehearsal," says guitarist Robbie Krieger. "There were five to 10 people in the club. We did it for ourselves."
The Doors first came to San Francisco in January 1967 to open for the Young Rascals and Sopwith Camel at the Fillmore Auditorium. It was the same weekend that more than 25,000 hippies filled Golden Gate Park for the Human Be-In, and the Doors were there, too.
'Changing the world'
"We thought you guys were changing the world," Densmore says.
They stayed at the Swiss American Hotel on Broadway and ate po'boy sandwiches across the street at Mike's Pool Hall. "We were baby beatniks," organist Ray Manzarek says.
Along with the San Francisco rock bands of the day, such as Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead and Quicksilver Messenger Service, LSD evangelist Tim Leary urged the gathering of the tribes in the park to "turn on, tune in and drop out." There were also readings by the beat poets Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Michael McClure and Gary Snyder.
"Holy cow - these are the beat icons," says Manzarek. "(Jim) Morrison and I idolized the beats."
When the band appeared that night in the scheduled engagement at the Fillmore, the musicians sensed a certain reluctance by the crowd to embrace the band, introduced as a rock group from Los Angeles - "grumble, rumble, murmur, spatter of applause, sigh of disrespect," Manzarek remembers - but Morrison insisted the band plunge right ahead, opening with the 10-minute-plus opus "When the Music's Over," and winning the crowd right from the start. Promoter Bill Graham gave the band a $100 bonus.
Three months later, the Doors returned to San Francisco for the Avalon Ballroom and the midweek Matrix engagement, checking into a Lombard Street motel.
Airplane led the way
The Matrix opened in August 1965, with the first public performance by the Jefferson Airplane - in many ways, the birth of the San Francisco scene. The band held an ownership interest in the enterprise - the surviving Doors semi-accurately remembered the club as belonging to Airplane vocalist Marty Balin - and the Airplane performed as house band during the brief, early days.
"Then the Fillmore opened and we got semi-famous," says Airplane founding member Paul Kantner, who helped paint the club.
All the San Francisco bands of the day played the former Fillmore Street pizza parlor. Artist Victor Moscoso did some of his most famous posters, highly prized by collectors, for the club. The Airplane played the band's last Matrix show in September 1966, the first night Grace Slick sang with the band. Her previous group, the Great Society, is largely remembered today through two live albums recorded by Abrams at the Matrix.
The current whereabouts of Abrams is not known to his former associates or the Doors, who tried to locate him for years. He is rumored to have sold copies of his Matrix tapes through classified ads in the back of Rolling Stone magazine during the '80s. Some 40 years ago, he gave the Doors four edited reels of the recordings - Botnick says he believes the tapes come from only two different nights - and the CD set was made from these first-generation dub copies.
A roar through the repertoire
On the earliest known live recording of the Doors, the band surges with power ("Robby was exceptionally good," says Botnick), roaring through the repertoire from the band's classic debut album with the certainty of a thousand previous performances at Sunset Strip niteries. Vocalist Morrison doesn't sound on the tapes like he thinks it's a paid rehearsal.
"The ante is upped anytime you have people there," drummer Densmore says, "even if it's only a couple. You can tell - Jim wants to say something, even to two people: 'I don't care - it will be like a pebble dropped in the water and make big circles.' "
The band played a lot of blues at the Matrix, including Allen Toussaint's "Get Out of My Life Woman" and Slim Harpo's "I'm a King Bee" that rarely turned up again in the repertoire. They did an instrumental version of "Summertime," a piece Botnick never heard the band play again. The group introduced new material that would eventually find its way to the second album - "People Are Strange," "Moonlight Drive" - while Morrison expanded and elaborated the ending of the already epic "The End" as recorded on the first album. The shadowy, echoey recording sounds like being in the dingy, rundown nightclub. The tiny room and handful of strangers in the crowd give off a palpable presence on the tape. All 10 people applaud madly.
Site's come full circle
In 2001, new owners reclaimed the bar's name - it now goes by MatrixFillmore - and some of its history. A enlargement of one of Moscoso's iridescent psychedelic posters dominates the entranceway of this sleek, upscale bar, operated by the ritzy PlumpJack restaurant firm. The entire front wall is glass now, and a modern fireplace burns away in the middle of the floor.
On a recent Wednesday night, a desultory DJ spun bluesy instrumentals from the stage in the corner to a crowd about the size the Doors drew in '67. Fewer than a dozen patrons nursed their drinks and made small talk. The dance floor was empty.
New owners have done over the floors and ceiling. The backstage where Jerry Garcia once smoked joints has been converted into an upholstered lounge. The place is not just empty of customers; something else is missing. It's squeaky clean, well-appointed, illuminated carefully. Despite the echo of the psychedelic posters on the drinks menu and the matchbooks, there isn't a trace of rock 'n' roll funk anywhere.
Outside a chilly wind whips though the foggy streets. At least the weather hasn't changed.
E-mail Joel Selvin at jselvin@sfchronicle.com.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/11/17/DD6Q13RA0V.DTL
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Well I am looking forward to his new songs. All of his previous hits lyrics were exactly like those stolen from our house some of whom my psychopathic sick mother-in-law handed to this narcissist's buddies.
These songs must be retreads from those they didn't use that disappeared from the house. OVer my dead boday little rich getting any more.
I don't know where he gets his melodies from but I will say this guy couldn't write the lyrics to a song to save his life.
****John Rich keeps new marriage under wraps
AP WASHINGTON – John Rich's latest song is about a relationship, but if you're looking for dish about his recent wedding or other details on his real-life love, you're out of luck.
Rich — who is half of the top country duo Big & Rich and host of CMT's "Gone Country" — got married last month to his longtime girlfriend, Joan Bush.
But unlike some other celebrities, he has no interest in sharing his big day, or much else about his marriage, with the public.
"I've never really understood artists that sold their wedding pictures or they sell pictures of their kids," he said in a recent interview. "To me, I'm just not that kinda guy. You gotta keep something for yourself, and my private life is my private life. Everything else the fans are completely welcome to, and I've let 'em in just about every corner of my life except that."
Rich's public profile is about to ramp up even more with the slated release of his upcoming solo album. The first single, "Another You," was recently released.
The 35-year-old said he probably would not have made the record had partner Big Kenny Alphin been healthy. Alphin has been sidelined due to an injury. He got hit by a drunk driver in 2001 and had to have a second surgery on his neck last year. That meant he couldn't tour for a while.
"I was faced with doing nothing for 18 months, which wasn't gonna happen, or put out new music," said Rich.
The "Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy" singer said he already had a number of songs written that probably never would have ended up on a Big & Rich album, because they were too personal. So those tunes will be part of his solo album due out in May, titled "Son of a Preacher Man."
Rich's dad is, in fact, a preacher, "the fire and brimstone kinda guy," Rich said. And that strong belief system is one thing Rich inherited. But Rich also calls himself "one of the most hard core honky-tonk guys in the business," which makes for an interesting combination.
"I live my life with a King James in one hand and a Crown and coke in the other," said Rich.
But he can still remember when he was John broke, not John Rich, and that's something that keeps him grounded.
"If you took everything that I've accumulated away from me, you'd still find me in a country bar somewhere, singing for tips with a guitar until two o'clock in the morning," he says.
Big & Rich plan a tour in the next few months.***
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By CORINNA DA FONSECA-WOLLHEIM
Oxford, N.J.
The pond outside Keith Jarrett's home in rural New Jersey is frozen over. Inside the jazz pianist's 18th-century farmhouse, life appears similarly suspended. An expectant silence reverberates against the walls of vinyl LPs, CD boxes spilling off sofas, towers of stereo equipment bristling with cables. Next door, in the converted barn that houses Mr. Jarrett's recording studio, a pair of Steinways and two harpsichords cower under black quilted covers.
In the weeks leading up to a solo improvised concert, Mr. Jarrett retreats into creative solitude to empty his mind. More than 30 years since his first fully improvised solo album, "Facing You," he continues to be the only pianist to offer evening-long concerts of music created out of nothing. He records every such concert, preferring a recording to any attempt to notate and transcribe his music. The recordings thus become the authoritative source for his "compositions." Tonight, he will play at Carnegie Hall, his first North American solo appearance in more than three years. How does he prepare for such a tightrope act?
Tune In
Listen to clips from Keith Jarrett's 2005 solo concert at Carnegie Hall:
Part 3Part 6More
A Jazz Night to Remember: The unique magic of Keith Jarrett's 'The Köln Concert' (10/11/08)Listen to a clip of Keith Jarrett's "The Köln Concert," Part 2c Mr. Jarrett, his closely cropped silver hair offset by an all-black outfit, frowns. "Imagine an archer preparing for a shot before the target shows up," he says. "He's just aiming at where he suspects there may possibly be a target." In the run-up to his 2005 solo concert at Carnegie Hall, he read fiction by New York writer Nick Tosches and thought about Charles Ives and Carl Ruggles, composers, as he puts it, "who did their thorny stuff, their spiky music which we can begin to call American classical music."
This time, there is little deliberate preparation beyond playing a lot of Bach to "keep his fingers going." But Mr. Jarrett, who is known for hectoring audiences who cough too much, looks forward to playing again for a New York crowd.
"When you're on stage you have a very strange knowledge of what the audience is. It isn't exactly a sound -- it's a hum, like the streets. New York is such a microcosm of the world, and so independent-minded, that I have a kind of trust with them. You can feel that they just want me on stage and then they don't know what's going to happen. It's more like playing for other 'me's' in the audience."
The format of Mr. Jarrett's solo concerts has changed since he returned to them after an illness-induced hiatus in the 1990s. While his improvisations often used to last as long as 40 minutes, Mr. Jarrett now allows each musical idea to find its shape -- even if the result is a three-minute miniature. Recent solo concerts have consisted of as many as 10 musically distinct pieces that range from lyrical blues to jaggedly dissonant knots of fast notes.
"Some of those languages come up just because my hands are in a certain place," he says. "One of the great things about paying money is that maybe you stay there a few minutes longer and you might get to see something being built in front of your eyes. If a person plays dissonance long enough it will sound like consonance. It's a language that was alien and then it's less and less alien as it continues to live. After a while, it's like saying, goddammit, it finally makes sense."
Whether the resulting music can still be called jazz is of little concern to Mr. Jarrett. "It has the tendency to be anything it wants to be. My music education and listening has been so broad that it doesn't sound categorizable to me either. Obviously it gets into jazz territory -- and then it gets out of it again." But while Mr. Jarrett can draw on a wide knowledge of Western music, and an impressive catalog of recording and performing the classical repertoire, he has no desire to return to "that nervous, jittery, get-into-emotion-on-bar-151" world.
As he sees it, moving from the interpretation-based world of classical music to the improvisational one of jazz requires a radical shift that can shake the foundations of self. When he performed a lot of Mozart in the '80s, he says, "I wasn't playing anything other than Mozart. I had to become another person." And, he adds, "to teach a classical musician to improvise is almost more impossible than to teach an accountant or a plumber to improvise."
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Ken Fallin"I once had a conversation with Vladimir Ashkenazy. We were on a cruise with the English Chamber Orchestra and I gave him a tape with some of my improvisations. When he had listened to it, he said, 'How do you play all the right notes?' I said, 'No, you see they just become the right notes by virtue of their environment.' Then he said, 'I'd love to be able to improvise but I know I'd need so much time to get into the right headspace to do that.' Of course, he didn't use the word 'headspace.' But he knew he'd have to shut everything down. From where they are you can't get to the improvisation and have it be you, because you've been trained outside of yourself.
"If you're improvising and you finish a concert and you're changed forever, that's different from finishing any kind of classical concert, no matter how good. The reason you can't be physically, cellularly changed is it did not come through you. The music was already there."
Still, there are clues to Mr. Jarrett's classical ventures in almost every aspect of his art, from the musical idioms he employs to his near-obsessive concern with matters of touch, color and sonority. Many have written -- and complained -- about his physical relationship with his instrument, the tortured positions he gets into while playing, and the moans and groans that escape him. But Mr. Jarrett says that what some see as an almost sexual relationship with the piano is really one marked by struggle.
"I'm never trying to get it to sound just like a piano. I'm trying to find every possible way to make it either a voice or an instrument that is unlike a Western instrument. You know, it can't be a guitar but I wish it was; it can't be an orchestra but I wish it was. So the rebellion that I'm faced with immediately upon sitting down at a piano is that it is a piano. And I can turn cartwheels -- it's not going to make any difference. But what I can do is try to almost fool the instrument into becoming something else."
The irony is that the painful contortions and ecstatic moans that some critics find so distracting are the effect of his efforts to get out of the way of the music and to channel what he calls a "transformation of energy." And it is this intensity that he brings to each moment on stage that ultimately roots him in jazz.
"If I'm not a jazz player all the time, I've at least been cued in to what I do by jazz. Because people needed to survive, they were in the cotton fields and they sang because otherwise they would not be able to handle their lives at all. If you play music from that same position, then what you have at stake is your own survival. Which is really what I've been saying about solo improvisation for 30 years: It's dangerous as hell because if you fail you feel like committing suicide."
Ms. da Fonseca-Wollheim is a writer living in New York.
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Posted this, just because. :-D
The sunscreen song!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5NAPZp2w-o
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Recently was I turned onto Pandora Internet Radio by a friend and I find I’m really enjoying listening and discovering new music. I like the way you can pick an artist and it will play them as well as pull up music that is structured in a similar format or range. It’s based on what they call the “Music Genome project”. It hadn’t occurred to me to Try out Brent Lewis since I already have a number of his discs loaded onto my iTunes. I’m going to try that next to see what it comes up with.
William
http://www.pandora.com/
The Music Genome Project®
On January 6, 2000 a group of musicians and music-loving technologists came together with the idea of creating the most comprehensive analysis of music ever.
Together we set out to capture the essence of music at the most fundamental level. We ended up assembling literally hundreds of musical attributes or "genes" into a very large Music Genome. Taken together these genes capture the unique and magical musical identity of a song - everything from melody, harmony and rhythm, to instrumentation, orchestration, arrangement, lyrics, and of course the rich world of singing and vocal harmony. It's not about what a band looks like, or what genre they supposedly belong to, or about who buys their records - it's about what each individual song sounds like.
Since we started back in 2000, we've carefully listened to the songs of tens of thousands of different artists - ranging from popular to obscure - and analyzed the musical qualities of each song one attribute at a time. This work continues each and every day as we endeavor to include all the great new stuff coming out of studios, clubs and garages around the world.
It has been quite an adventure, you could say a little crazy - but now that we've created this extraordinary collection of music analysis, we think we can help be your guide as you explore your favorite parts of the music universe.
We hope you enjoy the journey.
Tim Westergren
Founder
The Music Genome Project
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I too listen to Pandora and like it a lot.
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It really is amazing how these musicians who are on the receiving end of music that is stolen are so idolized and honered.
I heard a story from a law enforcement person how he was convinced it was obvious based on the evidence he saw that Wonder stole another man's music. It went to civil trial and of course the jury sided with the "lovable" Wonder. You know the jury gets "star struck", probably get offers for backstage passes, think he is so wonderful and would never steal others' music ("hey he doesn't need it he is so rich"), or are simply bribed which is rampant in the music industry. Katherine also states she recently heard him come out with a "jingle" that is right out of one of her songs though she said another also used it.
Anyway, musicians like many of our sports "heroes" are fasely idolized, have phoney facades. They are often even thieves. AS the saying goes, there is no honor amongst thieves. Nor with those who lie like the wind blows:
****Obama plans concert for Stevie Wonder
AP – Stevie Wonder performs at the 40th NAACP Image Awards on Thursday, Feb. 12, 2009,in Los Angeles. (AP …
Play Video Barack Obama Video:Obama's Valentine's Vacation ABC News Play Video Barack Obama Video:AP Top Stories AP Play Video Barack Obama Video:Obama: Stimulus passage is a 'major milestone' AP WASHINGTON – The White House is planning a concert this month to honor Stevie Wonder, whose music provided part of President Barack Obama's campaign soundtrack.
The White House says the president and first lady Michelle Obama will present Wonder a Library of Congress award on Feb. 25. The concert will be broadcast the next day on PBS as part of its "Performance at the White House" series.
The award-winning and chart-topping Wonder performed at the Democratic National Convention in Denver on the night Obama accepted his party's nomination. He also performed at a concert during the week of Obama's inauguration.
His song "Signed, Sealed, Delivered I'm Yours" became a theme song during the campaign. Obama also used "Higher Ground" during campaign stops.****
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Frank Zappa. Never got a chance to see him perform live :-(
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kf8TM4CIk5g[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOeOlcR_CgE[/youtube]
Blue Man Group
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=So5eEjwjLLM[/youtube]
opened my eyes & ears that music doesnt just come from conventional instruments, contrary to what my parents always said when I was banging away on the pots and tupperware ... I coulda been a star :lol:
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Woof Nonkosherdog! Thanks for the memories 8-)
I got to see Frank Zappa in the late 70's at CLevelandS public Hall.....
One of my all tme Favorites and IMO one of if not the greatest guitar players ever.....(among many)
I still have a lot of his original albums in my collection.......
If memory serves me correctly a man that also sported a IQ 175...
Fun to watch the clips......I'am gonna have to visit you tube soon!
TG
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I saw FZ lead the Mothers of Invention at the Fillmore East 8-) Probably around 1969. To be candid, Zappa often irritated me a bit-- he had great chops, but usually was disrespectful of the music, he had a hard time just playing. Exception: the Hot Rats album. Yes the humor was still there, but with great vocals by Capt. Beefheart, Zappa jammed and played his ass off.
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I have a dirty secret: I hate the Beatles, viewing them as a lens through which an entire generations music was pulled. Talk about fights, say something mean about the two-dimensional swill the boys form Liverpool excreted and you'll find yourself flamed in no uncertain terms. As such I was happy to see this bit from Van Morrison:
Van Morrison: 'Beatles were peripheral'
Thursday, March 5 2009, 9:50am EST
By Mayer Nissim
Rex Features
Van Morrison has said that The Beatles's influence on the history of music is overstated.
According to The New Yorker, the Irish singer-songwriter made the comment when someone in the city described skiffle legend Lonnie Donegan as one of a number of "pre-Beatles rock and roll" artists.
He is quoted as saying: "That's a cliché. I don’t think 'pre-Beatles' means anything, because there was stuff before them.
"Over here, you have a different slant. You measure things in terms of the Beatles. We don't think music started there. Rolling Stone magazine does, because it's their mythology.
"The Beatles were peripheral. If you had more knowledge about music, it didn't really mean anything. To me, it was meaningless."
He added that he preferred the "real" Little Richard, Carl Perkins and Gene Vincent to the music of Elvis Presley.
Morrison is currently playing a worldwide tour of his 1968 album Astral Weeks, which includes two concerts at the Royal Albert Hall on April 18 and 19.
http://www.digitalspy.com/music/a148565/van-morrison-beatles-were-peripheral.html
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Adding this one to my workout mix:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPBt8UztXoQ[/youtube]
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Sort of music related but very enjoyable
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJJo8CJpGWo
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJJo8CJpGWo[/youtube]
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Haven't listened to these songs in a while..
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Mn-3EqaO0E[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-swlx9z2O0[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1N_qX_r4Iw[/youtube]
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http://www.youtube.com:80/watch?v=B1sgmj7JvCA&feature=channel
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http://www.youtube.com:80/watch?v=B1sgmj7JvCA&feature=channel
Yes, but did he string his harmonica upside down?
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I saw Hendrix twice-- including the New Year's Eve concert at the Fillmore East that become the record/CD "Band of Gypsies".
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Jessica Simpson country career *may be over* ; since my "mother" in law has not come back into the house they have not been able to steal song lyrics. Simpson will be back if they can steal more. Or else get them from somewhere else.
We are finally hearing fewer and fewer of Katherine's lyrics. It is amazing how they can extend the life of the stolen material. They make new videos of second and third tier songs from the albums released and present them as new. Or they start coming out with greatest hit albums. Or when the season is right (esp. with Alan Jackson) Christmas or Easter covers.
Many of the stars are taking breaks for all sorts of excuses , family , childrearing, death of a loved one, divorce. They might change the type of music they sing or play because they can't get it from the original writer. I love when they do that and claim 'yeah we are experimenting with our versatility" yadah yadah etc.
John Rich on Hannity singing his supposed songs. The last two we heard may actually have been his writing because they were not Katherines's. And IMO they sucked. Because he really can't write no matter what he claims. What a joke. This guy sits there and talks about America and freedom, love of country, individualism on Hannity and he got famous singing stolen songs and claiming he wrote them.
Concerts Jessica Simpson's country career hits sour note
AP, Apr 14, 2009 6:00 am PDT
Jessica Simpson's courtship with country music seems to have had a shorter shelf life than her marriage.After lackluster sales for her country debut, "Do You Know," Simpson and her Nashville record label have parted ways, leaving many wondering what's next for the 28-year-old entertainer.
"Right now it seems like she's taken a break from recording. There is nothing else on the books," said Ian Drew, senior music editor at Us Weekly magazine.
A spokeswoman for the one-time pop princess says Simpson remains part of the Sony Music Group on the Epic label, but is no longer working with the company's country division, Sony Music Nashville.
"She was on loan to Sony Nashville for her country album," said Lauren Auslander.As for her future in country music? "We don't know yet," she said.
"Do You Know" started strong but faded fast. The lead single, "Come on Over," a flirtatious, steel guitar-laced slice of country pop, peaked at No. 18 last summer and the album debuted at No. 1. But the second single, "Remember That," stalled at No. 42, and the third, "Pray Out Loud," failed to chart.
To date, the disc, Simpson's fifth studio release, has sold around 178,000 copies — a long way from her 3 million-selling 2003 disc, "In This Skin."
"Everywhere I saw her around the U.S. at different radio station events she was always well-received," said Lon Helton, editor and publisher of the industry trade publication "Country Aircheck." "For whatever reason, the music did not resonate."
Simpson came to country after her 2006 pop outing, "A Public Affair," fell flat. The Texas-born blonde touted the move as a return to her roots. She performed on the Grand Ole Opry, signed autographs at the Country Music Association's annual festival, and toured with country's multiplatinum trio Rascal Flatts.
But she got more publicity for her life outside of music, most of it far from positive. She was ridiculed when it seemed as if she had gained a few pounds, and the status of her romance with Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo was constantly scrutinized.
She was also criticized for a few erratic concert performances. At a February show in Michigan, Simpson apologized to fans after she forgot the lyrics to a song and asked her band to start over on another.
Some detractors viewed her country career as a calculated attempt to follow other pop stars who have found success on country radio.
"Working the country market is very different. You really have to work it at country. You have to spend your life on the road building an audience and she didn't really put the work in," Drew observed. "She walked the walk and talked the talk, but she didn't have the street cred that she needed to make it work."
But others say Simpson shouldn't bail too soon. She may just need more time to find an audience.
"It doesn't seem like she was even on the country music scene long enough to prove what she is capable of doing for this industry. She never got the chance," said Neely Yates, music director for country station 96.3 in Lubbock, Texas.
Helton wondered whether the singer was a victim of bad timing. Pop rockers Darius Rucker and Jewel were crossing over to country about the same time, which he called unusual in country music.
"What was the ability of the market to absorb and focus on more than one pop singer at a time coming over?" he asked.
The question now is whether Simpson will keep her record deal. After two disappointments, Epic may be ready to move on without her.
"She's never really sold a lot of records except for the album out at the height of 'Newlyweds,'" said Drew, referring to her popular reality TV show, "Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica," which chronicled her ill-fated marriage to Nick Lachey. "Other than that, she's never been able to sell much of anything."
But in a recent interview, Rascal Flatts' Gary Levox said Simpson is in a no-win situation with her critics: "She's in a spot where whatever she does, they pick her apart. They need to just leave her alone and just let her sing."
"She's a wonderfully gifted singer," added bandmate Jay DeMarcus. "All the other stuff overshadows what she's really about and it's unfortunate, because there's more to her there than just tabloid fodder."
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I suspect the Beatles may have actually been one of the few groups that actually did write their songs as they claim:
"Turner said his research, including interviews with Vodden and Julian Lennon, confirm that she is the Lucy in the song. He said it was common for John Lennon to "snatch songs out of thin air" based on a simple phrase he heard on TV or an item he read in the newspapers"
That is how Katherine writes her songs. Except not from the newspaper which she doesn't read. She gets them from TV, thngs she hears, during conversation or spontaneous thoughts.
The songs then just come into her head.
Of course a lot of dirtball liars in the music "industry", if that is what you call a criminal organization from top to bottom, claim this now. After stealing hundreds of her lyrics the phrase "singer-songwriter" became ubiquitis as the assholes are all running around taking credit for coming up with lyrics - that they didn't write.
****Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds' gravely ill
AP, Jun 12, 2009 9:23 am PDT
They were childhood chums. Then they drifted apart, lost touch completely, and only renewed their friendship decades later, when illness struck.Not so unusual, really.
Except she is Lucy Vodden — the girl who was the inspiration for the Beatles' 1967 psychedelic classic "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" — and he is Julian Lennon, the musician son of John Lennon.
They are linked together by something that happened more than 40 years ago when Julian brought home a drawing from school and told his father, "That's Lucy in the sky with diamonds."
Just the sort of cute phrase lots of 3- or 4-year-olds produce — but not many have a father like John Lennon, who used it as a springboard for a legendary song that became a centerpiece on the landmark album "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band."
"Julian got in touch with me out of the blue, when he heard how ill I was, and he said he wanted to do something for me," said the 46-year-old Vodden, who has lupus, a chronic disease where the immune system attacks the body's own tissue.
Lennon, who lives in France, sent his old friend flowers and vouchers she could use to buy plants at a local gardening center, since working in her garden is one of the few activities she is still occasionally well enough to enjoy. More importantly, he has offered her friendship and a connection to more carefree days. They communicate mostly by text message.
"I wasn't sure at first how to approach her. I wanted at least to get a note to her," Julian Lennon told The Associated Press. "Then I heard she had a great love of gardening, and I thought I'd help with something she's passionate about, and I love gardening too. I wanted to do something to put a smile on her face."
Vodden admits she enjoys her association with the song, but doesn't particularly care for it. Perhaps that's not surprising. It was thought by many at the time, including BBC executives who banned the song, that the classic was a paean to LSD because of the initials in the title. Plus, she and Julian were 4 years old in 1967, the "Summer of Love" when "Sgt. Pepper" was released to worldwide acclaim. She missed the psychedelic era to which the song is indelibly linked.
"I don't relate to the song, to that type of song," said Vodden, described as "the girl with kaleidoscope eyes" in the lyrics. "As a teenager, I made the mistake of telling a couple of friends at school that I was the Lucy in the song and they said, 'No, it's not you, my parents said it's about drugs.' And I didn't know what LSD was at the time, so I just kept it quiet, to myself."
There's no doubt the fanciful lyrics and swirling musical effects draw heavily on the LSD experiences that were shaping Lennon's artistic output at the time — although many of the musical flourishes were provided by producer George Martin, who was not a drug user.
"The imagery in the song is partly a reflection of John's drug experiences, and partly his love of `Alice in Wonderland,'" said Steve Turner, author of "A Hard Day's Write," a book that details the origins of every Beatles song. "At the time it came out, it seemed overtly psychedelic, it sounded like some kind of trip. It was completely new at the time. To me it is very evocative of the period."
Turner said his research, including interviews with Vodden and Julian Lennon, confirm that she is the Lucy in the song. He said it was common for John Lennon to "snatch songs out of thin air" based on a simple phrase he heard on TV or an item he read in the newspapers. In this case, Turner said, it was the phrase from Julian that triggered John's imagination.
Veteran music critic Fred Schruers said Julian Lennon's reaching out to help Vodden as she fights the disease is particularly moving because of the childlike nature of the song.
"It's enormously evocative but with a tinge of poignancy," he said. "It's the lost childhood Julian had with that little Lucy and the lost innocence we had with the psychedelic era, an innocence we really cherished until it was snatched away."
Vodden was diagnosed with lupus about five years ago after suffering other serious health problems. She has been struggling extreme fatigue, joint pain, and other ailments.
"She's not given up, she's a fighter, and she has her family backing her, that's a good thing," said Angie Davidson, campaign director for St. Thomas' Lupus Trust, which funds research. "We need more people like her, more Lucys."
Davidson, who also has the disease, said it affects each person differently, typically causing exhaustion and depression. When the disease kills, she said, it does so by attacking the body's internal organs.
It has become difficult for Vodden to go out — most of her trips are to the hospital — but recently she and her husband went to a bookstore and heard the song playing over the store's music system. When they went to another shop, the song was on there as well.
"That made me giggle," she said.****
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Caught this musician on Carson Daly show, nice music to chill with:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdXDgaEgaJ8[/youtube]
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Well John Rich has "400" songs according to Gretchen Wilson, Dolly Parton claims three thousand, other claim hundreds, shania Twain was coming out with an album until her divorce supposedly put a stop to it. Now Jackson had a "secret" stash of 100 songs.
Yet if anyone listened to the Coutnry Music Awards recently they would have noticed there were almost no songs that have not been out for well over a year. Yet supposedly all these people are sitting there with songs on the books. Jackson's people are now claiming that this guy, who was hundreds of millions in debt, was saving songs for his children. Folks, as a victim witness in the sewer hole the music industry is, I can tell you this is bullcrap. That would be like someone sitting on a winning lottery ticket, being in huge debt, and saying, "well I'll save it for my kids". The reality is, no one in the music business could possilby have 100 songs that are "secret" and no one would sit on them for years and especially so if, they owed hundreds of millions of dollars.
Even if they wanted to, the scum bag leeches around them wouldn't let them.
Unless, of course these 100 songs were so crappy they thought they wouldn't sell or be good enough to put together an album.
The new music has finally dried up since Katherine finally realized it was her own mother who was the last one still close enough to rip her off. She has not been allowed back into our house for close to one and a half to two years now.
We still have evidence. So even though the thieves (including several neighbors who moved in to stalk us and sit and wait to get into the house) put the "stars" on hold saying to them you can't do these songs yet.
They have copies of everything Katherine wrote. They just can't do it till they steal all the evidence. They are that patient, that careful, that planning, and cunning, and scheming.
Since there last inside connection (my mother in law - who is pure evil - ruined her own daughters life for some cash) and Katherine has not left the house for *two years* they cannot get all the evidence. They still hack into our computers, have listening devices in the house and monitor us (try finding them - I wouldn't even know what to look for) (Try hiring someone who does - everyone and I mean everyone can be bribed or threatened).
So this lastest news, MJ has one hundred "secret" songs which may or may not get released sounds to me like the latest scam.
If they can get the evidence from us - or perhaps someone else they are robbing - then the go ahead to release these songs will be given. That is my take. Or else he really did have 100 songs that were throw aways that they are trying to push as being good enough to release.
*******secret library of over a hundred songs recorded by Michael Jackson could be released following his death.
One of the singer's biographers, Ian Halperin, claimed that the unheard songs had been made for his children.
Mr Halperin, author of Unmasked, The Michael Jackson Story, said before his death: “He wants to leave them for his kids, a very personal legacy to them. I was told he will not let them come out now.”
Jackson leaves three children: Prince, 12, Paris Katherine, 11, and Prince Michael II aged seven.
Times Archive, 1972: The Jackson Five live at Wembley
Michael Jackson's twinkling feet scarcely seemed to touch the stage
Related Links
Web struggles to cope as Jackson news spreads
Michael Jackson: in his own words
The dysfunctional Jackson family
Multimedia
IN PICTURES: the passing of a legend
PICTURES: decline and fall
PICTURES: highlights of Michael Jackson's career
It is rumoured, given the parlous financial situation of his estate, that any such recordings will not be kept private for long. It is understood that Jackson may have gone to the grave under debts of about $400 million (£240 million) – though some believe the true figure may be much higher.
Sales of Michael Jackson’s music and memorabilia have already begun to soar. In America, the Thriller album is number one on iTunes, while his Number Ones album has now reached the top spot on the UK iTunes chart.
Online retailers Amazon say that Jackson’s albums had taken 14 of the top 20 places on the Amazon.co.uk sales chart. The Amazon chart was topped by his first solo album, Off The Wall, which features tracks such as "Don’t Stop ’Til You Get Enough" and "She’s Out Of My Life".
Already, Jackson’s death is beginning to producing a new industry. Outside the Los Angeles hospital where he was pronounced dead, a group of men appeared selling $10 T-shirts with a silhouette of Jackson and reading: “In loving memory of Michael Jackson.” Memorial T-shirts were also being sold at the Glastonbury music festival.
On eBay, bidding grew on a number of Jackson memorabilia items. Limited edition records, musical instruments used by the star and even a movie contract with his signature were being sold for thousands of pounds.
The Neverland ranch and Jackson’s final resting place, if made accessible to the public, could also become lucrative tourist attractions.
Graceland, the mansion owned by Elvis Presley and where he was buried, has become a much-visited landmark. Opening its doors to the paying members of the public is thought to have made the trust that operates Graceland in the region of $100 million.*****
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The other side of Rick Wakeman from YES. 8-)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4JRFFmlPCY
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Now we finally stopped them from stealing songs (I allege) she can't write her own - like she fasely claimed she ever did.
In any case she's got nothing left but cover songs:
Gretchen Wilson, Sony Music Nashville part waysThe Associated Press
Posted: 07/28/2009 02:33:15 PM MDT
NASHVILLE, Tenn.—"Redneck Woman" Gretchen Wilson and her longtime record label, Sony Music Nashville, have parted.
Sony announced the split Tuesday, describing it as a mutual decision.
Wilson shot to fame with her 2004 smash "Redneck Woman." Her debut album, "Here For the Party," sold 5 million copies.
Her next two albums for Sony—2005's "All Jacked Up" and 2007's "One of the Boys"—reached No. 1 but didn't sell nearly as well as her debut and produced only one Top 10 single between them.
Sony says in a statement that while Wilson will no longer record for the label as a solo artist, both parties look forward to working together on catalog projects.
Wilson was not immediately available for comment.
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Clarkson has the lead name as writer of this song. I allege she didn't write it. My wife did. Clarkson moved to the country scene because that WAS where the songs were. Now they can't get songs she is going back to pop.
Despite her name on it she of course blames another writer whose name is on it.
I allege she is lying. She didn't write the lyrics to the song, she can't wirte hit songs.
She is a bs artist.
That is my belief. Now that we stopped them from stealing (for now) Katherine's lyrics by keeping her mother away you will see country songs drop off a cliff. the country stations are keeping the radio/cable stations going by releasing new videos from songs that were not lead songs from previous albums from at least 6 months to even years ago. Most people would not necessarily notice these are videos to songs that came out from older albums. They make it look like they are brand new songs.
Where are all the songs from the dozens of writers out of Texas and Nashville???
****Kelly Clarkson says she isn't a rip-off artist despite having the same song as Beyonce
BY Nicole Carter
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Tuesday, July 28th 2009, 1:57 PM
Boyd/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty; Winter/Getty
Kelly Clarkson is doing everything she can to explain she isn't ripping off of Beyonce.
Related News
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Beyonce shows 'Fierce' and softer sides in tour kickoff at the Garden
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It's true: Kelly Clarkson's new single "Already Gone" sounds a lot like Beyonce's "Halo."
But Clarkson is doing everything she can to explain she isn't a rip-off artist.
After speculation that the "American Idol" winner had copied the R&B diva's power ballad, Clarkson claimed it's actually her co-writer Ryan Tedder- who consequently wrote Beyonce's tune- that's to blame.
"We wrote about six songs together, four or five of them made the album," Clarkson said on Canada's CBC radio earlier this week. "I"d never heard of a song called ‘Halo.' Her album came out when my album was already being printed."
And the 27-year-old doesn't hold back her feelings about getting, well, screwed.
"It sucks, but it"s one of those things I have no control over. I already made my album. At this point, the record company can do whatever they want with it," she added.
Clarkson has also said she "fought and fought" to prevent the song from ever going public.
The pop star knew what her fans would think.
"No-one"s gonna be sittin" at home, thinking ‘Man, Ryan Tedder gave Beyonce and Kelly the same track to write to." No, they"re just gonna be saying I ripped someone off."
Beyonce has yet to comment on the situation.****
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Friedman talks like he has the inside scoop. This guy has no clue. The reason Clarkson went to country is that is where the songs were. Now there are none left so she goes back to pop.
He claims she can't write yet she was let into the Grand Ole Opry. She was one of the biggest stars while she did her songs that I allege the lyrics were Katherine's. Friedman, the dupe doesn't even mention this. He just says she learned her lesson and is running back home to grand daddy Clive. Is this what Clive has told him from the "inside".
Friedman are you that stupid or are you part of the scam:
By Roger Friedman
Kelly Will Go Back to Pop for Next Album
Kelly Clarkson gets the picture, finally.
There was no bucking the system, and no going against Clive Davis. Sources tell me that Clarkson has agreed, through her wise new manager Narvel Blackstock, to make a pop album for release in 2008 with songs selected by Davis and his team.
Clarkson's acquiescence comes at the end of a long melodrama concerning her current, turgid album "My December," which features a lot of ragged self-penned songs by Clarkson about a relationship gone sour.
Davis didn't like the album, considering it was the follow up to Clarkson's multimillion selling "Breakaway." But he released it, and Clarkson responded by dissing him and then apologizing earlier this week.
In the meantime, "My December" is sort of free-floating away now, and will probably sell a respectable 850,000 copies in the U.S. and maybe the same worldwide.
Clarkson gets points for trying out her chops as a songwriter, but demerits for not following anyone's advice, trying to take on the record industry's most astute executive maybe of all time and acting like a 25-year-old (which is, in fact, her age.)
The news about Clarkson's next move came Thursday during the annual UJA Federation lunch at which Davis was honored. Everyone in the biz was there — the room was so packed that there was little space between the tables for waiters to maneuver or for good schmoozing.
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I owe Friedman an apology.
Katherine tells me I mixed up Kelly Clarkson with Carrie Underwood who was the one who was "inducted" into the Gran Ole Opry.
My correction noted. As for Clarkson, Katherine believes her lyrics were oddly like words she wrote and disappeared from her possesion (the same is believed for Underwood). Perhaps that was the whole modus oper. behind Clarkson's suddenly deciding to "write her own songs". Someone simply got her the songs and a deal was made. It is possible Davis knew they stunk and after they proved to be bombs then said more or less, "I told you so".
Many of the lyrics are not that great. It appears that when the crooks run low on material they start using the less good lyrics.
It only takes one really good set of lyrics out of ten songs to get one over the top.
And one never knows. Songs thought to not be likely to sell sometimes do.
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http://www.boston.com/ae/music/artic...os ton_globe/
Modern music owes a lot to Les Paul Inventor and Guitar legend.
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***But it turns out there is a whole underworld of techie criminals who hack into emails and servers to get hold of the sought-after new tracks.***
Yeah no kidding. I've been saying this for years. And it is far worse than this. We are not only talking hacking into servers, we are talking listening devices, surveillance, bribery (up to the US copyright office), payoffs and more.
And it isn't just people lifting songs from the suppossed creators of this music. For example Justin Timberlake has done songs exactly like those stolen from Katherine.
I must also point out the 100 to 150 songs (depeding on which story you read) that went missing from Michael Jacikson's home after he died (see the reports of the missing hard drive all over the news reports) is also no accident.
I strongly doubt it is as simple as Lotaya Jackson "backing up the moving van" and taking away the hard drive though elements in the music industry would like us believe it is that simple.
The hard drive was stolen. It might reappear but it will likely be switched (if not already).
I VERY STRONGLY SUSPECT that the parade of people recently announcing they are coming out with new albums in September (including Gretchen Wilson - it will be more rock than country this time) are going to get buy some of the materials from this HD.
I am not clear that Jackson didn't get the material for a price from those that steal and supply the material to the singers.
Now that he is dead these same elements aren't about to let Lotaya have it all.
I suspect they took it back and are out around the music world selling them off.
Remember those songs could be worth multiple millions. People who don't think there is organized crime doing business in this realm are totally niave - as I was years ago.
"called the cops"
What a laugh - those guys are way in over their heads. Plus they earn little - get my drift.
*****SIMON COWELL has called in cops after LEONA LEWIS's new track was leaked on to the internet.
On the case ... Simon Cowell
The X Factor boss discovered his record company Syco's computers have been targeted by hackers on a mission to nick tracks.
Last month I told you how these leeches had got their grubby mitts on some unfinished tracks by last year's X Factor winner ALEXANDRA BURKE and had been touting them around as the finished article.
The truth is the songs were rough, unmastered recordings and may not even make it on to the album.
But this latest leak is the hotly-anticipated single from Leona Don't Let Me Down, a collaboration with JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE.
The track is seriously being considered as the first release from her second album but it has found its way on to the web - and is the final straw for Cowell.
I always assumed songs that went missing were hard copies pinched from the studio.
But it turns out there is a whole underworld of techie criminals who hack into emails and servers to get hold of the sought-after new tracks.
It sounds like something out of Spooks.
These guys compete to be the first to get hold of a new song because there is huge kudos in it - and a shed load of cash to be made.
Dodgy file-sharing websites pay hackers top dollar for stolen tracks as they try to attract more downloaders to the site so they can rake in more money from advertisers.
The hackers put a bit of digital code - a geeky version of a graffiti tag - on to the tracks to prove they got there first when the track spreads like wildfire on the web.
A spokesman for Syco - part of Sony BMG - said: "Syco are working alongside the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, the British Phonographic Industry, the police and investigators in this and they are making fast progress.
"We will certainly look to bring charges against those who are responsible. We cannot give any more details at this stage for operational reasons."
Advertisement
I hope the police manage to bang the criminals up.
They ruin it for everyone.
It is always better to hear the finished version than a stolen demo.****
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This appeals to me and I thought the Dog Brothers might like it too
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPBt8UztXoQ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPBt8UztXoQ)
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPBt8UztXoQ[/youtube]
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Wow, awesome find, Freki... Very nice!
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Remember this from my post of June 27, 2009:
"So this lastest news, MJ has one hundred "secret" songs which may or may not get released sounds to me like the latest scam.
If they can get the evidence from us - or perhaps someone else they are robbing - then the go ahead to release these songs will be given. That is my take. Or else he really did have 100 songs that were throw aways that they are trying to push as being good enough to release."
The truth is Anka probably wrote the whole thing but had to share credit with Jackson.
Now fast forward to this:
****Anka gets credit for co-writing Jackson single
AP, Oct 13, 2009 2:28 am PDT
With a familiar high-pitched voice counting off one-two-three-four, a new Michael Jackson single debuted online Monday, prompting a hasty response from the singer's estate after Paul Anka revealed he was the song's co-writer."This Is It" is featured on the soundtrack to the upcoming documentary featuring the late superstar, but its genesis was actually in 1983 when it was written for a duets album Anka was recording.
The song was titled "I Never Heard," and Jackson and Anka are credited as co-authors on an early 1990s version recorded by the singer Sa-Fire.
Anka said Jackson's estate moved quickly to give him credit, promising Anka 50 percent of the song's profits.
"They did the right thing," Anka said. "I don't think that anybody tried to do the wrong thing. It was an honest mistake."
The string-backed ballad was released on the singer's official Web site and sent to radio stations. It gives advance publicity to the documentary, culled from footage of Jackson rehearsing for the concerts that he never got a chance to do.
Representatives of Jackson's estate acknowledged Anka's work in a prepared statement. Until Anka stepped forward, the song's history was a mystery.
"The song was picked because the lyrics were appropriate because of the name Michael gave his tour," the statement read. "We are thrilled to present this song in Michael's voice for the first time, and that Michael's fans have responded in unprecedented numbers."
Anka, 68, initially contemplated legal action after being informed Monday by outlets such as the New York Times and TMZ of the similarities between "This Is It" and the Sa-Fire version. But later in the day, he said he was satisfied with how the situation was handled.
"There's nothing but honorable people here," said Anka, a former teen idol from the 1950s and '60s who sang "Put Your Head on My Shoulder" and wrote "She's A Lady", one of Tom Jones' biggest hits.
Sony Music Entertainment had said it wasn't sure when Jackson recorded the song but speculated it could have been around the time Jackson's "Off the Wall" album was done 30 years ago.
Close — Anka said it was recorded right around the time Jackson's "Thriller" album was becoming a smash hit.
"This Is It" was apparently found in a box of tapes with only Jackson's voice and a piano accompaniment.
Strings were added to the bare-bones recording, along with backing vocals from Jackson's brothers. Other touches included finger-click percussion that echoes Jackson's recording of "The Girl Is Mine."
The preparation of "This Is It" is eerily similar to how the surviving Beatles took outtakes from John Lennon following his murder and added their voices and instruments to craft the "Real Love" and "Free As a Bird" songs released as part of the "Anthology" project in 1996.
"This is it," Jackson sings to open the song. "Here I stand. I'm the light of the world. I feel grand."
Sony says it was a coincidence that his upcoming concert series was also titled "This Is It"; the company has no evidence that Jackson himself had planned to release the song.
Posthumous releases follow a long-standing pattern in popular music dating back to Elvis Presley's death in 1977.
Presley's records have continued selling since then, with new greatest hit compilations and live concert releases finding huge new audiences. His estate still receives tens of millions of dollars each year from CD sales and other enterprises, and in 2002 he even topped the UK charts with a remixed version of an older song.
The same was true, to a lesser extent, after the deaths of rock icons such as Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin. A number of Lennon solo albums were also released in the years following his shooting death in 1980.
Some artists have scored major hits after their deaths. For example, "Time in a Bottle" was the No. 1 hit in early 1974, months after Jim Croce died. Otis Redding's biggest hit, "The Dock of the Bay," was released after his death in a plane crash in December 1967. "Me and Bobby McGee" made the charts in 1971, a year after Joplin died.
It probably won't be the last time music fans hear something new from Jackson. Tommy Mottola, former chairman and CEO of Sony Music, told The Associated Press shortly after Jackson died in Los Angeles June 25 that there are "dozens and dozens of songs" that did not make the pop star's albums, along with more recently recorded material.
Questions about who owns the material and differing opinions among people who control Jackson's estate could complicate the release of these songs, said Rob Levine, executive editor of Billboard.
Making "This Is It" available online before putting CDs on sale might seem counterintuitive. But several artists do it — the Flaming Lips streamed their entire new album online — and Web sites such as myspacemusic.com offer streams of many songs.
Jackson's company is betting that interest generated from early release of the song will spur purchases of the album. More so than many artists, Jackson fans are more inclined to buy CDs than seek out digital copies of his music, Levine said.
"This is aimed at passionate Michael Jackson fans and people who want to participate in a historical event," he said. "In both cases, people are going to want something to hold in their hands."
The two-CD set offers previously released versions of Jackson hits coinciding with the order they are presented on the DVD. Besides "This Is It," the other new material is a spoken-word poem and demo versions of "She's Out of My Life," "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'" and "Beat It."
Jackson, one of the most commercially successful artists of all time, is expected to sell millions of albums in the coming years. His death already brought some of his classic records back to the top of the charts.
His death at age 50 is still being investigated.
The Los Angeles County coroner has ruled Jackson's death was caused by acute intoxication by the anesthetic propofol, with other sedatives a contributing factor. The coroner found the powerful anesthetic was administered without any medical need and that recommended resuscitation equipment was missing.
___
Associated Press Writers David Bauder, Gregory Katz and Mesfin Fekadu contributed to this report.****
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CCP, My daughter went to see Taylor Swift this past weekend :-( The question of who writes her songs is asked on Yahoo. Then it is answered by young fans who vote on each other's answer and so it is now a resolved question :-(
In my day... for one thing each band succeeded by creating something new and original. I doubt if Bob Dylan stole songs or poems. Nobody ever said he sounds just like - fill in the blank. The lead singers of the Grateful Dead each had a lyricist and they gave and took shared credit on every song. They played plenty of other people's material and even if they re-worked it musically or even if it was never previously famous they didn't claim they wrote the song. Similar for bands like Yes, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Supertramp, Steely Dan, Jethro Tull, etc. They didn't come out with a new song to the reaction that it sounds remarkably like someone else. More likely they could be accused of it sounding to much like own of their own previous works.
What I don't understand, if there are millions to be made why they can't, as Jackson had to here with Paul Anka, buy and pay for the help they receive. Maybe the answer is in the fan comments on Taylor Swift. They are so sure that she is singing directly to them from the heart, not reading a teleprompter. Even then, couldn't they privately buy the right to take full credit?
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Thanks for your thoughts.
I am not completely sure of the answer.
Taylor Swift of course is not running around taking songs. There are organized thieves, PIs, and their freinds and relatives who have controlled the approach to us.
There have dozens and probably by now years after it started hundreds of people involved.
Yet it always seems coordinated and one person fails or is "outed" they seem to fade while other scams evolve.
Someone or someones are clearly behind the scene orchestrating this. Unfortunately they succeeded at bribing one person after another - tenants who lived in an efficiency we rented behind our house, an ex "friend" of mine (since age 12), Katherine's uncle, her mother, her brother, neighbors, mail carriers, co workers of mine, gardners, at least two police officers, lock smiths, Copyright official (others just looked away), almost certainly two different attorneys, and I could go on if I think about it.
As one person who moved to Florida where we were from Hoboken, NJ to set upa studio (the whole thing was certainly a scan) said to Katherine "everyone has their price". "If someone want to get one's songs, they WILL get it".
Well I learned he wasn't kidding. I learned how bribery can buy almost anyone. You will see the experts in spying tell us on TV the best way to get information isn't torture. Its simply to pay people off.
So in answer to your question the people who are behind robbing us are not interested in letting us get to the "stars" to sell songs.
They will stop us. It doesn't help I work 60 plus hours a week, Katherine is legally blind and there is no one in her family she can trust. As for my family they have their own lives and don't want to be involved or a few who don't believe the whole thing.
Taylor Swift is for all I know several people removed from Katherine. Her father I understand is some producer and surely he has connections and for that reason and that reason alone she is where she is. She is not terrible, but surely anyone can see she is not hugely talented as a singer, dancer, or musician in any way except that she along like many of them have either private deals with the people who got her the songs and come up with the melodies or have simply paid them to be able to claim them.
Perhaps she is allowed to claim she writes (I can only plead that from my place that she absolutely doesn't and almost certainly couldn't even if she tried) but those who stole and got her the material are getting the money for that.
Katherine was in Nashville in 1989. She was right up there with these guys there. She sat next to Willie Nelson.
They asked her to open for Alabama but I guess she got stage fright. They knew she could right. They even warned her to never show anyone her songs. "why they will be stolen in a heartbeat!"
"Why don't even show your mamma your songs!" She never thought this would apply to her own mother.
When she said she didn't have any melodies or songs their comments were to the effect, "don't worry we'll get you the songs".
She later told me she had no idea they meant steal them.
Well one crook she spoke to told her she'd be surprised at what they pay the people robbing us and stalking us. It "isn't as much as you might think". He then offered her $400 a song. "Hey you gotta eat".
Nice guy huh?
Another guy told her a "good crook sleeps with they girls he robs".
Another time we were followed to a hotel room and they were going to switch a Uhaul we rented. Before we knew it one guy rents the room to one side of us and another the other side. Katherine heard the one say to the other when she look out the window, "I told you this wouldn't work, the bitch is already looking out the window".
These are the kinds of people in the music "industry".
Don't think the "front" people, the Toby Keiths, the Shania Twains, the John Riches, the Brad Paisly's, the Dolly Partons, are any nicer people than these other behind the scenes low lives. They are not. Don't think their tours overseas doing shows for the troops means they really care about the troops or any of their fans for that matter. It is all a show. It is all sales. It is all about the money.
I could forgive Taylor Swift as just a kid who would give anything to be a star just like the teens who would do anything to meet her, date her, be her friend, or be like her.
But when I see her get up there and lie like the best of the liars forget it.
She is a low life just like the rest.
She would stab you in the back as fast as one can blink an eye.
Yet Katherine and I struggle on.
They will get the rest of her songs over our dead bodies.
And I mean it. I ain't afraid to die. I don't give a rats behind anymore.
And Katherine keeps wishing she never wrote.
I encouraged her for quite some time thinking everytime we wouldn't be robbed again only to find we keep getting scammed again.
Finally I pleaded with her to stop and I don't know why she llterally couldn't. Emotional or what I don't know. It was like an addiction to her. She could write and write and write. And the people robbing us know it.
Sony Nashville was organized all around her lyrics.
So was Lyrics Streets. Look at the names of the people behind these for example. Were talking not onl millionaires but billionaires.
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Ive been on a Retro Hard rock \ Metal kick. Im sure these guys will conjure up some old sounds of rock.
Wolfmother - Woman
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLGde-7mIyA[/youtube]
Wolfmother - Dimension
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXl1Kq3zRBY[/youtube]
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Query: What's your favorite music to...
1) Workout to?
2) Fight to?
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Katherine and I found out the criminals surveillancing us have been in our house more than once probably within the last few months.
Unless they used forced entry and covered it up they slipped in through a door and tip toed around stealing some Copyright documents, financial statements and ominously identification documents for Katherine.
Were not entirely sure the damage done but it is no coincidence this occured (we believe within last few weeks to month) before the Country Music Awards this Wednesday.
She or I are ALWAYS in the house so they somehow got in and snuck around while we were there.
They must have cameras and listening devices somewhere to be able to coordinate it without our knowing.
There are neighbors who have moved in to neighborhood after us in order to watch us exactly for this reason; to stalk and wait for the perfect opportunity to get in the house steal evidence and then get the songs up to the singers so they can get them OUT THEIR - published!
This is how these criminals work and why it is so hard to catch them. They never take chances, they are very patient and willing to wait for as long as it takes, and have everything planned out in advance, and everything is soft - they sneak around leaving no evidence. No forced entry - just pick locks, get copies of keys through bribery or finding out which Home Depot I was in and simply getting a key from the same batch of locks (- they are all the same key), and similar tricks.
I believe they are getting in the house when I am not home. In retrospect I find they watch me closely wherever I happen to be at the time when the plan to get in the house. This way they know I won't just happen to pull up and catch them.
I can't comment anymore.
We will be watching the CMAs closely for any new material.
Did anyone see Carrie Underwear say on the CMT or perhaps GAC station how she can't comment on her new songs, "my handlers have not given me permission" to say yet?
In other words, the songs have not been *completely* stolen just yet so she has to keep her mouth shut.
When they think they are on the verge of succesfully stealing the lyrics and all the related evidence the singers many of whom claim they are the song writers start bragging about how they are working on new albums and about ready to release this or that.
If their plans fall through there is either total silence as to why the album or new hit single hasn't come out OR they make up excuses.
Such as taking time of for their children, spend more time with family, or some other BS excuse.
It is sickening to watch the total BS.
And I don't care how adorable Bill O'Reilly thinks Taylor not so swift is. She is a lying dirtball. She couldn't write a song to save her life. All those stories about boyfriends are nonsense. And she is a mediocre singer.
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Not good workout music, but Sting is a brilliant & well-rounded musician, the likes of which we rarely see:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFAleFnbRgw[/youtube]
I hadn't seen this video before, but I love old Skinny Puppy. Better than "real ultimate power" for getting pumped (hahaha!!!):
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aS-gGYaA8F0[/youtube]
Geez, Marc, I didn't know you'd seen Jimi live. I am forever jealous.....
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Query: What's your favorite music to...
1) Workout to?
2) Fight to?
For working out and "fighting" I prefer energetic, rhythmic
Stuff like:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlOslJjGF0A[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EE7LWBzQJPw[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2tT3FDD16g[/youtube]
I like metal but sometimes it doesnt give me boost \ vibe i need while working out, unless im on a stationary bike or need an energetic boost before working out.
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I don't know if anyone is a country fan but if you watched the CMA awards you couldn't help but think the music mostly stunk.
No new songs that appeared to be Katherine's.
However there were some sung that originally appeared as recent as around two months ago that were like those networked off the computer or a few left overs written on folders and taken out of the house.
Included are the first one of Taylor Swift's two songs as well as White Liar claimed to have been written by Lambert.
The Sugarland songs of course (Ms. stuffed nose).
Keith Urban's appeared to be written by someone else not Katherine - maybe really was his own.
Carrie underwood's song as usual sounded like a Katherine throw away. Wasn't even "country" and was really more pop.
They had all kinds of excuses explaining how or why she is changing her style. Don't buy the bullshit. It is for no other reason than they can't steal something that is more suitably country and apparently can't write anything themselves or/and do not anyone else who can in their little club of scoundrels.
Brooks and Dunn who sang numerous songs just like Katherine's are all washed up and have announced their retirement but not before making fools of themselves singing a hard rock song with a ZZ top song (oh yea - that's real country).
Unless they can get Swift more songs she will go the way of the garbage can too. See certainly isn't where she is because of talent.
Yea they will get her some more material to soak the teenie boppers as much as they can out of their parent's money but she proved again she can't sing well, dance well, or play guitar - unless strumming one cord is playing guitar.
They cleverly had all the country bumpkin "stars" come in with their daughters so they could all run down and surround the stage where Swift was doing her one cord strum and play up the teens gone wild for Taylor bit.
Sorry Doug. I am glad your daughters had a good time with Swift and hope they are well. No one can stop teenage crushes anymore that we can stop a hurricane. I remember my older sister screaming and going nuts with my parents scratching their heads 45 yrs ago as the Beatles came out on Ed Sullivan. Who didn't have romantic fantasies at that age? I know I did.
Unless they can steal more of Katherine's songs (or someone else with real talent) the country bumpkins are mostly washed up.
That said I don't underestimate their resolve or leverage in getting their way.
Like a boxer once said on cable - "you can't fight the mafia".
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@Freki
Live performance clip:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-G8PnfN0kiQ[/youtube]
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Great stuff!
Here's one for sparring - "Fight Song":
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C64FBkb_gRg[/youtube]
But after your session of unadulterated violence, you can cool down while indulging your sensitive side (hahaha!):
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWU8XWksg_0[/youtube]
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Good to have you with us again SD.
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Ahhhh the sensitive side... forgot about that, lol.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWkKAQxe2mc[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_YfyKahP-0[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YV956ptWrlY[/youtube]
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not sure how to describe it, cool stuff. been listening to it over and over for some time now...
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgafofMfBFM[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99WVI86gQeo[/youtube]
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I took a few computer courses at University of Central Florida aournd 1999. After we realized Katherine was getting robbed we niavely looked for a computer expert who could dig up evidence on our hard drives. I called the school and asked my professor if he does that and he said he was too busy but he would put me in touch with someone else. After around 2 or 3 more people said the same thing I eventually got a call back from this guy, John Joseph Leeson. He agreed to "help" us do searches and came to our house to copy our drives. It was a set up from day one. The people robbing us were, we later realized, listening to our phone calls and this guy was already approached, bribed, and bought and sold when he came to our house I think it was in around February of 2000 though I could be off on the dates.
He basically tampered with ur drives, some of which were probably switched altogether. I made the mistake of giving him access to call our computers. We had one or two desk tops and a few laptops. He thus had all the codes and access information and them we were from that point on unable to stop them from networking in and swiping songs. I was typing around thrity songs onto a laptop one time in the kitchen when suddenly they all disappeared off the memory. Well they would then know if we made any copies by scanning printing or making discs or CDs. Thus they knew what we had with regards to songs and everything they needed to do to steal any evidence we had.
Any songs we had that we might have had a copy they would thus know about and not let their singers do until they were sure we had nothing on them. This piece of garbage who purports to be a forensic crime fighter actually did all he could to continure robbing us. He even got flustered one day and blurted out, "what's my own ITP address doing on your computer". Later we also found out his latino wife was some sort of a musician and singer. For people who have not been through this kind of thing it feels like we were robbed, my wife was raped and our lives destroyed. And this guy goes merrily on his way and gets lauded as some good guy crime fighter. I wonder how many others he robbed while playing the role of a forensic computer hack.
And just by coincidence I find this article that was published (no coincedence at all) shortly after we made contact with this alleged thief and total dirtball. I see he appears to have retired in 2007. I believe he made hundreds of thousands for what he did to us:
Computer Forensics Teams Learn to Follow Digital Footprints
By DENNIS BLANK
Published: March 9, 2000
JOHN LEESON smiles as he straightens out a paper clip and inserts it in the back of a portable Zip disk drive of a personal computer that he has put into standby mode. The disk, which contains an unknown password that allows access to the computer's hard drive, pops out and Dr. Leeson inserts another disk. When prompted by an on-screen message, he chooses ''remove protection'' and enters a new password that will give him access to valuable information on the hard drive that had previously been blocked.
That is just part of a bag of tricks -- some easily available on the Internet -- that Dr. Leeson uses to teach his class of police officers and lawyers ways to retrieve information from computers.
Dr. Leeson, 55, an associate professor at the School of Computer Science at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, is a teacher and practitioner of what is known as computer forensics. In addition to teaching, he also helps the campus police department and the local sheriff's office with computer-related investigations.
''John is one of a couple of pioneers in this area,'' said Mark Politt, unit chief of the computer forensics laboratory at the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Washington. ''The need for computer forensics is growing exponentially, and we need more people trained in the basic fundamentals.
''The use of computers both as tools and storage devices for crimes is growing. Investigators need to build up teams because things have become so complex, one person doesn't have all the knowledge.''
There is a great demand for more law enforcement investigators trained in digital crime-solving techniques, said Carrie Whitcomb, director of the National Center for Forensics at the University of Central Florida, and the university is developing a graduate certificate program. Dr. Leeson's course, which is offered in the summer, is part of the program.
Digital evidence can come from many sources in addition to PC's, Dr. Leeson said. Investigators can also find evidence in Palm devices, fax machines, cell phones and other equipment that keeps or produces data or a record of users' activities.
''How do you catch a criminal?'' Dr. Leeson said. ''You try to follow the digital trail, just like the gumshoe would follow the trail of evidence.''
In a criminal case, if a computer can be seized by law enforcement authorities, then time is on the side of the investigators as they peel off the necessary information: e-mail and Web site records and hard drive data. If a computer cannot be confiscated, tracking a suspect becomes more difficult.
''Digital is like footprints in the sand,'' Dr. Leeson said, ''and it will disappear rather quickly over time because information is being overwritten constantly. If you overwrite in the digital world, it is virtually impossible to recover it.''
Standard detective work may be all that is necessary to recover things like Web site passwords. ''People leave information lying around,'' Dr. Leeson said. Often, a sticky note with a password might be in an obvious place, like on the PC monitor or underneath the keyboard. Pictures of a pet, grandparents or a friend, if they can be identified, may all be clues to a password.
A typical investigation might involve tracing the electronic path of someone suspected of downloading child pornography. If certain images are hidden or encrypted, Dr. Leeson said, ''it adds another layer to the hunt.'' If a suspect has used a ''very good encryption program, it goes from difficult to virtually impossible to unscramble,'' he said.
One of the hypothetical cases he discusses with his students is that of someone who receives a pipe bomb in the mail. In this case, an estranged wife is suspected. After the authorities get a search warrant, the hard disk on her computer reveals that she has been surfing the Internet and visiting sites that explain how to make the kind of bomb used in the crime. That kind of evidence, though circumstantial, can help link a person to a crime.
There are other, tougher cases, Dr. Leeson said, particularly those involving hackers who have used others' computer systems to do their damage. In those cases, he said, the investigator has to backtrack to determine how the hacker got into other people's computers.
Often that entry is through the Internet. ''The World Wide Web was not designed with security in mind but was designed to share research,'' Dr. Leeson said.
But the Web also has features that can aid a forensic computer scientist. Once a user is online, search engines are logging ''the fact that you are there and where you are coming from, and those log records can be used to track their way back,'' Dr. Leeson said. Cookies, tiny data files automatically placed by some sites on a computer's hard drive with a unique tracking number, are another way that a user's Web surfing habits are tracked.
''It is possible to falsify your tracks, and that makes the job of finding you much more difficult,'' he said.
Dr. Leeson acknowledges that some of what he taught in his first introductory graduate course on computer forensics may be old hat when he teaches the popular class again this summer. For one thing, Windows 2000 may pose some new security issues, while new state laws may have been enacted that will have an impact on the course.
''Any crime that you can conceive of,'' Dr. Leeson said, ''a computer can be an instrument of that crime.''
Photo: John Leeson of the University of Central Florida in Orlando teaches lawyers and the police to be digital detectives. (Linda Blank for The New York Times)
A version of this biography appeared in print on March 9, 2000, on page G8 of the New York edition.
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My nieces :D
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FC49-pcPGps[/youtube]
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What can I say? She makes it *a point* to thank her producer for "letting her" sing the songs "she wrote".
Who else can recall anyone saying that. Gee thanks for letting me write and my own hits! Well that's modest. The narcissism is totally lost to the adoring and cashing in media.
All I can do is sit and frown. This little s..t whose songs were exactly like those stolen from Katherine. At least two from her first album. Like my Indian colleague said to me, "you mean they all sing and claim songs here [in the US] they didn't write? In India everyone knows the singers don't write their songs. It doesn't matter what they claim. Only here no one knows!".
My wife sits stuck in our little house. Her life in ruins. People who moved in all over the street just to watch and try to rob us. Not a thing I can do about it. The moment Katherine forgot to double lock the door someone then snuck right into the house to steal some copyrights and financial papers (they are screwing her trades obvouisly in cahoots with an insider at Fidelity).
I got home right after they were in the house. I pulled up and saw a little shit I've seen before sitting in the lot right next to our house grinning. Right away it was a rega flag. Then I go to the back door only to find it casually locked which I can open and enter. Normally I wait for her to let me in because only with a bolt from the inside can we keep professional criminals out. There is no lock they can't pick, or somehow get a copy of the key. Just ask any lock smith. So immediately I knew we be had - again.
And this little lying sack of s..t.......
What's worse is she is a mediocre singer. A lousy dancer, and can't play guitar. And her songs I allege are stolen and not written by her as she plays innocently to claim.
If there is a God then maybe there will be justice some day.
""Over the last three and a half years, Ms. Swift has established herself as pop’s leading naïf. Not in her songwriting, which has been precocious, but in her persona. By now, she’s even patented a look she whips out at award shows, concerts and more, when her innocence is threatened by acclaim: eyes wide, mouth agape, hand held over it as if to keep in the breath she’d just gasped as if it were her last.
Most stars — and make no mistake, Ms. Swift is the most important new pop star of the past few years — have their images undone by failure. In Ms. Swift’s case, the opposite is true: success has necessitated a re-evaluation.
Her Sunday night at the Grammys will be remembered as the turning point. She won four awards, including album of the year for “Fearless” (Big Machine), her outstanding second record — the youngest artist ever to do so, and the first solo female country singer to earn that as well. It was the ultimate stamp of insider approval for someone who insists that she’s thrilled just to be invited to the party.
But the night also revealed her weaknesses. Her new single, “Today Was a Fairytale,” from the “Valentine’s Day” soundtrack, opened her performance, and it was limp, a parody of her best songs about teen love fantasy. That transitioned into a pitch-challenged duet of “Rhiannon” with Stevie Nicks, who then joined in — facing her own vocal challenges — on a banjolin-driven version of Ms. Swift’s “You Belong With Me.”
Ms. Swift is still young — she’s got teenage taste, some of it bad (Owl City, Boys Like Girls), some of it better (John Mayer) — and it’s refreshing to see someone so gifted make the occasional flub. Compare her with, say, Beyoncé, the night’s only bigger winner, who appears allergic to risk, or showing weakness.
But with every step Ms. Swift takes toward ubiquity, her facade must come undone a bit. The recent avalanche of disturbances dates back to the disruption of her acceptance speech by Kanye West at the MTV Video Music Awards in September. That was the first rupture: Ms. Swift held her composure, but the world assumed that she felt anger and frustration anyway and granted it to her, making her an unlikely David to Mr. West’s Goliath.
Suddenly Ms. Swift had texture. She was complex. In short, she became an adult. Not surprisingly, in the subsequent weeks, she was more of a tabloid presence than ever before. Her earlier entanglement with Joe Jonas had been handled gingerly and from a distance, but now Ms. Swift was fair game. She was part of a celebrity mega-feud and soon, reportedly, a celebrity mega-relationship, with the “Twilight” star Taylor Lautner. In November she won Entertainer of the Year, and three other prizes, at the Country Music Association Awards, confirming her breakthrough.
In this window came a more important milestone that passed with relatively little notice: Ms. Swift turned 20 in December. She’s no longer a teenager; soon, when she performs her anthems of young-love heartbreak, it’s going to appear as if she were carpetbagging.
And more important, she’ll almost certainly be 21 (or older) when she releases a new album that can’t now, by definition, have the same emotional guideposts as the previous ones. Success has altered how she’s perceived, but most of all, success breeds perspective, especially in someone as savvy and bright as Ms. Swift.
Ideally, what will emerge will be a new Ms. Swift, cut from whole cloth, with some gumption, some sass, some wisdom that the world has crueler foes than teenage boys. As a singer, the songs she’ll produce should be just as honest as the ones before them. And as a person, she should now be unafraid to share all the things she undoubtedly already knows but has been holding back. Her multitudes await.""
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Like I said, she is not a great singer. Her voice on her albums can be and is touched up. Live she is no better than a decent karaoke singer.
As for the music label's CEO:
“The facts say she is the undisputed best communicator that we’ve got," Borchetta said.
I wonder how much he paid for the lyrics. The middleman are out on the "streets" stealing the "material" and then they run back to their contacts in Nashville among other stops and I assume they pawn them off to the front people who "fit the song". Obviously fiftenn fits Swift. It wouldn't be one to go to fat Toby Keith - another con artist- as I allege.
***The good news: At 20, Taylor Swift has become the youngest-ever recording artist to win Grammy’s biggest prize, Album of the Year. She is now the only Nashville performer to win that prize with a solo album.
“Nashville is my favorite place in the world and to see it recognized in such a beautiful way makes me so happy,” Swift said backstage late Sunday night after being told that her big win came on the same night that Kings of Leon notched Nashville rock’s first best record win.
In all, Swift won four trophies at Sunday’s 52nd Annual Grammy Awards. After Fearless also won for Best Country Album, the singer-songwriter said, “I’m standing here accepting an impossible dream right now and I thank you so much for that.”
Now the bad news: The responses to that duet with Fleetwood Mac’s Steve Nicks have been harsh.
The genre-blending duet — on Nicks’ “Rhiannon” with Swift’s “You Belong With Me” — drew sharp reviews from critics, both professional and in the social networking and blogging world.
Ann Powers of the Los Angeles Times wrote that “Swift gave a strikingly bad vocal performance at Staples Center on Sunday, sounding tinny and rhythmically flat-footed as she shared the microphone with the distinctive Stevie Nicks.”
Chris Richards of The Washington Post wrote a piece that started with “A night in the charmed life of Taylor Swift: Give an incredibly wretched vocal performance, go on to win the biggest Grammy of 2010, anyway.”
The Tennessean’s Dave Paulson chimed in on a live blog: “Maybe a smidge of Jamie Foxx’s autotune wouldn’t be such a bad idea for this duet.”
Respected music industry blogger Bob Lefsetz first wrote that Fearless deserved to win album of the year, but then proffered that Swift might have single-handledly imperiled her career with this one Grammy performance: “How awful was she? Dreadful.”
Scott Borchetta, president and CEO of Swift's record label Big Machine Records, had this response late Monday night.
“The facts say she is the undisputed best communicator that we’ve got," Borchetta said. "So when she says something or feels something it affects more people than anybody else. Maybe she’s not the best technical singer, but she is the best emotional singer. Everybody gets up there and is technically perfect people don’t seem to want more of it. There’s not an artist in any other format that people want more of than they want of Taylor. I think (the critics) are missing the whole voice of a generation that is happening right in front of them. Maybe they are jealous or can’t understand that. But obviously the people that she talks to are engaged with her. No one is perfect on any given day. Maybe in that moment we didn’t have the best night, but in the same breath, maybe we did.”
A midday release announcing Swift’s awards noted that immediately after the Sunday show, Swift and her band “left for LAX, headed to Australia and Japan, where she will perform several sold-out shows before returning to the States to launch her FEARLESS 2010 tour March 4th in Tampa.”
— PETER COOPER, CINDY WATTS AND LINDA ZETTLER
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Robert - Nice video!
Marc - I don't suppose you recorded that Jimi show?
CCP - I'm totally lost. I must have missed your earlier posts. Are you saying Taylor Swift somehow stole your songs? If so, why not just file an infringement suit? It costs you about $50 and all you need are your copyright registration numbers which you can retrieve directly from the Copyright Office in DC if you no longer have them. Very simply process.
Sooo....what shall we work out to today? How about something in an ODD TIME SIGNATURE so you can REALLY work on timing and that pesky predictability. Rhythms embedded within rhythms...imply one rhythm while really employing another...then strike. Ever wonder why sophisticated rhythmic structures were used in music typically considered primal, base, and un-developed? Now you know.
Give a listen, contemplate, grok. Have fun at your next training!!!
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_Xsd_aCVNs[/youtube]
or
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0-OvL2pHsM[/youtube]
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Just realized that my wording on the bit about complex rhythms came off as sounding at least a touch arrogant and "know-it-all".
My apologies in advance. Farthest thing from what I intended to convey. Just a pet theory is all.
To be more clear, I probably should have also included that the primal musics I was referring to are those that accompanied pre-fight rituals as well as rituals that simulate combat. This much is true (at least in some cultures), but whether or not the complex rhythmic structures were designed as a means of giving a fighter who employs said structures and advantage is not something I've ever seen any fighter, instructor, or musicologist discuss in any detail, and is certainly nothing I can prove.
It's just a pet theory that if you imply one rhythmic pattern and attack using another that stems from the first, you then posses a tactical (if extremely transient) advantage.
Those whose combat skills are superior mine (probably most of the folks here) are in a much better position to assess the value of such a theory.
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SkinnyDevil,
That is what I believe. The lyrics were taken out of our house.
It is a long long story. I have been posting for years on this board and the previous message board Crafty and I were on. Unfortunately this has been ongoing for years and the people who are orchestrating this are master criminals who must have been in the music theft business (or in their families) for decades.
As for Copyright my wife just noticed Copyrights missing out of the house and noticed that registrations that are in the Copyright Office have probably been switched. The people robbing us have been planning this for several years and may have recently succeeded on getting a half dozen songs (Katherine is not sure how many but this is her estimate). She wrote a few thousand songs so she has difficulty keeping track.
My wife registered multiple song lyrics under one registration title page (it varied but could be as many as 25 songs under one registration. The only thing that gets documented when registered is the title register page. IT will list that there are 25 songs but not the actual lyrics. The lyrics behind the total registration go into storage which has recently been moved over to Maryland. To have the proof of lyrics found one would have to request the CO pull the registartion in storage. There were numerous steps along the way and multiple people in the chain of custody so to speak. Anyone along the way could be bribed and apparantly do get bribed.
There is virtually no chance the materials could be pulled, and viola, we would get evidence implication Toby Keith or anyone else at that level. It never happens. The crooks always seem to find a way to get the right stuff to disappear and get switched so another song is in the place of the one with the evidence. That is why it is so hard to catch anyone. The music and I am sure the whole entertainment business, as well as the book business is corrupt with intellectual property theft. Law enforcement is not interested and most people like us either don't even realized they were robbed or can't even sy how it is done so no one in law enforcement bothers.
The music industry and the middle men thieves appear to control what goes on at Copyright. Remember, no one is really watching what goes on in at the CR Office.
Indeed there are literally only a small number of people in the whole world who really know what goes on there. And legally they have final say on what and how documents get processed.
For example, we had one document pulled to have it brought to the main office and get a certified copy which definitely had evidence of a song that was done by some big name in the industry. Of course the copy we got did not have in it the right information. And the rest of our documentation was stolen from our house prior. It appeared the registration coming over from storage was taking longer than usual. We inquired why.
Well we were told that on the way from storage to the CRO the "truck" broke down and was in the repair shop - with those materials in it. Well gee what a coincidence.
How much does it cost to bribe a truck driver to bring a truck into a repair shop. Who is going to even question this but us? How can anyone prove this wasn't anything more than a coincidence? Try telling law enforcement this. Even if they were willing to believe it they won't do a thing.
So there you have it.
As an aside Shania Twain is coming out with a reality show to portray her efforts to make a comeback??? But I don't understand. She is the great singer songwriter?
She is this great creative musical talent with no less than a quarter of a billion dollars to her name. Yet she needs to show her efforts on a reality show?
The truth is it ain't Mutt Lange or her who came up with lyrics (I admit I don't know about the melodies).
The truth is she is not a creative talent. She couldn't write a song lyric to save her life. It is all a scam. They either have some of Katherine's lyrics or are awaiting to get the evidence on more and will show her pretending she writes the songs.
Why else? She is so great, she has so much money and so many connections she can't simply write songs and come out with them?
The excuse will be that without Mutt her talent is diminished. They were only good as they were when together. Toby Keith uses the same excuse, "my little song writing buddy" as he points to the silent side kick next to him in his band as a way of explaining why he couldn't write till he was in his late thirties. That explains why he suddenly became a genius.
http://www.fox23.com/entertainment/story/Twain-lands-reality-TV-show/2yD0DqtqA0aCyAt5iOD74A.cspx
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SD:
I like non 4/4 rhythms. I use rhythm A LOT in my teaching method-- and in my fighting.
I liked both those clips there. What were the signatures in each? I am shy to guess publicly :oops:
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CCP - Interesting story. I'm a bit confused as to why they would go to all the trouble & expense of theft (physical & otherwise) when it's cheaper and easier to pay a royalty. Did you piss someone off? How did they know Katherine was able to write?
Crafty - The second song (Steve Vai's "Attitude Song") has major sections in straight 4 (sometimes double-timed) and a cool polymetric approach over the main riff where the drums play a 4/4 behind the 7/8 guitar riff.
The first song (Tool's "Aenema") is a bit more bizarre. The song starts with a guitar riff that sound like a non-lilting 6/8 (or a 3/4 if you're inclined to stress the quarter) at one speed (the "illusion" to which I refer above), but then sounds like a shuffled 4/4 (12/8) when the drums enter (the "actual"). They do this by a rather complicated process (as opposed to using the 8th note as a pivot, as in a metric modulation). Some have argued that the song uses hemiola, but the guitar doesn't change it's phrasing or stress. It is simply rhythmic sleight of hand.
Of course, that's just the first 30 seconds (hahaha!). They continue their rhythmic explorations throughout the song (is that mid-section a slow 12 or a quick 3? Depends on your perception, as they give reason to hear it either way).
Frank Zappa liked that sort of rhythmic illusion, too, as well as others. You just don't often hear that sort of rhythmic complexity on the radio, (though a few songs by Led Zeppelin are good for rhythmic fun). You can get equally bizarre examples listening to certain traditional African musics, certain Latin musics, and even several 20th century classical composers who were influenced by & experimented with "primitivism".
As an aside, it's this rhythmic complexity that stops most people who cover old Robert Johnson songs from getting it right. Rory Block, however, does an amazing job. Check her version of Johnson's "Terraplane Blues" and dig those changes!
If I were in CA, we could chat for quite a while about poly-rhythms, poly-meters, metric modulations, & other more advanced rhymthic devices. I'm sure you are far more able to employ these ideas in a fight scenario than I.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmR0_epz5OQ[/youtube]
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Katherine always had a dream to be a singer. She went to Nashville in 1989. I met her in '92.
She met some important people in the business. She even sat next to Willie Nelson who showed her how to eat lobster.
They suggested she open for Alabama but from what she tells me she may have gotten nervous. She told them she didn't have the songs. They said, don't worry we can get you the songs. She now states she didn't know they meant steal them.
In any case she didn't sleep with one or two people and they got mad.
I don't know all the details as I was not there. They knew she could write lyrics. She should one songwriter her songs and he thought they were good. But she told me years ago that he then asked her why she was showing him her songs. He warned her, never show anyone your songs. Not even your mamma. They will be stolen in a heartbeat.
We later learned he wasn't kidding. She believes they didn't rob her then because they liked her. In retrospect she recalls one of the men who liked her bringing her roses and she spurned him. Her mother who is a definite psycopath encouraged her not to speak to him. She can only guess that she pissed him off and that is why they have kept after her since.
We believe the reason that songwriters (the real ones don't get paid ) is that there is a whole network of middle men who appear controlled by someone or a few people who will not "let anyone" in the business without their ok.
They appear to contol who gets on radio and the circuit.
As one guy who has a recording studio, Paul Harlyn in Celebration Fla. (aka Paul Biddles) said, the music business is kind of "clicky", if they like you they let you in. If they don't you may as well pack up your bags and go home.
He moved to Celebration from Jersey City NJ for the purpose of hooking up with (and probably scamming) Katherine it is my belief.
She recorded three songs in his home studio. Since then the people robbing us have been trying to get them out of, or rearranged in the CRO. We believe they were set to be taken and sold to Shania Twain. Twain tells the story that she and her hsuband Mutt Lange were in a hotel and were writing songs and suddenly they realized they had all these "hits" and both just suddenly got so excited and "this was what they were waiting for". that was before she was famous and after her first album which was a total bomb.
Now if that doesn't sound ridiculous? You don't sit and write songs and *suddenly realize* you have all these hits and exclaim this is what we were waiting for! More like, the people who robbed Katherine showed up at the hotel with her stuff and showed Twain and Lange the goods who immediately saw its' potential and realized those were the potential hits they were waiting for and then proceeded to cut some sort of deal with the music lyrics thieves. Well I can tell you don't think Shania Twain is smart. She ain't.
As far as the melodies of her songs I don't know where they come from. Perhaps Lange really did come up with those. I don't know.
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Been some time I visited this thread. That is some really interesting stuff, I believe I asked Guro Crafty a question about Music and Martial Arts. I dont even remember exactly what I asked but I think it would start an interesting thread. I don't quite understand all that you wrote about Ill have to look into it further but it sure is interesting! Definitely adding those two songs to my playlist!
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CCP - Sorry you've had such a bad experience. The industry is big and multi-faceted. I'm a professional musician (don;t hold it against me - hahaha!) and have not ever come across this sort of thing at all, but then I'm not in Nashville, either. Nor am I a country music artist. She can always write songs & start over, though.
Robert - A polymeter is when you simultaneously play 2 (or more) different meters, like Steve's 7/8 guitar riff while the drums are playing in 4/4 I mentioned. A polyrhtyhm is simultaneously playing 2 (or more) different rhythms (say, sub-dividing the beat by 2 for one, and sub-dividing the beat by 3 for the other). There are other relationships between rhythms that are just as much fun!
Check out the Robert Johnson song that Rory performs in the other video. Bizarre changes, but there is an underlying thread that attaches them.
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SD:
Thanks for breaking that down.
I did catch the 3/4 (6/8) beat, but the second piece went right over my head with nary a look back :lol:
I like playing 6/8 on my djembe. Indeed I came up with a variant that shifts continuously between right and left hand dominance that tickled my teacher.
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Crafty - When do we get to hear those 6/8?
OK...a nod to Willie on his birthday. Good for a relaxing time AFTER the training....
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7vaYOIKWYY[/youtube]
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Oh I dunno , , , maybe as an extra on one of our DVDs , , ,
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Oh I dunno , , , maybe as an extra on one of our DVDs , , ,
Excellent!!!
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One of my faves to train to. :-D
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liyaXjf_WSI[/youtube]
Boyo
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Here's one for you. Takes a minute to get rolling, but then.....
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVtYG3tYg0M&feature=related[/youtube]
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From Roger Freidman:
"Ricky Martin Livin’ “La Vida Loca” Again with Producer Desmond ChildBy: Roger Friedman in Celebrity, Music // June 18th, 2010 at 10:45 AM EDT
.......There were great moments and odd moments in the Marriott Marquis ballroom. John Mayer, looking uncomfortable, appeared on stage to give Taylor Swift the Starlight Award for new young songwriter. He said, “We’re both like black swans,” and then rambled on about the two of them being unlike everyone else. He also said that even he asked her, “Who writes your songs?” Swift, still 19, gave a very relaxed speech, without using notes. She’s very poised. And she’s going to be around for a while."
John Mayer would know she didn't write the songs as she claimed. He didn't/doesn't write his either.
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The Russian spy ring has features a lot like what I and Katherine go through with the people who have moved in our neighborhood. There are several of them. Same thing. They blend in with the neighbors raise their kids act like they are just law abiding citizens paying the bills like everyone else. All the while they watch our mail box, watch the house wait for any opportunity to get in, watch anyone who comes into the house, such as work men etc. Then approach those people if they think they can bribe them to serve a useful purpose for the next time they come into the house. We were recently robbed again of jewelry this way.
The power of the bribe is unfortunately and sadly totally unstoppable. I am not aware of anyone who doesn't seem to be able to be bribed so it seems.
What did Bamster call it? "The culture of the birbe" when speaking of other countries? Sad truth is it is a way of life everwhere including here.
So neighbors and friends of the spy ring are stunned about the Russian spying. All I can say to them is they have learned a good lesson in life from this.
As I have myself over the last ten years.
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This morning as I leave the house I see a large dump truck next to our back yard fence gate with guy sitting there reading paper, our "neighbor" who is a plant sitting on her porch like she does off and on all day everyday smoking her cigarette on the other side of house, new guy who just moved in standing in his driveway directly next to our house, pickup truck from guy named Mcyintire who I have found following me, his vehicle is registered to son who moved in the house three doors down. He doesn't live there he lives 30 minutes away but the truck is registered to the son. they moved out from Brooklyn . They *all* moved in after us.
They were hoping to get in the house after I leave and if Katherine lets out the dogs in our yard and by accident leaves the back door unattended even for minutes.
They will know exactly where in our house to go, understand from monitoring us the time needed to do what they need to do, and sit and wait, and have all the people in the scam in place. They will get in the house, take what they want and leave no obvious trace. The only thing(s) missing will be related to songs, lyrics, copyrights, documents related to Fidelity trading scam where they were robbing Katherine by some insider at the trading desk or at Fidelity.
I don't know who is the one calling the shots behind all these low level bozos who are being dircted by someone who is a professional crook who does this for a living for the music industry middle men. I am told the big guys corporate execs at sony, disney, Gaffner etc. are not directly doing this. They are reportedly just looking the other way. I am not so sure. But that is what some have told me.
I have been told there is an Irish Mafia that has a group that does this as well as the Italians. The Blacks in music of course are all associatecd with the drug gangs.
It is obvious to us that when there is something they *must* get in our house we see more and more obvious people wlaking dogs, smoking cigarettes, parking in the Chruch lot next to our house. We get offers for service, like a plumber who is offering low rates (just while we happen to need one), left on our door, on the local cable station, the neigbhors two doors down, the Flanagens had a miad crew come in driving the exact same model '95 black Caddy I used to drive. Not only that after a slid on ice and crack into a sign pole causing a dent in the front, so did their car later show a dent almost exactly the same location as mine. I suspect they were going to park it where I usually park my car and make it look like it was me at my house while they were in the house.
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A nice post on powerline over the weekend about one of my guitar heroes. Unlike CCP's experience, Garcia always gave credit to his lyricist and to the original writers of the songs he performed even though he normally changed the songs musically to his liking. The song below is from BB King.
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http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2010/08/026895.php
Today is the anniversary of Jerry Garcia's birth and an appropriate occasion to remember his contribution to American popular music. Garcia made his mark as a musician and songwriter with the Grateful Dead, but at heart he remained an unreconstructed devotee of folk, bluegrass and country music. He had an encyclopedic knowledge of folk music in particular. Garcia's devotion to traditional American music was the source of the Dead's commercial breakthrough with the beautiful Workingman's Dead and American Beauty albums in 1970 .
Garcia's inventive work with the Dead on electric guitar is well known; less so is his work on acoustic guitar with mandolin virtuoso David Grisman. Garcia had a long friendship with Grisman dating back to 1964 based on their mutual love of bluegrass music. Garcia recruited Grisman to make a key instrumental contribution to American Beauty. In the mid-1970's Garcia joined forces with Grisman in the bluegrass ensemble Old and In the Way.
Garcia played distinctive Scruggs-style banjo while Grisman, Peter Rowan (guitar), John Kahn (bass) and Vassar Clements (fiddle) filled out the group.
Garcia and Grisman continued recording together mostly for fun over the years. In the atmospheric video below they play an acoustic version of B.B. King's "The Thrill is Gone." In his biography of Garcia, Blair Jackson quotes the director of the video (the son of one of the Dead's drummers) regarding Garcia: "We cut his hair, put him in a suit and tie, and had him there for twelve hours." The director quotes Garcia saying, "I'd never do this for the Grateful Dead, never in a million years."
Garcia died of a massive heart attack at age 53 in 1995 while in treatment for a nasty heroin habit. Jackson suggests that Garcia was persuaded to enter treatment because of the toll his habit was taking on his health and his playing. The devastation wrought by drugs on so many talented musicians of the 1960's is a story that remains to be told.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKvDtWeyO5c[/youtube]
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Doug,
My first date with Katherine was to a BBKing concert in WPB, Fla.
After over a decade of getting our lives destroyed by music thieves my/and her enchantment with anything to do with music is, well let's just say, the
"thrill is gone". She now realizes she was getting robbed almost certainly all the way back to ~1989. The year she was in Nashville.
BBK has broken through. Many of the other old time Black musicians have their own long stories about how they were treated like garbage and left to rot.
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Usually when they start telling you the "story" behind the lyrics it is because the person didn't write it and it is pure BS to cover it. The rush out of the song is very suspicious. Often they rush it out because it is stolen or has been stolen not by downloaders but by the middle men. As soon as they get the evidence they throw it out there. Delays in singers coming out with their albums are because they can't steal the evidence. They will not do a song if the real writer hass evidence. They will wait days, weeks, months or even years. That it why it is so rare to hear in the news when anyone gets caught. And then there is a behind the scenes deal or they work on stealing the evidence as it comes forward and we never hear in the nuews anything about it again.
In any case I will look forward to seeing the lyrics. Taylor Swift is really Taylor little shit.
Every day lately there are people sitting outside our house. Today one guy was sitting in a SUV in front of the house next to us. Hey it is only 90 degrees. After I passed him twice he finally dirves away. Later some guy in a small truck again sitting out facing our back door for no obvious reason until he left after I watched him for five minutes. Meantime Katherine's computer keeps crashing while they buy time.
****Taylor Swift, 'Mine' -- Story Behind the Lyrics
Posted Aug 5th 2010 9:00AM by Nancy Dunham Comments [2] Print
Big Machine Records
The lyrics to Taylor Swift's new song, 'Mine,' give fans a glimpse into her love life that you'll only hear her sing about. In a webchat held last week, the 20-year old superstar told fans she won't discuss her personal life in interviews, but she "definitely sings about it," especially on her upcoming album 'Speak Now,' set for release on October 14.
Taylor's management team announced on August 4 that they rushed 'Mine,' the album's first single, to iTunes and country radio after "an unauthorized low-quality mp3 file of the single appeared online earlier today. As the low-quality file started to spread virally the decision was made to rush release 'Mine' to iTunes and Country radio to ensure that Taylor's fans were able to hear the single as she intended."
During the webchat, Taylor also told fans that she didn't use co-writers for the songs on her upcoming album because most of the lyric ideas came to her late at night on her Fearless tour. She also shared the very personal story behind what led her to write 'Mine.'
It's a song that is about my tendency to run from love. It's sort of a recent tendency.
For me, every really direct example of love I have had in front of me has ended in goodbye and has ended in break ups. So I think I've developed this pattern of running away when it is time to fall in love and stay in a relationship.
This song is about finding the exception to that and finding someone who would make you believe in love and realize that it could work out. I'm never, ever going to go past hoping that love can work out. I'm always going to be very hopeful and blindly optimistic when it comes to love even if it does seem like it's very hard.
Tune in to Aol Radio's Top Country radio station, where 'Mine' is playing in heavy rotation, here.****
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Semper Fi!!
Dog Brothers here are some Devil Dogs
http://www.thewarriorsong.com/video.html (http://www.thewarriorsong.com/video.html)
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This AM John Rich was on TV saying he has so many songs that he doesn't know what to do with them all. They will never get to radio so if anyone wants them for "free" one can go to his website. I don't know what songs he is talking about but Gretchen Wilson another alleged liar stated he had hundreds of songs.
There is something totoally dishonest about his claim this AM.
Folks, take it from me. This guy I alledge is a gigantic crook. He does not have the evidence from Katherine to do the songs (if they are hers). Or, he cannot come up with the melodies. I hope they aren't Katherine's. I hope for his reputation they are not.
This guy wound never give away songs. It is ludicrous to think he would give them away. I would NOT/NEVER go this site. YOu risk getting viruses from him or he and the criminals who do the actual stealing will find out who you are. This would be one way to search and find people who do write so they can see if they are any good and then rip them off.
All these music lyrics contests are offered for the same purpose. Give me a break. There are so many dozens and dozens of these singer/songwriter geniuses they are suddenly quiet and without content? Suddenly they are holding song writing contests?
Folks never believe any of these hucksters that they are "giving" away anything to you. It is just the opposite.
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Those of you who read my Rambling Rumination "The Song of my Youth" may recognize that I was writing about this sort of thing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrTS7b028A8&feature=related
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I know the sound of this band isn't anything new but its kind of refreshing.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZJLi0f0ZIA[/youtube]
Yeah I could go back and listen to the music that inspires these guys but I'm really diggin this album.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shM3Nm-wRrs[/youtube]
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Writer Bill Wyman--no relation to the Stones' bassist--channels a Mick Jagger response to Keith Richards' new book. An interesting piece of writing:
Please Allow Me To Correct a Few Things
Mick Jagger responds to Keith Richards about his new autobiography.
By Bill Wyman
Posted Friday, Nov. 5, 2010, at 7:15 AM ET
Editor's note: On a recent morning, the journalist Bill Wyman received a UPS package containing a typed manuscript. On reading it, he saw that it seemed to be the thoughts, at some length, of singer Mick Jagger on the recently published autobiography of his longtime songwriting partner in the Rolling Stones, Keith Richards. A handwritten note on an old piece of Munro Sounds stationery read: "Bill: For the vault. M."
From this, Wyman surmised that the package was intended for Jagger and Richards' former bandmate, the bassist Bill Wyman, who has assiduously overseen the band's archives over the past five decades and with whom Wyman the journalist coincidentally shares the same name. Wyman the journalist, a longtime rock critic, was once threatened with a cease-and-desist letter from Wyman the bassist's Park Avenue attorneys and felt no compunction about perusing the contents of the package. The manuscript he received is reprinted below.
I am, I see here, marginally endowed, if I read Keith's sniggering aright. I do not sing well, either. I am not polite to employees; indeed, I have even been known to say, "Oh, shut up, Keith," in band meetings. I do not appreciate the authenticity of the music or the importance of what we do. I want to "lord it over" the band, like James Brown. I am "insufferable." I slept with Anita.
Most of that is in just the first quarter of this overlong book, but a tattoo of my failings sounds all through it and culminates in almost 20 full pages of rambling invective near the end.
I don't mind this, really, for reasons I hope are understandable and will get into later. This is all from a guy pushing 70 for whom gays are still "poofters" and women "bitches." I think so many things about Keith. We were close, the two of us, for many years. We had known each other in grade school, if you can believe it, in the same undistinguished eastern suburb. Then we bumped into each other in a train station at 18 or so and started talking about the blues. We were different; I'd already been on TV with my father, who was a fairly notable expert on physical education at the time. Keith was … rougher, let's say. For the next nearly 10 years, we were rarely apart. Even after we were famous, we lived at each others' flats or houses. We were still very young, and, like puppies, we'd cluster together.
We were barely a band before our lives changed, but I think still of the time we spent, squalidly, before we were a group, in a very cold and small flat, more filthy than you can imagine. Our flatmate Jimmy Phelge was a veritable comic virtuoso with a pair of soiled underwear. Certainly we—I—wanted to be famous, but can I point out our road to it was not absurd, exactly, but unthinkable, in the sense that we couldn't even imagine a way to do it? The London music scene was entirely insignificant, and we didn't even play the trad jazz (Charlie's métier), which dominated.
Still, we practiced day and night out of some unspoken impetus, innocent suburban boys abruptly living quite near the edge of a dark milieu. This brings me to Brian, who played guitar very well and was a brittle devil. We knew that because of many things, not least that he spent an inappropriate amount of time beating up his girls in the next room. I'm not proud of that. Keith gives himself (too much, I think) credit for rescuing Anita, eventually, from Brian; but that of course was years later. Earlier, we both listened to or watched his cruelty, in the bedroom and elsewhere; we paid no attention to the half-dozen kids he'd fathered and ignored the savagery he accomplished on tour. We didn't know better; we were priapic jackals ourselves, fucking even one another's girlfriends if they got left, as it were, unattended. But it was wrong to have let Brian do that, and Keith should have owned up to this in the book.
I supposed it is a karmic justice for Brian that we continued to watch as he descended from there to hell, harried by the police and increasingly incapacitated artistically, which further estranged him from us. Oh, that's not true; we didn't just watch. We ushered him along, ridiculing him, you might say, to death as he began to lose his ability to contribute. Again, we were young. What were you doing at 25? We didn't know about depression, insanity, addiction, or what acid might have done to him. It's unclear to me whether the drugs diminished his ability to contribute or whether the drugs were in effect a way to cover up something that wasn't there. The first song Keith and I wrote was a hit single; Brian couldn't write a song to save his life, literally. And let's remember that he was a total asshole.
I'm digressing but I'm trying to explain where we came from. We didn't have a template. Nothing against Steven Tyler, but there's a difference. We felt around in the dark; we were famous within weeks; and, in the end, we left a body or two behind us. We did these things, good and bad, together; we were friends.
The second important thing is Keith's talent. We took it for granted, in a way, as he says. We felt it was our duty to get together and write a song, one good song each day we worked. He is kind to say I could take what he gave me and run with it. But he is the one who gave me the actual song to write the lyrics to. He wrote a dozen Top 10 hits in five years, and, after the band added Mick Taylor and essentially grew up, he wrote most of Beggars Banquet and Let It Bleed. Again: What were you doing at 25? It's interesting to me how no previous song we'd recorded would have a respectable place on those albums; and any song on them would have seem out of place even on Aftermath or Between the Buttons. Keith's lurch forward was amazing. As a pure rock (not folk or pop) songwriter, I think he is not just without peer. I think he is unrivaled in depth and growth, from "As Tears Go By" to "Satisfaction" to "Jumping Jack Flash" to, I don't know, "Gimme Shelter. " "Monkey Man." "Street Fighting Man." The primal feel of the chording. The musicality of the intros and breaks. The innovation of the recording—cruder, no doubt, but I will argue far more emotionally powerful than the Beatles'. The winding, intermixed guitars he almost desperately loved. Without him, what would I have been? Peter Noone? It is hard to use a word like integrity about a band as compromised, as self-bloodied, as we were. But for some years, unlike any other group, the Beatles included, we declared war on that silly, hypocritical, repressive, and arbitrary society in which we lived. The only ammunition we had were Keith's songs. The lyrics, I confess now, may have been in their defiance just épater la bourgeoisie and in their poesy derivatively Zimmerman-esque. Even when they weren't, no one would have paid attention if the chords weren't arresting, irrefutable. The songs spoke primarily through their music, not their words. Keith's doting fans nattering on about the ultimate avatar of rock 'n' roll authenticity irritate me, it's true; but he may to this day be underappreciated.
So those two things I think, are important. Our bond; his talent. We blink at that point, and go 40 years forward, and he has written a book that says, essentially, that I have a small dick. That I am a bad friend. That I am unknowable.
The reviewers, who idolize Keith, don't ask why this is all in here. We have rarely spoken of such things publicly, and tangentially even then. We don't talk about it in private, either, and, no, he hasn't been in my dressing room in 20 years. I thought we both learned that there is no point in sharing anything at all with the press, save a few tidbits for the upbeat The Stones are back in top rocking form! article that accompanies each of our tours. I think Keith never appreciated the tedious hours I had to spend with Jann Wenner to accomplish that.
But I know why it is all here.
In the book we get the stories.
Oh, the stories. The rock, the girls. The car wrecks, the arrests. You read them on the printed page, delivered in what, I must admit, is a pretty fair written representation of Keith's slightly tangential, drawling, effeminate delivery, resting charmingly just this side of the incomprehensible.
I was generally made familiar with the stories in a different context. They were generally related by an assistant or a lawyer, tour manager or a publicist, poking their head into a room. Keith's disappeared. Keith's asleep backstage and can't be roused for the show. No one will wake him because he keeps a loaded gun under his pillow and grabs it and points when riled. Keith fell asleep in the studio again. No, Keith isn't mixing the album. He flew off to Jamaica, and, no, we don't know when he will be back. Keith's asleep. Keith's asleep. Keith's asleep.
The scamp. Those are but one tier, and a fairly innocuous one, of the many times I was vouchsafed news of my partner. The next tier is more colorful. Keith (or his favorite sax player/drug runner/drug buddy/hanger-on) has slugged a photographer/destroyed a hotel room/gotten into a fistfight with the locals/fallen into a coma. Oh, yes, and the police are here. (Because police are whom you want backstage at a rock concert or at a recording studio.)
Or: The bandmate Keith personally vouched for is freebasing again. This last was of some interest to me, because it meant that I got to sing at a stadium backed by not one but two guitarists falling over onstage. Keith likes to talk a lot about his getting clean from heroin. It is not correspondingly apprehended that he replaced the heroin comprehensively with liquor. Given a choice I select the slurring alcoholic over the comatose junkie as a lifelong professional partner, and I say this with some knowledge of the two alternatives. But neither is strictly desirable.
And, yes, they do fall over onstage. (Or asleep on a chair in the studio.) I laugh at it now and blame no one but myself. Why, Keith gave me his "personal guarantee" Woody would not be freebasing on tour.
And yet I was surprised when it happened. I take the point that professionalism, one's word, rock 'n' roll merriment … these are fungible things in our world. It is a fair charge that I have become less tolerant in these matters over the decades. In our organization, inside this rather unusual floating circus we call home, I am forced into the role of martinet, the one who gets blamed for silly arbitrary rules. (Like, for a show in front of 60,000 people for which we are being paid some $6 or $7 million for a few hours' work, I like to suggest to everyone that we start on time, and that we each have in place a personal plan, in whatever way suits us best, to stay conscious for the duration of the show.)
So I will take that point. All of the forgoing was just … a little outré behavior on tour. Let's go to the next tier—again, of matters one is informed of with some regularity, this not over months, not years, but entire decades. Keith's been arrested with a mason jar full of heroin and a shopping bag full of other drugs and drug paraphernalia and is charged with drug trafficking. That was his baggage for a weekend in Toronto. It is hard to play a show with a catatonic guitarist, harder still when he is in jail for 10 years. I won't even get into the fact that this came right when I had every record label in the world fighting to sign us, and in an instant my negotiating power was vaporized. Here's a baroque bulletin from the archives: Anita's 17-year-old boyfriend has accidentally shot himself, in Keith's house—Keith's bedroom—with a gun Keith left lying around. Young Marlon, then perhaps 10, saw Anita, covered in blood, coming down the stairs distraught, and God knows it could have been Marlon playing with the gun. Or: Keith's driven his car off the road (again) with Marlon inside (again). In his book Keith stands back, amazed at the things that just … happen to him. He is frequently the victim of faulty wiring in the hotels in which we bivouac; a surprising number of times this phenomenon has caused fires. Ritz-Carltons are not built the way they use to be, I guess. Redlands burned down a couple of times as well, as did a house he was renting in Laurel Canyon. It's a wonder Marlon survived his childhood. A third child Keith disposed of by sending her off to his mum back in Dartford I to raise. The second? That was another son, who was left with his paranoid, unstable, heroin-addict mother and didn't make it past infancy. Keith says he blames himself, and on that at least I think we can agree.
It is said of me that I act above the rest of the band and prefer the company of society swells. Would you rather have had a conversation with Warren Beatty, Andy Warhol, and Ahmet Ertegun … or Keith, his drug mule Tony, and the other surly nonverbal members of his merry junkie entourage? Keith actually seems not to understand why I would want my dressing room as far away as possible from that of someone who travels with a loaded gun. And for heaven's sake. No sooner did Keith kick heroin than Charlie took it up. In the book Keith blames me for not touring during the 1980s. I was quoted, unfortunately, saying words to the effect of "the Rolling Stones are a millstone around my neck." This hurt Keith's feelings. He thinks it was a canard flung from a fleeting position of advantage in my solo career, the failing of which he delights in. He's not appreciating the cause and effect. Can you imagine going on tour with an alcoholic, a junkie, and a crackhead? Millstone wasn't even the word. I spent much of the 1980s looking for a new career, and it didn't work. If I had it to do over again I would only try harder.
When I came back I resolved to do at least something well. Which brings us to money. We did not entirely mismanage our career in the 1960s, save for the calamity of signing with Allen Klein, who, with fatal strokes of our pens, obtained the rights and total control of our work throughout the 1960s. It was my responsibility. Keith downplays this, but the fact is we signed the thief's papers. It was all done legally. Klein was a Moriarity, truly; he didn't wait to sign us to steal. The signing was the theft, a product of a scheme so encompassing that in the end, he paid us a pittance and walked off with our songs. This is by far the single most important nonmusical event in our history, and yet it is rarely remarked on. I was not 30 and had lost us a historic treasure.
In the 1970s, we worked very hard, and with Some Girls we eventually sold a lot of records, but in reality you couldn't make much money back then, even touring. In the early 1970s we might play for a period of, say, two months, 10,000- and 20,000-seat halls at $6 or $10 a ticket. Back then, we were lucky to take half the gross home. You do the math. Then take out expenses and manager and lawyer fees ... and split the remainder five ways. Nor did we live frugally. It got better over the decade, and Keith and I had the songwriting, of course, but compare us with Paul or Elton during the 1970s (who outsold us by many times, for starters, and among other things did not split their income with anyone) and our fame was entirely inconsistent with our back accounts.
In 1981, I put us in stadiums and charged a more reasonable tariff and might have made us more money that summer than we'd earned in our entire career up to that point. And I've done it several times since—each time, I mean, to be precise, literally earning close to as much as we had the previous 30 or 40 years in total, including those previous tours. The Bigger Bang outing grossed more than $588 million—more than a million dollars a day for 18 months—and we pocketed the lion's share of it. If the promoters didn't like it they could raise price of the nachos, or the parking. And I'm not even mentioning the sponsorships, the ticket fees, the merchandise …
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I sound, now, like the accountant who earns my bandmates' jeers. But I don't remember Keith complaining about these sums, or, incidentally, that it took me 20 years to remember to give Ronnie a full share, just as we both pretended not to hear when Mick Taylor, or Ronnie, asked for credit for songs they'd written.
Does Keith really sigh for the good old days on tour? Shabby theaters, shitty sound? Wound-up kids standing for hours in the hot summer sun in dreadful mid-American cities waiting for a chance to race recklessly for general-admission seats? Us enduring a day of hassle and travel to take home perhaps $3,500 each? I remember Keith asleep or not showing up until hours after the scheduled start time. Our feral fans running, fighting, throwing rocks at police. Today, the shows start promptly, there are video screens for the folks in the back, and we offer $1,000-a-seat ducats for the fat cats.
Here's the thing: I'm a rock star. What is the measure of my success if not the biggest rock and roll tour of all time?
I know what you're thinking. It's what Keith thinks, too.
What about the music. Isn't it all, in the end, about the music?
I must note that the Stones rarely get a bad review, no matter how poor our albums. (Jann again, and so many wannabe Janns; how is it that we somehow manage, again and again, to record our "best album since Some Girls"?)
But let me ask you to imagine yourself, as I was, unimaginably, partnered with the writer of "Satisfaction," "Paint It Black," "19th Nervous Breakdown," "Honky Tonk Woman," etc. And then imagine that your partner, seemingly overnight, lost some essential part of his talents.
Not, as is commonly supposed, sometime perhaps in the 1980s, when the Rolling Stones' decline in creativity was on obvious display, but earlier. A lot earlier. Like, say, 1972 at the latest.
Those who like Exile on Main St. like its denseness, its mystery, its swampy commitment. Accidentally and amid no little chaos, we conjured up something dirty, impenetrable, and, in parts, compelling. But I think its murk promises depths that aren't there. There are decent but no major songs on Exile. Let's go back an album, to Sticky Fingers. I wrote "Brown Sugar." Mick Taylor wrote "Sway" and most of "Moonlight Mile," and made "Can't You Hear Me Knocking" his own. Keith and I together did most of the rest, like "Wild Horses," but, in the end, he didn't write most of the thing's best songs.
From there, there's Exile. Some nice tracks— "Rocks Off," "Happy"—but there is no "Gimme Shelter" or "Let It Bleed." Chords that once threatened society in some significant now way rarely radiated outward.
The next few years were difficult. I don't want to say Keith wrote no songs. He did. But successively, in each album, the process became more difficult, as both his capacity for the job declined along with the quality of what he did write. He mocks the disco songs—"Hot Stuff," "Miss You," "Emotional Rescue." But what would the commercial impact of those albums have been without those immediate hits? We were being outsold by everyone from Supertramp to the Doobie Brothers as it was. At the same time I had to come up with tracks and weasel promising material out of our cohort and not give up songwriting credit, which I accomplished in all but one or two cases.
The resulting albums are, with perhaps the exception of Some Girls, flaccid and unconvincing. The aforementioned disco hits. A little lyrical naughtiness ("Starfucker," "Some Girls"). The earnest ballad in which the incorrigible Stones display some unexpected touches of maturity ("Memory Motel," "Waiting on a Friend"). Lots and lots of undistinguished filler, clavinet playing by Billy Preston, Motown covers … And for some of the good stuff Keith wasn't even there. For It's Only Rock and Roll I did the title single with Woody and Bowie. Taylor and I constructed the splendid "Time Waits for No One," a fantasia, alluring to this day, for percussion, piano, and guitar. (I don't think Keith has ever let us play it live.) ("Sway," either.)
I will testify that Keith was intermittently sentient during some part of the recording of Some Girls. Yes we were fully Manhattanized at this point, because I live here and that's what I found interesting. The geographic location of Keith's talent, being nowhere, wasn't available for evocation.
By the time of Tattoo You I was exhausted. Entirely drained of ideas. I told Chris Kimsey to ransack the archives. "Start Me Up" was a very old song, with some 20, 30, 40 takes as a reggae ... and one with a real rock guitar. It turned out to be our last real hit, and the arc of our career would look a lot different if we hadn't found it. With it, we could plausibly least claim to be hitmakers in the 1980s. "Waiting on a Friend," that symbol of our new-found maturity, was, if memory serves, from a centuries-old session with me and Mick Taylor. About our work from the rest of the 1980s and 1990s, the less said the better. Can you sing a single chorus from Dirty Work? Name a single track? We certainly don't play songs from those records in concert if we can help it.
I go into such detail to describe the arc of our decline accurately but also note this sad corollary: Keith brought something out of me, way back when. Through Exile, I felt I had to rise to his songs. When he checked out creatively, I lost something important. While there is some spark, I guess, in "Some Girls" or "Shattered" or whatever, however contrived, I know most of the other songs sucked. In the 1980s and '90s it got worse. I could conjure up only the most banal cliché or the most pretentious polysyllabic nonsense. Compare "Sympathy for the Devil" with "Heartbreaker." One Godard made a film about. The other is a TV movie. I literally wrote a song called "She's So Cold" and then, a few years later, one called "She Was Hot."
Now, Keith went through the same thing. I think this is why Keith lost himself with heroin and now drinks: to stave off the pressure to match himself and dull the knowledge that he can't any more (and, back then, couldn't). It's trite, maybe, but there's a reason a guy spends a decade in a haze, and the three decades since in a stupor. Keith's rancor is almost entirely based on the fact that it was not, in the end, easy to keep the appearances of what in the public mind is the Rolling Stones, and the process wasn't always pretty. But I did it, and, among other things, to this day it is hardly in the public mind that Keith Richards hasn't written a significant rock 'n' roll song in nearly 35 years.
For that I get Keith's book.
Why did he write it? Or, rather, having decided to write it all down, why did he devote so much of it to carping about me?
Well, he's not talking about me, really. He's just trying to get my attention, I think, in the end. The remaining part of the rancor comes from the fact that he knows he lost me, many years ago. It's funny—Keith doesn't write good rock songs much any more, but what he does do, every four or five years, is craft a beautiful little ballad. Since Tattoo You Keith's written and sung a couple of tracks per album. (We had a huge fight about his putting three on Bridges to Babylon; I didn't like it, but didn't have anything else to offer, even with three years since the previous album. Why one of the songs I did write is now co-credited to k.d. lang is a matter to be discussed on some other day. ) Generally, one of these is a throwaway, and the other ... is something gorgeous. Put them all together along with songs he wrote solo and sang from the early years—"You Got the Silver," "Happy," and so forth, all the way up to "Thru & Thru" and "All About You"—and you have a CD of no little power and emotion. (I've done it.)
These songs are more honest than his book. In "The Worst," he says something about "I'm the worst kind of guy/ For you to be around." That's a song that might ring true for many people. It makes me think about how Keith lost me only after I lost him. In an older song, he explains a worldview I find a bit disturbing, and I would like to point out that since from most peoples' perspective I have flirted the edge of total decadence my entire life I can make that observation with some authority:
Slipped my tongue in someone else's pie
Tasted better every time
She turned green and tried to make me cry
Being hungry
Ain't no crime
Again, the honesty is bracing. I think Keith puts just about any of his manifold urges on a par with hunger, and I think we can agree the world would be a dangerous place if that was the norm. It explains many, many of his actions over the years. In the book he tells the story of going to meet Patti Hansen's parents for the first time—drunk, holding an open bottle of Jack, and with one of his fucktard friends in tow. You can imagine how the evening ended. I'm sure Keith thinks it's OK. ("Being nervous ain't no crime.") ("Oh, shut up, Keith," I think.) With that perspective—and the added benefit of being rich and famous and having most of his deplorable actions do nothing but burnish his image—Keith's way in the world has been, in a certain way and ignoring, for the moment, the people who died, a blessed one.
I certainly bless it. I stood by him and propped him up and didn't fire his ass for many, many years. It would have ended the Stones, of course, so maybe I was being selfish. In a way, even comatose he had a marquee name; as my meal ticket, you might say, it suited me to let him doze. I took the reins until, when he finally woke up, he found that he had no place in the management. He's angry about that, too. Yes, let's let Keith Richards have a hand in overseeing an operation that generates $1 million a day in revenue. I don't know what else I could have done. Later, one grows older and becomes more informed about such things, and I saw I was supposed to have held an elaborate ceremony called an "intervention." Society could have effectively halted the upheavals of the 1960s simply by requiring all of us to "intervene" with one another. In any event, considering half our circle was on heroin and the rest were coke fiends, I think it wouldn't have efficacious in our circumstances.
He talks about me, too, in his solo songs, less subtly: "I'm so sick and tired/ Of hanging around/ Jerks like you." People ask me why I let him put these on the album. I think: Oh, why not? It's a great song, and he can sing it, and he can write the book, too. He's trying to get my attention. To connect. To have it be how it once was. At our age, I think there's no basis for it. Keith celebrates his own unchanging character, and I have had quite enough of that.
But, still, when I think of Keith, I think sometimes of how someone different from the book comes out through these songs. Once in a great while he detaches and looks down at his corporeal self. "I think I lost my touch," he sings on one of them; "It's just another song and it's slippin' away." Rock and roll is strange. When a song is beautiful—those spare guitars rumbling and chiming, by turns—the words mean so much more, and there, for a moment, I believe him, and feel for him.
Or I think about "How Can I Stop" which may end up being Keith's last great song.
"How can I stop … once I start?" he murmurs, over and over again. "How can I stop once I start?"
It's about rock 'n' roll, of course, and playing guitar, and his tenure, and mine, in our unusual coalition. It's also about heroin and everything else he can't stop ingesting. But again it's about Keith himself, who once started never did stop—through the fame, the songs, the concerts and the women and the drugs; and the violence and senselessness, the addictions and the deaths, the ruined lives, the petty and large-scale cruelties. At the end Keith got Wayne Shorter to do a sax solo that is itself almost an out-of-body experience, perhaps the loveliest moment on one of our records. It goes on and on over the last two minutes of a very long track, and the end is almost a … an exaltation, perhaps? I am lost there. It's something I'm not sure I ever saw evidenced in real life, and something that isn't in his book. It's the sound—or at least the closest thing Keith Richards will ever admit to it—of a conscience.
Like Slate on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter.
Bill Wyman is the former arts editor of NPR and Salon.com. He can be reached at hitsville@gmail.com.
Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2273611/
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http://www.wolfgangsvault.com/?utm_source=NL&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=101119#interumVideoPlayer
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Katherine and I were one of the first ones to move into Celebration, the town that Disney built. We moved there from South Florida because we thought it would be a pleasant place to live and since Katherine is visually impaired (legally blind) it would be ideal for to be able to walk to destinations, make friends and maybe a good investment.
Well it was anything but wonderful life. Our house was wired, our internet connections were controlled, our phone was tapped, we had bugs in placed in the house, our neighbors were bribed to watch for when we left the house, we rented a small efficiency behind our house over the garage to a number of tenants all of whom were plants to rob us, our mail carriers would screw up delivery of our mail so crooks could surveillance it and if needed steal or manipulate copyrights sent to and from the COpyright Office, bank employees were bribed to get in our safety box, new gardners came into town and were immediately doing all our neighbors lawns so they could have access to wireless devices and be near our house, at least once we had three people wearing exterminator outfits like the one we used show up at our porch even though the company denied anyone was sent and they never sent three people at once, our neighbors never saw a thing, though one did admit she didn't know how we could stand it, and would have committed suicide by then. A neighbor moved in from Alabama who appeared to have bribed the garbage man to drop off our garbage at his house which was a few houses down his run, we would be watched while we walked our dogs and someone would be going through our house, Katherine's uncle was biribed, her mother, an 80 yo "friend" of hers who I made the mistake of trusting and letting stay in our house, we had a computer phD come into the house (worst mistake of all) and let him have access to all our computers thinking he was looking for evidence for us while instead he was rigging our systems and erasing all evidence, painters painting just the back of our neighbors house for several days in an attempt to wait for us to leave the house (walk the dogs, etc) so they could run in and take whatever they wanted, on the other side of us a guy and girl were doing some yard work and I say a straight stick in the very center of my driveway appearing as some sort of signal that our house was the target house, when I turned my back and went upstairs in our efficiency Katherine could hear the girl screaming to the guy to "get it, get it" right outside a window on the side of our house and Katherine called me and by the time I was able to see what they were doing these two characters were on other side of the the house next to us as though nothing happened.
Our gardner was eventually bribed. I remember Katherine telling me he was stunned when he saw a sherriff's car come aruond the corner and look exactly at the two of them speaking and immediately turn around and go back the other way. Even he was startled and siad "did you see that, that was weird".
Eventually he was bribed and possibly intimidated (he had a dirt bike accident) and turned not so nice to us and was obviously going around looking for windows he or his new empolyee could get into. I could go on. These stories are only a small part of what was done to us in Disney's little town. all the while Disney was making money off her lyrics, Lou Perlman was making money off them, Paul Bittles Harlyn KIng or which ever name you want to use was also doing the same. Even one of our tenants, a pyschopath, Joe (a gay waiter at one of the Disney restaurants) said "everyone in Orlando is making money off your songs but you"!
Rascall Flatts got famous as did countless other pop and country singers many of whom are also suddenly going by the phrase "singersongerwriter".
There was lyric streets dot com that has finally gone out of business, Sony Nashville was established with a catelogue of Katherine's song lyrics.
Yes Celebration was supposed to be a dream town. It was our worst nightmare. I was warned that leaving the state would not make this problem go away. These kind of criminals will easily follow us around. He was absolutely right. The exact same thing is happening to us in NJ. Our house is totally wired.
We have been and are terrorized. OUr lives has become a living hell. All because Katherine is a genius talent at writing ready to go sellable music lyrics. The music industry is criminal from top to bottom. Does anyone care? Short answer - NO at all. I learned anyone can be bribed. Any one who thinks otherwise is a fool.
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20101202/D9JRQLRO0.html
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There is and had been crime in Celebration. Disney used to cover it up to avoid the negative publicity. ONe PI hired to investigate a rape was told by witnesses they were instructed not to speak. Mickey Mouse my ass.
****Disney town sees death for 2nd time in week
Email this Story
Dec 3, 6:50 AM (ET)
CELEBRATION, Fla. (AP) - Authorities were investigating another death Friday in the town Disney built just days after reporting its first homicide in its 14-year existence. This time it was a man who apparently killed himself after shooting at deputies.
Craig Foushee, 52, barricaded himself in a home Thursday for more than 14 hours, according to an Osceola County Sheriff's Office report. He shot at deputies several times, but deputies never returned fire because they were unable to acquire a target and no deputies were injured, authorities said.
Deputies entered the home early Friday and found him dead of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Sheriff's spokeswoman Twis Lizasuain said there was no connection between Foushee and Matteo Patrick Giovanditto, who was found slain in a condominium Tuesday. That homicide was the first for Disney's master-planned, picture-perfect central Florida community with 11,000 residents.
Giovanditto lived alone with his Chihuahua and had been slain over the long Thanksgiving weekend, authorities said. Neighbors hadn't seen him for days, so they filed a missing person's report, then went into his condo a day later and found him.
Giovanditto's death was an isolated incident, Lizasuain said.****
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It is not that your friends have been unable to steal more lyrics from Katherine, it is she is too happy to write. It is truly amazing how these people lie all day long.
Another excuse when songs are not successfully stolen is the female stars have babies, the amle stars make up all kinds of excuses. Gretchen wants time with her family. Country singing was secondary. Fat Toby Keith is too busy with his label and promoting others, and the rest of them are too busy doing beneifts and charity work (another way to promote themselves in the meantime)
***Miranda Lambert
By Mike Krumboltz, Yahoo!
Thu, Feb 03, 2011, 4:10 pm PST
This is one of those "good problems." In Ladies Home Journal, the country star says she is too happy to write country songs, which are all about "leaving and sadness." Lambert has good reason to be happy with a new fiancé and Grammy nominations888
The truth is she can't wirte and if her friends cannot "get" her the material she is clueless. So she comes up with this line.
And the public soaks it up like the dupes they are.
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One tip and one song:
Any music in the Youtube public domain can downloaded and converted to MP3 free for home, car or workout using http://www.vidtomp3.com/index.php
A classic song for your playlist, try this brief masterpiece that just keeps getting better with familiarity - and volume. Jupiter is the centerpiece of The Planets by Gustav Holst from almost a hundred years ago. Over a million hits on youtube for this version by Osaka Philharmonica.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3B49N46I39Y
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Shania Twain 'Why Not' airing in May
March 18, 2011 01:45 PM EDT
Shania Twain's new show, Why Not, will begin airing on OWN, on Sunday, May 8. On the show, the country superstar will share her innermost feelings about her failed marriage and her journey to a new beginning. She does so by heading out in to the world to meet people who have inspirational stories of survival after "deep life
struggles."
**What a joke. The multimillionairess got divorced. She is already remarried.***
Twain will go on a tour of sorts to talk with people who have overcome hardships and who have asked themselves the question, "why or why not?" The show will encompass all that Twain has gone through privately over the past couple of years, and will embrace her voyage back to the top.
***Voyage back to the top? Another joke. The issue is she has no songs, no music, couldn't right a song lyric to save her life, and if she could and had the creative talent she would cut an album and it would be back on the radio in minutes.***
OWN (the Oprah Winfrey Network) is a great outlet for Shania Twain to really reach out to people who want to listen. Oprah was very cautious in choosing which shows she would have on her network, and Twain's sounds as though it fits in with the type of inspirational, educative, and stimulating shows that are already airing on OWN.
***the show will be a flop. Twain is a simpleton with no personality. One person who apparently is in the know called her the "biggest bitch in Nashville". Unfornately, I can't prove it but I can only allege all the hits she claim she wrote were stolen (lyrics). Perhaps Mutt Lange did come up with the melodies I don't have any clue about those.***
There are so many people who love and support Twain, and want to see her succeed. Her divorce was very shocking to the watching world, who have yet to see her publicly regain her confidence and her spirit. Why Not will showcase her journey back to the top.
***So many people who love and support Twain. Of course, they love her for the wonderful lady she is, not they want to make tons of money promoting her.***
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Blowin’ in the Idiot Wind
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: April 9, 2011
Bob Dylan may have done the impossible: broken creative new ground in selling out.
The idea that the raspy troubadour of ’60s freedom anthems would go to a dictatorship and not sing those anthems is a whole new kind of sellout — even worse than Beyoncé, Mariah and Usher collecting millions to croon to Qaddafi’s family, or Elton John raking in a fortune to serenade gay-bashers at Rush Limbaugh’s fourth wedding.
Before Dylan was allowed to have his first concert in China on Wednesday at the Worker’s Gymnasium in Beijing, he ignored his own warning in “Subterranean Homesick Blues” — “Better stay away from those that carry around a fire hose” — and let the government pre-approve his set.
Iconic songs of revolution like “The Times They Are a-Changin,’ ” and “Blowin’ in the Wind” wouldn’t have been an appropriate soundtrack for the 2,000 Chinese apparatchiks in the audience taking a relaxing break from repression.
Spooked by the surge of democracy sweeping the Middle East, China is conducting the harshest crackdown on artists, lawyers, writers and dissidents in a decade. It is censoring (or “harmonizing,” as it euphemizes) the Internet and dispatching the secret police to arrest willy-nilly, including Ai Weiwei, the famous artist and architect of the Bird’s Nest, Beijing’s Olympic stadium.
Dylan said nothing about Weiwei’s detention, didn’t offer a reprise of “Hurricane,” his song about “the man the authorities came to blame for something that he never done.” He sang his censored set, took his pile of Communist cash and left.
“The Times They Are Not a-Changin’,” noted The Financial Times under a picture of the grizzled 69-year-old on stage in a Panama hat.
“Imagine if the Tea Party in Idaho said to him, ‘You’re not allowed to play whatever,’ you’d get a very different response,” said an outraged Sophie Richardson of Human Rights Watch.
A 22-year-old Dylan did walk off “The Ed Sullivan Show” when CBS censors told him he couldn’t sing “Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues.”
But he’s the first to admit he cashes in.
David Hajdu, the New Republic music critic, says the singer has always shown a tension between “not wanting to be a leader and wanting to be a celebrity.”
In Hajdu’s book, “Positively 4th Street,” Dylan is quoted saying that critics who charged that he’d sold out to rock ’n’ roll had it backward.
“I never saw myself as a folksinger,” he said. “They called me that if they wanted to. I didn’t care. I latched on, when I got to New York City, because I saw (what) a huge audience there was. I knew I wasn’t going to stay there. I knew it wasn’t my thing. ... I became interested in folk music because I had to make it somehow.”
“Folk music,” he concluded, “is a bunch of fat people.”
He can’t really betray the spirit of the ’60s because he never had it. In his memoir, “Chronicles,” he stressed that he had no interest in being an anti-establishment Pied Piper and that all the “cultural mumbo jumbo” imprisoned his soul and made him nauseated.
“I had very little in common with and knew even less about a generation that I was supposed to be the voice of,” he said.
He wrote that he wanted to have a house with a white picket fence and pink roses in back, live in East Hampton with his wife and pack of kids, eat Cheerios and go to the Rainbow Room and see Frank Sinatra Jr. perform.
“Whatever the counterculture was, I’d seen enough of it,” he wrote. He complained of being “anointed as the Big Bubba of Rebellion, High Priest of Protest, the Czar of Dissent.”
Performing his message songs came to feel “like carrying a package of heavy rotting meat,” he wrote.
Hajdu told me that Dylan has distanced himself from his protest songs because “he’s probably aware of the kind of careerism that’s apparent in that work.” Dylan employed propaganda to get successful but knows those songs are “too rigidly polemical” to be his best work.
“Maybe the Chinese bureaucrats are better music critics than we give them credit for,” Hajdu said, adding that Dylan was now “an old-school touring pro” like Frank Sinatra Sr.
Sean Wilentz, the Princeton professor who wrote “Bob Dylan in America,” said that the Chinese were “trying to guard the audience from some figure who hasn’t existed in 40 years. He’s been frozen in aspic in 1963 but he’s not the guy in the work shirt and blue jeans singing ‘Masters of War.’ ”
Wilentz and Hajdu say you can’t really censor Dylan because his songs are infused with subversion against all kinds of authority, except God. He’s been hard on bosses, courts, pols and anyone corrupted by money and power.
Maybe the songwriter should reread some of his own lyrics: “I think you will find/When your death takes its toll/All the money you made/Will never buy back your soul.”
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...her the material.. She really isn't doing new songs because she doesn't have any or any that she has obtained without evidence that someone else wrote them. IF she was such a creative talent - believe me - she would be singing and selling and promoting.
FWIW this story is total BS. Of course the niave American public will believe it. The reason that Twain is not coming out with any new songs is that she has not been able to buy any. She can't write to save her life. Katherine has not left our house in years guarding what would certainly be some lyrics that professional thieves would steal and sell of to Twain. It has nothing to do about "finding her voice". It is amazing the phoney stories and excuses these people will come up with to give to the naive public.
Katherine and I are watched 24/7. There is so much money involved it is no problem to pay people round the clock to watch us. They move into the neighborhood and appear to go about regular lives while all the time they are watching. I know who some are but there is really not a thing I can do about it.
We almost put down one of our three dogs last week. Around two days later on squak box on CSNBC which Katherine watches most days Aaron Burnett read something off the teleprompter to the effect that lets take a poll if you would get another dog if yours dies. They do this all the time to us. Occasionally it is likely coincidence but much of the time it is someone contacting whoever controls what these news people say over the teleprompter. Someone even commented when she said this something to the effect that it must be an "inside joke". I read how everyone everywhere will have everything about them monitored because of the electronic devices. I promise everyone you do not want to ever become a target. You will live in a suffering tortuous world like we do. Like OBL lived in hiding in a house is like Katherine lives trying to ptrotect her lyrics. We committed no crimes. The crimes are against us.
****Shania Twain Desperate To Find Her Voice Through Tv Show
Country music star Shania Twain's vocal problems became so bad following the break-up of her marriage to producer Mutt Lange, she couldn't even sing in the shower.
The You're The One hitmaker admits she lost the ability to express herself after discovering her husband was romancing her best friend the day after he served her with divorce papers.
In the debut of her new TV series Why Not?, which aired in America on Sunday night (08May11), she says, "I came to the realisation that I had lost my ability to express myself and my ability to sing.
"It physically will not come out of my voice... I couldn't even sing to myself, I couldn't sing in the shower.
"It wasn't one crisis that did it; it's just been a very progressive thing... What if I can never sing again?"
The new show chronicled Twain's efforts to get her singing voice back. The programme's blurb reads: "In the summer of 2010, Shania started a journey to heal herself, inspire others, and find her voice."
On the show, Twain assembles a group made up of family and friends to help inspire her as she plucks up the courage to get back onstage. The group includes her cousin Kenny, who taught the singer to play guitar, her sister Carrie-Ann and her longtime bandmate Cory Churko.****
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Melissa Venema, age 13, is the trumpet soloist. Here is Taps played in its entirety. The Original version of Taps was called Last Post, and was written by Daniel Butterfield in 1801. It was rather lengthy and formal, as you will hear in this clip, so in 1862 it was shortened to 24 notes and re-named Taps. Melissa Venema is playing it on a trumpet whereby the original was played on a bugle. Watch at this site.
http://www.flixxy.com/trumpet-solo-melissa-venema.htm
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Very powerful
http://www.karmatube.org/videos.php?id=1312
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Not sure what to say, very nice piece of music.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ddn4MGaS3N4[/youtube]
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Very nice! Technique is very outside-the-box.
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http://www.wolfgangsvault.com/stanley-jordan/video/the-sounds-of-silence-eleanor-rigby_1005092.html?utm_source=NL&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20120104video
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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ud9gVs-H9d8&feature=related[/youtube]
Haunting. Alice in Chains is good now, better then...
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmv1VhrtYRo
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Woof,
O.K. for all you guys in Europe, listen up. There is this awesome all girl band that is touring Switzerland, Germany, and the U.K. They are a tribute band for AC/DC, did I mention they are awesome? Anyway if you get the chance check them out and pass the word around, they are really great people and want you to send them friend request's via Facebook, they are known as the Backnblack Chicks. https://www.facebook.com/backnblackgirls (https://www.facebook.com/backnblackgirls)
P.C.
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I dunno, I just like the song...
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujv3c0TqLRk[/youtube]
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Replying to something in the "Race, religion, ethnic origin, LGBT, & "discrimination" made me think of this song...
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3y7lUGdfXQ[/youtube]
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http://www.wolfgangsvault.com/fleetwood-mac/concerts/roundhouse-chalk-farm-april-24-1970.html?utm_source=NL&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=120511
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Days before Private James Marshall Hendrix (Jimi to his friends) was officially drummed out of the military, Army brass delivered withering assessments of the 19-year-old soldier. Hendrix, Captain Gilbert Batchman reported, slept on the job, had little regard for regulations, and was once 'apprehended masturbating' in the latrine. Sergeant Louis Hoekstra noted that Hendrix was a 'habitual offender' when it came to missing midnight bed checks and that the Seattle teenager was unable to 'carry on an intelligent conversation.' Hoekstra added that Hendrix, who was once suspected of 'taking dope,' played a musical instrument while off-duty, 'or so he says. This is one of his faults, because his mind apparently cannot function while performing duties and thinking about his guitar.' Those are just two of the gems contained in the late rock star's nearly 100-page Army file, which TSG obtained from the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis. You'll find highlights from the file on the following 18 pages. The documents track Hendrix's messy 13 months in the Army, beginning with his May 1961 three-year enlistment, which came with his assurance that he wasn't a Commie and a handwritten explanation about a juvenile burglary arrest. Hendrix, records show, was a terrible marksman and a recidivist truant. Weeks after ordering a physical and psychiatric examination of Hendrix (who was attached to the 101st Airborne Support Group in Fort Campbell, Kentucky), Capt. Batchman sought to discharge a soldier who was an 'extreme intravert' and whose many problems were not treatable by 'hospitalization and or counseling.' Included in the Army's discharge request were various statements from fellow soldiers, all of whom thought Hendrix deserved to be bounced. James Mattox, for example, recalled an April 1961 incident in which he, Hendrix, and four other soldiers were assigned to wash a ceiling. When Hendrix, who occasionally napped during the cleaning assignment, disappeared at one point, Mattox went looking for him. He quickly found Hendrix in the latrine, where he was 'sitting in the last commode. I thought he was sitting there sleeping so I stood on the stool in the commode next to his and...there sat Hendrix masturbating himself.' For his part, Hendrix--who apparently hated life as an enlisted man--did not challenge the discharge request, according to a signed statement. At the time of his expulsion, Hendrix was allowed to leave the military with some parting gifts, including some Army-issued clothing. He also benefited from frequent dental care at Fort Campbell and California's Fort Ord, which probably made it easier for him to subsequently play that black Stratocaster with his teeth. (18 pages). http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/crime/jimis-private-parts
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As much as I like Dick Morris, his lunch alert viewers deserve a longer version of the spectacular intro music, American composer Aaron Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man. Enjoy:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVgs38tpMhs[/youtube]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVgs38tpMhs
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nY7GnAq6Znw
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Catchy :-D
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzHAlwEK7a4&feature=youtu.be
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I want this played at my cremation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqc1_RQHOKM
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I want this played at my cremation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqc1_RQHOKM
Very nice, never heard it before.
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I enjoy both versions...
From my Father down to me
Then on to you my son.
Someday you will be the one, to carry the pride.
My Lion, roar!
Remix:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoNz4czQ5BE[/youtube]
Original:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qm-i2NHxFw[/youtube]
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'Jed Zeppelin': They're Country, But Raised on Rock 'n' Roll .
By DON STEINBERG
Getty Images
Eric Church: 'There's a lot of Iron Maiden in what we do.'
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It might seem odd that Eric Church's song titled "Springsteen" reached No. 1 on Billboard's country-music chart this summer, but it really shouldn't. More than ever, country artists are channeling the rock of the 1970s and '80s.
Though Nashville traditionalists don't fully approve of all the rocking, Mr. Church is nominated for more Country Music Association Awards than anyone else this year, with the ceremony set for Thursday. "Springsteen" is nominated for song of the year.
It's not just about Bruce. On country radio these days, it's easy to hear echoes of Bad Company, Bachman-Turner Overdrive and Joan Jett. For music fans raised on the straightforward guitars and ragged drumbeats of classic rock, the latest country music has a familiar ring.
"What you're hearing is a change in the way country songs are mixed," says Brian Philips, president of Country Music Television. "You're hearing dirtier guitars, turned up louder in the mix. The rhythm section is more prominent. The drums are heavier. The vocal is a little more defiant. It's a rock mix. It's very different from what you would have heard in Nashville a decade ago."
Rock and country have fed on each other since before Elvis Presley showed up at Sun Studio, of course. What's different now is that today's country stars grew up in a world when rural America was less isolated than before. Country traditions abide in some quarters, but for these artists, rock—even heavy metal—was the currency.
Randy Houser's summer hit "How Country Feels," with its power-chord and kick-drum opening, sounds eerily like AC/DC's "Highway to Hell." The first bars of Thomas Rhett's "Something to Do With My Hands" evoke Aerosmith's "Dude Looks Like a Lady." Lady Antebellum's "Friday Night" is very "Jessie's Girl" (Rick Springfield). Love and Theft's summer hit "Angel Eyes" channels Tom Petty. Dierks Bentley's raucous "5-1-5-0" pays homage musically to the Eagles' "Life in the Fast Lane," though its title is a nod to Eddie Van Halen, who used "5150" (a California police code for somebody acting crazy) to name his guitar and a Van Halen album.
"We joke and make up names in the studio, like Jed Zeppelin," says Ronnie Dunn, formerly of country duo Brooks and Dunn and now a solo artist who recently released the single "Let the Cowboy Rock." Brooks and Dunn's work included a remake of the 1973 B.W. Stevenson classic "My Maria." Their hit "You Can't Take the Honky Tonk out of the Girl" sounded like the Rolling Stones' "Start Me Up."
"That's what we were going for," says Mr. Dunn. "I tell people my ultimate fantasy for a band is where the Stones meet Merle Haggard."
Superstar Kenny Chesney has a song, "I Go Back," where he recalls his passionate younger days listening to the Steve Miller Band, John Mellencamp and Billy Joel. In July, Mr. Miller joined Mr. Chesney onstage during an Oakland concert, and they performed the classic hits "Rock'n Me" and "The Joker" together. The Dixie Chicks famously covered Fleetwood Mac's "Landslide." Oklahoma good ol' boy Toby Keith, on his 2011 album "Clancy's Tavern," performs Three Dog Night's laid-back "Shambala."
In the song "Springsteen," which has the solemn vibe of Mr. Springsteen's "I'm on Fire," the singer-songwriter Mr. Church recalls his own teenage glory days listening to the radio.
"When I grew up, yeah, I listened to country music," says Mr. Church, 35, who was raised in small-town North Carolina. "But if you were going to a football game, rock 'n' roll was playing in every car and every truck. You were listening to everything from AC/DC, Metallica, all the way to Lynyrd Skynyrd, Mellencamp, Springsteen, Seger, Petty."
Mr. Church figures the first song he learned to play on guitar might have been "Born to Run," or maybe "Jack and Diane."
"I went to an AC/DC concert in an amphitheater, and it just damned near changed my life," he remembers. "Guys with their fists in the air. The raw energy of rock 'n' roll is something no one else has been able to duplicate. In our show, we try. There's a lot of Iron Maiden in what we do."
Country lyrics have evolved, too. They remain rich in confessional narrative and honky-tonk wordplay, though increasingly there are fewer tales of woe, more attitude and gratitude. Often the down-home words contrast with the guitar-amped sounds. Mr. Houser's "How Country Feels" kicks in on the highway-to-hell riff, then cuts down a dirt road to heaven: "You never rolled in the hay/Never thrown it in four-wheel/Climb up on in here, girl/Let me show you how country feels."
"They're almost overcompensating these days for kind of injecting even metal influences into some of the country songs," Mr. Dunn observes. "They'll overwork the lyrics to testify that they are country: 'I've got my dog on my seat in my truck, on the dirt road, in the backwoods.' It's almost like you catch yourself apologizing for rocking out."
If today's country music sounds like 1970s rock, another reason may be because what passed for rock during that musically diverse era was infused with twang. Bad Company were considered hard rockers, but listen to 1975's "Feel Like Makin' Love" again some time. It doesn't sound like the electronic pop that's on rock charts these days, and if newly released it would be most likely to get airplay on a country station. You could say the same about many hits from the Eagles, Grateful Dead, Neil Young, the Band, the Doobie Brothers, America, Bob Seger, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Olivia Newton-John, Linda Ronstadt and, of course, Southern rock bands like Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Allman Brothers. Bad Company weren't the only Brits to cowboy up. A good slice of the Stones' fertile early-1970s period was country, and the Who gave voice to country-style violin (in "Baba O'Reilly") and banjo (in "Squeeze Box"). Country's plaintive steel guitar accents Elton John's "Tiny Dancer." And the quirky '70s hit parade featured countless country-flavored novelties: "Convoy," "Afternoon Delight," "Still the One," "Rhinestone Cowboy," "Angel of the Morning," "The Cover of the Rolling Stone," "Delta Dawn," "Dueling Banjos."
Country's spread into rock territory has coincided with a geographic incursion. Country is thriving where you'll never find a hayseed. In Philadelphia, where venerable rock station WYSP last year became another major-market rock casualty, country station WXTU is having its best run ever.
"I think people are surprised how well country does in the Northeast," says Natalie Conner, the station's general manager.
Country-music sales trail behind rock and R&B, according to Nielsen SoundScan. But country's 5.6% increase in album sales in the first half of 2012 (over 2011) was a bigger rise than any other genre.
Pollstar says the highest-grossing concert tour of the summer was Mr. Chesney and Tim McGraw's tour together, which featured their new duet, titled "Feel Like a Rock Star," of course. The tour reached $96.5 million in gate receipts and sold one million tickets, according to Pollstar. Their two football-stadium shows in Foxboro, Mass., broke the sales record for a New England country-music event. Mr. Chesney broke the New York/New Jersey record in 2011.
Bill Flanagan cultivated the long-shared DNA of rock and country when as an executive at CMT he created the "CMT Crossroads" TV series, pairing country artists with rockers. In one episode, Taylor Swift rocked out with Def Leppard.
"It seems totally incongruous," Mr. Flanagan says, but he traces a direct line: Ms. Swift grew up listening to Shania Twain, whose producer (and ex-husband) Mutt Lange also produced the classics by Def Leppard and AC/DC.
"When the series began, we assumed it would be young rock artists wanting to work with older country artists like Merle Haggard or Willie Nelson. It's actually worked out the other way," Mr. Flanagan says. "Now it's Keith Urban getting to play with his hero John Fogerty. Ninety percent of the country artists we talk to ask if they can do it with Springsteen. We had to create a No-Bruce Zone."
Write to Don Steinberg at don.steinberg@dowjones.com
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=hnLsfnchbGs#!
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R.I.P. Ray Manzarek of The Doors:
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/music/posts/la-et-ray-manzarek-photos-20130520,0,147206.photogallery
http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-ray-manzarek-20130521,0,3258512.story
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We have all heard the long and short versions of "Hey Joe" sung and played by Jimi Hendrix.
The origins of the song are quite murky. Look up "Hey Joe" on Wikipedia and one can read what I mean.
One claim is this is the original writer and singer of the song that was stolen by her boyfriend and rewritten as "Hey Joe".
I think this singer is great:
http://www.numerogroup.com/catalog_detail.php?uid=00950#
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The only thing I remember about this when I was somewhere around the age of seven was my sister hogging the TV and sitting Indian style (I hope I didn't offend anyone) in front of our little black and white TV with the antennae (no remote back then) and giddily screaming and screeching over these guys. I couldn't figure it out. :|
It was as though she was possessed. My oldest sister felt that way about Elvis I think.
http://news.yahoo.com/ed-sullivan-beatles-39-item-headed-nyc-auction-051556647.html
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My father took me to see (not hear) the Beatles at Philadelphia Convention Center in 1963 or '64. There was not a dry seat in the house.
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www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnDLa-8MAHQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBsENI3F9FE
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The Green - The Power in Words
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JC-di8CjCY
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Circa 2000 we went to see him at the House of Blues in Orlando (when we were leaving the house). He was one of my favorites in college. Unfortunately, he looked very sickly. Someone said they thought he had aids. He was injecting heroin so it is feasible that he also injected a deadly virus. OTOH albinos sometimes have associated neurodegenerative disorders as well and for all I know it was this that made him appear the way he did. We left the show early because frankly he was so weak and terrible that he could only repeat the same few chords while his band was obviously trying to compensate for his inability to play. We thought he looked like he was going to die soon at that time so I am surprised he lasted till now. He will be remembered for his "mean" guitar work. His music struck a chord with me that is for sure:
Blues legend Johnny Winter dies at 70 in Zurich
Associated Press
By JOHN HEILPRIN 43 minutes ago
FILE - In this Friday, June 19, 2009 file photo, Johnny Winter plays during the Canton Blues Festival 2009 in downtown Canton, Ohio. Texas blues icon Johnny Winter, who rose to fame in the late 1960s and '70s with his energetic performances and recordings that included producing his childhood hero Muddy Waters, died in Zurich, Switzerland on Wednesday, July 16, 2014. He was 70. (AP Photo/The Repository, Bob Rossiter) MANDATORY CREDIT
GENEVA (AP) — Texas blues legend Johnny Winter, known for his lightning-fast blues guitar riffs, his striking long white hair and his collaborations with the likes of Jimi Hendrix and childhood hero Muddy Waters, has died. He was 70.
Winter was a leading light among the white blues guitar players, including Eric Clapton and the late Stevie Ray Vaughan, who followed in the footsteps of the earlier Chicago blues masters. Winter idolized Waters — and got a chance to produce some of the blues legend's more popular albums. Rolling Stone magazine named Winter one of the top 100 guitarists of all time.
His representative, Carla Parisi, confirmed Thursday that Winter died in a hotel room in Zurich a day earlier. The statement said his wife, family and bandmates were all saddened by the loss of one of the world's finest guitarists.
There was no immediate word on the cause of death.
Winter had been on an extensive tour this year that recently brought him to Europe. His last performance came Saturday at the Lovely Days Festival in Wiesen, Austria.
The tour, a documentary that premiered at the SXSW Festival exploring his music, youth and substance abuse battles, and a newly released four-CD set of recordings were all part of Winter's celebration of turning 70 this year.
John Dawson Winter III was born on Feb. 23, 1944, in Mississippi, but was raised in Beaumont, Texas. He was the older brother of Edgar Winter, also an albino, who rose to musical fame with the Edgar Winter Group.
Winter was one of the most popular live acts of the early 1970s, when his signature fast blues guitar solos attracted a wide following. But his addiction problems with heroin during that decade and later battles with alcohol and prescription medication, including methadone, also drew attention.
His career received a big boost early on when Rolling Stone singled him out as one of the best blues guitarists on the Texas scene. This helped secure a substantial recording contract from Columbia Records in 1969 that led to an appearance at the Woodstock Festival and gave him a wide following among college students and young blues fans.
Crowds were dazzled by the speed — and volume — of his guitar playing, which had its roots in urban blues but incorporated elements of rock 'in roll.
Winters paid homage to Waters on "Tribute to Muddy," a song from his 1969 release "The Progressive Blues Experiment." He continued to pick up accolades, producing three Grammy Award-winning albums for Waters and recording with John Lee Hooker, which helped revive their careers.
Winter performed often with blues and rock singer Janis Joplin and the two became close during the 1960s.
Among the blues classics that Winter played during that era were "Rollin' and Tumblin'," ''Bad Luck and Trouble" and "Good Morning, Little Schoolgirl." He also teamed up with his brother Edgar for their 1976 live album "Together."
He was inducted into the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame in 1988.
There was no immediate word on funeral services.
Gregory Katz contributed from London.
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I saw him sit in with Electric Hot Tuna at the late show at the Fillmore East around 1970.
I LOVE his rendition of Dylan's "Highway 61"!!!
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"I LOVE his rendition of Dylan's "Highway 61"!!!"
Yes! 1970? Was he the main act or the opener then? I think I got into him some years after. Early to mid 70's. I liked him better than his brother.
I had a couple of his albums. My favorite was AND/LIVE though it was circa '75 when I first heard it in my fraternity during a party.
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The show wherein I saw him was an Electric Hot Tuna show and he was invited onstage to join the set.
Frankly to my ear he often did not play with much heart, instead more with volume and speed and with a competitive attitude with Jorma.
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Happy 75th birthday Grace Slick!!!
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It's about time someone actually won a copyright infringement in the music business. If it wasn't a family of a famous artist the verdict almost certainly would have been different. No names almost never win against the celebrities. Unfortunately this is only the tiny tip of the iceberg.
***** AP • MSNBC • USA TODAY • FOX News • New York Times Movies • Movies • Music • TV • Entertainment News Videos
'Blurred Lines' verdict likely to alter music business
Mar 11, 11:07 AM (ET)
By ANTHONY McCARTNey
(AP) Marvin Gaye's daughter, Nona Gaye, talks to the media outside the Los Angeles U.S....
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A verdict saying Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke copied Marvin Gaye's music to create their hit song "Blurred Lines" could ripple across the music industry, potentially changing how artists work and opening the door to new copyright claims.
An eight-person jury determined Tuesday that Williams and Thicke copied elements of Gaye's 1977 hit "Got to Give It Up" and ordered the pair to pay nearly $7.4 million to the late R&B legend's three children.
Millions more in potential future profits for "Blurred Lines" are now also at stake.
The Gaye family will seek an injunction against the song, which will give them leverage to negotiate for royalties and other concessions such as songwriting credit, although Tuesday's verdict could face years of appeals.
While the verdict affects Thicke and Williams' finances in the short term, artists and music industry lawyers will likely face new constraints as they sort through the verdict and its implications.
Howard King, lead attorney for Thicke and Williams, said in closing arguments that a verdict for the Gaye family would have a chilling effect on musicians trying to evoke an era or create an homage to the sound of earlier artists. Williams contended during the trial that he was only trying to mimic the "feel" of Gaye's late 1970s music but insisted he did not use elements of his idol's work.
"Today's successful verdict, with the odds more than stacked against the Marvin Gaye estate, could redefine what copyright infringement means for recording artists," said Glen Rothstein, an intellectual property attorney.
He said the decision sets a precedent because "paying homage to musical influences was an acceptable, and indeed commonplace way of conducting business and even showing respect for one's musical idols, (but) after today, doubt has been cast on where the line will be drawn for copyright infringement purposes."
Music copyright trials are rare, but allegations that a song copies another artist's work are common. Singers Sam Smith and Tom Petty recently reached an agreement that conferred songwriting credit to Petty on Smith's song, "Stay With Me," which resembled Petty's hit "I Won't Back Down."
In the "Blurred Lines" case, the Gaye family will seek an injunction against the song, giving them leverage to negotiate for royalties and other concessions such as songwriting credits.
Nona Gaye, the late singer's daughter, wept as the verdict was read and later told reporters: "Right now, I feel free. Free from ... Pharrell Williams' and Robin Thicke's chains and what they tried to keep on us and the lies that were told."
Larry Iser, an intellectual property lawyer who has represented numerous musicians such as Jackson Browne and David Byrne in music copyright cases, criticized the verdict.
"Although Gaye was the Prince of Soul, he didn't own a copyright to the genre, and Thicke and Williams' homage to the feel of Marvin Gaye is not infringing," Iser said.
King, the pair's lawyer, said record labels are going to become more reluctant to release music that's similar to other works — an assertion disputed by Richard Busch, the lead attorney for the Gaye family.
"While Mr. Williams' lawyer suggested in his closing argument that the world would come to an end, and music would cease to exist if they were found liable, I still see the sun shining," Busch said. "The music industry will go on."
So, too, will Williams' career, said Joe Levy, editor-at-large at Billboard.
"For Pharrell, the story moves on," he said. "It will move on quickly."
Williams, 41, is a seven-time Grammy Award winner whose songs he's performed or produced have sold more than 100 million copies worldwide. His hit "Happy" has helped make him a household name, as has his work as a judge on NBC's music competition show, "The Voice."
"It's much to Pharrell's advantage that he is at a high point in his career," Levy said.
Thicke's career may have more issues as a result of Tuesday's verdict — which came on his 38th birthday — because "Blurred Lines" was a global hit and his follow-up effort failed to connect with audiences, Levy said. Despite the song's popularity, feminists have criticized it, saying it promotes rape culture.
While the verdict will likely make musicians and record labels more cautious, it won't stop artists from using others' works as inspiration, Levy said.
Despite the decision, he predicted that "Blurred Lines" will continue to make plenty of money for Williams, Thicke and, in all likelihood, the Gaye family.
"People aren't going to stop playing it," Levy said. "It's not just going to disappear."****
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Jorma Kaukonen Finds Somebody To Love
The former Jefferson Airplane guitarist and Hot Tuna lead man comes home to his mother’s faith at his Fur Peace Ranch in Ohio
By Wayne Robins
The former Jefferson Airplane guitarist and Hot Tuna lead man comes home to his mother’s faith at his Fur Peace Ranch in Ohio
By Wayne Robins
August 12, 2015
I. ‘Shalom, Brother’
At Fur Peace Ranch, hidden away on an unpaved road in the Appalachian foothills of southeastern Ohio, one expects to hear the moo of cows, the rustling of corn. But Fur Peace doesn’t raise dairy cattle or crops. Its primary product is guitar players, mentored during numerous weekend retreats each year by owner Jorma Kaukonen. One of the most celebrated and influential rock guitar players of the last 50 years, Kaukonen was a founding member of Jefferson Airplane, the band whose very name represents the base camp of the 1960s counter-culture in all its striations: lysergic visions, political upheavals, feedback-fueled rock ’n’ roll, the San Francisco-born soundtrack to collective hallucinations, urban revolution, and pastoral pleasures.
Kaukonen came to rock ’n’ roll gradually and unexpectedly. He was a product of the folk and blues boom of the late 1950s and ’60s, meeting and playing with nascent stars such as Janis Joplin, Jerry Garcia, and Airplane co-founder Paul Kantner in the clubs around Santa Clara, the southern part of the San Francisco peninsula, now absorbed into Silicon Valley. (“If I was scripting Janis’ life, she would have stayed just a blues singer,” Kaukonen said of Joplin, whom he accompanied in clubs in the early 1960s.)
His empathetic, energetic, and erudite guitar playing was there from the beginning, on Jefferson Airplane Takes Off. Kaukonen’s electric playing propels the band’s classic rock hits, including “Somebody to Love” and “White Rabbit.” Devotees of his distinctive, folk-raga style from the Airplane’s heady days like to cite his instrumental “Embryonic Journey” on the watershed Surrealistic Pillow album and his arrangement of the traditional “Good Shepherd,” a peaceful interlude on the up-against-the-wall psychodrama of Volunteers.
By the end of the 1960s, Kaukonen—overshadowed at times by the big three egos of singers Grace Slick, Marty Balin, and Kantner—was also moonlighting with his oldest friend from D.C., Airplane bassist Jack Casady, on what has become their most lasting combo, blues-folk-rock band Hot Tuna. Though the repertory has stayed the same, the approach often changes, as Hot Tuna tours and records in acoustic, electric, and blended formats. Its original lineup featured a violinist, Papa John Creach. Since around 2002, it has included mandolin player Barry Mitterhoff, whose expertise and repertory include both klezmer and bluegrass, sometimes at the same time. The band’s name—rowdier fans sometime add an “effin” between “Hot” and “Tuna”—evokes an active connection to both ’60s nostalgia and 21st-century American roots music. (As usual, they are currently on tour.)
At lunch in the building named after Kaukonen’s mother, the Beatrice Love kitchen and dining cabin, Kaukonen sidled up to me, stretched out his hand, and said, “Shalom, brother.”
II. Judaism, Appalachian Style
Now a we-should-all-look-so-good-at-his-age 75, Kaukonen lives a full and interesting life divided between the guitar school at Fur Peace Ranch and tours with Hot Tuna or as a solo artist, as well as gigs with whomever he pleases. Earlier this year, Red House Records released Kaukonen’s latest solo album, Ain’t in No Hurry, produced by fellow guitar star Larry Campbell (Tom Petty, Bob Dylan). The most recent Hot Tuna album, Steady as She Goes (2011), was also done for Red House.
Just as important as his still-flourishing music and teaching career is Kaukonen’s embrace of his Jewish heritage, a process accelerated in unusual fashion: The spontaneous decision 10 years ago of his wife and partner, Vanessa, to convert to Judaism. This was not a conversion prodded by marriage, since the couple had already been married for many years. Nor was it something that Kaukonen, with a Finnish father and Jewish mother, had ever contemplated, much less pushed for, since he had always identified as more cultural than religious. “It was mainly the food, the chopped liver, and my grandparents’ stories about Russia,” Kaukonen said.
In fact, Kaukonen still takes delight in the food aspects of Jewish culture, adapted to the rural Ohio region in which he and Vanessa have lived for many years. On Saturday morning, bagels and nova (along with granola, fresh fruit, and excellent strong-brewed coffee and the ranch’s own line of artisanal teas) were available at the Fur Peace Ranch buffet breakfast. Kaukonen placed some nova (sliced thin) on a bagel but instead of the classic companion, slapped a spoonful of peanut butter on his plate. Noting my quizzical glance, Kaukonen pointed at the peanut butter and said, “hillbilly cream cheese.”
(Photo: Scotty Hall)
Jorma’s Jewish identity was imprinted not just by his grandparents, especially his beloved grandmother Vera, a dominant figure in his childhood, but by the great-grandparents who were leaders of an agrarian commune of Russian Jewish tobacco and potato farmers in the Connecticut River Valley known as the Rockville Settlement. His great-grandfather Samuel Levine, known as Shmuel, served a rabbinical function in the community’s synagogue, Congregation Knesseth Israel, built in Ellington, Connecticut, in 1913. According to a website quoting a local newspaper at the time: “The cornerstone of the new Jewish temple was laid Sunday afternoon with appropriate exercises conducted by Samuel Levine of Vernon.” Levine was also a sofer, the scribe who created the community’s first Torah.
With his father traveling often as a foreign service officer, Kaukonen was raised in the Chevy Chase section of the District of Columbia (not to be confused with Chevy Chase, Maryland). Kaukonen remembers Washington, D.C. in the 1940s and 1950s as a Southern city. “Many of my friends at school were Presbyterian southern kids,” he said. “The food I ate was ethnic Russian Jewish cooking. I never gave it a second thought. Jews were the outsiders. I got into fights all the time because I was a Jew. I just accepted that’s the way it was.”
The most influential figure was that maternal grandmother, a leftist Zionist. It was Vera, “an outlaw” who was not at all religious, who gave Kaukonen Israel Bonds for each of his birthdays; to buy his first electric guitar, Kaukonen cashed in those bonds. To underline the particular place of honor she holds in his life, he acknowledges that there is a reason she does not rest in the family plot in Connecticut. “She was cremated, and she’s in my garage, next to my motorcycles,” he explained.
Vanessa Lillian Kaukonen was raised Catholic, coincidentally in Hartford, Connecticut, near Jorma’s ancestral roots. “When I become confirmed, my parents got divorced, and all I could think was, I didn’t have to do this”—going to church—“anymore,” she said one afternoon at the Fur Peace Ranch, while the sounds of acoustic guitar players being taught by Kaukonen and the weekend’s guest instructors, bluesman Guy Davis and Irish musician John Doyle, chimed in the air. “I didn’t want to be part of the Catholic Church, but I kind of wandered. I always believed there was something bigger than me, but I didn’t know what, or why.”
Addiction and alcoholism play a part in both Vanessa and Jorma’s spiritual journey. She has been sober 22 years; Jorma for 19. “That was a huge part of my search. I’m not giving myself a pat on the back for having been an addict, but one of the things, when I got sober, I realized there was something missing, a power greater than me that I could relate to,” Vanessa said. Twelve-step programs helped, but Vanessa, apparently, needed something more. The epiphany, when it came unannounced, changed her life.
The time: about 10 years ago. The place: an old synagogue, Congregation B’nai Sholom, in Huntington, West Virginia, just 57 miles south of the Fur Peace Ranch. The occasion: a concert by the Klezmer Mountain Boys, a band led by clarinetist Margot Leverett that blends the traditional Eastern European swing music with good old American bluegrass. Mitterhoff, the Klezmer Mountain Boys mandolin player, is close to the Kaukonens, a perennial Fur Peace Ranch teacher of a popular course called “Bluegrass and Beyond” and a near constant traveling companion as a member of Hot Tuna since the early 2000s and sideman on Kaukonen’s own headlining concerts and recordings. Kaukonen cites Mitterhoff as an important influence in his enhanced Jewish identity.
“We’ve traveled endlessly together, 100 to 150 days a year for 13 years,” Mitterhoff said in a phone conversation from his home in Scotch Plains, N.J., “and it might have been the first time he spent that much time with another musician who was Jewish. I’m not very religious, but if we see something in the newspaper about Jewish life or issues, we point it out to each other and discuss it.”
When Jorma and Vanessa arrived at the West Virginia shul for the Klezmer Mountain Boys show, they were greeted by a man in a cowboy hat and boots who said, “Shalom, y’all!” So far, so cute. But something in Vanessa Kaukonen changed when she walked through the doors. “It’s a very modest looking sanctuary,” she said. “Something happened to me, so out of body, I started weeping. Not like somebody-died kind of crying, or I-hurt-myself crying, but it was so deep, like from 100 years ago, I couldn’t tell you. I looked at Jorma, and I had to go to the bathroom to compose myself. I told Jorma, ‘This is the same feeling I had when I met you. I feel like I’m home.’ ”
A week later, Vanessa was on the phone with Rabbi Danielle Leshaw, spiritual leader of the Hillel in Athens, Ohio, 25 miles north of the Kaukonen home in Pomeroy, Ohio. Though Athens is a college town, the Hillel at Ohio University there is the hub for all of the small Jewish community in the region. “Whenever anybody calls me and announces they’re interested in conversion, my initial reactions are always the same,” Leshaw, who is Reconstructionist, said in an email. “I’m excited, but also cautious.”
She continued: “Our first few meetings were spent discussing her spiritual path, her family of origin, and her hopes for a religious connection to a new community of faith. Jorma began to attend the meetings, in part because Vanessa encouraged him to explore his Jewish past, but also because he was eager to create a Jewish future with her.”
Together with the woman they call “Rabbi Danielle,” Vanessa and Jorma had immersive conversations about Jewish holidays, rituals, the importance and meaning of Shabbat, raising Jewish children, ethics, and Torah. “I required them to participate in Jewish life in Athens, build friendships, and devote time and talent to supporting this community,” Leshaw said.
“I wasn’t bar mitzvahed,” Jorma said about his youth. “I didn’t know who I was, or why I felt different. Now I know, I was a Jew from a Jewish family.” When Vanessa decided to begin her Jewish transformation, Jorma said, “it struck me that I need to do it, too.” Though he is not observant, Kaukonen’s increased Jewish awareness provides something essential that had been missing from his life. “I’m not fond of dogma, but I feel very comfortable in the [Jewish] milieu. At our little Reconstructionist synagogue in Athens, not only is our rabbi a woman, she’s a got a little tattoo on her ankle. It felt like being home to me. I had never considered it in a conscious, intellectual way before, but it felt like it had been there all along.”
It’s not that extra motivation was needed, but raising a Jewish child was about to become relevant to the Kaukonens. They were beginning the process of adopting a young daughter from China. Their daughter, Israel, known as Izze (pronounced “Izzy”), is now 9 years old and is often seen at Fur Peace Ranch. (The family actually lives on another farm about eight miles away.) She had a little crafts table near the entrance to the theater before the Saturday night concert by guest teachers Guy Davis and John Doyle, selling her colorful handmade cloth “don’t worry” dolls at a brisk clip, negotiating prices with hagglers while Jorma sat by quietly and beamed with pride.
Tall for her age and sophisticated in her worldview, Izze is home-schooled and also participates at Hillel. “She’s getting a little old for the children’s services, so she goes to adult services with me,” Vanessa said. “I want her to be part of the conversations after services.”
The ranch has become integrated in the region’s Jewish community. One year, they held Rosh Hashanah services at the ranch. Jorma was the co-leader of the musical part of the service with Carol Weiner, a local Jewish musician who sings and acts as cantor. Kaukonen and Weiner also did the music for the Rosh Hashanah children’s service at the Hillel in 2010.
Jorma wrote about the experience on his blog. The headline on the post is “5772 Comes in With the Blues.” Kaukonen notes:
We did a number of appropriate tunes but I think our big number was The Yom Kippur I’m Sorry Blues by Lisa Ann Green. Other songs in the service included Shanah Tovah by Judy Farber, L’Shanah Tovah by Debbie Friedman, Avinu Malkeinu in English by Judy Caplan Ginsburg, May You Be Sealed, Shofar Blast and Ahavah Love is Gonna Carry You, all by Peter and Ellen Allard.
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Jorma and Vanessa had been living in Woodstock, New York, long thought of as a felicitous settlement for musicians with strong affinity for the 1960s. Jefferson Airplane, after all, was one of the headlining bands of the 1969 Woodstock festival, which benefited from the town’s artistic cachet, even though it was finally held in Bethel/White Lake New York, across the Catskills in Sullivan County. Their move to Ohio was pure serendipity. Twenty years ago, an old friend of Kaukonen’s from the 1950s called—“a phone call out of the blue,” he says—offering him approximately 130 acres for $32,000. “It seemed like a good idea,” Kaukonen shrugged. “If I was thinking of a higher power in those days, which I wasn’t, I would have realized this was a good deal and an opportunity, which it really was. It could have been a royal pain in the ass. Being a farmer is real work.”
Kaukonen’s notion was that it would be a nice place to have some kind of music camp. “Left to my own devices, we would have been sitting around a campfire with some hay bales, not necessarily singing ‘Kumbaya,’ but sitting around playing. But Vanessa had a real life before this as a civil engineer, and she drew up the plans, went to the bank, and did all that stuff to make it happen.”
Vanessa was living in Key West in the 1980s, working as an architectural designer. A friend dragged her to a Hot Tuna concert, they sat near the stage, met the band, partied all night. She gave Jorma her phone number. For the next few months Jorma courted her ardently, and he frequently flew her out to see him when he was touring. The turning point was when she was in Woodstock, Vermont, on a design job, and Jorma came to see her from Woodstock and asked her to marry him. Jorma had to go on the road, but he left Vanessa his massive Cadillac Eldorado at a nearby airport. “It had a beautiful black leather interior and a trunk you could fit four ex-husbands in,” Vanessa said. “I turn the key, and start to drive, the song is [Hot Tuna’s] “Genesis” with the line “and I want to go with you,” and the DJ says, ‘that was Jorma Kaukonen.’ I heard the angels sing, the universe was saying go-go-go-go-go-go, there was no going back now.”
It’s no surprise that this instant love story between two people who were heavy substance abusers at the time might have its bumps. “We got married on a pirate ship in Key West. The next five years were shit,” Vanessa said. Jorma spent considerable time in California with a Jefferson Airplane reunion project that did not turn out well. And Vanessa hated Woodstock. “He was on a methadone program, I was drinking heavily and still doing my drugs. I lost my paradise in Key West and went back to Woodstock, which I never liked, because his ghosts from his old life and his addictions were there. He kept saying, it’s all part of a bigger picture. And I was saying, what’s the bigger picture? Is this all some kind of cosmic joke? He gets this land in Ohio, I cried all the way here. He goes out on tour, and I find God in the hills of southeast Ohio. I got sober and he’s not. In the three years before he got sober, he has an affair that produces a child. I’m like, thanks a lot. I’m sober and I’m doing what I’m supposed to do. All I ever wanted from that, when I found out, I just wanted to learn how to forgive him, because it was the righteous thing to do.” In a follow-up conversation, Vanessa added emphatically, about Jorma’s son: “Zachary is not a secret; he is a blessing.”
In retrospect, this focus on righteous forgiveness made the Kaukonens’ embrace of Judaism—he from the inside, she from the outside—seem natural, if not predestined. At the Fur Peace Ranch, they have created a sanctuary for musicians of all levels who find an atmosphere in which to grow. The ranch is alcohol and drug free; the psychedelic experience is represented by the ranch’s Psylodelic Gallery, a two-story silo dedicated to the arts and culture of the 1960s: concert posters, photographs, memorabilia, the occasional light show. One poster captures the era: It advertises a New Year’s Eve show in San Francisco, 1966/1967: Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother & the Holding Company, Quicksilver Messenger Service. Tickets $6, breakfast included.
At the time of my visit, the Psylodelic Gallery also featured original work by local artist Kevin Morgan, credited with creating the “visual identity” for Kaukonen’s recent musical efforts, including the last covers for both Hot Tuna and Kaukonen’s solo albums. There’s also a store, at which you can purchase all kinds of Fur Peace Ranch, Hot Tuna, and Jorma merchandise: T-shirts, hats, guitar keychains, as well as CDs and DVDs by kindred spirits.
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The gallery and store are both steps away from the barn, which is transformed into a concert hall that seats 200 and has a laid-back mood and state-of-the-art light and sound. Cardboard nametags are spotted on many seats, and the impression is that of a down-home version of the gold-plated nameplates on the backs of seats in many synagogues. They are reserved for season ticket holders, and they make up what appear to be a majority of the seats in the hall.
On Saturday night of Memorial Day weekend, the guest teachers Davis and Doyle were the headliners. Ranch manager and longtime family friend John Hurlbut was the emcee with a folksy Prairie Home Companion delivery, sincere and satirical at the same time. Kaukonen played guest slots with each of the headliners, to heavy applause.
“We’re a destination, not a way point and not a bar,” Kaukonen said the next morning over more nova and, for him, peanut butter. “We have well over a 90 percent return rate among season ticket holders. There are other cool venues [in the region], but we are part of the community.”
Both instructors and students get something more than just musical lessons at Fur Peace Ranch. And they come from all over. The gifted blues singer and stylist Lisa Biales came from Oxford, Ohio, to study with Davis to “get instruction from a master” and add to her repertoire. Leading a small class of blues guitarists, Guy Davis spoke of trying to “unlock something inside of us” along with the drill of “focus and regularity” in the chord changes. Aside from Biales, almost every other student seemed to have traveled long miles. One was from Norway. Others came from Jacksonville, Florida; Tucson, Arizona; Salt Lake City; upstate New York and Long Island; Athens, Georgia.; Sudbury, Massachusetts. One of Jorma’s younger students, Albert Von Ledebur, from Regina, Saskatchewan, is what is referred to as a “repeat offender,” one who comes every year, with an obsessive, detailed knowledge of Kaukonen’s music, from early Airplane to late Hot Tuna.
David Wolff, Jorma’s teaching assistant, may be the original “repeat offender”; he began following Hot Tuna around the country when he was 15 years old. He is also a valuable resource in Jorma’s Jewish development. Wolff was raised in a nonobservant Conservative Jewish home but became more observant as a young adult. His first two children were raised kosher, shomer Shabbos, Modern Orthodox, and went to the Abraham Joshua Heschel school on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.
“When Jorma and Vanessa told me they were committing themselves to Judaism, my own journey to a more observant lifestyle gave me some insight into what they were embarking on,” Wolff said. “Many aspects of Judaism have helped me to move in a positive direction, and I had the sense that this could benefit the Kaukonens at this time of their life as well.” (That includes one of Wolff’s sons helping “Uncle Jorma” find the right page in his siddur when davening in Hebrew at a Manhattan shul, B’nai Jeshurun.)
Kaukonen’s secular muse is the Rev. Gary Davis, whose songs and finger-picking style are so much a part of Kaukonen’s life that there is a Davis song on almost every album he’s ever made. “Hesitation Blues,” a rock song in Hot Tuna’s repertory, is a Davis tune. Teaching it to his guitar students one afternoon, he pointed out how Barry Mitterhoff had taught him the same chord progressions were in the classic Jewish song, “Sholom Aleichem” (A minor to E major, transition to C7).
There are two other underappreciated guitarists from the early 1960s whose spirit Kaukonen is dedicated to keeping alive. Steve Mann is one, commemorated by the Hot Tuna song “Mann’s Fate.” Another was Ian Buchanan, who died in 1982. Buchanan was a protégé of Rev. Davis and bluesman Lonnie Johnson; Buchanan taught his Antioch College classmates Kaukonen and John Hammond Jr. the finger-picking style and instilled the classic repertory that Kaukonen plays to this day. “Ian was a really important guy to me, an utterly pure and uncommercial spirit. I followed my spirit most of my life, but I really liked getting paid for it. Ian never cared whether he did or not.”
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Kaukonen has made two trips to Israel in the last five years. One tour was with Hot Tuna in 2010; another with Mitterhoff, playing small gigs at Israeli clubs in December 2012. His support for Israel is uncomplicated. “It’s there,” he said with finality. As for those who won’t recognize that, he says, “I’m glad I’m not called upon for a solution. My experience is very superficial. I was there working. I met countless Israelis who love the same music I do.”
Vanessa and Izze, who weren’t working, got to see Israel from a slightly different angle: walking on the beach in Tel Aviv on Christmas Eve, marveling at the elevators set to stop at every floor on Shabbat. (Hungry, they managed to find a Thai restaurant in Tel Aviv open on Shabbat.)
On an off day in Jerusalem during the Hot Tuna tour, the Israeli concert promoter had arranged for a small tour bus to show the band and their entourage the sights. Jack Casady’s wife, Diana Balfour Casady, was already in a wheelchair, suffering from cancer. (She died on Sept. 8, 2012, at age 65.) The concert promoter introduced each of them individually to the guide and driver, whose ears perked up when he heard Diana’s British accent and the name “Balfour.”
The guide said, “That’s a very important name for us.” Diana acknowledged that she was a niece of Lord Arthur James Balfour, the British foreign secretary who wrote the essential 1917 letter expressing his government’s support for the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. In Diana Balfour’s honor, the tour guide adjusted his itinerary that day to show her some of the sites that might be more relevant to a gentile visiting the Holy Land.
“The promoter kept saying ‘I’m sorry the way the tour has turned’,” Vanessa Kaukonen recalled. “I said, ‘Are you kidding me? This is beautiful. What a gracious man, he did it because she was a Balfour, because it was the right thing to do. Knowing that you have that obligation.” In the telling, Vanessa became teary. She paused to reflect. “I was never offered that in the faith I was born into,” she said. “If I was, I missed it. But I know I was never offered that.”
Later, asked to amplify the thought, Vanessa said: “When I talked to you about the one thing that drew me to Judaism, it was this responsibility to be righteous in your life, no matter what. To walk a straight line, so to speak. The faith I came from spoke of walking a clear path, but I never found it to move me like the words and prayers did when I read them at Shabbat services. … I feel it every time a group of students comes and leaves four days later. It is powerful and magical and lives are changed. And Jorma and I are better people for walking this path.”
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What a different world to leave the discussion of terror to attend this celebration of peace on earth. (They wrote the program earlier in the year.) Last night I traveled to my daughter's college to experience one of the most amazing musical performances (for a second time), the 103rd annual St Oaf Christmas Festival, put on by 500 student musicians, beautiful voices and amazing talent from all across the country and the world, the St. Olaf Orchestra and world renowned St. Olaf Choir. http://wp.stolaf.edu/christmasfest/ Wonderful orchestral and choral arrangements and performances of mostly unfamiliar songs from different centuries, different languages from around the world, including local compositions.
May I suggest that people from anywhere, especially those from other religions (just ignore the part about the newborn King), set aside a couple of hours and enjoy this. The final performance will be broadcast and simulcast this Sunday 1:00pm Pacific, 4:00 Eastern. 99.9% beautiful music, only a few seconds of Bible reading. Buy some black Friday high fidelity products and tune in from your own home via public radio simulcast if yours carries it or via live stream: http://www.classicalmpr.org/ (click 'listen', upper left)
http://wp.stolaf.edu/christmasfest/broadcast-information/
Update: Broadcast spoiled by announcing. Skip it.
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Get your dance shoes on:
http://www.openculture.com/2014/07/the-oldest-song-in-the-world.html
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Rest in Peace, neighbor and icon, Prince Nelson from Minneapolis Central, class of 76. His parents divorced when he was 8, felt his mother abandoned him. Moved around maybe 30 times as a kid, all in Minneapolis. His dad, a jazz musician, co-wrote some of his songs. Mostly not my type of music, but he was an original and a legend. Known for his live performances, played many instruments. He wrote many songs that made others famous. I haven't seen him since his wedding...
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/04/21/475143464/4-prince-videos-you-should-watch-right-now Superbowl halftime show
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8BMm6Jn6oU Purple Rain on Arsenio Hall
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SFNW5F8K9Y Tom Petty, Steve Winwood, Prince, Tribute to George Harrison, While my Guitar Gently Weeps, Prince on guitar starts at 3:33.
In 1984, Prince accomplished something only the Beatles had one before him: He was topping charts simultaneously with an album, a film and a single.
http://www.citypages.com/music/53-things-you-might-not-know-about-prince-6652547
Rolling Stone ranked Prince the no. 2 greatest live act, behind Springsteen, ahead of the Rolling Stones.
Our lake got a famous mention in the movie Purple rain as the pretty girl tosses off her clothes to jump in:
The Kid (Prince): You have to purify yourself in Lake Minnetonka.
[She strips down, and runs towards the lake]
The Kid: Hey! Wait a minute! That's...
[She jumps in. She gets out shivering]
The Kid: Uh, hold it...
Apollonia: What?
The Kid: That ain't Lake Minnetonka.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087957/quotes
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Lotsa and lotsa of talent, but he never impressed me. (That solo on "While my guitar gently weeps" is extraordinary!) Apart from "Let's get crazy" I can't think of anything he did that I liked or that sounded all that different from anything else he did. The business about his name no longer being "Prince" but some symbol was hubristic absurdity.
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He was a big star on stations I didn't listen to and clubs I didn't go into. A 5'2" guy with an unbuttoned shirt wasn't my kind of sexy, but he was a big star and helped a lot of people get started. Prince would join local acts on stage in downtown Mpls clubs and then disappear as soon as the word got out.
26 unreleased albums, they say, someone is going to make money off of this.
The nameless period was weird but I kind of admire standing up to a big company that thinks they own the name your parents gave you. Also seems strange to go from his very sexual stage act to being a Jehovah's Witness, and then just not play certain songs.
A history of depression and dark stuff like the movie Purple Rain, and songs like Manic Monday, I can guess that a lot of these so-called creative geniuses were living out what otherwise would be considered mental illness, manic depressive bipolar, if it had a label.
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"Our lake got a famous mention in the movie Purple rain as the pretty girl tosses off her clothes to jump in:"
Wow. I didn't he lived near you. Actually I never realized he lived in Minn.
FWIW
A producer in Florida saw Katherine write lyrics and was reading one of her songs. He didn't like the way the words came out and asked if she could fix it. She said sure, and immediately rearranged the words making it come out perfect.
The producer was astonished and said, "I never saw anyone who can write like this, except Prince, and he's a genius".
Despite trying to fleece Katherine in every way he could think of he claimed, "I am the most honest person you will ever meet in the music business".
There are good reasons why Prince had to live in a high security compound and reportedly had a bank like vault.
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"I didn't know he [Prince] lived near you. Actually I never realized he lived in Minn."
Unlike Bob Dylan and others, he actually stayed here and was proud to be from here. Must not have had a competent tax adviser.
"There are good reasons why Prince had to live in a high security compound and reportedly had a bank like vault. "
As the saying goes, just because you're not paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you. Most don't know the music theft business the way you and Katherine do. I think of that when I see some cute 21 year old new on the scene who 'writes all her own songs'. I saw a 14 year old Kid Johnny Lang play a heavy blues guitar song 'he wrote' about love gone bad.
Local urban legend on lyrics: 52 years ago (1964), a little known band from England, the Rolling Stones played here at Excelsior Park on the lake and were allegedly booed off the stage. While in town, Mick Jagger (or whoever wrote songs for him) "was standing in line with Mr. Jimmy", the town bum, down at the Chelsea drug store, "they decided they would have a soda"but they were out of his favorite flavor cherry red, and Jimmy told him... "you can't always get what you want"... A singalong lyric now well known by millions.
Final Prince story: My sister is a professional viola player, played on his Paisley Park recordings in the 1980s. I tried to find out what songs that might have been. Here is a pretty song from that time with Prince on piano and the viola starting to come through around the 1:20 mark: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaL4DCseY4Y Sometimes it Snows in April, about the death of a friend. Prescient? They didn't come up with that line in Nashville or Hollywood.
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Apple gets into ITunes users hard drive and if they find something that "does not match" they upload to their (apple) database then delete the music from the person's hard drive
If they person had their own music on their hard drive apple has now effectively just stolen their property:
http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/05/06/apple-music-users-report-missing-music-in-library/
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http://rainnews.com/grammy-winning-musician-and-congressional-witness-calls-youtube-a-criminal-racketeer/
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http://rainnews.com/grammy-winning-musician-and-congressional-witness-calls-youtube-a-criminal-racketeer/
This is quite an interesting issue. Musicians who are mostly liberals are the property owners in this case and Google who is also leftist in politics is the greedy capitalist.
I like to think of youtube as content that is by definition public domain. The biggest company in the field is implicitly presenting it as that. It is quite easy to find different versions of favorite songs, convert them to MP3 and then 'own' a free version of it.
Google/Youtube teases you with free and easy viewing. They build their own market share and monopoly status, and then slip in more and more ads, enriching themselves, never the content provider.
The accuser is right. When content is taken down, the owner of the content is blamed, as if we had a right to their work for free that they are denying.
The music business has always been a mixture of free and paid content with I suppose only the very high end prospering from it. We need to listen free in order to like it and buy it, but if enough is available free, do we need to buy it?
I think google builds this dispute intentionally. In the end they will agree to a settlement that will involve payment to the artists, including a substantial cut to youtube, like eBay gets from sellers.
And still they will interrupt our service with advertising.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcGHznR64NM
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcGHznR64NM[/youtube]
Oh no! Cultural appropriation! :roll:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXJifYl_byU
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXJifYl_byU[/youtube]
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http://www.breitbart.com/big-hollywood/2017/01/15/toby-keith-dont-apologize-performing-country/
This is painful for me. Toby Keith is one of the biggest corrks there is. Most of his songs and hits are composed of lyrics stolen from us including red white and blue that was ripped off from our house in Celebration Florida. This prick of course is one of the singers claiming he writes his songs.
I thought he was a Democrat!
You I know he does shows for the troops. I am sure they all run out and buy his albums too.
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any fans of radiohead here? April can't come soon enough i'm just dying to hear them live
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A pretty part (4 minutes) at the end of the second movement (Andante moderato) before all the wild stuff gets going.
I was proud to see my sister perform this piece over the weekend. The conductor's opening remarks ended with, "You are in for a treat."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5jBVD1cztA
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Doug,
Is that your sister on harp?
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By Alan Paul
Aug. 26, 2017 7:00 a.m. ET
8 COMMENTS
Gregg Allman had been working on “My Only True Friend” with guitarist Scott Sharrard for a few months when they met for a songwriting session in Mr. Allman’s New York hotel room in March 2014. The Allman Brothers Band was in the midst of its final year of performances, after which Mr. Allman would dedicate himself to performances with his solo band, for which Mr. Sharrard was the musical director.
As they settled down with acoustic guitars, Mr. Allman dropped some heavy news: He had terminal liver cancer. Though he wished to keep the news secret, it seemed to shift his songwriting ideas.
“He scratched out a line of the song and added a new one: ‘I hope you’re haunted by the music of my soul when I’m gone,’” Mr. Sharrard recalls.
Mr. Allman and Scott Sharrard performed at the Georgia Theatre in 2015 in Athens, Ga.
Mr. Allman and Scott Sharrard performed at the Georgia Theatre in 2015 in Athens, Ga. Photo: Chris McKay/Getty Images
With the new lyric, “My Only True Friend” transformed from a classic road song to an aching farewell to his fans. It is now the lead single and emotional centerpiece of “Southern Blood,” the final solo album by Mr. Allman, who died on May 27 at age 69. The album is set for release Sept. 8.
“As soon as I heard ‘My Only True Friend,’ I thought the song was a shockingly honest confessional, that he was laying himself out and standing naked,” producer Don Was says. “He was telling you the key to his life, because he wanted to tie up the loose ends for the people who had stuck with him for decades and also for himself. He was making sense of the totality of his life.
Watch “My Only True Friend”
“Gregg was fully realized when he was on stage playing for his fans. What you saw on stage was the real guy, and all the troubles he encountered had to do with not knowing what to do with himself the rest of the time,” Mr. Was says.
“Southern Blood” was recorded with Mr. Allman’s touring band at Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals, Ala., where Mr. Allman’s brother Duane first made his name as a session musician with Wilson Pickett, Boz Scaggs and others. The band played live with Gregg Allman singing along, and most of the performances on the album were captured in the first or second takes.
A noted perfectionist, Mr. Allman planned to do vocal overdubs, to add his voice to two more completed musical tracks and to finish some tunes he was working on with Mr. Sharrard and keyboardist Peter Levin. Mr. Sharrard says there were also plans to write with Bonnie Raitt, Jason Isbell and others.
All of this was rendered impossible by Mr. Allman’s health struggles, so aside from “My Only True Friend” and one other Allman/Sharrard song, “Southern Blood” leans heavily on covers. Most of the material has an autumnal feel and underlying theme of mortality, notably Bob Dylan’s “Going, Going, Gone,” the Grateful Dead’s “Black Muddy River” and “Once I Was” by Tim Buckley, the California folkie who had a large influence on Mr. Allman’s songwriting. The album closes with a duet with Mr. Allman’s old friend Jackson Browne on Mr. Browne’s elegiac “Song for Adam.”
“The sessions were powerful because we all knew what he was singing about and why we were there,” Mr. Was says. The producer, who has worked with the Rolling Stones, Van Morrison, Ms. Raitt and many others, grew emotional discussing the monumental task of helping Mr. Allman achieve his dying vision.
Gregg Allman and Don Was rehearsed onstage ahead of a concert tribute to Mavis Staples in Chicago in 2014. Mr. Was produced Mr. Allman’s final album.
Gregg Allman and Don Was rehearsed onstage ahead of a concert tribute to Mavis Staples in Chicago in 2014. Mr. Was produced Mr. Allman’s final album. Photo: Rick Diamond/Getty Images
“Even in such a heavy atmosphere, we had a lot of fun, and the mood was effusive because we knew we were getting it,” Mr. Was says. “Gregg was digging in deep and he was oozing heart and soul, even in spots where he might not have had the lung power that he once had. He wanted to do vocal overdubs, but honestly if he had been able to, maybe we would have cleansed away some of the soul.”
By the time of the recording sessions, in March 2016, Mr. Allman had already outlived his diagnosis by several years. In 2012, two years after undergoing a liver transplant, he learned that he had a recurrence of liver cancer and was given 12 to 18 months to live, according to manager Michael Lehman.
“The doctors said the cancer could not be cured, but treatment could extend his life. But radiation treatment would have risked damaging his vocal cords and he refused, because he wanted to play music as long as he could,” Mr. Lehman says. “He wanted to enjoy his life and to perform until he simply could not.”
Mr. Allman played his final show in Atlanta on Oct. 29, 2016. As he rested and eventually received hospice care in his Georgia home, Mr. Was worked to finish the album, adding minimal overdubs. Until the end, Mr. Allman discussed his illness with just a handful of people. Chank Middleton, a friend of almost 50 years who was a near constant companion and was with him in his final weeks, says that Mr. Allman remained upbeat until almost the very end.
“I knew for a few years and it was hard for me to accept, but he was the one with strong words,” Mr. Middleton says. “I never saw him stand up to anything or anyone as he stood up to death. He did not like confrontation, but he faced death like a strong soldier. He looked it in the eyes and said, ‘Death, I’m not scared of you and I’m not ready for you.’ ”
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Bing Crosby version 1933: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmRiHVmPZB8
Three Dog Night version 1969: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xu6DUq3QboI
I prefer the '69 version. I wonder if it is because I grew up then or if it is better.
Would depression era folks prefer the '33 version better?
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FRom Albert King 's "California Night" to Jimi Hendrix "California Night" to "Red House "
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JePP3a048iI&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR3rFduFXv_E3ka23sIY1-hOxwqTBg9AG0BnG4pzidxRfXnWi2ayymKMh-A
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https://www.cbsnews.com/news/elderly-men-nursing-home-wacken-open-air-festival-itzehoe-heavy-metal/?fbclid=IwAR3A181W_MwcLTYSqHD3AUmxR6cwtAMnFaf1vBw6MdEDhvw4w1qxa7wQE7E
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http://www.openculture.com/2016/07/the-secret-link-between-jazz-and-physics-how-einstein-coltrane-shared-improvisation-and-intuition-in-common.html?fbclid=IwAR32qzkWOqWV2o16BT9EIN23uyA4YwFH_Ipg5Tw3OQSzS_Edqu51kbx-7zw
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https://www.culturesonar.com/funkadelic-at-50-mommy-whats-a-funkadelic/
The band I played with in the early 70s did a lot of this music.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JePP3a048iI&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR3rFduFXv_E3ka23sIY1-hOxwqTBg9AG0BnG4pzidxRfXnWi2ayymKMh-A
Still cool, it would be neat to have some kind of jam session with various Tribal members after the fights. I'm not at the same skill level as many others but I can still keep trying and practicing.
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Almost posted this in the "Power of Words" thread ....
https://youtu.be/8JC-di8CjCY (https://youtu.be/8JC-di8CjCY)
If you don't think about what you say
Every single time, knowing in your mind
The power in the words won't go away
Negativity comes your way
If you don't think about what you say
Every single time, knowing in your mind
The power in the words won't go away
Positivity comes your way
If you say love, say strength
Speak good words in abundance
Say health and happiness
You better mean what you say
Say hope, say peace, forgiveness, over standing
Your strength and loyalty
They’re gonna show you the way
[Chorus]
If you don't think about what you say
Every single time, knowing in your mind
The power in the words won't go away
Negativity comes your way
If you don't think about what you say
Every single time, knowing in your mind
The power in the words won't go away
Positivity comes your way
know you and you know me, keep it real, take it easy (easy)
Now what you trying to prove, who you trying to trick?
Because friendship and compassion, they can last forever
But I still need you to know
[Chorus]
If you don't think about what you say
Every single time, knowing in your mind
The power in the words won't go away
Negativity comes your way
If you don't think about what you say
Every single time, knowing in your mind
The power in the words won't go away
Positivity comes your way
Say love, say strength
Speak good words in abundance
Say health and happiness
You better mean what you say
Say hope, say peace, forgiveness, over standing
Your strength and loyalty
They’re gonna show you the way, but
[Chorus]
If you don't think about what you say
Every single time, knowing in your mind
The power in the words won't go away
Negativity comes your way
If you don't think about what you say
Every single time, knowing in your mind
The power in the words won't go away
Positivity comes your way
If you don't think about what you say
Every single time, knowing in your mind
The power in the words won't go away
Negativity comes your way
If you don't think about what you say
Every single time, knowing in your mind
The power in the words won't go away
Positivity comes your way
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A favorite of mine that I would listen to after Saturday sessions w/ DogZilla and the Hawai'i clan. Not that I drink or smoke (at least I don't anymore and I don't have anything against anyone who does) it's just the vibe and that mellow/chill feeling post-training.
https://youtu.be/FXPzRDxXRzg (https://youtu.be/FXPzRDxXRzg)
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Love the bassline/groove in this song.
https://youtu.be/sEdqy8yWmww (https://youtu.be/sEdqy8yWmww)
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Reminded of a song from a Facebook post.
https://youtu.be/i-UrNYzASBg (https://youtu.be/i-UrNYzASBg)
Hard times are comin your way
You're gonna have to rise above it some day
Organize your life and figure it out
Or you'll go under without a doubt
Hard times! hard times!
Seems i'm bein forced into a mold
Hard times! hard times!
Forcin me and i'm growin cold
Hard times are coming through
But if your hard they won't get to you
They're gonna try to drive you into the ground
But never surrender, never go down!
Hard times! hard times!
Seems i'm bein forced into a mold
Hard times! hard times!
Forcin me and i'm growin cold
Cromag!
Skinhead!
Breakout!
Now!
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Bob Dylan, a Genius Among Us
Amid America’s cultural upheaval, some things remain constant.
By Peggy Noonan
June 18, 2020 6:45 pm ET
Eduardo Kobra's Bob Dylan mural in Minneapolis, Oct. 13, 2018.
PHOTO: RAYMOND BOYD/GETTY IMAGES
Summer begins and it may be a hard one. Lots of pain in this big place.
The cultural upheaval continues, the plague marches on, a bitter election looms. This is a good time to think about something noble and inspiring, the life and work of Bob Dylan. He has an album out this week, his first with original material since 2012, called “Rough and Rowdy Ways.”
Mr. Dylan wrote his most famous anthem, “Blowin’ in the Wind,” in 1962. He has been operating at the top of American culture and embedded in the national consciousness for almost 60 years. You have to go back to Robert Frost and Mark Twain to find such a span of sustained literary productivity and importance.
Like Twain and Frost his great subject is America. Like them he is a genius: He did work of high artistic merit that had never been done before and won’t be replicated. For me, having known his work since I was young, his work is grave, wistful, rollocking, full of meaning and true. Also, obviously, prophetic, as if he were picking up big clear waves of themes in the electrical static all around us. “The battle outside ragin’ / Will soon shake your windows / And rattle your walls / For the times they are a-changin’.”
That was true when he wrote it and is true today. Great art is always about right now. It time-travels. Mr. Dylan’s music never settles down into an era, it’s dynamic, it’s like hearing the past in active conversation with the future.
There are two things you have to do if you have big ambitions and want to create something important that lasts. The first is the daily work and trying to keep it at a height that satisfies you. That’s hard. If you succeed, the second is dealing with the effects of the work, managing a career. That’s tricky. It involves making big, real-time decisions about pathways and ways of being. You have to figure out if an opportunity is a true opening or an easy way out; if a desire for security has the potential to become a betrayal of yourself and the thing God gave you, your gift.
Mr. Dylan seems to have handled all this by following to an almost radical degree the dictates of his essential nature and talent, and doing the work as he envisions it day to day. You can wind up being a hero one decade and a joke the next when you choose that route, and that’s happened to him. But in the end, this: In October 2016, he became the first writer of songs to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.
What a great figure.
In his autobiography, “Chronicles,” Mr. Dylan writes of how one night, when he was starting out playing the clubs in New York in the 1960s, he stumbled on a man who’d been stabbed to death. The blood made interesting patterns in the snow. This reminded Mr. Dylan of old photos of the Civil War. He began to study the war, deeply. Its meaning would shape him: “Back there, America was put on the cross, died and was resurrected. There was nothing synthetic about it. The godawful truth of that would be the all-encompassing template behind everything that I would write.”
He loves the mythic, fabulous figures of U.S. history. On the first page of his autobiography he writes of meeting Jack Dempsey. “Don’t be afraid of hitting somebody too hard,” the old boxer, taking him for a bantamweight, advised him. On “Rough and Rowdy Ways,” Mr. Dylan sings of William Tecumseh Sherman and George Patton, “who cleared the way for Presley to sing / who cleared the path for Martin Luther King.” It’s as if it’s all a continuum in which America’s outsize and spectacular beings clear the way and pave the path for the renegades and revolutionaries who will follow.
Mr. Dylan has the soul of a worker, a craftsman who has learned his craft. He spoke of this in February 2015, when he received the Person of the Year award from MusiCares Foundation. Rolling Stone later printed a transcript taken, the magazine said, from Mr. Dylan’s notes.
“These songs didn’t come out of thin air,” he said. He learned how to write lyrics from listening to folk songs over and over. He studied them, absorbed them, sang “The Ballad of John Henry, ” the steel-driving man with the hammer in his hand. “If you had sung that song as many times as I did, you’d have written ‘How many roads must a man walk down?’ too.” He said his intention was “extending the line,” continuing the music he loved by internalizing it and turning it into his own words, thoughts and stories.
In a New York Times interview last weekend, the historian Douglas Brinkley asked Mr. Dylan about the musical tributes he’d done to John Lennon. Is there anyone else he wants to write a ballad for?
Some public figures “are just in your subconscious for one reason or another,” he said. “None of those songs with designated names are intentionally written. They just fall down from space. I’m just as bewildered as anybody else as to why I write them.”
Writers are often asked how they get their ideas, and the language with which they express them. The truth is they don’t know. Why did your mind yield up that thought in those words? Walker Percy thought when he got something right the Holy Spirit had snuck into him.
Mr. Dylan doesn’t know where it comes from. Sometimes you write “on instinct,” he told Mr. Brinkley. “Kind of in a trance state.” His recent songs are like that: “The lyrics are the real thing, tangible, they’re not metaphors. The songs seem to know themselves and they know that I can sing them, vocally and rhythmically. They kind of write themselves and count on me to sing them.”
Mr. Dylan more and more speaks of fellow artists—fellow workers—with great tenderness. He reminds me of what Pope John Paul II said, that artists know a special pain because they imagine a work and see it in their heads but can never execute it perfectly, can never achieve what they’d imagined, and forever carry the anguish of unmet ambition.
Mr. Dylan looked up to Nina Simone, “an overwhelming artist.” When she recorded his songs, it “validated” him. “Johnny Cash was a giant of a man, the Man in Black.” When Mr. Dylan was criticized, Cash defended him in letters to magazines. In Cash’s world nobody told a man what to do, especially an artist. Little Richard was a man of “high character”: “He was there before me. Lit a match under me.” Why didn’t people appreciate his gospel music? “Probably because gospel music is the music of good news and in these days there just isn’t any. Good news in today’s world is like a fugitive, treated like a hoodlum and put on the run. Castigated. All we see is good-for-nothing news. . . . On the other hand, gospel news is exemplary. It can give you courage.”
We can forget: There are geniuses among us. They’re doing their work and bringing their light. Remembering this is encouraging.
Also Bob Dylan needed freedom to be Bob Dylan. Lose that and you lose everything.
But isn’t it good that he’s here? Rock on, Bob Dylan. Your work adorns us.
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https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2020/07/10/eminem-mask-shames-slams-dirty-cops-and-says-fck-drew-brees/
who else buys his stuff?
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https://www.steelstacks.org/about/venues-at-steelstacks/
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https://news.trust.org/item/20201013182102-pke3a
if it sucks he probably did
if it is good he probably stole it
maybe blind but he is still a lyin prick
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https://jimihendrix-lifelines.blogspot.com/2020/11/my-angel-catherina.html?fbclid=IwAR18TfV-_bXVwMSk9ewx0yGFDiKaN50JTUwzaDG-8mP4CT9dfAltcq_hiIQ
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpxA_ZxGX_M&feature=emb_logo
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpxA_ZxGX_M&feature=emb_logo
I like this better than the original.
Mongolian is the most Metal language every invented by humans.
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I have no idea what they are saying but it is powerful
and makes feel powerful
I could imagine Genghis Khan's vast hoards crossing the plains with boom boxes playing this tune as they conquer the world
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oN87fWPGa6g
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGRnokznTF0
UP YOURS WOKESTERS
(even better after a few drinks!)
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oN87fWPGa6g
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGRnokznTF0
UP YOURS WOKESTERS
(even better after a few drinks!)
Under the left’s thumb.
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yahoo.com/entertainment/taylor-swift-blasts-damon-albarn-for-claiming-she-doesnt-write-her-songs-213957694.html
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prolonging the "righteous" 60's protests
ah the nostalgia:
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/david-crosby-stephen-stills-ask-184005819.html
do they even listen to Joe Rogan?
My opinion :
Hey folks do not confuse
"virtuoso" with "virtuous"
it gets old very fast - no pun intended.
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Musicians no one has cared about in decades move to become even more irrelevant!
prolonging the "righteous" 60's protests
ah the nostalgia:
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/david-crosby-stephen-stills-ask-184005819.html
do they even listen to Joe Rogan?
My opinion :
Hey folks do not confuse
"virtuoso" with "virtuous"
it gets old very fast - no pun intended.
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How about just, shut up and sing? )
It's a business and personal decision how and where to sell their music. I suppose they are trading half good (and half bad) PR for losing a sales outlet. Spotify is not right wing but funny in general for a seller to not want half the market to access your product in any business or industry.
Have you heard that great new song by CSNY? Just kidding.
Similarly, to appease the 'woke': Dick's Sporting Goods lost $250 million in revenue on decision to end gun sales. That's okay, but don't buy their stock and don't buy anything else there if that decision offends you.
https://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/dicks-sporting-goods-admits-decision-to-abandon-gun-sales-cost-shareholders-250m-in-revenue/
I wonder if their press release regretted that their decision made defending yourself and your family more difficult, leaving maybe dozens dead and hundreds robbed, and deer herds starving from over-population.
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his name is fitting
https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2022/03/18/jeffrey-steele-pays-tribute-to-andrew-breitbart-with-new-single-walk-toward-the-fire/
saw this guy in NYC yrs ago
he along with 3 others who claimed to write songs they did not
were there
saw person who followed me around in Florida
there who kept watching me
who was one of the middle men who ripped us off and sold these guys the goods
more to the story but will not bore anyone with it.
so now he is honored for honoring Breitbart
:roll: :x
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resort to all sorts of gossip and gimmicks to perk interest in watching grammies
have jon stewart pull his pants down in front of brittney spears
etc. :roll:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/oscars-slap-prepare-nightmare-grammys-085004286.html
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https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/toby-keith-stomach-cancer-191733875.html
I am sure people knowing our history with this liar can imagine my joy at this.
8-)
sorry for sounding mean but for me this a night to drink a beer.
out of a red solo cup
whose lyrics came from our house among many others, such red white and blue, and
whose your daddy ( I allege, of course)
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https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2022/07/01/jeffrey-steele-releases-single-im-an-american-im-tired-of-people-putting-us-down/
"Steele — who’s written hits like “What Hurts the Most,” “My Wish,” and “These Days” for Rascal Flatts, as well as singles for Eric Church, Tim McGraw, Trace Adkins, Keith Urban, and Miley Cyrus "
yes he gets takes the credit
but he did not write jack
saw him in Joe's Pub in NYC yrs ago
when I had some choice words for some of his friends
with someone there who I recognized from Florida because I saw him at least twice following me around. So it went to that person to the likes of Jeff Steele then to the bigger names .
sorry to post but I can't help myself when I go to one of my favorite sites lauding a lying scumbag.
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Words fail.
-
words fail
True :cry:
Unless you are a 25 yo low level Trump aide.
Then words with no corroboration mean everything....
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/07/20/kingfish-blues-buddy-guy-guitar/
he is the real deal. :-o!
only 23 :-o
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https://www.thewrap.com/diane-warren-twitter-beyonce-24-writers/
:wink:
he who asks is racist!
:wink:
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vimZj8HW0Kg
is this how my mind works ?
:-o
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CCR was my favorite group early '70s
I never even noticed the Hollies 'Long Cool Woman in Black Dress"
was taken from 'Green River', but now I hear it:
https://www.google.com/search?q=green+river+ccr&rlz=1C5GCEM_enUS1001US1001&oq=green+river+ccr&aqs=chrome..69i57.15965773j0j15&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:88143f3c,vid:3WbmBK9BR9U
3 yrs later :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78edK-qI5FA
incidentally this version is pretty good:
https://www.google.com/search?
q=green+river+cover+song+machinist&rlz=1C5GCEM_enUS1001US1001&ei=3Op8ZPqUOICs5NoP-vqomAg&ved=0ahUKEwj68uW1sar_AhUAFlkFHXo9CoMQ4dUDCBA&uact=5&oq=green+river+cover+song+machinist&gs_lcp=Cgxnd3Mtd2l6LXNlcnAQAzIFCCEQoAEyBQghEKABOgcIABAeELADOg4IABCKBRCGAxCwAxCLAzoICCEQFhAeEB06BQghEKsCSgQIQRgBUKcDWNsXYIUZaABwAHgAgAFYiAG2BpIBAjExmAEAoAEBuAECwAEByAEC&sclient=gws-wiz-serp#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:7165f5a0,vid:xAe-XMGyn4k
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". His past is a litany of swindles and lies
His heart is vindictive you can see it in his eyes "
https://www.paroles-musique.com/eng/Forest-Fox-Bad-Boogaloo-lyrics,p6429321
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Over effusive, but as usual Noonan writes well.
We Should All Give Thanks for Taylor Swift
She brings joy, jobs and happy feet everywhere she goes. She’s the best thing happening in America.
Peggy Noonan
Nov. 22, 2023 6:54 pm ET
Right about now Time magazine would be choosing its Person of the Year, a designation I’ve followed from childhood because their choices tend to vary from sound to interesting. Also I almost always know who they’ll choose and enjoy finding out if I’m right. Here I tell you who it will be and must be or I will be displeased.
Miss Taylor Swift is the Person of the Year. She is the best thing that has happened in America in all of 2023. This fact makes her a suitably international choice because when something good happens in America, boy is it worldwide news.
I have been following her famous Eras tour since it began in March. Everyone says she’s huge, she’s fabulous, but really it’s bigger than that. What she did this year is some kind of epic American story.
Here are the reasons she should be Person of the Year:
Her tour has broken attendance and income records across the country. She has transformed the economy of every city she visits. The U.S. Travel Association reported this fall that what her concertgoers spend in and around each venue “is on par with the Super Bowl, but this time it happened on 53 different nights in 20 different locations over the course of five months.” Downtowns across the country—uniquely battered by the pandemic and the riots and demonstrations of 2020—are, while she is there, brought to life, with an influx of visitors and a local small business boom. Wherever she went it was like the past three years didn’t happen.
When Ms. Swift played Los Angeles for six sold-out nights in August she brought a reported $320 million local windfall with her, including 3,300 jobs and a $160 million increase in local earnings. From Straits Research this month: Ms. Swift’s tour is “an economic phenomenon that is totally altering the rules of entertainment economics.”
When the tour became a bona fide record-breaker Ms. Swift gave everyone in her crew—everyone, the dressers, the guys who move the sets, the sound techs and backup dancers—a combined $55 million in bonuses. The truck drivers received a reported $100,000 each.
Bloomberg Economics reports U.S. gross domestic product went up an estimated $4.3 billion as a result of her first 53 concerts.
The tour made her a billionaire, according to Forbes the first musician ever to make that rank solely based on her songs and performances.
When Ms. Swift made a film of the ongoing tour she reinvented how such things are financed and marketed, upending previous models, and when the film opened, on Oct. 13, it became the most successful concert film in history.
Foreign leaders have begged her to come. One said, “Thailand is back on track to be fully democratic after you had to cancel last time due to the coup.”
All of this is phenomenal, groundbreaking, but it’s just economics. Ms. Swift brings joy. Over the summer I was fascinated by what became familiar, people posting on social media what was going on in the backs of the stadium as Ms. Swift sang. It was thousands of fathers and daughters dancing. When she played in downtown Seattle in July, the stomping was so heavy and the stadium shook so hard it registered on a seismometer as equal to a magnitude 2.3 earthquake.
People meaning to compliment her ask if she’s Elvis or the Beatles, but it is the wrong question. Taylor Swift is her own category.
Here I wish to attest personally to the quality of her art but honey, I’m not the demo, I’m Porgy and Bess, the American Songbook and Joni Mitchell. She writes pleasing tunes with pointed lyrics. They’re sometimes jaunty, sometimes blue, and famously have a particular resonance for teenage girls and young women. She has said she sees herself primarily as a storyteller. They’re her stories and those of her audience—breakups, small triumphs, betrayals, mistakes. Her special bond with her audience is that for 17 years, more than a generation, they’ve been going through life together, experiencing it and talking it through. It’s a relationship.
Nine years ago, in an interview with CBS’s Gayle King, Ms. Swift cooly self-assessed. “My life doesn’t gravitate towards being edgy, sexy, or cool. I just naturally am not any of those things.” Pressed for what she is, she said: “I’m imaginative, I’m smart and I’m hardworking.” She was only 24 but all that seems perfectly correct. She’s focused, ambitious, loves to perform, loves to be cheered, loves to strut. Great careers are all effort. She works herself like a rented mule.
In the Atlantic magazine, the writer Spencer Kornhaber captured her opening show. Over more than three hours she played an amazing 44 songs in Glendale, Ariz. “Somehow seeing her up close made her seem more superhuman.” She has “the stamina of a ram.” She was fearless and inventive. “At one point she induced gasps by seeming to dive into the stage and then swim to the other side, as if it were a pond.”
Friends, this is some kind of epic American thing that is happening, something on the order of great tales and myths. Over the past few months as I’ve thought about and read of Ms. Swift my mind kept going back to phrases that are . . . absurd as comparisons. And yet. “When John Henry was a little baby . . . ” And a beautiful lyric I saw years ago that stayed with me. “Black-eyed peas asks cornbread/ ‘What makes you so strong?’/ Cornbread says, ‘I come from/ Where Joe Louis was born.’ ”
There is just something so mightily American in Taylor Swift’s great year.
Am I getting carried away? Oh yes, I am. And yet I think, isn’t it great that somebody’s shown such excellence you get carried away?
We end with her recent purported famous romance with football star Travis Kelce of the Kansas City Chiefs. Is it real, everyone asks. Who knows? Maybe they don’t know. I don’t understand the argument that they’ve come together for publicity. That’s the one thing she doesn’t need more of and could hardly get more of. As for Mr. Kelce, as J.R. Moehringer noted this week in the Journal, his mug is all over too. Whatever it is they owe no stranger an answer.
But here are reasons people would like it to be real. Because it makes life feel more magical—the prince meets the princess. Because it’s sweet. Because if it’s real then not everything is media management, which is the thing that deep down we always fear. Because it’s fun. Marilyn and Joltin’ Joe made America more fun, more a romantic place where anything can happen and glamour is real. Also if it’s real it adds to the sum total of love in the world, literally increases its quantity, and the love enters the air and the world breathes it in and, for a moment, becomes: better.
Onward to further greatness, Taylor Swift. Onward Travis Kelce. Win the Super Bowl this year, make an impossible catch, jump a man’s height to snatch the ball from the air with 10 seconds to go, score the winning touchdown, hold the ball up to your girl in the stands as the stadium roars and the confetti rains down.
Leave a 100 billion memories. Remind everyone: It’s good to be alive.
Because it is.
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:roll:
her early lyrics were allegedly the same as some that disappeared from our house.
yeah I know they show pics of her sitting in her bedroom and handwritten words on paper.
she allegedly memorized the lines or copied them took a photo and had a person their witness her write them down , take a picture and show the world.
sorry, she is sorrow to this household
lying B..h
oh she is so nice - "devastated" by a fan that died of heatstroke in Argentina........
entertainment knows how to play the fans....
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Her too?!? Did not know!!!
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every other view of her looks like this:
https://www.bing.com/search?pglt=41&q=talyor+swift+image+with+open+mouth&cvid=444e602361f54cf08d71b3c5ef22ed65&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIGCAEQABhAMgYIAhAAGEAyBggDEAAYQDIGCAQQABhAMgYIBRAAGEDSAQkxMDUyMWowajGoAgCwAgA&FORM=ANNTA1&PC=DCTS
nothing staged here, of course :roll:
what a horrible joke for me.
the best I can do is try not to think about it.
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Inside story, our ccp and the mrs. share the Person of the Year award with the singer. Without her writers she is a mere mortal millennial.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-12836881/Taylor-Swift-baffles-fans-quote-horcruxes-infinity-stones-TIME-interview-named-person-year-metaphors-just-inexplicable.html
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:-D :-D :-D
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The *real* T Swift
she can't even take one joke:
https://nypost.com/2024/01/08/entertainment/jo-koy-reacts-to-taylor-swifts-death-stare-at-golden-globes-2024/
How dare he!
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https://www.msn.com/en-us/music/news/the-monkees-davy-jones-called-the-beatles-the-1st-manufactured-group/ar-AA1dEzdt?ocid=msedgntp&pc=DCTS&cvid=95ad38c2916b4a7abfbb03450d9531c7&ei=8
OTOH
from my experience writing songs based on personal experience does NOT necessarily mean the claimed songwriter did in fact write the song.
I have seen them distributed to people based on what fits their profile.
Very clever and no one knows for the better.
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https://www.msn.com/en-us/music/news/the-monkees-davy-jones-called-the-beatles-the-1st-manufactured-group/ar-AA1dEzdt?ocid=msedgntp&pc=DCTS&cvid=95ad38c2916b4a7abfbb03450d9531c7&ei=8
OTOH
from my experience writing songs based on personal experience does NOT necessarily mean the claimed songwriter did in fact write the song.
I have seen them distributed to people based on what fits their profile.
Very clever and no one knows for the better.
I regularly get into trouble for claiming the Beatles killed rock ‘n roll, perhaps an exaggeration, but not much of one as I believe they exerted such an enormous force on the course of pop music in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s that they effectively bent all ensuing genre offerings towards the musical archetypes they established much as a celestial body bends space and time.
This sort of force does not emerge accidentally so I’m with Jones where the “manufactured” claim is concerned, particularly given all the solo treacle (Paul McCartney and Wings ditties makes me want to self-administer a lobotomy with a grapefruit spoon) emerging after they broke up. Indeed, after Lennon was shot my favorite joke was:
Q: What would it take to bring the Beatles back together?
A: Three more bullets.
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Speaking of music, here’s the best album you never heard of and one of my favorite artist, one that left us far too soon:
https://music.apple.com/us/album/living-with-the-law/157301322
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that never got much fanfare:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Buchanan
sad ending to apparently tortured musician but he leaves us with his creations
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that never got much fanfare:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Buchanan
sad ending to apparently tortured musician but he leaves us with his creations
Thanks for that. I knew of him, but have never done a deep dive into his work. Making up for that now….
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that never got much fanfare:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Buchanan
sad ending to apparently tortured musician but he leaves us with his creations
Thanks guys for the music referrals.
Ok, the guy can play: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMcjPZgK9GM
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Good choice
his Hey Joe rendition was unbelievable
I have seen this video but just noticed they are drinking beer! :-o
One doesn't even mind he can't sing because the guitar work is so amazing one doesn't care.
The album version was great too:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeJYRfG-qZU
an old Junior high school friend who played sax told me of him while we were (likely) doing marijuana 50 or so yrs ago.
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ccp’s post re Buchanan got me thinking about other guitarists that aren’t regarded as well as the should be. I already posted about Chris Whitley, whose blend of blues, folk, alt rock, and subtle jazz sensibilities makes him a standout.
Another is Johnny Thunders. It’s easy to miss his prowess as his often punk, reductive, guitar work doesn’t scream “look at me, ma!” like wretched, showy guitarists such as Richie Blackmoor, Eddie Van Halen, and others that find the outside edge of their usually limited skill set, crank the amp up to “11,” and then proceed to publicly masturbate using their guitar as an inflatable doll proxy.
Next, I’ll tell you how I really feel about showy guitarists with limited skills….
Anyhoo, Thunders in not the antithesis of the sort of rock musicians I loathe, but rather turns cliches inside out and generally fucks with them, all while letting his understated guitar work shine through his music, rather than dominate it like the meatheads cited above do. Thunders is one of the few guitarists out there that, within the first few bars of a piece, is immediately recognizable, which is also the case where his vocals are concerned.
A lifelong junky, Thunders OD’d in a seedy motel, leaving little other than his body of work behind. You can find much of his work here:
https://music.apple.com/us/artist/johnny-thunders/3184311
A couple of my favorites:
https://music.apple.com/us/album/great-big-kiss/285601659?i=285601789
https://music.apple.com/us/album/you-cant-put-your-arms-around-a-memory/310650295?i=310650315
And hey, while gushing on about an artist, I should confess I initially didn’t have much for the first band most know Thunders from, the New York Dolls. In those days I was into power trios and blues roots stuff; glam rock was far from my cup of tea. Things change, though, and much like I came to embrace Bowie despite his glam strutting (though I still can’t abide China Girl and his pop Thin White Duke crap), the Dolls and their contribution to the early US punk and NY CBGB’s musical scene has grown on me in my dotage.
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A couple of my Chris Whitley favorites:
Suspect I used to date her:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNtUvbtIwl0
“Scratching the wall with some old barbed wire,
Whatever it takes to make the dirt stick”
His lyrics often blow my mind:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErdyQDDK1M4
And perhaps the most wistful song ever:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcsbhTGa4AI
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excellent musician
the song he plays slide guitar reminds me a bit of Johnny Winter.
nice voice
lung cancer at 45 sad.
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excellent musician
the song he plays slide guitar reminds me a bit of Johnny Winter.
nice voice
lung cancer at 45 sad.
Indeed. I think Winter has a more balls to the wall style v. the subtleties Whitley embraces but, along with Duane Allman, they are some of the finest rock slide guitarists to be found.