Launched just over 37 years ago in September 1977, the probe is now about 18 light-hours away from home. How do we know? Why from reading Voyager I’s twitter feed that’s how. Yup. Voyager I is on Twitter.
Reminds me of this. Long intro…stick with it though. Or skip ahead to 0:45. You’re welcome.
In my earlier post (scroll down) about the 1965 BillBoard Hot 100 charts, I mentioned that The Supremes were runners up to the Beatles with four #1 songs that year (the Beatles had five). The four #1’s for The Supremes were Come See About Me, Stop In The Name of Love, Back In My Arms Again and I hear a Symphony. The only other groups with multiple #1’s that year were The Rolling Stones (Satisfaction, Get Off My Cloud) and Herman’s Hermits (Mrs. Brown You’ve Got A Lovely Daughter, I’m Henry VII, I am). I’ll embed here one song from each group, but if you click on the other song titles, the link will take you to a YouTube video of that song. Enjoy!
The Supremes
The Stones
Herman’s Hermits
Kind of hard to believe that the original Rolling Stones, most of them anyway, are still touring today considering all the drugs and alcohol they must have gone through. Brian Jones did succumb to his excesses.
I have decided to embark on a journey of discovery to determine my Peak Music year, which you may remember me discussing in an earlier post, “What Does My Taste In Music Say About Me?” Initially I was at a loss as to how this could be accomplished, and after some thought I decided that there would be no truly scientific way to study this, that there would be a large measure of subjectivity involved. Since we’re talking about my taste in music, which is really just my opinion, I figured subjectivity would be OK. In some of my Music Friday posts where I give background on the songs I’ve chosen; I often reference where the song placed on the Billboard Hot 100 Chart in a certain year. With that in mind I decided the measurement of a song’s popularity as measured by the BillBoard Hot 100 chart could form a basis of information to determine what year is my “Peak Music” year. Fortunately, all the Billboard charts going back to 1958 are archived online at the Billboard Magazine website. 1958 is plenty far enough for my purposes, since I was only born in 1956 and have decided arbitrarily that I would start my search at 1965 anyway. Side note: in addition to viewing the weekly charts, you can listen to the songs through Spotify. If you don’t have a Spotify account you can set one up for free, you just need to provide your e-mail address.
This is going to be a process. Since I’ve decided that my peak music year is likely to fall between 1965 and 1975, I will research those years first. If I am unsatisfied with the end result, I will expand the survey to earlier and later years. Since the BillBoard Hot 100 chart is released weekly, there are 52 charts per given year, each chart with 100 songs on it. Yikes! I have decided, again arbitrarily, to review only the #1 songs from each weekly chart and determine which artist or group had the most #1’s. The artist or group with the most #1 songs in a given year I will deem the “most popular” of that year. Then based on that I will decide which of those ten artists or groups are my favorite and that year they were the “most popular” will be my “Peak Music” year. Make sense? Probably not, but I’m going with it anyway.
Oh…and once I determine the winner for a given year, I will feature that artist’s #1 song (or songs) on that Music Friday.
So…the 1965 Billboard Hot 100. Winner: The Beatles with five #1’s – I Feel Fine, Eight Days a Week, Ticket to Ride, Help! and Yesterday.
Runners up were The Supremes with four #1’s. The only other groups with multiple #1’s were The Rolling Stones and Herman’s Hermits with two apiece.
So Here are the Beatle’s #1 songs from 1965. Since I just featured Eight Days a Week last Friday, follow this link for that song. The others follow now.
Next week – 1966! See ya!
Guy plays the national anthem with a rifle. A Ruger 10/22 to be exact, which I had previously only suspected was the most versatile of firearms. Now I am convinced of that fact. If you have a hammer, a crescent wrench, two screwdrivers (phillips and common), a roll of duct tape and a Ruger 10/22 (with ammo) you can accomplish just about anything.
The tempo is a little suspect, but with some more practice and better target placement I’m sure that can be improved.
Hat Tip: Ace of Spades HQ
Of course, it happened in Japan:
Tokyo Cops Bust School Girl Sniff Parlor
I’m still trying to decide if that’s for real or if it’s a hoax. If it’s a hoax, someone put a lot of time into it. Since truth is often stranger than fiction, I guess there’s a good chance it’s true. On second thought, it’s Japan. So it’s gotta be true.
Now this:
Once I start Beatle-ing I can’t stop. So three more songs for you of the non-obscure variety, timeless and especially meanigful to me (and I hope you, too!). Enjoy!
In my life, I get by with a little help from my friends eight days a week.
Here are a few un-deconstructed Beatles tunes. I mean re-constructed. Wait. Constructed? Skip it. These are just a few of my favorite (and hopefully more obscure) Beatles tunes.
Tell me what you see.
Think for yourself.
And your bird can sing!
Tell me you’ve seen seven wonders indeed. Now you’ve heard three.
As in deconstructing the Beatles. This is a little about the music and a little about how it is was made, that is, performed and recorded. Or at least how it was done in “the olden days”. Here is a YouTube video that breaks down Sgt. Pepper’s Lonley Heart’s Club Band into the 4 tracks it was recorded on. Yep, the analog tape machines of the day only recorded on 4 tracks, so the engineers had to get a little creative. George Martin who produced and/or engineered many Beatles recordings is considered an early master at fitting everything onto the 4 available tracks, a practice known as “ping-ponging”.
Interesting, no? I think it holds up well strictly as an instrumental. And the harmonies seem all the more…harmonious when you hear them a capella. Anyway, lots of Deconstructing The Beatles videos at YouTube if you’re interested.
There were a couple things in the news this week. Paul Revere of Paul Revere and the Raiders died this week at the age of 76. Paul Revere was the band’s keyboard player, not the frontman/vocalist. That was (is) Mark Lindsay who is still alive. Here is one of my favorite P.R. & The Raiders songs:
The nominees for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for this year were announced. Among them is Sting, so here is a song from him:
What the hell. Here’s a bonus song from when he was a Policeman:
So, there you go. No film at 11.
I’d like to first welcome any new readers, then give some background and answer some questions about the blog.
*taps the microphone* Is this thing on?
Ego Vero is my little corner of the internet where I can transform thoughts and ideas that are rattling around inside my head into a form of reality by comitting them to writing. Ego Vero is Latin for “I seek truth”. I have invited you along on my journey which may take us along strange paths. This means I may write about any of several general topics that interest me and for whatever reason occupy my thoughts. The articles (which are called “posts”) on the home page are in chronological order – newest at the top, older below – and not sorted by category. As you scroll down you go back in time and see every post covering every subject. If you don’t wish to see all the categories, you can narrow things down to one category at a time. Here’s how. You will see these categories listed on the right hand side of the page – clicking on one of those categories will show you only the posts on that subject. Let’s say you are an aviation buff who only wants to read my aviation posts and avoid the rest of my blather about Empiricism, robots, music and so on – click on “Aviation” and voila! You will see only the aviation posts – still in chronological order with the newest at the top. Same goes for any of the categories.
The category with the most posts by far is “Life”. Just FYI
You know – Life – as in Life One and Life Two (three? four?……)
Any red text you see within a post contains a link to additional information – an article I used for reference, perhaps another related post I wrote, or a wikipedia link, etc. Clink on the red text and the link should open in a new tab.
My goal first and foremost is to get these ideas out of my head! Read the “About” page for more background. But I invite you, dear reader, in the hope that we may learn something together about ourselves and each other. And that you may be at least somewhat entertained in the process. I welcome your feedback via the comments. To the left of each post title is a two colored box – the top half is red and indicates the date the post was created. The bottom half is grey and says “comments”. The number – which is almost always zero, dammit – indicates how many comments readers have left about the post. Click on that grey box and you can leave a comment about the post. Please do! Your e-mail adress will not be published, shared or used by me in any way. And there is definitely a slim chance that I will not stalk you.
For more, read How to Read This Here Blog Thingy and For New Readers – Welcome!
So Welcome! And enjoy.