Archive for Music - page 5

Welcome to Music Friday on a Saturday morning.  What can I say? I just ran out of Friday.  No matter – since there are no more Saturday morning cartoons you don’t have anything better to do, right?  Thought so.

OK, so jumping off my previous post (scroll down or click here), I want to throw something different at you.  These songs are among my favorites – what does that say about me?  If you ask me, it says nothing.  But what do you imagine it says about me?  Listen to these while you ponder that.

Presented with minimal commentary.  Click on the artist’s name to follow a link to their Wikipedia page.  First up is a song from the soundtrack of a popular movie by dueling pianists Ferrante & Teicher:

Come to think of it, these are all from soundtracks.  The next offering is the first of a pair from Henry Mancini:

And finally another Henry Mancini arrangement:

So.  Any opinions?  Did my choices reveal my secret personality?  Please feel free to leave a comment.

And conversely, what does your taste in music say about you?

According to this article at Pcsychology Today it says quite a bit.  Practically the first sentence of the article asserts that you can predict whether someone is politically conservative or liberal by noting “markers of openness” in a person’s music collection.  For me, this is where the article goes…well…barking up the wrong tree.  Because the “markers of openess” allegedly denoting a politically liberal person exist in my library/music collection.  I am not liberal, politically anyway.  And it just goes further off the rails from there.  My advice?  Just listen to what you like and don’t worry so much about what it says about you.  Because whatever it “says about you” is likely to be a (probably wrong) conclusion jumped to by someone who doesn’t know you.

But there are still some questions related to what we listen to and why we listen to it.  For example: At what age do you form your taste in music?  Many an article has been written on this subject and they all say something different.  Some say at a certain age your brain “bonds” to the music you listen to.  Some say that you settle on music that coincides with a certain emotional climate occurring in your life at a certain time.  And so on and so on.  I understand that we want to know why.  We’re always asking WHY?  But does it matter?  I don’t think so.

And finally, questions inspired by this post at Althouse: what is your “peak year” for favorite music and how old were you at that time?  Well, the answers to these questions may go some way to answering the previous questions because if you can determine your “peak year” you may have some empirical data to fill in the blanks to the previous questions and perhaps a pattern will emerge.  I did say perhaps.  I also said “if you can answer”.  I add the disclaimer because determining your “peak year” isn’t as easy as it sounds.  That may be a project for the coming week with the results posted next Music Friday.  We’ll see.

My guess is that my “peak year” falls into the mid 1960s somewhere, at least based on my recent Music Friday posts.  But I could do music posts all day every day and still get stuck in any given genre for a good long while.  So what does my taste in music say about me?  I don’t really know.  And I don’t really care.

…and so here you go – Beatles Pancakes (!)

It’s not fair that some people (like myself) have almost zero artistic talent, yet this dude creates art in the kitchen and then eats it.

OK, back to wandering….                 ……………………………………..

Oh…almost forgot.  hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ

Welcome to another Music Friday.  Today I am jumping off a post I did a couple weeks ago featuring The Seekers, who had a hit song written by Tom Springfield, the brother of today’s featured artist  Dusty Springfield.  Who on earth is Dusty Springfield? you ask, unless you are old like me.  Well, since you’ve asked, Dusty Springfield was an English pop singer and Blue Eyed Soul artist from the late 1950’s until the 1990’s, though most of her success came in the mid to late 1960’s.  Dusty Springfield was her stage name.  Her real name was Mary Isobel Catherine Bernadette O’Brien and she was born in London in 1939 to an English father and an Irish mother.  I seem to have a thing for Irish girls.  The family enjoyed music, so the children were encouraged to partake.  Mary began singing professionally in 1958 (age 19).  The “Springfield” alias originated when she and her brother formed a folk group in 1964.  Apparently they rehearsed outdoors – in a field – and so they thought an appropriate name for the group would be The Springfields.  Each member adopted a nickname and since Mary was reportedly somewhat of a tomboy known for playing football with the boys, “Dusty” seemed like a fitting moniker.  In retropsect it is also a neatly fitting description of her vocal style.

As a fan of American pop music, she was responsible for introducing some lesser know American MoTown artists to an English audience as the host of an English TV program called “Ready, Steady, Go!” in the early 1960’s.  The Springfields enjoyed some success, but nevertheless disbanded in late 1963.  Shortly thereafter, Dusty Springfield released her first solo single, “I Only Wanna Be With You”.  The song, released in 1963, charted at #4 in Great Britain and made the Billboard Hot 100 in the U.S., peaking at #12 in 1964.  This is the song that introduced her to America.

Here are three performances from British television in no particular order.  Note that these are sung live, not lip-synced as later became common for televised pop music performances in the 60’s.

From 1968, “Son of a Preacher Man”

Next:  “All I See Is You”

OK, I saved the best for last.  This next song charted in the U.S. in 1966.  Springfield called it “good old schmalz”, but one of the composers of the song, Simon Napier-Bell, felt that Dusty’s rendition took it to another level:

“There, standing on the staircase at Philips studio, singing into the stairwell, Dusty gave her greatest ever performance – perfection from first breath to last, as great as anything by Aretha Franklin or Sinatra or Pavarotti. Great singers can take mundane lyrics and fill them with their own meaning. This can help a listener’s own ill-defined feelings come clearly into focus. Vicki [Wickham] and I had thought our lyric was about avoiding emotional commitment. Dusty stood it on its head and made it a passionate lament of loneliness and love.” – Simon Napier-Bell

A song that was voted among the All Time Top 100 Songs by BBC Radio 2 listeners in 1999: “You Don’t Have To Say You Love Me”

She lived an interesting life – too many things to write about and not enough time or space here.  Follow this Wikipedia link if you’d like the rest of the story.  Just two final notes:  She was prone to odd behavior such as food fights and breaking crockery which was described by others as “having a wicked sense of humor”.  She never had a heterosexual relationship.  Though she said her prime ambition was to love a man, she also said  “they frighten me”.  She died of breast cancer in England in 1999.

The headline of this story at NBC.com is “Stephen Hawking Fears Higgs Boson Doomsday and He’s Not Alone“.  I have no idea what that actually means, but if Stephen Hawking fears it then so do I.  I guess that’s why he’s not alone.  Here is an article that explains what the Higgs Boson Doomsday is.  Let me see if I can get this straight – because the Higgs Boson, the energy field of which is the source of mass for everything in the universe, is estimated to be just the right mass in itself to cause the potential instability of said universe, there is a theoretical possibility that said universe might become unstable and instantaneously cease to exist.  Yeah.  I don’t understand it either.  But these guys do and they say it’s possible.  Ironically (!) if the mass of the Higgs Boson were different by just a few percent, we wouldn’t be doomed!  Boy did we luck out.  Nailed it on the first try.  Better go buy a lottery ticket.

But don’t worry:

“You won’t actually see it, because it will come at you at the speed of light,” Lykken said. “So in that sense don’t worry.”

Super.  We’re all gonna die instantly at any second.  But we won’t see it coming.  So don’t worry about it. Nope.  Don’t give it a second thought.

Stevie says don’t you worry ’bout a thing:

…Pretty Mama.  On second thought, forget the lottery ticket.  If I won and then the universe ended, I would have to kill myself.

If you are old enough to have been self aware in 1963, you may remember this song, since it reached #1 on the US Billboard Hot 100 in December of that year.  It is one of a relative few US chart topping songs to be recorded in a language other than English, and as far as I know it is the only one to be written and recorded by a member of a religious order.  The artist is Jeanine Deckers, also known as Sister Luc-Gabrielle O.P., also known as The Singing Nun.  Deckers was a Nun in the Order of Preachers (O.P.), more commonly known as The Dominicans since the order was founded in the year 1217 by Saint Dominic.

The song “Dominique” is, unsurprisingly, a ballad about Saint Dominic:

The song was so popular that a movie starring Debbie Reynolds as Sister Luc-Gabrielle was made in 1965, though the subject of the film herself dismissed it as “fiction”.  Here from the film is Reynolds in character as “Sister Anne” (Hollywood changed the title character’s name) performing  a version of the song in English.  Note: the English lyrics sung in the movie are not a translation of the original song’s lyrics, rather a version composed for the movie.  Follow this link to see the English translation of the original song (along with the original lyrics in French).

In 1965, Deckers left the Convent, though remained a Lay Member of the Dominican Order.  Apparently her first love was music, as she made several unsuccessful attempts at continuing her musical career.  These efforts were hampered by the fact that the recording company owned not only the rights to the song, but also the rights to the names “The Singing Nun”  and “Sister Smile” (which was another name she was known by) and refused her permission to record under those names.  Now suffering from lack of promotion and name recognition, her subsequent recordings were commercial failures.  In addition to that, the Belgian Government claimed she owed $63,000 in back taxes on royalties from the song.  On a note of black irony, she committed suicide in 1985 and her suicide note cited this ongoing financial strife as one of the reasons for her taking her own life.

Final note: Saint Dominic (1170-1221) is credited with promoting the Catholic Devotion of The Rosary.  He is also the Patron Saint of Astronomers.

I’m always interested in learning about what makes people tick and the reasons why we are such strange critters.  So after a discussion today about why certain people seem to like having an adversarial relationship with one another, I came across an article at TheWeek.com and now feel compelled to share.

Here’s the article: “The Science of Sex: 4 Harsh Truths About Dating and Mating”

The article is based on some “research” posted at a website called Barking Up The Wrong Tree, so the “science” may be total bullshit, but the 4 truths are generally accepted stereotypes they claim are supported by research.  Well, they’re stereotypes, so they must be true at least part of the time or they would not have become stereotypes.  I won’t go into the supporting information, you can go to the link if you want that.  I just want to cover the harsh truths.  This is after all a search for the truth no matter how harsh.  So here goes.

Harsh Truth #1: Those things we say we hate about people actually make us more attracted to them.  Based on surveys of women who were most attracted to men that they were told might like them either a lot or not very much.  They were more attacted to them than to men who they were told liked them a lot.  Related: surveys found that “playing hard to get” works.  Just don’t play “too hard to get”.  Also, Narcissistic traits make a person more attractive.

Harsh Truth #2:  Guys are pretty shallow.  Most male behavior is all about getting laid.  Guys are more likely to be attracted to women with large breasts.  Guys will go to greater lengths and expense to impress younger women.

Harsh Truth #3:  Women are no angels, either.  Women find “bad boys” more attractive, and “happiness” was found to be the least attractive emotion in a man.  Women are attracted to men of status (translation: Money).

Harsh Truth #4: Harsh truths #1 – #3 do not change over time (as we age).  They also hold true across different cultures.  Men focus on looks, women focus on status.  Even in nursing homes.

Well they may be harsh but calling them truths goes too far.  They certainly are stereotypes, but stereotypes are not absolute.  In this case, the claim of “truths” is alleged to be backed up by science.  But even that holds that the “truths” are valid only for “x” percentage of the respondents.  So they are “mostly” truths or “sometimes” truths.  Thank God.

Some of these are partially true for me, others don’t apply to me at all.  I’ll let you guess which.  So all we can glean from this is that there are a wide variety of things that motivate people in regard to physical attraction.

Oh and…*ahem*…sex.

So, as I like to say, different strokes for different folks.  Now that is a truth.  And not too harsh!

Now this:

This week featuring…The Animals!  AKA Eric Burdon and The Animals.  The original incarnation was formed in England in 1962 or 1963.  As part of the British Invasion of the early 60s they had a few hit songs and some commercial success.  In one of my earlier Music Friday posts I gave them a mention because they recorded the song “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” which was the first record that I actually owned, that didn’t belong to one of my older siblings.  Here it is – give a listen:

Probably their most successful song is a traditional folk song, written by an unknown author on an unknown date.  Recorded by the group in 1964, it’s a song that still gets a lot of airplay on oldies and classic rock stations.  Here is “The House of the Rising Sun”:

Like most of the groups that were part of the British Invasion their roots were in American Rythm and Blues, which you will hear in this number, “It’s My Life”:

What were they thinking?  I dunno – maybe you should ask them.  Most of them are still around.  Thanks for listening!

On a related note (as is most everything I think or say or do), I have a song for you from Dusty Springfield who I mentioned in the previous post.  She is related to The Seekers in that her brother and producer wrote some of the Seekers’ hit songs.  Her smoky voice and singing style made her one of the first artists of the “blue-eyed soul” genre.  Perhaps I will devote a full fledged Music Friday post to her soon.  For today, here is her first hit song from 1963.

Dusty Springfield died of breast cancer in 1999.  RIP.

Since I was off the grid and I missed last Music Friday, here’s your Music Monday.  Actually isn’t every day music day?

Since we are all seekers to one degree or another, I thought it appropriate to feature The Seekers as our guests today.  Humans of my vintage may remember The Seekers, as they had a few hit songs back in the mid to late 1960’s.

This is maybe the most recognizable song done by the group, since it charted at #1 in the UK and #4 in the US in 1965, a song written by Tom Springfield who was the brother of Dusty Springfield:

Finally, another Tom Springfield compostion which charted at #20 that same year:

Final note:  The Seekers were Australian, not British.  So, as they say down under, “Good on ya!”