Archive for Music - page 9

Sometimes when I’m be-boppin’ around on the web I come across something, bookmark it and later forget how I got there.  That is the case here – I forgot how I came across this Judy Collins performance of  her song Since You’ve Asked, but I’m glad I did.  I hadn’t realized that she wrote it, as I was only familiar with the Dan Fogelberg version (2nd video) and assumed he authored it.  You will not recognize this song if you are only familiar with Collins’ commercially successful songs like Both Sides Now or Send In The Clowns.  This is a very moving love song, melodic poetry with a piano accompaniment

Now Dan Fogelberg:

Very Nice!

…It means inferior, damaged or otherwise of poor quality and I’ve never used it to refer to the quality of music.  I’d always heard it used to refer to certain…ahem..”combustibles” of poor quality.  But using it to refer to the quality of music is what Jody Rosen does in this Vulture.com article In Defense of Schlock Music: Why Journey, Billy Joel and Lionel Ritchie Are Better Than You Think.  Rosen spends a fair amount of ink (electrons? pixels? bandwidth?) explaining that if you’ve ever read or paid any attention to music critics you would know that almost all popular music, past and present, is considered schlock by those critics.  And despite the critic’s…err…criticism, the music was and is commercially successful, widely popular and has stayed popular over time.  Huh.  I can’t really decide if the article is a true defense of the music, a defense of the critics who deemed the music schlock, or an idictment of the public for embracing and consuming the schlock tunes because about halfway through the article I started to lose the will to live – no offense meant to Jody Rosen.  Anyhoo…I don’t care.  Beauty is in the eye of the beholder as they say (or so I’m told that they say) and I don’t need a critic to tell me if a painting is good, or if I should like a song.  I know what I like when I hear it.  I DO NOT LIKE The Pina Colada Song – just want to get that out there.  Now THAT is some schlock.  God, now I’ve got that in my head.

So in the critics’ opinions, my taste in music runs to “schlock”.  Everyone has their opinions – one man’s schlock is another man’s…umm…something that’s good music.  Let’s try that again.  One man’s schlock is another man’s..BACH!  Awesome.  Just find something you like and let it make you happy!

Here is number 109 from The 150 Greatest Schlock Songs  of All Time:

Hat tip:  Althouse

The spotlight turns to Joe Walsh, who many of you may know as a member of the Eagles;  However…Joe Walsh was Joe Walsh before he was an Eagle.  In the late 60’s he joined a band called The James Gang – 70’s refugees will recognize the name and recall that this band produced some of the first hit songs written/performed by Walsh.  He left the James Gang and formed a group called Barnstorm, which had a few hits, the most commercially successful being “Rocky Mountain Way” which reached #23 on the 1973 US Top 40 Chart.  Interestingly, the band released three albums, but only the first branded as Barnstorm, the later two marketed as Walsh solo efforts.  As a result, no one remembers Barnstorm – I know I didn’t.

This James Gang song is the one with the famous riff and the funky name: Funk #49:

OK then.  I’ll close with a few bonus fun facts about Joe Walsh:

He played the Oboe in his high school band; He produced Dan Fogelberg’s 1974 Album Souvenirs;  he is an amatuer (HAM) radio operator, call sign WB6ACU.

Classic Rock and lawsuits go together like…like…well it just seems ike a lot of classic rockers sue each other.  And now lawyers for the family of deceased “Spirit” guitarist Randy California may file suit against Led Zeppelin to ensure that California gets a writing credit on Stariway to Heaven, which California claims Led Zeppelin “ripped off’ after the groups toured together in 1968.  The basis of the lawsuit is that “Stairway to Heaven” is plagiarised from the Spirit song “Taurus”  Give a listen and see what you think.  Personally, I don’t hear it.

What I find interesting though, is that the bands Led Zeppelin and Spirit toured together in 1968 – today the Led Zeppelin guys (the surviving ones) are wealthy music icons, and Randy California is basically unknown and apparently died penniless.  Such is life.

For Randy California – some of us know who you are.  For what it’s worth, thanks.  If you don’t remember any Spirit tunes, this is probably their most famous song.  Enjoy:

…It’s Friday and that means it’s music day.  Stuck in the 70’s music day!  Today’s first offering is a Steely Dan number off their 1974 (of course!) album “Pretzel Logic”.  Unless you are a Steely Dan superfan like me, you probably have not heard this song, titled “Any Major Dude Will Tell You”.  Regarding Pretzel Logic, they did have hit song from this album which you most likely know, “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number” which is a great song, but I like this one better;  No performance video, just audio.  Give it a listen:

Alright, since “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number” was Steely Dan’s most successful single (with good reason) Here you go:

Apparently since I am over 50, I am a dinosaur as are most of my family and acquaintances.  I know this is true because when I tell people I know to read my blog, they say “what’s a blog?”  I am so screwed – since I don’t write about Beyonce or Justin Bieber no one under thirty will ever read this and no one over thirty knows what a blog is.  So let me tell you a little bit about how I found out about blogs, became a reader of blogs and then went on to blogging.

I have never thought of myself as an early adopter of technology but I have been using the internet since the early 1990’s.  Thinking about it now, it was the dawn of time.  My chosen portal: AOL, now just a footnote to history.  I started out reading what they called “newsgroups” which were kind of like discussion boards where someone would post an article or website adress, people would read and discuss.  Usually I would “lurk” in these newsgroups, a term that means to look in, read the article and discussion but not participate – if you don’t speak up, no one knows you’re there.  This evolved into general web surfing and a few sites helped fuel that, mainly The Drudge Report (which started out mainly as movie industry news and gossip) with it’s many links to news stories.  Another was Lucianne.com founded by Jonah Goldberg’s mother, Lucianne Goldberg.  It’s still around.  Finally, sometime in the early 2000’s a Radio Talk Show host I listen to named Hugh Hewitt began talking about this new thing on the internet with a funny name.  Blobs?  No, that can’t be it.  BLOG!  That’s it – internet lingo shorthand for weblog.  Weblog = weBLOG = BLOG.  He wrote a book about it.  Anyway, the amount of information and perspectives on information available to me online took a quantum leap with that revelation.  There are blogs about everything you can think of.  I zeroed in on politcal blogs mostly, but also branched out into Law, and Science as well as general interest.  Many bloggers write about other subjects in addition to their area of expertise if they have one.  When 9/11 happened, I started reading the military blogs or MILblogs.  Yes, the blogosphere has covered the War on Terror.  Over the course of years, I came to admire some of these bloggers (whom I have never met, nor communicated with) and at some point decided that imitation would be the best form of flattery.  On the sidebar to the right you will see a heading that says “Some Blogs I Like”:  Click on any of those, they are worth your time.

The subtitle of Hewitt’s book sums up the what Blogging is to me and why I decided to become a participant instead of just an observer:  “Why You Must Know How The Blogosphere Is Smashing The Old Media Monopoly And Giving Individuals Power In The Marketplace Of Ideas”.  I have decided to exercise my power and transform my exploration of life into a creative exercise – and to invite you along.  If you are lurking here, your journey has already begun.  Step into the light, introduce yourself and we can all continue our journey together.

I write about anything that happens to be of interest to me, and the subject matter is varied.  The posts are  in chronological order, the newest at the top – you can keep scrolling down to the bottom of the page and keep going back to view older  posts, all the way back to the beginning of time…err.. when I started this blog in February of 2014.  If you like what I write about some subjects but don’t care for others, look on the sidebar to the right.  You will see “categories”.  All my posts fit into one or more of these categories.  Click on the category you are most interested in, and you will see only posts in that category.  Simple.  Within my posts I often link to additional information and/or another blog or article that inspired the post.  When you see a word in red text, that is a link to additional information.  Click on it and the link will open in a new tab.  Any pictures within a post can usually be viewed in a larger version by simply clicking on the picture.

Please comment! To the left of the title you will see a box with the date and below it a box that says comments.  Click there and a dialogue box will open where you will be able to write comments on the article. This is how I know you’re reading and I welcome all feedback on my writing. You will be asked for your name and e-mail adress but don’t worry!  You can use an alias if you don’t want to disclose your name and your e-mail adress will not be displayed, nor will I spam you.  I moderate all the comments so I will see your comment.

Thanks! and Enjoy!

If you  have read much here you know that musically I am stuck in the 70’s.  If you haven’t read much here, congratulations on not wasting a lot ot time on the internet.  Now go tell all your friends and acquaintances that might be  disposed to wasting a lot of time on the internet to read this blog.  Thank you.  Now back to our program – in listening to my 70’s playlist today up comes ” Aquarius” by The 5th Dimension, a song that gained popularity in the late 60’s (ok, not 70’s) as one of the songs from the musical “Hair”.  This was at the peak of the hippie movement and the lyrics are all about how the dawning age of Aquarius will usher the human race into an era of perpetual peace, love and understanding.

Still there? OK, I’ll get to my point (finally!).  The song was released about forty years ago and the human race is just as screwed up now as it was then, if not more.  So what the hell happened?

I looked up “Age of Aquarius”; follow the link if you have some time, but I’ll give you the short take:  Various astrologers and philosophers have competing theories about what it actually means and when it will arrive (or did arrive) based on differing astrological calendars (though Robert Zoller’s summation seems to fit the current times very well).  Of course it helps to have some belief in astrology, which I don’t, but this is a thought exercise.  Oh, sorry I forgot to tell you – this is a thought exercise.  So The Age of Aquarius  may or may not have dawned or have yet to dawn and if so, there is no guarantee that it will usher in an era of “sympathy and trust abounding”, “mystic crystal revelations” or “the mind’s true liberation”.

My question is: if the earth’s relative position in the cosmos were able to influence human behavior, is the human race even capable of achieving that level of enlightenment?

The short answer in my opinion: NO.  Let me expand that somewhat:  Can A Human Being achieve that level of enlightenment?  Most likely YES;  Can the Human Race as a whole achieve that level of enlightenment?  Most likely NO.

Magical rays of love from the universe are not going to change human nature.  There will always be warmongers, sociopaths, haters and idiots with too many items in the express lane.  No, the only thing that can change human nature is one human – who can change his or her own human nature.  One person cannot change the world – only themselves.  One can only influence what is outside one’s self.  If you want to change the world, change yourself first – clean up your own act.  Tidy up your own metaphysical house and yard and before trying to reach outside your borders into someone else’s territory and change other’s behavior.

What do you think?  Leave your thoughts in the comments!

…so more music!  Let’s go for something with broad appeal like…The Eagles.  Who doesn’t love the Eagles?  Except you, you commie.  Take a hike.  Now for everyone else…this was the only version of this song I found that had (the original vocalist) Randy Meissner doing the vocal.  Though it was shot in 1977, at least it wasn’t recorded on someone’s phone so video and sound are pretty decent.

“…put me on a highway, show me a sign.  Take it to the limit one more time…”

I blogged awhile back about a few music performance shows that I found on cable and one of them was Guitar Center Sessions.  You can guess by the name it’s mainly guitarists or bands where the guitarist(s) are prominent, so if you like some guitar playin’, this is your show.  Anyhoo…I happened to catch an episode a few weeks ago with Peter Frampton.  Yeah, you know “Frampton Comes Alive” Peter Frampton, though he was well established before that came out in 1976 (38 years ago! Sh*t!).  He played a song I did not expect – not one of his.  The song was played as an instrumental – no vocal (except the voice box solo) and it was…awesome.  I would have never expected him to play this song, coincidentally one of my favorites:  Soungarden’s “Black Hole Sun” (I know!):

Though the hair is gone, the jam is on.