I've talked about my musical tastes here quite a few times so I thought I'd say something about a neglected old song being given a bit of new life in a TV ad campaign.
I've heard this cute little banjo-pop hit hundreds of times, but not for quite a number of years until DirecTV started advertising a new feature free to subscribers (XM satelite radio - yay!). The ad features a metallic earth being orbited by a be-bopping satelite while this song plays.
Ordinarily that'd be no big deal; TV commercials are forever resurrecting forgotten old hit tunes. The difference in this case is that it got me to actually listen to the words of Stop, Stop, Stop for probably the first time in my life. The story it tells is fascinating and surprisingly dark.
The singer is in love with a show girl at a dance hall. He tells us about going to the club to see her show, about how he walks around the perimeter as she performs so that he's always in her gaze, although she doesn't know it because of the spotlight in her eyes. Suddenly, he steps out of the shadows and into the spotlight himself and she freezes. He grabs her and won't let go. Next thing we know, the bouncers are forcibly throwing him into the street as he tells us that this is the way it always happens.
Funny thing about it is that I've heard this record countless times over the decades, but until now I'd never paid attention to it. It always sounded like a silly little pop song, but now I see that it's something more. I wonder if maybe Sting had been listening to this when he wrote Every Breath You Take.
"We look forward to hearing your vision, so we can more better do our job. That's what I'm telling you."-George W. Bush, Gulfport, Miss., Sept. 20, 2005.
If you aren't aware of this new album, 'All The Roadrunning', you should be. The lead single is This Is Us and although it hasn't been played much on radio outside the Triple A format, Don Imus has been promoting it heavily. Whatever you want to say about that man you can't attack his taste in music, it's almost flawless. This album is everything you'd expect from these two giants and then some.
That lead single is a highly infectious ditty about an aging couple going through an old photo album and reminiscing about their younger days. It's a simple pleasure that won't disappoint.
The real standout, though, is the final track: If This Is Goodbye. It's inspired by the cell phone calls made to loved ones by the passengers of Flight 93 and those trapped in the twin towers on 9/11. Words can't describe it, you simply must listen to it. The whole album is available at iTunes.
Asgara writes:
quote:Floyd's moments of sheer genius (read David Gilmour) more than make up for the psychedelic, weird, mediocrity of the Syd Barrett days Listen to "Piper At The Gates of Dawn" (if you can get thru it) and than listen to "The Division Bell"
I thought 'Piper' was a good album, particularly the opening track Astronomy Dominé. But the Pink Floyd album I've been listening to more often lately isn't really a Pink Floyd album. It's Roger Waters and Eric Clapton's The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking. The title track is probably the best known from the record, but if I had to pick one song as the best from this collection it'd probably be Sexual Revolution. This is probably the best rock album of the 80s, at least pre-Nirvana.
Has anyone else used this service to find old, nearly forgotten favorites? If you haven't, you should. Over the past couple weeks I've downloaded several songs, including a few I already have on both record and CD. For some reason, the iTunes versions sound better than I've ever heard them before.
A few examples of what I'm talking about: Billy Thorpe's Children Of The Sun, Peter Frampton's Do You Feel Like We Do? (the live version, of course) and Lou Reed's live Intro / Sweet Jane (and I think I'm gonna go back and get the rest of that phenomenal album 'Rock and Roll Animal'). In each case, iTunes has made available remixed versions that sound much, much better than any previously released print. Musical elements that were hidden in the background and that you had to strain to notice are now so clear that you can't miss them.
The selection on iTunes is wide but not comprehensive. Some albums aren't complete. One irritating case in point is Little Feat's 'Wating For Columbus'. The original vinyl record, as well as a CD print that was released in the mid 90s, includes the unforgettable live version of Dixie Chicken in a medley with Tripe Face Boogie. The iTunes album leaves out Dixie Chicken but includes the other half of the medley. It even includes material that wasn't on the original release. To my mind, this ommision is unforgiveable unless iTunes is waiting for a cleaned-up remix to be produced by the record label.
Another ommission is the single version of Edgar Winter's Free Ride. The album version is available but the single was much better and is almost never heard today (I still have the single and an mp3 so I haven't forgotten it).
The liberal Crooks & Liars video blog has lately been posting a number of live performance musical videos. One of the best so far is Tower of Power performing What Is Hip?, posted just last night. The link is to a webpage and it loads very slowly, but it's soooooo well worth it. I promise you won't be disappointed. The horns will absolutely blow you away!
Just click the link at C&L and go do something else for a while. When you start the video, be sure to crank the sound up LOUD!
Americablog today posted this link to a Schoolhouse Rock video about the Mayflower (the blogger was trying to make a point about GWB acting like a king but let's please leave that out of this thread). It was fun to watch, and it got me thinking about some of those other famous SR 'toons.
Music in the 1970s didn't get any better than Little Feat. The first time I was allowed to go on a long-distance trip without my parents I went to Atlanta to see Little Feat with some friends. Probably the best concert I've ever been to.
This live recording is from 1975. It features the late, great genius of Little Feat, Lowell George.
In the 1970s a group of Italian animators produced a terrific film that borrowed the premise of Disney's Fantasia - animated sketches set to classical music. This is taken from that film (which I highly recommend).
Valse Triste literally translates to 'waltz sad', and the sketch is indeed one of the saddest cartoons I think I've ever seen. It never fails to choke me up. I made up the name 'The Melancholy Cat' for this sequence because it fits. A cat wanders through the ruins of his former home after, apparently, a nuclear holocaust. As he walks from room to room, he remembers the life and good times that once existed there. At times, he gets so wrapped up in his happy memories that he almost forgets that they are indeed memories and that all has been lost.
One of the most exciting developments on the internet in recent years has been the advent of YouTube. Videos on every subject imagineable can be found there, and it's no surprise that musical performances make up a big chunk of the offerings. Indeed, you can find thousands of contemporary videos as well as tons of old film or tape footage of classic performances.
What's difficult is finding rare videos in high quality, and that's what I've been posting here. You can click any of my links and crank the volulme up LOUD, and so long as your sound card and stereo equipment are up to par the quality will be excellent if not superb. From the history of this thread, it's obvious that there are lots of us who love music, so I'd like to request that anyone else who stumbles across a classic, high quality video anywhere on the net please stop by here and post a link so the rest of us can enjoy it.
This one goes back to 1973 and probably the most recognizable performer of our time (that is, of course, if you've seen him at least once before). He's absolutely amazing, and his keyboard wizardry has had a profound influence. I think today's hip-hop deejays owe a debt to him, and by extension to Jimi Hendrix.
quote:I don't know anything about YouTube - maybe they've entered into some agreement with the BBC that makes this ok?
I've wondered about that too, but I haven't seen anything to suggest that there's a dispute between the BBC or anyone else and YouTube. There may be, but there are also existing court rulings that make a clear distinction between hosting illegal content and simply linking to it.
Maybe one thing YouTube has going for it is that the videos are not downloadable; all you can do is watch them. But if Percy has a problem with these links I'll gladly stop posting them.
AbE: I did some searching and found that there is indeed a dispute going with YouTube, but oddly enough it isn't with any major publisher. It's with an individual, the guy who made the Coke / Mentos fountain video that made the rounds a few months ago. He had posted it on another site and was collecting ad revenue from the viewings but lost money when the file was quickly copied to YouTube. He's now suing them.
So it looks like that's going to be the area where YouTube might have trouble, at least for the short term. I can't find anything about a legal battle with a heavy-hitter like the BBC or an American record label. YouTube's policy states that it will remove any posting of copyrighted material whenever requested by the holder of the copyright. That may prove to be their saving grace.
In any event, there's no question that hosting the content and linking to it are two completely different things. During the Napster controversy even Time magazine posted links on their website and provided "getting started" instructions on how to use it. A lot of newspaper websites did the same thing, some of them - like Time - owned by media conglomerates.
Crooks & Liars posted this as the Late Night Music entry for tonight. I love a good violin concerto and this is one of my favorites. Even if you're not crazy about classical music, you should treat yourself to this. Oistrakh's performance is amazing.
My favorite versions of Summertime are the Janis Joplin and the Billie Holiday.
I don't know what the most covered songs in history would be, but I know of a couple I'm sick of hearing covered: Feelings, originally (I think) by Albert something or other and Hero, aka Wind Beneath My Wings (Gladys Knight had the best one, and even it was kinda weak).
Day after day, day after day, We stuck, nor breath nor motion; As idle as a painted ship Upon a painted ocean.
Water, water, every where, And all the boards did shrink; Water, water, every where, Nor any drop to drink.
The classic Samuel Taylor Coleridge poem is re-told by one of the greatest hard rock bands of all time. Although whole sections of the original poem are used in the lyrics, in order to tell the complete story much of it had to be condensed. Even so, the original album track ran to nearly 14 minutes, and this video is broken into two parts. A very short section from the original record, wherein the death of the crew members after the dice game between Death and Life-In-Death is recounted in some detail, has been deleted. It would have fallen between the two parts.
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