'Serenity'
There's a lady plays her fav'rite records/On the jukebox ev'ry day/All day long she plays the same old songs/And she believes the things that they say/She sings along with all the saddest songs/And she believes the stories are real/She lets the music dictate the way that she feels.
Heh. When I googlebate my name I come up with my defense of the leisure suit.
Lapel points spread elegantly out like the wings of Jonathan Livingston Seagull...a suit that says Remy Martin, Isaac Hayes, Hot August Nights...begging for the caress of Qiana and the kiss of a gold chain. --David Smay
Also, you can find my Daisy Bang illustration by Andrice Arp.
Hey, there's a good Bubblegum podcast with a fair amount of rarities on it.
Okay, all you hipsters are gonna laugh at me, but Randy Newman's The Great Nations of Europe is just the most fantastic song ever.
Yes, I am only just now discovering this.
Have you heard much Randy Newman before, Sean?
Kind of. I mean, he's in soundtracks all over the place, and I've always liked those songs. Plus I had a friend back in Michigan who could play piano, and he always liked to play Randy songs. So I've been aware of him for quite a long while, but I only heard Great Nations for the first time ever over this last weekend.
You should really check out his early albums. I think you'd love Sail Away.
I think he's kind of wasted on soundtracks and people that only know him for his broader satire can miss some of his unbelievably lovely and subtle early songs.
ION, can I get some feedback on my revised book cover:
DavidS "Natter Area 51: The Truthiness Is in Here" May 8, 2007 9:37:59 am PDT
You should really check out his early albums. I think you'd love Sail Away.
Bought. Will report back later.
On the Web, oldies are golden again
Easy access to vintage hits creates new fans for artists from bygone eras.
Sales of albums by contemporary musicians have been falling for years, but what the industry calls deep catalog albums (more than 3 years old) have been making a comeback, with their sales soaring 104.2% from 2005 to 2006. That has been a boon for Avalon and other older artists.
...
And playlist-based listening "really benefits those one-hit wonders from bygone days," said Aram Sinnreich, a managing partner at Radar Research in Los Angeles. For example, you probably wouldn't stumble on the Norwegian band a-ha's "Take on Me" in a record store, but there's a chance you would on the Internet.
Businesses are hustling to cash in, buying old songs they hope will come back in vogue. Sacramento-based Digital Music Group Inc., for one, acquired the rights to distribute 335,000 tracks that had been owned by Chancellor Records.
Some of the master recordings are stored in a climate- controlled warehouse in North Hollywood. Some, such as the 1962 recording "Party Lights" by Claudine Clark, hadn't seen the light of day in decades. Digital Music Group converts the fragile reel-to-reel tapes to digital, salvaging disintegrating and corroded master recordings and preserving them, the company likes to say, forever.
...
As more music becomes available digitally, semi-obscure artists are finding they have devoted fans. On Rhapsody, for instance, Top 100 artists produce only 25% of the songs played, said Tim Quirk, Rhapsody's vice president for music content and programming.
In contrast, nearly half of retail store sales are generated by that elite group. Less popular artists get playtime too — 90% of the 195,200 artists on Rhapsody are played at least once a month.
The 42-year-old Quirk was in a punk-pop group, Too Much Joy, whose albums went out of print in the late 1990s. These days, he's receiving royalties he never expected and performing in reunion shows. "It's pretty encouraging to get a monthly check," he said.
For Ron Dante, "it's like having a second career." Dante, 60, was in the Archies, which had the No. 1 single of 1969 with "Sugar, Sugar." As big as it was, "you would have two or three years" of success in those days, he said, "and then the big-selling years would be over."
And now? Dante, who was Barry Manilow's producer and backup singer, performs solo around the country, from Wildwood, N.J., to Las Vegas.
Bought. Will report back later.
Be warned - the title song is basically an advertising jingle for a slave trader in Africa trying to round up some recruits with his sunny tales of the south.
Easy access to vintage hits creates new fans for artists from bygone eras.
This goes right back to the Long Tail theory.
Heh. I always like reading the blurbie things for a particular album when purchasing from iTunes, and the blurb mentioned exactly that, so I was already forewarned.
Having just listened to it, I don't know that I would have figured it out, but the lyrics would have piqued my interest enough to make me go look them up/find out what the hell Randy was singing about.