Tag: YouTube

Summer song: Summer’s Almost Gone

Waiting for the Sun must have been lots of people’s favorite Doors’ album, since it was the group’s only #1 album in the United States.

My favorite Doors’ album is the third one, Waiting for the Sun, even though the song Waiting for Sun does not appear on it; it shows up two albums later, on Morrison Hotel. This third LP must have been lots of people’s favorite Doors’ album, since it was the group’s only #1 album in the United States, fueled by the #1 single, Hello, I Love You.

The melancholy song Summer’s Almost Gone (listen), the fourth tune on the album, precedes a much more joyful Wintertime Love; maybe I’ll include that a few months from now.
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In honor of Freddie Mercury’s birthday: Bohemian Rhapsody by Porkka Playboys.

K is for Kiss

Here are some songs about kissing, all of which charted on the US pop charts.

 

Some couples have “our song” or “our place.” My wife and I seem to have “our drawing.” It is, of course, “The Kiss” by Gustav Klimt (July 14, 1862 – February 6, 1918). My wife has a book about it, we have it on a mug, and at some level, it is an idealized version of us.

Klimt, according to Wikipedia, painted it “between 1907 and 1908, the highpoint of his ‘Golden Period’, when he painted a number of works in a similar gilded style. A perfect square, the canvas depicts a couple embracing, their bodies entwined in elaborate robes decorated in a style influenced by both linear constructs of the contemporary Art Nouveau style and the organic forms of the earlier Arts and Crafts movement. The work is composed of conventional oil paint with applied layers of gold leaf, an aspect that gives it its strikingly modern, yet evocative appearance…”

“Klimt was 45 when he painted The Kiss, still living with his mother and two unmarried sisters,” yet reportedly had, let’s say, an active romantic life. There was a 2006 film called Klimt, starring John Malkovich, which I did not see, but it did not review well.

The artist was honored with a Google doodle in honor of the 150th anniversary of his birth earlier this year. Check out iklimt.com or klimtgallery.org for more information about Gustav Klimt.
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Here are some songs about kissing, all of which charted on the US pop charts. I didn’t bother with Kiss by Prince, because his people are always taking down YouTube videos.

Kiss on My List – Hall & Oates (1980)
Kiss You All Over – Exile (1978)
Kisses Sweeter than Wine – Jimmie Rodgers (1957)
Kiss An Angel Good Morning – Charley Pride (1972)

What are your favorite songs about kissing?

ABC Wednesday – Round 11

Y is for Yankovic, “Weird Al” Yankovic

He got his parody tapes to radio personality Dr. Demento when Al was still a teenager and his career slowly took off.

 

I was flipping through the channels on a Saturday morning – unusual, that – when I came across a BIOGRAPHY Channel piece on “Weird Al” Yankovic, which I was oddly compelled to watch. Then I came across this Bat Segundo interview, a very interesting listen.

Most novelty acts last a year or three. So how is it that Weird Al has managed to mine the music parody gig for nearly three decades? Not only that, he is more successful than ever, up for two Grammy awards in February 2012 and having a 2011 Top 10 album. Yankovic’s success comes in part from his effective use of music video to further parody popular culture, the song’s original artist, and the original music videos themselves, scene-for-scene in some cases. There’s a whole YouTube channel of Weird Al songs out there, so it’s difficult to narrow the list.

As a kid starting on the accordion, the instrument of non-relative Frank Yankovic, Al learned to play an unusual version of rock and roll. He got his parody tapes to radio personality, Dr. Demento, when Al was still a teenager and his career slowly took off.

Al usually has three basic types of songs on his albums, of which I have a half dozen: those that parody a particular song with new lyrics, generally with the express permission of the original artist; original songs, often in the style of a given group; and the polka medley, where a bunch of songs are strung together.

For instance, compare Al’s Eat It with Beat It by Michael Jackson. Or Al’s Smells Like Nirvana with Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit. Many of the same sets and/or actors are used in both the original videos and Al’s renditions.

Just a handful of the parodies:
Ricky, a riff on the TV show I Love Lucy, taking the tune from Toni Basil’s Hey Mickey
Amish Paradise which came, via Coolio’s Gangsta Paradise, from Stevie Wonder’s Pastime Paradise
Gump, about the movie character Forrest Gump, based on the Presidents of the United States’ Lump
Polkas on 45, the first of the polka medleys
The Saga Begins, a Star Wars riff using Don McLean’s American Pie
And something I can really relate to:
I Lost On Jeopardy, based on Jeopardy by Greg Kihn, who’s in the last shot of Al’s video.

A 2011 non-parody tune contains an important message: Stop Forwarding That Crap To Me

As Wikipedia and the BIOGRAPHY special noted, Al tends to work clean. There are videos purporting to be Weird Al’s, usually “songs that are racist, sexually explicit, or otherwise offensive,” which often misspell his last name as Yankovich. So make sure you’re getting the real Weird Al Yankovic. This Funny or Die video isn’t really Al, but Al does appear in it in a small role.

From Correlated.org, a meaningless factoid: In general, 59 percent of people like Weird Al Yankovic. But among those whose primary home computer is not a laptop, 74 percent like Weird Al.
Based on a survey of 245 people whose primary home computer is not a laptop and 544 people in general.

ABC Wednesday – Round 9

Toronto: The City Pass, Part 2

The highlight may have been a Rube Goldberg-type machine.

The third full day in Toronto we dedicated to going to the Toronto Zoo. It is on the eastern edge of the city and required both train and bus to get there. One could make the case for driving there, I suppose. One of the selling points of having the City Pass is that one could avoid lines. Never was this more true at the Zoo, where we avoided at least a 15-minute wait just to get inside.

The zoo is massive. We saw only about 40% of it. We went to the Malay and African sections but never even got to the Americas or Australia or Eurasia. We considered taking the train around, and we might do that on a future trip. We’re already thinking about that.

The only comparable facility I’ve been to is the San Diego Zoo in California, and that was over a decade ago, maybe two decades. The SD Zoo was $32 per person then, whereas the Toronto Zoo retailed for under $25 US.

There were some extra features, such as rides, which we did not use. But we were pleased that the splash park was part of the admission. It was a particularly warm day – I got a bit of sunburn – so it was a welcome relief. To give you what a full day it was, the Daughter fell asleep on my shoulder on the bus trip back to the train, and then fell asleep again on her mother’s shoulder on the subway ride back to our hotel.

The BONUS appeal of the Toronto Zoo, though, happened some days after we got back to Albany. The Daughter was watching her new favorite show, Dino Dan, which is a TV series about “paleontologist-in-training Dan Henderson (played by Jason Spevack) and his friends, who uncover clues about the past and secrets of the dinosaurs. The show combines live action with CGI dinosaurs.” On one episode last month, which I was only half watching, the Daughter correctly identified as having been filmed at the Toronto Zoo; I immediately recognized the elephant and lion areas myself. Someone put a bit of the episode on YouTube.

I will revisit the zoo later in the year.

 

We went to the Ontario Science Centre on our way out of town and may have given it short shrift. The quirky thing about this building is that the 6th floor is down, while the 1st floor is up. The Daughter enjoyed the reptiles, and especially the area where one plays with a hot air balloon, lights, bubbles, and a lot more. She particularly liked dancing to her image altered by some nifty effects. Most of our time was spent in the play area.

But the highlight may have been a Rube Goldberg-type machine similar to, but not exactly the same as this one. The one we saw had a bunch of billiard balls, and the patrons had to keep loading the balls into the machine, from a half dozen locales, to keep the effect going. The kids LOVED it; heck, I loved it.

There are City Passes for about a dozen other cities in North America. I’m not sure I’d use it for a city I’ve visited, such as New York or Boston; I’ve been to the Empire State Building. But for a city I’ve never been to, such as Seattle, I think it would be ideal.

F is for Fire

The other fire songs here, which I also own, are about passion, romantic passion.

Here’s another look at a word that has, either alone or in combination with other words, has several meanings.

The most common meaning of fire, of course, is that chemical change that creates heat and light, and usually smoke, which can evolve into a “destructive conflagration”. It was one of four substances thought in ancient and medieval cosmology to constitute the universe, along with earth, air, and water; five, if you count spirit.

But fire also means:

*enthusiasm, passion e.g., “all fired up”
and in one is at work and NOT “fired up” one could be subject to dismissal from employment, “getting fired”

Also:
a severe test; a trial or torment, “under fire”
the discharge of firearms or the like, “ready, aim, fire!”
to bake in a kiln, such as with pottery
to throw with force and speed; “fire a ball at a batter”
to ask questions, “fire away”
exposed to attack, “under fire”
*a burning sensation sometimes produced by drinking strong alcoholic liquor, “firewater”
and a whole lot more

Word History: Primitive Indo-European had pairs of words for some very common things, such as water or fire. Typically, one word in the pair was active, animate, and personified; the other, impersonal and neuter in grammatical gender. In the case of the pair of words for “fire,” English has descendants of both, one inherited directly from Germanic, the other borrowed from Latin.

As is often the case, I have found some songs that address the issue.

First, by The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, a reference to hellfire. This song actually went to #2 in 1968 in the US, and somewhere I have it on some LP.

But the other fire songs here, which I also own, are about passion, romantic passion.

The Ohio Players, a #1 song from the winter of 1974-75.

Bruce Springsteen. His live 1978 version went to #46 in 1987. (I don’t know the vintage of this video.) And here’s a studio version. This Boss song was a big hit for the Pointer Sisters, #2 in the winter of 1978-79.

ABC Wednesday, Round 9

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