Category: Music

Top music

Just to keep you informed, from Billboard, the latest chart toppers (because all NewMexiKen ever wanted to be was a disc jockey) —

Hot Tracks:
Gold Digger, Kanye West Featuring Jamie Foxx

Top Albums:
All The Right Reasons, Nickelback

Hot Ringtones:
Gold Digger, Kanye West Featuring Jamie Foxx

Speaking of music, NewMexiKen hopes you didn’t bother downloading iTunes 5.0 a few weeks ago. That’s because iTunes 6.0 is here already.

A sampling of lyrics

… from three of the six songs that have been number one on the Billboard Hot 100 this year.

(Faint-hearted people may be offended.)

Gold Digger
by Kanye West featuring Jamie Foxx
[Current number one, fourth week]

[Chorus]
(She give me money) [Jamie Foxx as Ray Charles]
Now I aint sayin she a gold digger (When I’m in need)
But she aint messin wit no broke niggaz
(She give me money)
Now I aint sayin she a gold digger (When I’m in need)
But she aint messin wit no broke niggaz

[Second Verse]
18 years, 18 years
She got one of yo kids got you for 18 years
I know somebody payin child support for one of his kids
His baby momma’s car and crib is bigger than his
You will see him on TV any given Sunday
Win the Superbowl and drive off in a Hyundai
She was spose to buy ya shorty TYCO with ya money
She went to the doctor got lypo with ya money
She walkin around lookin like Michael with ya money
Should of got that insured GEICO for ya money
If you aint no punk holla We Want Prenup
We Want Prenup!, Yeaah
It’s something that you need to have
Cause when she leave yo ass she gone leave with half
18 years, 18 years
And on her 18th birthday he found out it wasn’t his

Hollaback Girl
by Gwen Stefani
[Number one four weeks, May 7 – June 3]

Oooh, this my shit, this my shit [4x]

I heard that you were talking shit
And you didn’t think that I would hear it
People hear you talking like that, getting everybody fired up
So I’m ready to attack, gonna lead the pack
Gonna get a touchdown, gonna take you out
That’s right, put your pom-poms down, getting everybody fired up

A few times I’ve been around that track
So it’s not just gonna happen like that
Cause I ain’t no hollaback girl
I ain’t no hollaback girl
[2x]

Candy Shop
by 50 Cent with Olivia
[Number one nine weeks, March through April]

[Chorus]
[50 Cent]
I take you to the candy shop
I’ll let you lick the lollypop
Go ‘head girl, don’t you stop
Keep goin ’til you hit the spot (whoa)
[Olivia]
I’ll take you to the candy shop
Boy one taste of what I got
I’ll have you spending all you got
Keep going ’til you hit the spot (whoa)

For the record, the other three songs:

Let Me Love You by Mario (nine weeks)
We Belong Together by Mariah Carey (fourteen weeks)
Inside Your Heaven by Carrie Underwood (one week)

Probably not quite as much shakin’ goin’ on

Jerry Lee Lewis is 70 today.

Ian McShane is 63. Big party at the Gem. (McShane plays the c***s**k** Al Swearengen on Deadwood.)

Bryant Gumbel is 57.

Gene Autry was born in Tioga, Texas, on this date in 1907. The following is from the biography at the Official Website for Gene Autry:

Discovered by humorist Will Rogers, in 1929 Autry was billed as “Oklahoma’s Yodeling Cowboy” at KVOO in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He gained a popular following, a recording contract with Columbia Records in 1929, and soon after, performed on the “National Barn Dance” for radio station WLS in Chicago. Autry first appeared on screen in 1934 and up to 1953 popularized the musical Western and starred in 93 feature films. In 1940 theater exhibitors of America voted Autry the fourth biggest box office attraction, behind Mickey Rooney, Clark Gable, and Spencer Tracy.

Autry made 635 recordings, including more than 300 songs written or co-written by him. His records sold more than 100 million copies and he has more than a dozen gold and platinum records, including the first record ever certified gold [That Silver-Haired Daddy of Mine]. His Christmas and children’s records Here Comes Santa Claus and Peter Cottontail are among his platinum recordings. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, the second all-time best selling Christmas single, boasts in excess of 30 million in sales.

… Autry’s great love for baseball prompted him to acquire the American League California Angels in 1961. Active in Major League Baseball, Autry held the title of Vice President of the American League until his death [1998].

… Autry is the only entertainer to have five stars on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame, one each for radio, records, movies, television, and live performance including rodeo and theater appearances.

Autry’s Melody Ranch radio show aired from 1940 to 1956. His television program from 1950 through 1955 (91 episodes), and long after in syndication.

The Dylan mythology

ONLY A HOBO
“I was raised in Gallup, New Mexico. Got a lot of cowboy songs there. Indian songs. Carnival songs. Vaudeville kinda stuff.”, Dylan claimed in his first ever radio interview on WNYC in autumn 1961. He also claimed to have lived in Cheyenne, South Dakota; Sioux Falls, South Dakota; Phillipsburg, Kansas; Hibbing, Minnesota; and Minneapolis. At least the last two were true.

[This folklore was repeated by Nat Hentoff for the album liner notes for The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan (1963).]

THE CIRCUS BOY
“Oh yea, I spent about six years in the carnivals. Clean-up boy; worked on the ferris wheel — went all the way around the Mid West.”, Dylan told a radio interviewer in 1961. “Didn’t that interfere with your schooling?”, he asked. “Oh, I skipped a bunch of school”, he blithely replied.

THE NAME GAME
“That’s just a rumor made up by the people who like to simplify things”. Dylan said when asked if he’d taken his name from Dylan Thomas. “It’s the name of my family—on my mother’s side. It’s spelt D-I-L-L-O-N and I changed it from there.??? In fact, his mother’s family name was Stone.

THE INDIAN CONNECTION
When he arrived in Greenwich Village, Dylan reinvented several new lives for himself. But of all his tall tales, none was more preposterous than his claim that he was descended from the Sioux Nation. “I remember he solemnly gave us a demonstration of Indian sign language, which he was obviously making up as he went along”, recalls Dave Van Ronk.

— From The Rough Guide to Bob Dylan

Things Have Changed

No Direction Home: Bob Dylan, the PBS American Masters film, proved to be exceptionally well done and well worth its two-night, 200 minute run.

PBS, at least here locally, had the good sense to leave the language alone, preferring advisories for the faint-of-heart rather than deleting the expletives. Joan Baez passed her audition for Deadwood with flying colors.

It’s the birthday

… of Tommy Lasorda. The former Dodgers manager is 78 today.

… of Lute Olson. The University of Arizona’s Hall-of-Fame basketball coach is 71.

… of semi-famous daughters of very famous fathers. Shari Belafonte is 51. Debby Boone is 49.
Alaskan Bee
… of Joan Jett. The rocker is 47. Hey Joan, send me a digital copy of I Love Rock ‘N’ Roll.

… of Ronaldo Luiz Nazario de Lima. The Brazilian football star is 29.

And it’s also the birthday of John, official youngest brother of NewMexiKen. John is a multi-talented guy — photography (as you can see), black belt, racing cyclist, actor and world traveler.

Random is as random does

From Wired News:

My playlist has a total of 17 songs by the band, so it seemed highly unlikely that two of them would be bunched so close together in a random order. But I was wrong about that.

The problem, it turns out, isn’t that the programs aren’t randomizing my playlists. They are. According to Jeff Lait, a mathematician and author of randomm3u, it’s what’s happening between my ears, specifically, in my expectations of what it means for something to be random.

To illustrate his point, Lait referred to a phenomenon statisticians call the birthday paradox. Roughly stated, it holds that if there are 23 randomly selected people in a room, there is a better than 50-50 chance that at least two of them will have the same birthday. The point: Mathematical randomness often contradicts our intuitive expectations of randomness.

What we want, Lait says, isn’t a list that’s been randomized, but one that’s been stratified, or separated into categories that are weighted by a listener’s preferences. A stratified playlist might select songs randomly but would be smart enough to throw out choices that, say, would repeat a band within 10 songs.

The article goes on to describe iTunes’ new Smart Shuffle that will randomize music with selected parameters.

Of course, until iTunes can read your mind and determine what you really want to hear next, it’ll never totally satisfy. But they’re getting scarily closer.

Happy, happy birthday, baby

Bill Medley is 65 today. Medley is the Righteous Brother with the deep voice. It was he who sang the opening verse in the great, great classic “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’.” It was the late Bobby Hatfield, the tenor , who generally took the lead on Righteous Brother songs. Cynthia Weil, who wrote “Lovin’ Feelin’,” told this story:

After Phil [Spector], Barry [co-writer Barry Mann] and I finished the song, we took it over to The Righteous Brothers. Bill Medley, who has the low voice, seemed to like the song. I remember Bobby Hatfield saying, “But what do I do while he’s singing the whole first verse???? and Phil said, “You can go directly to the bank!???

Hall of Fame ballplayers Duke Snider and Joe Morgan were born on this date — Snider is 79, Morgan 62. When I think of Morgan I think of an interview during a World Series in the early 1970s. Howard Cossell asked Morgan, “What does it feel like to know you are the best person in the world at what you do?”

Roger Angell, the wonderful writer known foremost for his essays on baseball in The New Yorker, is 85 today.

Actor Adam West, TV’s Batman, is 75. David McCallum, TV’s Illya Kuryakin, is 72.

And the Mary Tyler Show debuted on this date 35 years ago.

Hey, Good Lookin’

Hiram Williams was born on this date 82 years ago. We know him as Hank.

Hank Williams’s legend has long overtaken the rather frail and painfully introverted man who spawned it. Almost singlehandedly, Williams set the agenda for contemporary country songcraft, but his appeal rests as much in the myth that even now surrounds his short life. His is the standard by which success is measured in country music on every level, even self-destruction.

— Country Music Hall of Fame

The Country Music Hall of Fame goes on to tell us:

The peak years of Hank Williams’s career were 1950 and 1951. He was one of the most successful touring acts in country music. Every one of his records charted, except for those issued as Luke the Drifter and his religious duets with Audrey. His songs, which had matured greatly since the demos he had submitted to Molly O’Day, began finding a wider market than his own recordings of them ever could. Starting with “Honky Tonkin'” in 1949, his songs had been covered for the pop market, but it was not until Tony Bennett covered “Cold, Cold Heart” in 1951 that he began to be recognized as an important popular songwriter. From that point, there was a rush to reinterpret his songs for the pop market. Guy Mitchell, for instance, had a hit with “I Can’t Help It (If I’m Still in Love with You”), and the duo of Frankie Laine and Jo Stafford took “Hey, Good Lookin'” into the pop Top Ten.

And the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, where Williams is also and inductee, says:

The words and music of Hank Williams echo across the decades with a timelessness that transcends genre. He brought country music into the modern era, and his influence spilled over into the folk and rock arenas as well. Artists ranging from Gram Parsons and John Fogerty (who recorded an entire album of Williams’ songs after leaving Creedence Clearwater Revival) to the Georgia Satellites and Uncle Tupelo have adapted elements of Williams’ persona, especially the aura of emotional forthrightness and bruised idealism communicated in his songs. Some of Williams’ more upbeat country and blues-flavored numbers, on the other hand, anticipated the playful abandon of rockabilly.

Hank Williams died in the back seat of his Cadillac. He was found and declared dead on New Year’s Day 1953. He was 29.

It’s the birthday

… of Milton S. Hershey, born on this date in 1857. Hershey, who only completed the fourth grade, developed a formula for milk chocolate that made what had been a luxury product into the first nationally marketed candy.

… of Bill Monroe, born on this date in 1911. The Father of Bluegrass Music was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1970. In 1993, Monroe was a recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, an honor that placed him in the company of Louis Armstrong, Ray Charles and Paul McCartney,

… of Mel Torme, born on this date in 1925. The “Velvet Fog” was a wonderful jazz singer, but his greatest legacy is “The Christmas Song” — “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire…”.

… of Sherwood Anderson, born on this date in 1876 in Camden, Ohio.

[Anderson] is best known for his short stories, “brooding Midwest tales” which reveal “their author’s sympathetic insight into the thwarted lives of ordinary people.” Between World War I and World War II, Anderson helped to break down formulaic approaches to writing, influencing a subsequent generation of writers, most notably Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner. Anderson, who lived in New Orleans for a brief time, befriended Faulkner there in 1924 and encouraged him to write about his home county in Mississippi.

— From the Library of Congress, which has more on Anderson.

Try a Little Tenderness

It’s the birthday of soul singer and songwriter Otis Redding, born in Dawson, Georgia (1941), who dropped out of high school to play in Little Richard’s band. His biggest hit, in 1967, was “Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay,” which was released after his death in an airplane crash. “Sittin’ in the morning sun, I’ll be sitting when the evening come, Watching the ships roll in, And I’ll watch ’em roll away again.”

— The Writer’s Almanac

Redding’s entry at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Two of country music’s immortals

… were born on this date.

Jimmie Rodgers, considered the “Father of Country Music,” was born in Meridian, Mississippi, on September 8, 1897. He died from TB in 1933. Jimmie Rodgers was the first person inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame and among the first inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Patsy Cline, the most popular female country singer in recording history, was born in Winchester, Virginia, on September 8, 1932. She died in a plane crash in 1963. Patsy Cline is an inductee of the Country Music Hall of Fame.

Apple Unveils Cellphone Music Player

Also on Wednesday, Apple announced a new iPod, the iPod Nano: “1,000 songs in your pocket and impossibly small,” Jobs said. It’s “thinner than a No. 2 pencil,” he said to oohs and aahs from the audience. “The iPod Nano is 80 percent smaller than the original iPod.”

iPod Nano comes in two models–the 4GB iPod nano holds up to 1,000 songs and the 2GB iPod Nano holds up to 500 songs. They cost about $249 and $199, respectively.

“iPod Nano is the biggest revolution since the original iPod,” Jobs added. “iPod nano is a full-featured iPod in an impossibly small size, and it’s going to change the rules for the entire portable music market.”

The iPod Nano features the same 30-pin dock connector as the iPod and iPod Mini, allowing it to work with a wide range of more than 1,000 accessories developed for iPod, including home stereo speakers and iPod car adapters.

— Excerpted from an article in The New York Times

Update September 8: Walter Mossberg at The Wall Street Journal just loves the new iPod Nano.

This Song Goes Out to You, Big Easy

For hundreds of thousands of listeners of about 225 public radio stations and XM Satellite Radio, Mr. Spitzer and “American Routes” have served since 1997 as the voice of New Orleans, right down to the theme music by Professor Longhair. Now, working with a patchwork staff from a borrowed studio in Lafayette, La., Mr. Spitzer is assembling this weekend’s show, titled “After the Storm.” (… A list of other stations is at www.americanroutes.org.) “I wanted it to be music of reflection and solace and also hope.”

— From an article in The New York Times

Apple, Digital Music’s Savior, Earns Record Industry’s Scorn

Uh oh! This report from The New York Times on the beginning of what I fear is the end for iTunes as we’ve known it.

Two and a half years after the music business lined up behind the chief executive of Apple, Steven P. Jobs, and hailed him and his iTunes music service for breathing life into music sales, the industry’s allegiance to Mr. Jobs has eroded sharply.

Mr. Jobs is now girding for a showdown with at least two of the four major record companies over the price of songs on the iTunes service.

If he loses, the one-price model that iTunes has adopted – 99 cents to download any song – could be replaced with a more complex structure that prices songs by popularity. A hot new single, for example, could sell for $1.49, while a golden oldie could go for substantially less than 99 cents.