Are we going to hear the retirement-age Who sing new meaning into the words “hope I die before I get old” tonight? Here’s hoping! In the meantime, these are my favorite Halftime moments from recent years:
1. Bruce Springsteen almost killing a camera man and causing thousands of cases of hi-def wall-mounted whiplash.
2. Prince (nudge-nudge-wink-wink)
3. Bono revealing that his armpit had provided sweaty cover for an American flag throughout his performance.
Got any you’d like to add?
Curty Ray of Power Pop Overdose comments:
Now that’s a tough one. I’ve never understood Bruce Springsteen’s uber-appeal… he’s good, but why and how did he become BRUUUUCE?
His first couple of albums were full of wordy shuffles that inexplicably got him branded as the next Dylan, and a few years later we got a couple of thin sounding synth-y things that were huge commercially, but pretty hard to listen to if you were on the fence to begin with. Fact is though, there were some really good records mixed in there as well and it all worked out: his mediocre records made him more popular and his good records made him more popular, and intermittent suckiness just didn’t make an ounce of difference. Everything the guy did seemed to enhance the icon factor. Think about it – the guy writes a melodically simplistic song about a Vietnam vet living a dead end life (Born In The USA), and it becomes misinterpreted into some sort of fist-pumping patriotic anthem that gets played at every fireworks display in America. Good work if you can get it.
My theory? Hard, hard work, a great live show, enough intelligence to pull back and deconstruct every so often (Nebraska) and a sneaky ability to create music (and a persona to match) that can be misunderstood in surprisingly beneficial ways. Overrated? maybe. Undeserving, no.
TV show theme songs pop in and out of my mind all of the time. It’s kind of amazing that we all can remember so many of them, especially since we might have only heard them 18 or fewer times (theme songs are the collateral damage of low ratings). Case in point: “Milton The Monster”. I actually know the words to that theme song, and I can’t remember the words to songs that I’ve performed for years. How is that possible? Tony had to shout first lines into my ear for as long as the Cheepskates existed, but if you were to ask me today “How many drops of sinister sauce were used in the Milton the Monster recipe” my answer would be “Five, of course.”
It’s a head-shaker.
The album-a-day project is working out just fine. As you might’ve noticed, I’ve been trying to listen to any given artist as chronologically as possible, starting with the earliest release that I own. Recently I’ve hit a couple of roadblocks – I have vinyl and tape copies of albums that are all but inaccessible and I just don’t feel like doing the necessary digging in order to listen to them. A temporary solution has been to sign up for Spotify and Mog.
I tried Spotify first, and was really happy with it. Incredibly clean, easy to use and an absolutely huge selection of music. There were very few searches that I did that came up empty, and it was a snap to click on an album, get it into a playlist and start listening. Every so often I’d have to hear an ad, but it seemed like a fair price to pay compared to cleaning the mold off my copy of “Tonight’s the Night”. Because the actual program resides on your computer it is as responsive as can be – actually more responsive than iTunes, which has become clunky for me because I have around 20,000 songs in there. The only real problem with Spotify is that I can’t legally use it in the U.S. – kind of a show-stopper, you know?
Next up was Mog, which gives you a whole free hour to decide whether or not you want to pony up some money for the service. For my free hour I listened to “Knnillssonn”, and the experience was good enough to entice me to spend $25 for a six month subscription. Like Spotify, the music selection is large enough to keep me occupied, but where in Mog’s name is Mike Nesmith? Spotify had him, Mog did not – that’s kind of serious. The user interface is OK – slower than Spotify because it’s web-based, and because there are more moving parts there’s a little more that you need to do in order to find an album and play it. The sound is OK too – not as good as the vinyl or CD would be, but passable… especially when you’re listening to something you already know because your memory fills in the gaps. If you’re a Pandora lover you can create a stream of music that is based on an artist and then have Mog play music that it thinks is similar. There are all sorts of social network things you can do as well, but I won’t be doing them because I’ve got bigger(?) fish to fry.
Final word: I liked Spotify a little better but Mog is good for my purposes, is inexpensive, and I won’t be breaking the law. At an album a day I’d be able to listen to around 2500 songs over the course of the next six months for about a penny per song. In theory it’ll also save me 180 trips to and from my basement, and that can only be a good thing.
Well… one month down, 599 to go.
Our first post was August 27th, 2009. The first reader not related to me showed up on August 30th, and in the next twenty-some days of our existence we welcomed visitors from 27 countries. Overall traffic is better than we could’ve ever imagined, and lots of you come by every day. It’s been pretty amazing, and I can’t thank you enough.
As time goes on there will be a lot more happening around here. I’m not going to say just yet exactly what those things are going to be, because once you divulge your plans it sometimes makes things harder to accomplish. If anyone out there has ideas or suggestions I’d love to hear them, otherwise we’ll just let this thing evolve naturally and see where we wind up.
Again… thanks!
