Birthday Month: Day 11

Some more 70's goodness!

 The Hues Corporation -- "Rock the Boat"



Speaking of rocking, George McCrea wants you to "Rock Your Baby," which would be him, by the way...



P.S. There's a mashup of this with Annie Lennox's "Little Bird." I have it in my iTunes but couldn't find it online.

Carl Douglas (no relation to Carol) says everybody was Kung Fu Fighting! (I wasn't.)



I wasn't doing The Hustle, either, Van McCoy.

My Halloween Playlist

In the past I've written about my playlist of summer music. (Not going to bother posting the links. You can search for them if you want.) I haven't done so recently, and now that we're past summer it doesn't seem like the time, but I'll mention in passing that it's up to 213 songs (plus five mixtape compilations from DJ Jazzy Jeff and his DJ cohort MICK, formerly Mick Boogie). A while back I created a playlist for winter as well, but I don't have many songs on it. There's no special vibe about a winter song, unlike summer songs. As a result, I only have songs with "cold" or "chill" or similar words in the title. So I need to work on that at some point.

I also have a Halloween playlist. It's now up to 77 tracks, including TV and movie themes, songs that are obviously Halloween-centric and others that merely have a word such as "evil" or "ghost" somewhere in the title and aren't necessarily (or aren't at all) scary or creepy. It's just over five hours long. (And I've got a list of songs I need to add to my iTunes library.) Instead of listing them by artist or alphabetically, I'm gonna group them here based on various keywords or other categories...

My iTunes Shuffle Baker's Dozen 4-12-13

Sadly, I continue to procrastinate at this blogging stuff. But somehow, someday, I'll do something more substantial than this...


Walk Away From Love - David Ruffin
All The Things She Said - Simple Minds
U Got The Look - Prince/Sheena Easton
Love Come Down - Evelyn "Champagne" King
Got To Give It Up (Pt. 1) - Marvin Gaye
Give It To Me - Timbaland feat. Nelly Furtado and Justin Timberlake
Only Happy When It Rains - Garbage
He's On My Team - Ari Gold feat. Kendra Ross
Smithereens - Annie Lennox
Gold - Spandau Ballet
It's My World - Ultra Nate
We Are Monkeys - Travis
Waste - Smash Mouth

My iTunes Shuffle Baker's Dozen 10-4-12

There's a twist here. These aren't the first 13 songs that played, but the most recent 13. I've been sitting at the computer for a little while and some of these songs really hit the spot for me today, so...

I Got You Babe - UB40 with Chrissie Hynde)
If I Could Only Win Your Love - Emmylou Harris
I'm Not Perfect (But I'm Perfect For You) (Right On Time Edit) - Grace Jones
Run On - Moby
Miami - U2
Mirrors - Natalia Kills
Crush - Dave Matthews Band
Thin Line Between Love And Hate - Annie Lennox
Living In A Box - Living In A Box
Rules & Regulations - Rufus Wainwright
All I Know Is The Way I Feel - The Pointer Sisters
Jeopardy - Greg Kihn Band
Gettin' Away With Murder - Patti Austin

Note to self: need to post a wrap up of my summer playlist additions, now that it's October (even though it feels like summer again, it's so humid).

My iTunes Shuffle Baker's Dozen 8-22-12

I'd love to know how the iTunes shuffle works. How exactly does it choose a song? Is it strictly random or is there some sort of pattern? At times, when it plays consecutive songs by the same artist or from the same album I'm especially curious. That didn't happen this time, though...

Lucky - Greg Kihn Band
Inner City Theme - Inner City
Quit Playing Games (With My Heart) - Backstreet Boys
Easier Said Than Done - Loose Ends
Your Love Keeps Working On Me (MK Brooklyn Mix) - Jody Watley
Brilliant Disguise - Bruce Springsteen
Footsteps - Lisa Stansfield
Sing (Harry Choo Choo Romero Club Mix) - Annie Lennox
You're Not Alone - Olive
Stay (Wasting Time) - Dave Matthews Band
This Old Heart of Mine (Is Weak For You) - The Isley Brothers
Lady, Lady, Lady - Joe Esposito
Lullaby of Clubland - Everything But The Girl

My iTunes Shuffle Baker's Dozen 3-4-12*

*Actually, these 13 songs were the first on my iPod one morning at work about 3 weeks ago. I wrote them down while I worked, but never posted them until now. If this bothers you, feel free to contact my attorneys.

I Might Have Been Queen - Tina Turner
Looking Through My Window - The Mamas & the Papas
Coloured Bedspread - Annie Lennox (I think this turned out to be my favorite from "Songs of Mass Destruction")
Don't Make Me Dream About You - Chris Isaak (I bought the album for this song, really, and because he was hot in the video, which came out before "Wicked Game")
Hey Boy - Mark Ronson & The Business Intl (feat. Rose Elinor Dougall/Theophilus London)
I Miss You - Incubus
The Other Side of the World - Chaka Khan
Sunday Morning (Questlove Remix) - Maroon 5
Sold on Love - Frankie Knuckles (feat. Lisa Michaelis)
Right in the Middle (Of Falling In Love) - Bettye Lavette
Candy Everybody Wants (live) - Michael Stipe and 10,000 Maniacs
Bridge Over Troubled Water - Annie Lennox
Transmit Your Love - Live

My 2011 In Music

And now that we've moved into 2012, here's a look back at what I downloaded in 2011 -- some of it purchased, some of it, ummm, not -- and what ended up as the 25 most-played songs of my iTunes library.

There are only 271 new tracks in my iTunes since the beginning of 2011. That's down from 317 in 2010. Only 19 were Christmas songs, though, compared to 73 a year earlier. So if you take the holiday songs out of the mix, my musical acquisitions increased. However, a lot of those were downloads of individual songs. Part of the total also comes from a few artists I discovered through various means (such as Twitter or Facebook) who made albums available for free download:

Childish Gambino (a.k.a. Donald Glover) - EP (he's funny on "Community" but he has definite skills in the hip-hop arena; he now has a full-length album out, but I haven't bought it yet)
Loco - No Shade (Mixtape)
Simon Curtis - 8Bit Heart
DISCO PUSHER - Now You Know How The Story Ends (also a mixtape)

Then there were the records released before 2011...

Kings of Leon - Only By The Night
Brandon Flowers - Flamingo
Mika - The Boy Who Knew Too Much
Cee Lo Green - The Lady Killer
RuPaul - Champion
various artists - Christmas Remixed-Holiday Classics Re-Grooved (my only "new" Christmas album)

So that leaves just four albums I got that were actually released in 2011:

Does This Make Me An Artist Or Something?

A while back I saw a sign at a subway station advertising Philly Photo Day. The promoters of this event, the Philadelphia Photo Arts Center, invited anyone to take a picture -- with any device, whether the most sophisticated camera or just a cell phone pic -- anywhere within city limits on October 28th and submit it on their website. Then, they'd take every photo submitted and hold an exhibition. So on the day in question, as I went to and from work, I took a few photos. I then had to decide to submit one. Here are smaller versions of the photos I took. I took the first one shortly after I left the house, just after 7 am...

I snapped a quickie on the crowded bus...

...and another when I reached the El platform at Frankford Terminal...

MixBlog 12-27-10

Now that Christmas is over, we can look forward to the end of 2010. I thought about doing something on this blog this week, perhaps pointing out some of my favorite posts or something. Anyway, that will be for the week to come. I've got a few things to go through now...

Christmas Music: I just removed the holiday songs from my iPod. Here are my Top 5 Most-Played Christmas Songs:

Baby, It's Cold Outside - Glee Cast (16 plays)
Baseball Glove - Gord Bamford (13)
God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen - Annie Lennox (10)
Put A Little Love In Your Heart - Annie Lennox and Al Green (10)
We Need A Little Christmas - Glee Cast (9)

All of the songs from the new Annie Lennox and Glee albums were played at least 5 times.

Snow: We officially had 12.4 inches Sunday into this morning. The forecasts generally went like this: from nothing (Thursday) to a coating to an inch (Friday) to 6-12 inches (early Saturday) to 10-15 inches (later Saturday evening) to 5-10 inches (late Sunday afternoon). The development of this storm, we're told, was very tricky to forecast. (Aren't they all?) As it turned out, all day and much of the night Sunday, the heaviest bands of snow that were circling around the low pressure as it moved north along the coast were unable to push across the Delaware River and into Pennsylvania.

A Little More On My Christmas Music

I just thought it would be fun to share how many versions of various Christmas songs are in my iTunes (out of the total of 468 holiday tracks), and the most notable performers of each...

Angels We Have Heard On High - 6; Aretha Franklin, "Glee" cast
Auld Lang Syne  - 5; Barenaked Ladies, Chris Isaak (and why is New Year's music played on Christmas?)
The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting...) - 8; Nat King Cole (duh), two versions by Ella Fitzgerald
The First Noel - 4; Annie Lennox, David Archuleta (I think these two names back to back form some sort of musical oxymoron)
Frosty the Snowman - 5; the Ronettes, two versions (again) by Ella Fitzgerald
God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen - 5; Annie Lennox, Rascal Flatts, Barenaked Ladies feat. Sarah McLachlan
Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas - 6; Pretenders, Kermit the Frog
I'll Be Home For Christmas - 4; Fats Domino, Kristin Chenoweth
Jingle Bells - 8 (if you include "Jingle Bells?" by Barbra Streisand and the medley "Jingle Bells/Jingle Bell Rock" by the Muppets)
Joy To The World - 5; Lee Greenwood, the Supremes
The Little Drummer Boy - 8; two up-tempo versions by Alexander O'Neal and the Salsoul Orchestra
O Holy Night - 7; Neil Sedaka, and a very funky cover by Musiq Soulchild
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer - 9; Gene Autry, Meredith Brooks, and only one version by Ella Fitzgerald
Santa Baby - 4; Eartha Kitt, Madonna, Everclear (male vocal, changed lyrics because heaven knows the band had to butch it up) and Miss Piggy
Santa Claus is Coming to Town - 8; the Four Seasons, the Supremes, the Looney Tunes (I own the CD "Have Yourself A Looney Tunes Christmas" -- not the greatest Bugs Bunny & Company work Warner Bros. has put out there, although it's mildly amusing at times)
Silent Night - 13 (this looks like the winner); Wynonna, Mahalia Jackson, the Salsoul Orchestra (non-discofied!)
Sleigh Ride - 9 (including the Kristin Chenoweth/John Pizzarelli duet medley of "Sleigh Ride/Marshmallow World" but not including the Alexander O'Neal song with the same title but different lyrics; I also have a version by the Spice Girls
White Christmas - 7; besides the obvious Bing Crosby, there's Darlene Love, the Supremes...and there goes that Ella Fitzgerald again with two versions...
Winter Wonderland - 6; of course, my favorite is by Eurythmics, though you can't go wrong with Johnny Mathis
We Wish You A Merry Christmas - 4, including Weezer

And with that, I wish you a Merry Christmas as well, if you celebrate it. Or, just follow Krusty the Clown's advice: "So, have a merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah, kwazy Kwanzaa, a tip-top Tet, and a solemn, dignified Ramadan. Now a word from MY god: our sponsor!"

My Go-To Christmas Music

Before I get into my main lists, I want to share a new favorite I discovered on Todd Zolecki's Phillies blog at MLB.com. It's "Baseball Glove" by a Canadian country singer-songwriter, Gord Bamford. The lyrics talk about the many things the family wants, but all he wants is a baseball glove -- specifically, "a genuine cowhide Rawlings Pro Special, one autographed by Roy Halladay." Bamford is a Blue Jays fan and it was released last year, before Halladay was traded to the Phils, but it doesn't matter. Click the above link and you can watch the video and find a link to download the song for free.

There are so many new Christmas albums now, but in recent years I've only bought a few. These are the albums I bought in the last couple of years that I really enjoy:

Glee Cast - Glee: The Music, The Christmas Album (love the Chris Colfer/Darren Criss version of "Baby, It's Cold Outside")
Annie Lennox - A Christmas Cornucopia (I love what she did, but I kind of wish this had a couple of fun, not so serious/religious-oriented selections, like Eurythmics' "Winter Wonderland," one of my all-time faves)
Kristin Chenoweth - A Lovely Way To Spend Christmas
Barenaked Ladies - Barenaked for the Holidays (their quirky humor shines in a number of songs, especially "An Elf's Lament;" also includes a few Hanukkah songs)
Ella Fitzgerald - Ella Wishes You A Swinging Christmas

I also found a couple of CDs that had been released previously: "A Classic Cartoon Christmas" and "A Classic Cartoon Christmas, Too." They feature tracks from many classic TV shows (and some that aren't so classic). Between the two, they include "Welcome Christmas" and "You're A Mean One, Mr. Grinch" from "Dr. Seuss' How The Grinch Stole Christmas," songs from "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" and "Santa Claus Is Comin' To Town," Jimmy Durante's "Frosty the Snowman," a couple from the Muppets, and -- most happily -- the "Heat Miser" and "Snow Miser" songs from "The Year Without a Santa Claus." (I really need to edit them into one mp3 so when my music is in shuffle mode, I won't hear one and not the other right away.)

The following are the Christmas CDs I've had the longest, and are still my favorites:

Christmas Is Coming!

Last Christmas I gave you my heart I listed the Christmas TV specials from my DVD or VHS collection that I try to watch every year. Well, this year I haven't watched a single one yet, and time is running out. (Although I have listened to every Christmas song in my iTunes. I want to try to do a holiday music-related post this week as well.) But it's not as if I haven't watched any Christmas programs. I've got both the "Glee" Christmas episode and this year's Christmas-themed "Simpsons" episode guest-starring Martha Stewart and (in live-action with Muppetized Simpsons) Katy Perry on my DVR and have watched both two or three times.

I also just recorded the TV-movie "A Diva's Christmas Carol" starring Vanessa Williams -- surely this helped lead to her becoming Wilhelmina Slater on "Ugly Betty" -- and right now I'm recording "Bad Santa" from Spike TV, although I'm sure it's a censored version that may disappoint.

Tomorrow I plan to try and add to my DVD collection, if I can find an inexpensive DVD of "Scrooged" starring Bill Murray. Like the Vanessa Williams film, it's another update of the Dickens classic, but with a more satirical streak. The soundtrack included the duet by Annie Lennox and Al Green of "Put A Little Love in Your Heart," a non-Christmas song that is now, for me, a holiday classic.



Yes, Christmas is coming...although the case can be made that it arrived early this year...

MixBlog 12-8-10

So I had a thought today -- pause for wisecracks regarding my actually having thoughts. I might do another random blog post, but at some point I'd be repeating myself in the titles. Random Thoughts, Random Musings, More Randomness, Randomly Random Randomness...I needed something different. But what? Anyway, I was on the bus today and for some reason the word "mixtape" popped into my head. Suddenly, I had what I needed: MixBlog! (Please note that the date in the title corresponds to when I started typing, before midnight.) So, without further ado...

• I love some of these Twitter accounts that either impersonate celebrities or purport to be TV or movie or other famous characters. (I'd like to do one myself. I need to find a character that I know well enough to make it seem realistic, as well as one whose name hasn't been used on Twitter. I had an idea or two but the Twitter names I had in mind were already taken. One or two times the Twitter accounts were created but they're pretty much dead accounts, with no tweets at all or no tweets in a long time.) Here's something about "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" from a famous newspaper reporter that I laughed at today...
  
  
  
  
  It was followed by "Oh, crap. You all weren't supposed to know that." I can't get that image to upload to the blog, though.

• Speaking of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell,"
  

Sorry, Annie Lennox

I've decided against a trip to New York City to see Annie Lennox.

That sentence is blasphemous, I know. So here's the deal:

The other day I was on Facebook and there was a post from Annie's page with a link to apply to get tickets to see her perform at the taping of "Christmas at Rockefeller Center." It said there were 500 tickets available. I clicked on the link and registered with the website (which has tickets to a number of TV show tapings, it seems). I requested two tickets, and actually got a confirmation. I clicked to print, and only one page came up (noting that it was for two people).

Then I noticed something on the website. It said that if your ticket was for two and you showed up alone, instead of being allowed in, you'd be put in the standby line! Since no one was able or willing to go with me, I wasn't going to make the trip up there unless I was guaranteed that I'd see the show.

I went back to the website today.

It Gets Better: The Miracle Of Love

My thanks to a friend who is known on the Interwebs as LCM, Centre of the Known Universe, for posting this video earlier..."The Miracle of Love" by Eurythmics:



I'm posting it because it makes me feel better to hear it after all of the stuff that follows this sentence, and perhaps it will make you feel better as well.

Last week I wrote about the It Gets Better video project started by sex-advice columnist Dan Savage in response to the news of 15-year-old Billy Lucas of Greensburg, Indiana, who committed suicide after being bullied and harassed nonstop by anti-gay bigoted thugs in his high school. It's designed to get the message out to kids who are struggling -- because of bullies, "religious" people, bigoted school officials and parents and the like -- that suicide isn't the answer, that if they hang on and get through this time in their lives, they'll one day escape their circumstances by going to college or moving to a big city with a stronger gay presence, and their lives will be so much better.

Just since then there were two more young kids who killed themselves after being bullied.

Let's Talk About Twitter

Since I seem to do my best work in the early morning hours -- to be more precise, since I tend to post in the early morning hours -- here's a blog post. My original intention (since I keep putting off the posts about the three movies I've seen in the last 2 weeks) was to just write about some random stuff in my head at 2:30 a.m (the time I began this). However, it's turned into a whole Twitter thing.

As of now I follow about 275 Twitter accounts. (I have about 180 followers of my own and am always looking for more, so tell your friends!) While I really like Twitter, there are things about it that I dislike immensely, and it's not posts about the weather or people's lives that some get worked up about -- they see tweets (or Facebook status updates, for that matter) like "Going out to dinner..." as boring. I don't mind them, though. They're little looks into people's lives.

Following 275 accounts, though a few aren't really active at all, it takes time trying to read through the timeline. That makes me want to try and save time by dropping some of those I currently follow. I don't want to unfollow anyone who's following me back, though, and of those who don't follow me back, I always seem to find various reasons to keep them, whether they're really entertaining or just because they're a favorite of mine (like Annie Lennox).

I finally dumped a couple today, one being ESPN's Jayson Stark. Why Jayson?

Some Rambling Random And Shirtless Stuff

I've got a few things that popped through my head recently that fit into the TLFT (Too Long For Twitter) category, so I figured lumping them together into a single blog post would work...

• When did songs like "Sleigh Ride," "Winter Wonderland" and especially "Baby It's Cold Outside" become Christmas music? There's nothing about Christmas in any of them. I'm not complaining. Would the beautiful voice of Annie Lennox have ever been heard singing "Winter Wonderland" if not for the holiday connection? I just got to wondering how it happened. Who was the first person to link these songs to Christmas? A singer, record producer or radio DJ, perhaps?

• On Christmas morning there was still tons of leftover snow from the storm 6 days earlier. Except for the areas shoveled -- paths along the sidewalk, people's driveways and some parking spots, and the part of the street that was plowed -- snow was piled up all over the place. The next day, virtually all of it was gone. Thanks to a soaking rain that started Christmas evening and temperatures that soared into the 50s the next day, you would never know that we had 23.1 inches of snow (the official total, although in my neighborhood I think it was more like 14 or 15 inches, which is, believe it or not, a lot more manageable) a little over a week ago.

• Alexander Ovechkin of the Washington Capitals is my favorite non-Flyers player. I love the fact that he's not just a goal-scorer. He doesn't shy away from hard hits or complain to the referees about them (unlike a certain whiny Pittsburgh Penguin); in fact, he revels in the physical aspect of the game. It does concern me that some of those hits lately have trended towards being dirty, and he recently received a two-game suspension for one such hit. I hope he reins himself in enough without completely losing that component of the game. Meanwhile, he was kind enough to pose shirtless for a Russian publication. Should we be concerned that he seems to have a tramp stamp on his lower back?

• I have an ethical dilemma. Would it be wrong for me to wish that my TV would die? I really want to join the HDTV age but I can't justify the expense, especially with my finances in their present state, unless the old TV dies. It's over 10 years old now (I've had it at least as long as I've been in my house, if not longer) and stubbornly refuses to die! Is there any way I could throw a brick through the screen and make it look like an accident?
  

Random Stuff About My iTunes Library

I stole this idea from my friend Walt, who stole it from someone else, who undoubtedly stole it from yet another someone else, and so on, and so on, and so on. So, here's what I've got in iTunes...

How many total songs?

9,352. They're not all songs. I have a few sound bites and bits of dialogue from cartoons and TV shows; some artists (I'm looking at you, Janet Jackson) like to put these spoken "interludes" between songs on an album; and I have a podcast or two. At any rate, the total is 9,352 tracks. That's a total of 27.7 days' listening, amounting to 37.09 GB. (Walt puts me to shame with his 57,043 items.)

Sort by song title – first and last…

"A.B.C." - The Jackson Five
"99.9 F°" - Suzanne Vega (all the numbered items follow items beginning with a Z)

Sort by time – shortest and longest…

0:03 - This Means War - Bugs Bunny (one of those cartoon bits)
1:11:50 - Christmas 2004 - Nice (another friend, Gregg, compiled "Naughty" and "Nice" mixes of holiday music in 2004 that are very creative)

Sort by Album – first and last…

Abraxas - Santana
99.9 F° - Suzanne Vega

(See above re: song titles; in addition, I should note that the track from "Abraxas" is the only song I have from that album. That's because I have many downloads of individual songs or, for CDs I own, I may have only copied certain songs into iTunes. Also, I have songs that don't have an album title in the notes -- these are strictly downloads, and I haven't bothered to update the info in the library. I was doing that for a while, and even copying the album cover, but I've gotten off track there and now I can't be bothered.)

Sort by Artist – first and last…

a-Ha
95 North

Top five played songs

"When Love Takes Over" - David Guetta feat. Kelly Rowland - 222 plays
"Let It Rock" - Kevin Rudolf feat. Lil' Wayne - 176 plays
"Poker Face" - Lady Gaga - 144 plays
"Shining Light" - Annie Lennox - 133 plays
"If I Never See Your Face Again (Paul Oakenfold Remix)" - Maroon 5 feat. Rihanna - 126 plays

I reset the total at the beginning of every year, so this is only 2009's most played.

Find the following words. How many songs show up?

Sex: 38 (the search function in iTunes, however, brought up every variation on the word, including titles like "Sexual Healing"
Death: 5
Love: 829 (again, variations, including "lover" and "lovely"
You: 1170
Home: 57
Boy: 79
Girl: 124

First five songs that come up on Party Shuffle...

I don't seem to have "Party Shuffle" any more, not that I ever used it. I just used the regular shuffle mode. Anyhoo, it seems to be called "iTunes DJ" now. And because I hit a button by mistake, I refreshed the list it brought up. So this isn't exactly the first five, but let's pretend:

"Cemeteries Of London" - Coldplay
"Orange Crush" - R.E.M.
"River Deep, Mountain High (Live Unplugged)" - Annie Lennox
"Believe Somebody" (mashup) - Madonna/Cher/Whitney Houston
"If I Could Only Win Your Love" - Emmylou Harris