Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Top Ten TV Theme Songs

I frequent many sites looking for music news and found a great site- www.pastemagazine.com. They are running a feature called "The 40 Best TV Theme Songs of All Time" and I think it will be a fun feature for us to explore. That said, let's explore what made their Top Ten:

10. The Olympic Games on NBC - "Olympic Fanfare and Theme" by John Williams

Better than Charles Fox' Monday Night Football theme music. Better than the intro to Wide World of Sports. This piece originally composed by Williams for the 1984 Games in Los Angeles has been the heart of NBC's Olympic coverage ever since. His NBC Nightly News score is pretty great, too.

Rather an odd pick in my opinion, but nonetheless, it comes in at number 10. We will look at #9 tommorrow!



Cover Art of Keyshia Cole's 'A Different Me'

While her LP, 'Different Me', will not hit the U.S. market until mid December, Keyshia Cole brings out an official cover art for the upcoming album.


An official cover art for Keyshia Cole's third studio LP "A Different Me" has been unveiled. On the cover art posted on the news photo, the R&B singer/songwriter is shown wearing a swimsuit with tattoos on her left wrist and right upper arm.

"A Different Me" is scheduled to come out in the United States on December 16 via Geffen/Interscope Records. One of the songs titled "Playa Cardz Right" which features Tupac Shakur has hit the airplays since October 21 and it can be listened through Interscope.

"It's a different me this time: a young woman who's still growing and finding myself, exploring life through different routes musically and in other areas," Keyshia commented on her latest work. "I wrote more about other people's situations than my own. I'm moving forward."

SOURCE: http://www.aceshowbiz.com

DOMINIA: New Album Cover Art Revealed

Nov. 18, 2008


St. Petersburg, Russia-based metallers DOMINIA have revealed the cover art (see below) for their second album, "Judgement Of Tormented Souls". Due on January 14 in Finland via UHO Production (distributed through EMI Finland), the CD was produced and mixed by Janne Saksa at Sound Supreme Studio in Hämeenlinna, Finland and was mastered at the Cutting Room in Sweden.

DOMINIA's debut album, "Divine Revolution", was released in September 2006 via UHO Production. The CD was recorded at Sound Supreme studio in Hämeenlinna, Finland with producer Janne Saksa.

SOURCE: http://www.roadrunnerrecords.com

The Killers' difficult third album (cover)

By Alice Jones

After artist Paul Normansell created an image of Kate Moss for GQ magazine, he landed the commission of a lifetime.


Paul Normansell thought it was a joke when he took a phone call from The Killers' manager, asking him to design the cover art for the band's third album. "At first I thought, 'someone's having me on'," says the 30-year-old artist from Solihull. "And then I spoke to Brandon Flowers."

It's a long way from the Birmingham dormitory town, whose most famous musical sons are the long-forgotten Ocean Colour Scene and Ritchie Neville from the boy-band Five, to Las Vegas – the city of sin and birthplace of The Killers. Nevertheless, the band spotted Normansell's mosaic-inspired portrait of Kate Moss in GQ magazine in May and within a month had called him up to ask him to create the back cover for their latest album, Day & Age. As time went on, he was commissioned to do the front cover and individual portraits of the four band members, too, all in his trademark colour-spot style which echoes the band's own dot-matrix logo.

Normansell's portrait of The Killers' leonine guitarist Dave Keuning also adorns the cover of the current single, "Human", and his work plays a leading role in the video as the band hold their individual headshots in front of their faces and playfully swap them around. The epic final shot has them linking arms to watch the sunset over Utah's Goblin Valley, which fades out to become the lilac-hued landscape of Normansell's cover. The paintings on screen are not the originals, though. "I was shipping them out for the video but they never got to the desert in time," says Normansell. "They've got all the originals in their recording studio at the moment. When I saw the band after their gig at the Royal Albert Hall, they said they'd like to keep them, but the record company has paid for them, so whether they get to keep them or not, I don't know."

Even if the painting doesn't end up above Flowers' mantelpiece, it's quite an honour to be Killers-approved. Since the band formed in 2002, the evolution of their sound, from indie-glam to synth-pop via blowsy Springsteen-iana has been mirrored by its imaginative image-making. The flamboyant yet enigmatic frontman, Flowers – who recently said he would feel "petrified" if he were to make his stage costume a T-shirt – has moved with Madonna-like ease from rocky leather-and-eyeliner for Hot Fuss to deranged Wild West ringmaster (complete with bushy moustache) for Sam's Town to his current favourite, a sharp tuxedo with owl-feather epaulettes, designed by Fee Doran (who memorably draped Kylie in a white hood for "Can't Get You Out of My Head"). The Killers' last album, Sam's Town, featured a trailer-trash beauty queen on its cover, shot by Anton Corbijn, the director of the award-winning Ian Curtis biopic, Control, and countless music videos for U2, Nirvana and Coldplay.

The cover for Day & Age went through a month of negotiations and several versions – including a cluster of palm trees and a Mexican ruin – were rejected before the band happened upon an old photograph of a nocturnal desert scene which appealed to their Nevada roots. It is not, as one blogger has suggested, "a depiction of the place Brandon went to kill the animal he wore on his shoulders in the promo pics". From there, it was a slow process of getting the colours just right. Flowers was, apparently, particularly keen on pastels.

Normansell graduated from the University of Central England in 2001 and started out producing abstract paintings which were snapped up by, among others, Radio 1 DJ Pete Tong and British Airways. One particularly keen collector bought a painting and asked the artist to design a tattoo based around it in 2004. "It's quite bizarre that someone's got a tattoo of my work on them. It's there for the rest of his life, so fingers crossed he really likes it." Inspired by a picture of Kate Moss in a magazine, Normansell began to apply his spot technique to portraiture a couple of years ago, rendering his famous subjects in thousands of meticulously applied dots of gloss paint on aluminium sheets. The reflective materials give his pop art a magazine-shoot high sheen at the same time as producing an unsettling distortion effect. "Depending on where you view the image from, it can go in and out of focus," he explains.

Normansell is working on another portrait of Moss, commissioned to hang in the head office of the cosmetics giant Rimmel and has just completed a Jimi Hendrix for an exhibition at The Gallery at 94 in London. Other subjects on show there include Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe and Agyness Deyn, posing in candy-pink Wayfarers, on sale for around £5,000.

SOURCE: http://www.independent.co.uk

Give them a spin, again

The independent record stores still thrive in some parts:

By Sara Stephenson
Features Writer
Published: November 17, 2008

The vinyl record sales doubled worldwide in 2007 and continue to rise, according to a September 2008 Wall Street Journal article.

Stores that sell vinyl in Stillwater and Tulsa have also noticed an increase in sales.

The Antique Mall at 116 E. Ninth Ave. has at least six dealers who sell vinyl records.

“They’ve gone up quite a bit in the past four to five years,” said Amy Pitchford, who has worked at The Antique Mall for two years.

Pitchford said the most records sold are from the classic rock and pop genres; jazz is also a popular genre while country is the least sold.

The most common buyers of records at the mall are college students. Of course, there could be many reasons why students are buying more vinyl.

“A lot of people say the sound quality is better,” Pitchford said.

Records are also cheaper than CDs with most priced between $4.50 and $10.

“I like the artwork,” Pitchford said.

The Antique Mall has almost always had records for sale but recently have been selling more.

Rory’s Corner Mall at 123 E. Ninth Ave. also sells vinyl records. The store is across the street from The Antique Mall and has been in business for three years.

The owner, Daniel MacRory, has been in the collectible business for seven years.

MacRory said he has also noticed an increase in record sales over the last year.

He said he researched the subject and found that the recent increase was because of a mistake with an REM album.

A company in Seattle ordered 500 LP albums instead of CDs, and the LPs sold out within a week of release. Record companies started producing more LPs, and worldwide LP sales increased in February because of the REM accident.

Fifty percent of his sales come from high school and college students, as opposed to 25 percent a few years back.

“In my opinion, they’re getting a more defined ear,” MacRory said.

MacRory said he has always been on the cutting edge of music from eight tracks to MP3s.

In 1994, he decided to convert back to LPs for his listening pleasure.

“Digital music takes all of the fun out of it,” MacRory said.

LPs keep the raw distortion of the music, which digital music takes away, he said.

MacRory said 70s rock is the most popular genre he sells and he said he can’t seem to keep Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, The Doors, The Grateful Dead and similar bands’ albums on the shelves.

Meanwhile, Starship Records in Tulsa hasn’t noticed a demand for any particular artist.

The sales are pretty evenly spread, said Calvin Compton, who has worked at Starship for three years.

Compton said the store’s vinyl sales have increased mainly because there seems to be a resurgence in production with more indie and underground musicians putting out vinyl, he said.

Record buyers at Starship generally range from 18 to 35 years old , he said.

Whether because of sound quality or expense, record sales have indeed increased in Stillwater and Tulsa.

“The general idea is to preserve vintage stuff,” Pitchford said.

Attention Conspiracy Theorists: Did John Lennon Sell His Soul?

A new book is coming in December from New Chapter Press that asks whether John Lennon sold his soul to Satan in exchange for his musical success. The Lennon Prophecy, A New Examination of the Death Clues of the Beatles by Joseph Niezgoda will interpret the hidden messages and symbols that have supposedly been littering the Beatles landscape for many years.

According to the press release, "Niezgoda dissects and examines the Beatles' and Lennon's recordings and album artwork and follows a fascinating and unique trail of sorcery, mysticism, numerology, backward masking, anagrams and literary and theological writings to explain his conclusions."

The Lennon Prophecy puts forth the theory that a 20-year-old Lennon, so disillusioned with a life of sadness and disappointment where he was abandoned by his father and stricken with the death of his mother, entered into a deal with the devil to achieve fame and fortune. Niezgoda alleges that a 20-year pact began in December of 1960, shortly before a night when Beatlemania first struck audiences on December 27, 1960, when the Fab Four played at Town Hall Ballroom in Litherland, England. During that performance, as Niezgoda writes, "The Beatles evoked a response noticeably different from anything in their past." From there, The Beatles inexplicably and immediately shot to global fame at a level never seen before or since. The 20-year pact came to its tragic conclusion on December 8, 1980, when Mark David Chapman, who testified he was possessed by demons, fulfilled the end of the contract by murdering Lennon outside of his apartment at The Dakota in New York City.

Clues foretelling the death of Lennon are revealed in album covers such as Rubber Soul, Yesterday and Today, A Collection of Beatles Oldies, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Yellow Submarine, Magical Mystery Tour, Abbey Road as well as Lennon solo albums Imagine and Walls and Bridges. Songs that also reveal the mysterious prediction of death and connections to the devil include Tomorrow Never Knows, I Am The Walrus, Come Together, One After 909, Let It Be, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and Revolution No. 9, which Niezgoda reveals is in itself a step-by-step preview of the actual assassination. The video for the biggest hit off Lennon's last album (Just Like) Starting Over also reveals an intriguing clue that brings the literary world of James Joyce into the myriad clues.

Lennon's alleged anti-Christian behavior as well as his infamous declaration that the Beatles were "Bigger than Jesus" are also presented as evidence of a possible pact. Niezgoda also dispels the "Paul-is-Dead" mythology that theorized that the Beatles inserted clues in their songs how Paul McCartney was killed in a car crash.

Classic Rock Videos

The Rolling Stones - Play With Fire (1965)

Album Cover Art

Let's continue our look at the Gigwise.com list of the top 50 dirtiest and sexiest album covers (as compiled by their staff- Gigwise comments in quotes):


34. Queens of the Stone Age: ‘Queens of the Stone Age’ - "The debut album from Josh Homme and company sports a cover that could have been stolen from a Prince record. A model suggestively holds her underwear as if ready to remove them and unveil the prize below."

Queens of the Stone Age (also known as QOTSA or simply Queens) is a hard rock band from Palm Desert, California, United States, formed in 1997.

Originally formed under the name Gamma Ray by guitarist Josh Homme, Queens of the Stone Age developed a style of riff-oriented, heavy music which Homme described as 'robot rock', saying that he "wanted to create a heavy sound based on a solid jam, and just pound it into your head". The band is frequently described as stoner rock, although they reject the term.

“ The term sucks. The only element of the audience I want to get rid of is the shirtless, sweaty, maxi-mullet jock dudes. We want sex to bleed into the music. At our shows, we want to see half boys and half girls in a utopian world, dancing and drinking. ”

Their sound has since evolved to incorporate a variety of different styles and influences. As of October 2008, the Queens of the Stone Age are:

Joshua Homme – vocals, lead guitar (touring 1997–present); K/Q, QotSA, Split, R, SftD, LtP, EV
Troy Van Leeuwen – guitar, keyboards, lap steel, backing vocals (touring 2002–present); LtP, EV
Joey Castillo – drums (touring 2002–present); LtP, EV
Michael Shuman – bass, backing vocals (touring 2007–present)
Dean Fertita – keyboards, guitars, percussion, backing vocals (touring 2007–present)

Award nominations:

Grammy Awards of 2003 - Best Hard Rock Performance - "No One Knows"
Grammy Awards of 2004 - Best Hard Rock Performance - "Go With the Flow"
Grammy Awards of 2006 - Best Hard Rock Performance - "Little Sister"
Grammy Awards of 2008 - Best Hard Rock Performance - "Sick, Sick, Sick"

This Date In Music History-November 19

Birthdays:

Acclaimed folk singer Katy Moffatt was born in Fort Worth, Texas in 1950.

Born on this day in 1943, Fred Lipsius, of Blood Sweat & Tears.

They Will Be Missed:

Tom Evens of Badfinger died at the age of 36 in 1983. Like his band mate Pete Ham, Evens also hanged himself.

In 1992, songwriter Bobby Russell, who wrote many Top 40 hits including "Honey" and "Little Green Apples", died of heart disease at the age of 51 . Russell scored a hit of his own in 1971 with "Saturday Morning Confusion" which reached the Top 25 on the Country charts and the Top 30 on the Pop charts. In 1973 he composed "The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia", which became a number one hit for his wife, Vicki Lawrence.

Record producer Terry Melcher, who was behind hits by the Byrds, Ry Cooder and the Beach Boys, died in 2004 (age 62) after a long battle with skin cancer. The son of actress Doris Day, he co-wrote ‘Kokomo’ for the Beach Boys, produced Mr Tambourine Man for the Byrds, as well as hits for The Mamas and the Papas.

Dave Guard (The Kingston Trio) was born today (died March 22, 1991).

History:

A 60 track album called "Beatles Anthology I" was released in the US in 1995 and sets a first-day sales record of 450,000 units.

In 1994, Nirvana entered the US album chart at #1 with 'MTV Unplugged In New York.'

Carl Perkins recorded "Blue Suede Shoes" at Sun Studios in Memphis in 1955. It became his biggest Pop hit, reaching #2 on the Billboard chart. Elvis Presley's version, which gets more air-play these days, only managed to get to #20.

In 1965, Roger Daltrey walked out on a Who performance at London's Glad Rags Ball after they experienced trouble with the P.A. In the days that follow, many think that Daltrey will be replaced by Boz Burrell, an alumnus of the Sidewinders and Feel for Soul who later went on to sing and play bass with King Crimson.

In 1968, Diana Ross exercised her diva rights by interrupting the show to ask the world to embrace racial understanding. The audience, which included members of the royal family, applauded for two minutes. She didn't change the world.

Van Morrison's 1970 album, "Moondance" was awarded a gold record in 1976. The LP contained two hits: the title track and "Into the Mystic".

In 1957, Chicago radio station WCFL was picketed by the local chapter of the Elvis Presley fan club when it refused to play Presley's records. Despite the protest, the station did not change its policy. The policy remains in effect to this day.

Gary Lewis and The Playboys recorded "This Diamond Ring" in 1964, which will climb to number one in the US the following January.

The Supremes enjoyed their eighth US number one hit in 1966 with "You Keep Me Hangin' On.”

Crosby Stills & Nash member David Crosby had a successful liver transplant operation at Dumont-UCLA in Los Angeles in 1994. Crosby's liver was deteriorated from extensive alcohol and drug abuse, as well as hepatitis-C.