Michael Jackson and Britney Spears – The way you make me feel
Now, check out this couple. Wow.
Entries Tagged as 'Music'
Michael Jackson – Man in the Mirror
Michael Jackson’s performance at the Grammy’s in 1988 must stand out as one of his best. Enjoy.
Artist: Michael Jackson
Tune: Man in the Mirror
So what are Micheal’s best music videos?
Michael Jackson – Dirty Diana
As we approach the anniversary of Michael Jackson’s untimely death, I thought that I would post a few more MJ videos. This is a live performance. Enjoy.
Artist: Michael Jackson
Tune: Dirty Diana
Grab bag – Tuesday Night (updated)
Nice Commentary from Keith to go along with my opening paragraph:
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
- The media loves a point-counterpoint. They love bad versus good. They love rich versus poor. Any time you can paint a story as two extremes they start salivating. Now we have Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal versus President Barack Obama. There is a magazine article in which there are supposed to be some disparaging comments about Barack Obama, Joe Biden and his cabinet members. Frankly, some of the comments were juvenile. It is almost as if they were speaking off the record or they thought that the reporter was in a coma. President Obama has a complex decision to make — fire Stanley McChrystal in the middle of an offensive in Afghanistan, which could disrupt the military and its chain of command or keep the general and risk losing face with the military. Personally, I think it depends on the assessment of the Afghanistan war. If the offensive is meeting its goals then I would keep the general. If the offensive has been a huge waste of time, money and manpower then I would trash the offensive and fire the general. This is not an easy decision. No matter which President Obama goes on this one, look for the conservative media to bash him one way or the other.
- Judge Martin “Marty” Feldman of the US District Court in New Orleans is making news. (I don’t know whether he is called “Marty” for short. Of course, Marty Feldman was a great comedian, best known for his performance in Young Frankenstein.) This Feldman has overturned the president’s moratorium on drilling in the Gulf. The Obama administration will appeal.
- HHS has issued regulations for the Affordable Care Act. I’ll need to review this in detail. Here’s a quick summary fact sheet.
- Many people are now picking up on Rep. Joe Barton’s apology to BP as the Republican Party line rather than a rogue personal statement. As I’ve said many times, Republicans are very disciplined. They’re not known for emotional outbursts. (I think that Joe Wilson’s You Lie outburst at the President was planned.) When they say something, it generally has been thought about and approved on many levels. Republicans are outraged that a corporation would be asked to clean up something that they caused. There’s a reason that the Superfund was allowed to dry up by the Bush administration. Corporations were supposed to pay fines for their transgressions, fines collected and placed into the Superfund. The Bush administration stopped collecting fines. Without fines there would be no Superfund because in their minds making business clean up what they messed up is a bad thing.
- I was too disgusted after the NBA finals to actually talk about them. I wasn’t disgusted that the Los Angeles Lakers won. I was disgusted that instead of watching a basketball game, I watched a professional wrestling match. In spite of frankly my having gotten nauseated throughout the game, I feel compelled to congratulate Kobe Bryant, Phil Jackson (arguably the greatest coach of all time) and the Los Angeles Lakers. I would only ask that in the off season, point guard Rajon Rondo learn how to shoot free throws. Is that so hard?
- Michael Jackson died approximately one year ago (it’ll be one year on the 25th). Some are confused about the fact that he has left a mixed legacy. I am not confused. I grew up with Michael Jackson. I had all of the J5 albums. I saw the J5 when they came to Dallas in 1970. Michael was 11 but they said he was 8. I was 9. Michael Jackson was a complex person, just as many of us are complex people. He was a great humanitarian and one of the best entertainers to ever live. He also slept in an oxygen chamber, had a zoo complete with a tiger and chimpanzee and he had problems with personal relationships with adults and children. I love him as an entertainer. Whenever I see his Emmy award-winning performance of Billie Jean at the Motown 25th anniversary special or his performance of Man in the Mirror at the Grammys, I get goosebumps. In spite of my utmost respect for his musical talents, I’m not sure I would leave my grandson with him for more than a nanosecond.
- The goal of the day from the World Cup -
Sting and Branford Marsalis
Now this is nice for a Sunday night.
Artist: Sting and Branford Marsalis
Tune: Roxanne
I’m New Here
Gil Scott-Heron. One of the real, great poets in the Black musical community.
Artist: Gil Scott-Heron
Tune: I’m New Here
I Think I Can Beat Mike Tyson
I needed a little DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince.
Artist: DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince (Will Smith)
Tune: I think I Can Beat Mike Tyson
Wes Montgomery
After last night’s music video, I thought that I had to do better. So, how about some Wes Montgomery?
Artist: Wes Montgomery
Tune: Round Midnight
Usher – OMG
There are some artists that I just don’t get. Usher is one of those artists.
Artist: Usher with will.i.am
Tune: OMG
Con Funk Shun – “Got to Be Enough”
One of the great funk bands of the late ’70s and early ’80s. Con Funk Shun. I wonder if I have one of those jumpsuits in my closet.
DJ Earworm – Mashup 2009
A mashup is when you mash several tunes together. I have no idea who is the best at this. I do know that this guy DJ Earworm is da man. He is incredible.
Pop Music?
I have no idea why this tune popped into my head but here it is. This group/dude was a one hit wonder. This is it. So, enjoy it.
Artist: M
Tune: Pop Musik
Ray Charles – Stevie Wonder
I don’t know when this concert was. Stevie isn’t as big as a house, like he is now, so I would guess mid-’90s. Stevie Wonder is great in concert. If you have a chance, please go. I wish that I had had a chance to see Ray Charles. Both on the same stage is … I’m not worthy.
The song is Livin’ for the City. Please note that Ray sings his own version of the song, which is a little bit more bluesy with a hint of country. (I’ll talk about politics later on tonight. I just had to post this.)
Artists: Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles
Tune: Livin’ for the City
Portrait – Honey Dip
After way too much thought on this subject, I think that Portrait suffered from being in the wrong place at the wrong time. They hit the scene at the end of the hip-pop era. Their first CD was a hit, but not big enough to get a major producer and record label to grab them. I don’t know if any of them wrote songs. That would have helped. Anyway, they have vanished from the music scene.
Artist: Portrait
Tune: Honey Dip
George Benson – Breezin’
Did you see the jobs numbers? 290,000!! Now, that’s what I’m talkin’ about. Only 66,000 were government jobs. The private sector is hiring. The recovery package is working. More people are starting to look for jobs. This is nothing but great news.
I’m in Dallas chillin’ with my family.
Enjoy one of my favorite tunes.
Artist: George Benson
Tune: Breezin’
Guy – “Wanna get with u”
Been travelling today, so I haven’t been able to post.
You would figure after I was challenged about Senator Schumer causing IndyMac to fail (and I proved that any reasonable person would conclude that IndyMac self-imploded because of risky investments and undercapitalization) that said person would go home and lick his wounds. Nope. Like most conservatives, he doesn’t seem to know any direction but straight ahead. I have been challenged again. (I like this challenges because I get to research stuff that I normally wouldn’t read.) I will try to have a post about why the Community Reinvestment Act that was amended under Clinton was not the cause of Wall Street’s collapse.
In the meantime, I would like to leave you with a supergroup that dominated the early ’90s.
Artist: Guy
Tune: Wanna get with U
Paul McCartney – Maybe I’m Amazed
Now this is great tune.
Artist: Paul McCartney and Wings
Tune: Maybe I’m Amazed
Learn About Disco Music
I enjoy disco music. As I write this post, I’m listening to the disco channel on Pandora Radio. I find the music good-natured. Enough of life is angry. I’m often angry. I want something good-natured and disco music fits the bill.
I think if we all played disco music in our cars during our commutes to work that people would be nicer to each other on the road.
At this very moment the song Disco Inferno by The Trammps is playing on Pandora. This is indeed entertainment.
Here are some of the lyrics to Disco Inferno—
To mass fires, yes! One hundred stories high
People gettin’ loose – all gettin’ down on the roof – Do you hear?
(the folks are flaming) Folks were screamin’ – out of control
It was so entertainin’ – when the boogie started to explode
I heard somebody say
Burn baby burn! – Disco inferno!
Burn baby burn! – Burn that mother down
Burn baby burn! – Disco inferno!
Burn baby burn! – Burn that mother down
Burnin’!
These words seem to be urging you to burn something down, but it is quite the opposite. The singer clearly says in the song that your soul is on fire and you are happy. This song is channeling your negative energy away from destructive acts!
(Below–The Bee Gees!!!)
A new book reviewed in the New York Times recently tells some of the history and the social meaning of disco. The book is called Disco and the Remaking of American Culture and was written by Alice Echols.
From the review—
“But for the thrill-seekers, especially gay ones, who packed the trendier nightspots, disco was the sound of hard-earned freedom. It meant dancing your heart out until dawn, often aided by drugs, in clubs where anybody could pair with anybody. Disco’s beat took over your body and pounded away your inhibitions. At its headiest, the experience was a close simulation of sex, or a direct lead-in to it. Women were the main voices of lust. In “I Feel Love,” Donna Summer’s techno-backed moaning — “Oooooh, it’s so good, it’s so good, it’s so good” — seemed like a six-minute glide on the runway to orgasm….Alice Echols, a professor of American studies and history at Rutgers University and a former disco D.J., knows that most of the music she spun is considered “mindless, repetitive, formulaic and banal.” But in her engrossing new book, “Hot Stuff: Disco and the Remaking of American Culture,” she portrays that scene as a hotbed of social change — for gays, for women and their sexual rights, for blacks in the record industry. Other writers have done more to evoke the era’s sleazy glamour and animal excitement. But Echols…has few peers among music sociologists. Scholarly but fun, “Hot Stuff” is not just about disco; it re-examines the ’70s as a decade of revolution.”
(Below—A classic.)
Here is an article on the history of disco from American Heritage magazine. It is a good article that traces the evolution of disco to Paris during WW II.
Now playing on Pandora is Upside Down by Diana Ross.
Here is a history of disco from Soul-Patrol.com.
Listen to some disco and let some happiness into your life. Learn about the history of disco and see why this music that made a difference in people’s lives and in our society.
(Below–Why must this gentleman be a hater? Photo taken by Rich.lionheart.)
Grab Bag Sunday
I hope you had a nice weekend. Mine was pretty fair.
- I have been discussing the commerce clause with a friend of mine. He is a conservative and he doesn’t like health care reform. In spite of this, we’re trying to have a civil discussion over the constitutionality of healthcare reform, which I covered a couple weeks ago. One of the arguments for the constitutionality of health care reform is Congress’s authority under the commerce clause in the Constitution. The commerce clause can be found in article I, section 8. I found a nice explanation of the commerce clause here. I have also been reviewing Linda Monk’s book, The Words We Live By. It points to a couple of key cases that I’m going to be looking up in the next day or so (United States versus Darby Lumber Company, Heart of Atlanta Motel versus the United States).
- I congratulate President Obama for going to Afghanistan. I think it is truly important that we get Afghanistan right. One of the key questions is — is it too late? Only time will tell. One thing is certain. We have to get the corruption under control.
- Several days ago, I got my U.S. Census letter in the mail. As I was filling it out, I kept thinking to myself, what’s the big deal? Conservatives like Michele Bachmann have been railing against the census as if the questions were going to be the most invasive ever thought of (what is your bra size? How often do you watch pornography on the Internet?) She even went so far as to suggest that people should not fill out the census — violating US law. The questions were simple. The information is critically important to all of us.
- Lost in the healthcare debate is the reform of student loans that was also in the legislation. Government loans used to go through different financial agencies so that they can extract management fees. Now the government will lend directly to students. This should significantly decrease interest rates and other fees. This is a good thing.
- Sarah Palin has come up with a new attack line against President Barack Obama. I guess she thinks that this is a winner. She told a crowd at the “Conservative Woodstock” in Searchlight, Nevada that, “we need a commander-in-chief, not a constitutional law professor lecturing us from a lectern.” Now that’s a comeback… not!! She spent a good deal of her time talking about how important the Constitution is and then turned around to claim that we don’t need a constitutional law professor. Does that make any sense? Does she make any sense?
- Frank Rich from the New York Times had an absolutely fabulous column today. He put the over-the-top rhetoric and violence into perspective. We have to go back to the civil rights era and the ratification of the Civil Rights Act before we can say that we’ve seen anything like this in American politics. Here’s a small excerpt from his column. (Please read all the column. It is wonderful.):
But there was nothing like this. To find a prototype for the overheated reaction to the health care bill, you have to look a year before Medicare, to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Both laws passed by similar majorities in Congress; the Civil Rights Act received even more votes in the Senate (73) than Medicare (70). But it was only the civil rights bill that made some Americans run off the rails. That’s because it was the one that signaled an inexorable and immutable change in the very identity of America, not just its governance.
The apocalyptic predictions then, like those about health care now, were all framed in constitutional pieties, of course. Barry Goldwater, running for president in ’64, drew on the counsel of two young legal allies, William Rehnquist and Robert Bork, to characterize the bill as a “threat to the very essence of our basic system” and a “usurpation” of states’ rights that “would force you to admit drunks, a known murderer or an insane person into your place of business.” Richard Russell, the segregationist Democratic senator from Georgia, said the bill “would destroy the free enterprise system.” David Lawrence, a widely syndicated conservative columnist, bemoaned the establishment of “a federal dictatorship.” Meanwhile, three civil rights workers were murdered in Philadelphia, Miss.
That a tsunami of anger is gathering today is illogical, given that what the right calls “Obamacare” is less provocative than either the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or Medicare, an epic entitlement that actually did precipitate a government takeover of a sizable chunk of American health care. But the explanation is plain: the health care bill is not the main source of this anger and never has been. It’s merely a handy excuse. The real source of the over-the-top rage of 2010 is the same kind of national existential reordering that roiled America in 1964.
In fact, the current surge of anger — and the accompanying rise in right-wing extremism — predates the entire health care debate. The first signs were the shrieks of “traitor” and “off with his head” at Palin rallies as Obama’s election became more likely in October 2008. Those passions have spiraled ever since — from Gov. Rick Perry’s kowtowing to secessionists at a Tea Party rally in Texas to the gratuitous brandishing of assault weaponsat Obama health care rallies last summer to “You lie!” piercing the president’s address to Congress last fall like an ominous shot.
- And then there was one… or four. Kansas, Kentucky, Syracuse and Duke were all ranked the number one seeds in their sections. Only Duke has made it to the final four. The other three teams include Michigan State, West Virginia and possibly the greatest Cinderella story of them all, Butler. March madness brings some absolutely fabulous basketball and some of the most horrendous basketball faux pas. By the way, I picked Duke to win it all.
I’ll end with a little smooth jazz from Jeff Lorber, who has playing this type of music for over 25 years.
Artist: Jeff Lorber
Tune: Rain Song
Grab bag – Saturday Night
- We’ve seen over and over again that disadvantaged inner-city youths can be turned around and pointed in the right direction. They need motivated parents and motivated teachers. This was the essence of the KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program). In Chicago, the Urban Prep Charter Academy has proven exactly the same thing. All 107 students in their graduating class are preparing to graduate high school and are going to college. Getting good grades is all about hard work and dedication from students, teachers and parents. Everyone was accepted to college! This is an outstanding achievement.
- We need more jobs.
- Where’s Dawn Johnsen? Barack Obama made several recess appointments but for some reason she was not included. Why not?
- I’m not sure what exactly is the matter with the Catholic Church. Several years ago, at the beginning of the Bush administration, there was an outbreak of news in which Catholic priests were molesting young children. This was thought to be an isolated “American” problem. Well, it appears the problem is by far more widespread than the Catholic Church had let on. I don’t understand why the Catholic Church did not get ahead of this problem five years ago. I don’t understand how you let the current Pope get embroiled in this awful behavior, moving accused priests from parish to parish and not removing them from the church and not protecting children. Molesting children is bad enough but at a school for the deaf? This is sick.
- The Tea Partiers are going to have a “conservative Woodstock” in the hometown of Senate majority leader Harry Reid. Searchlight, Nevada, which is as big as you think it is, is the destination for the party.
- Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who replaced Hillary Clinton as New York’s junior senator, seems to be invincible or maybe untouchable. There’s been a string of Democrats and Republicans who said they were going to run against her, only to drop out before seriously entering the race.
- The craziness continues from the tea baggers. There’s been a string of violence and vile behavior by those who opposed health-care reform. Now it appears that Congressman Anthony Weiner received a package full of white powder at his office. This is wrong on so many levels, I don’t know where to start.
- Quinnipiac has just released a poll on exactly who these tea partiers are. They are exactly who we thought they were — ultraconservatives.
- The relatively small school at Butler made it into the Sweet 16, then the Elite Eight and now the Final Four. They have defeated Kansas State University. This team is playing really good basketball. Unfortunately, what used to be my Cinderella favorite North Iowa University (since they knocked off Kansas) has been knocked out of the tournament. Outstanding.
Watch the video:
Artist: Atlanta Rhythm Section
Tune: So into You
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Errington C. Thompson, MD, is a surgeon, scholar, full-time sports fan and part-time political activist. He is active in a number of community projects and initiatives. Through medicine, he strives to improve the physical health of all he treats...
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