Michael Jackson and Britney Spears – The way you make me feel
Now, check out this couple. Wow.
Now, check out this couple. Wow.
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?
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
Nice Commentary from Keith to go along with my opening paragraph:
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Now this is nice for a Sunday night.
Artist: Sting and Branford Marsalis
Tune: Roxanne
Gil Scott-Heron. One of the real, great poets in the Black musical community.
Artist: Gil Scott-Heron
Tune: I’m New Here
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
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
There are some artists that I just don’t get. Usher is one of those artists.
Artist: Usher with will.i.am
Tune: OMG
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.
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.
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
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
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
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’
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
Now this is great tune.
Artist: Paul McCartney and Wings
Tune: Maybe I’m Amazed

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.)

I hope you had a nice weekend. Mine was pretty fair.
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.
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
Watch the video:
Artist: Atlanta Rhythm Section
Tune: So into You