Happy Birthday, Texas

Barbara Jordan, 25 years ago at the sesquicentennial.

Songs in 6/8 time

K has this peculiar thing. He loves all songs that are in 6/8 time. Doesn't matter who the band or singer is, really. The one disappointing thing in Pandora has been that there isn't any way to seed it to return all songs in 6/8 time. You can suggest a batch of 6/8 songs, but it willfully refuses to notice that that's the only attribute you care about.

For K for Valentine's Day yesterday, I made a mix CD of 6/8 songs. In case anyone else has such a fetish, I'll offer the playlist:

I goofed, though. Holding Onto You is definitely not 6/8. And there are a couple others that might be 12/8, but I can't always tell the difference.

How many songs do you hear in Gaga's Born This Way

I (and all of Twitter) heard Express Yourself when we first heard Gaga's Born This Way. Cheeks (aka Brad Bell, musician, comedian, actor, internet personality) heard several songs and does an amazing job singing all of them while Born This Way plays in the background. (This impresses me because I always had trouble concentrating on singing my part of Row, Row, Row Your Boat in round.)



As listed and time coded by commenter AznShmiley, the songs he sings are as follows:

0:00-0:31 TLC- Waterfalls
0:32-1:01 Madonna- Express Yourself
1:02-1:08 Madonna- Vogue
1:09- 1:53 David Guetta- When Love Takes Over
1:54- 2:00 Kelly Clarkson- Walk Away
2:01 - 2:11 P!nk- God is a DJ
2:17 - 2:47 Madonna- Vogue
2:48 - 3:05 Adam Lambert - Fever

Cheeks' YouTube Channel.

Born This Way = Express Yourself

If you're Madonna's copyright lawyer, you should be busy screencapping Twitter trend lists right now. The new Gaga song, "Born This Way", sounds so much like Madonna's "Express Yourself" that the discussion on Twitter is causing "Express Yourself" to trend.

Update 2/11/11, 9:47 CST: Someone has mashed them, so you can compare for yourself:

Mexico's Gun Supply and the 90 Percent Myth | STRATFOR

I know I'm the only one who's been bothered by the numbers that have been thrown around but until now it was just a gut feeling. The link to Stratfor's publication today on the ref'd subject:

Mexico's Gun Supply and the 90 Percent Myth STRATFOR

Update on Adam's Charity:Water campaign

From Charity: Water:

. . . Saturday was Adam Lambert’s 29th birthday, where he raised more than $115,000 in one day, all for clean water projects. That’s the most raised in one day on mycharity: water! And this made his campaign the highest-raising one in mycharity: water history (and he hasn’t hit his goal yet!).

We were blown away by his fans’ support and continue to watch his campaign page, excited for him to reach his goal of $290,000 by the campaign’s end. Thank, you Adam! And thanks to your devoted fans.

Go here to donate.

Update 2/4/11: HuffPo has the story on its front page today.

Tis the season of high profile Star Spangled Banner performances

None of which Adam is singing.

But here are a couple of past performances, for your patriotic listening pleasure:

What is Money?

Here is an excellent episode of This American Life on the topic of "What is Money". They cover:

Prologue: The use of giant stone sculptures as money, impractical though such a practice may be.
Act I: The creation of a currency fiction to solve Brazil's problems with its voluble currency valuation.
Act II: The Federal Reserve's actions in response to the recent fiscal crisis.

Advice

Kanye has tweeted an important life rule that I pass on as a public service:

Livestream from downtown Cairo

Here: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/cairodowntown

Update 1/26/11: No longer providing a live feed. (It has, though, been playing footage recorded yesterday.)

Kanye and Napoleon Dynamite

Quiz for those of you who've been checking out Kanye's MBDTF: Quote the Napoleon Dynamite reference.

Cool site

visualisingdata.com. (Hope they play with data better than they spell.)

Happy Birthday, Scooter!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SCOOTER

Daily Show reports from Austin

tonight. Per the Statesman.

Fandom power applied to charity

Earlier this evening, Adam posted an announcement on his official fansite that he'd like fans to make donations to a charity in lieu of sending him birthday gifts. The charity he selected this time is charity : water that funds clean drinking projects (wells and so forth) in areas lacking clean drinking water.

In honor of this being his 29th birthday, he set the goal amount at $29,000 to be raised over 85 days.

In under 6 hours, his fans donated . . . [drum roll] . . . more than $29,000 dollars.

This was accomplished without any distribution of a press release and no announcement on Twitter.

Happy 6oth Birthday!

No, not to Michael. To The Day the Earth Stood Still and thanks to AMC for showing one of my all time faves tonight. Still love Patricia Neal.

And what geek could even mention the classic without quoting this:

Michael Rennie was ill
The day the earth stood still
But he told us where we stand
And Flash Gordon was there
In silver underwear
Claude Rains was the Invisible Man
Then something went wrong
For Fay Wray and King Kong
They got caught in a celluloid jam
Then at a deadly pace
It came from outer space
And this is how the message ran.

CHORUS

Science fiction — double feature
Dr. X will build a creature
See Androids fighting Brad and Janet
Anne Francis stars in Forbidden Planet
Oh — at the late night double feature
Picture show

I knew Leo G. Carrol
Was over a barrel
When tarrantula took to the hills
And I got really hot
When I saw Jeanette Scott
Fight a triffid that spits poison and kills
Dana Andrews said prunes
Gave him the ruhnes
And passing them used lots of skills
And when worlds collide
Said George Pal to his bride
I'm going to give you some terrible thrills
Like a —

Chorus

"Prunes?" Who knew?

R.I.P. Clarence Prevost

Clarence W. Prevost who alerted law enforcement about Zacarias Moussaoui's suspicious behavior while learning to fly a jumbo jet at a flight school in Eagan, MN, before the Sept. 11 terror attacks, has died at the age of 72.

On Kanye

Chris Jackson writing at The Atlantic talks about Kanye, what Kanye is saying, and how to interpret rap:

I was the editor of Decoded, and one of Jay-Z's main ambitions for the book from the beginning is that it give both fans and haters a primer on how to listen to rap, and why it's always more complicated than you think it is. Rap can be free wordplay or linear narrative. Sometimes a rapper uses words as rhythmic devices, as percussion, with little concern about literal meaning. Rap can be polemic or stand-up comedy. It's autobiography, fantasy, confession, satire, lecture, dream. The voice of the rapper can be first-, second-, or third-person, comic or hyperbolic or earnest. Even then it's complicated: Jay-Z's voice, even in earnest first person, is not necessarily Shawn Carter's voice, but then again sometimes it is.

[Jump]

...but at the least I think it's hard to analyze Kanye's lyrics outside of the understanding that he's fundamentally a comic, a sometimes viciously comic, rapper ... and an artist . . ., and operating out of a tradition of which he's conscious (as indicated by the inclusion of Gil Scott-Heron and Chris Rock).

[Jump]

I think the most difficult, and most intriguing, aspect of Kanye as a rapper is that you never know whether he's celebrating or satirizing an idea, or doing both at the same time.

[Jump]

All of which is to say . . . that Kanye West may or may not be a racist and a misogynist, but before making that claim he deserves a fairer hearing than a surface reading of his lyrics. We all know that rap is narrative, with unreliable narrators, and that the point-of-view in any narrative is not necessarily the point of view of the writer, but then we occasionally choose to forget this; in those moments we make judgments on rap songs without making the effort to first understand them on the terms of the form.

H/t Ezra.

T-Paw on Stewart

Former Minnesota governor and potential candidate for President in 2012, Tim Pawlenty, appeared on the Daily Show last night. The interview, including the portion that didn't air, is here.

I don't agree with him on much policy, of course, but I think he deserves consideration from Republicans who want a serious candidate. He's smart; he's experienced; he's articulate; he's a true believer in a conservative economic philosophy without emphasizing a socially "conservative" agenda.

Samples used in My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

Over the weekend, K and I saw Four Lions and heard, over the closing credits, a melody that is included in Blame Game on Kanye's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. That sent me to Kanye's liner notes that I had not read. That, plus LJ and Scooter's interest in the 21st Century Schizoid Man sample, motivated me to investigate the samples further.

With links to a cool site that streams audio of songs with their samples, side by side, here are Kanye's samples, in track order:

Dark Fantasy: Contains samples of “In High Places” by Mike Oldfield

Gorgeous: Contains portions of the composition “You Showed Me,” written by Gene Clark and Roger McGuinn.

Power:

• Contains elements of “It’s Your Thing,” recorded by the Cold Grits.
• Contains elements of “Afromerica” (Francois Bernheim/Jean-Pierre Lang/Boris Bergman)
• Contains material sampled from “21st Century Schizoid Man” performed by King Crimson Taken from the album: In The Court Of The Crimson King.

All of the Lights: None

Monster: None

So Appalled: Contains samples of the Manfred Mann’s Earth Band recording “You Are – I Am.”

Devil in a New Dress: Contains samples of the recording “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow” as performed by Smokey Robinson.

Runaway:

• Contains a sample of “Expo 83” performed by Backyard Heavies.
• Contains excerpts from Rick James ‘Live at Long Beach, CA’ 1981.

Hell of a Life:

• Contains samples of the Mojo Men recording “She’s My Baby.”
• Contains samples of the Tony Joe White recording “Stud-Spider.”
• Contains portions of “Iron Man,” written by T. Butler, A. Iommi, J. Osbourne and W.T. Ward (Black Sabbath).

Blame Game: Contains elements of “Avril 14” by Richard James, Aphex Twin.

Lost in the World:

• Contains portions of “Soul Makossa,” written by M. DiBango.
• Contains a sample of the recording “Think (About It)” as performed by Lyn Collins. Written by James Brown.
• Contains samples of “The Woods” performed by Bon Iver
• Contains samples of “Comment No. 1” performed by Gil Scott-Heron.

Who Will Survive in America: Contains samples of “Comment No. 1” performed by Gil Scott-Heron

Of note, the artistic use of autotune at the beginning of Lost in the World, that I'd given Kanye credit for, is almost entirely the doing of Bon Iver.