We may associate dance music with the clubs, the strobelights, the bathroom drug deals and sticky bathroom floors, but in this video for his 1979 hit “Baby Blue” (not to be confused at all with songs by Badfinger or Bob Dylan), Italian disco, bubblegum, and electronic music pioneer (not to mention mastermind behind some of the most memorable soundtrack music of the 80s) Giorgio Moroder – who, in April, celebrated his 70th birthday! – demonstrates what dance music is really all about: precision and professionalism, science and technology. Aww yeah. Shake that groove thing. Layers of interconnected, burbling synths, vocoders and cheesy falsetto harmonies, all backed by a solid disco beat? Just another day at the office for Giorgio Moroder.
Category: People
all-about-musicians-and-the-people-who-help-them-make-music
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Lionel Richie Is Outrageous
There are some people who just know you. They know just the thing that will brighten up your day. Well, thanks to Money Mike from Popblerd (and who also is one of the forefathers of this very site), nothing in my day can go wrong today.
Let me go backwards slightly.
Back in the mid 80s when Lionel Richie was winning music awards, he started using a special word over and over and over again. That word was “outrageous”. And he wouldn’t just say it. He’d shout it. He’d pump his fist when he said it. He’d shimmer in all of his glittery greatness when he said it.
VH-1 even had one of those goofy specials about the 80s where they remembered Lionel’s outrageous usage of the word “outrageous”.
But other than the B-grade comedians on VH-1 and Money Mike, no one would delight in the memory of Lionel’s outrageousness. Why? Well, I couldn’t find the thing on YouTube.
That is, until now. Just today, Money Mike sent me an e-mail with a just YouTube video link in the body and a subject that said, “Your boy.” So you can now celebrate with me, the outrageousness that is an 8-second video of “my boy” saying that oh so special word.
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Awesome Free Download: The Baseball Project “Broadside Ballads”
Broadside Ballads
D’ya like baseball? D’ya like story songs? How about story songs about baseball? How about story songs about baseball written by a supergroup of alterna-cool elder statesmen including the Dream Syndicate’s Steve Wynn, drummer Linda Pitmon, R.E.M.’s Peter Buck and Scott McCaughey of the Young Fresh Fellows, The Minus 5 and, well, a zillion other side projects. These four got together last year and formed a band that specializes in baseball songs. They call their band – duh – The Baseball Project and they released their debut full-length album Vol. One: Frozen Ropes and Dying Quails in 2009. While they’re working on Volume Two (due out next year), they’ve partnered with ESPN’s The Life this summer to provide running baseball commentary in song. And those songs – six of ’em so far – are being made available for free dowload at the Baseball Project’s label home, the always awesome Yep Roc Records. No small feat: these songs have actually given me a reason to care about baseball this year.I mean, seriously, with the exception of my sons’ little league games and the occasional excursion to Warner Park to watch the Madison Mallards play (and eat a few brats), I like stories and movies about baseball a lot more than I like baseball itself. I never miss a chance to watch Major League II when it comes on the TV. But when the guys in the Baseball Project start singing about “Lima Time”, the references are pretty much lost on me in the same way that that punchline in Modern Family about Diana Ross’s RCA period was mostly lost on the majority of the network prime time viewing audience. But it doesn’t matter that much: the band plays a handsome variety of laid back folk rock – think The Traveling Wilburys at a Miller Park tailgate party – that sounds great even when I don’t know the relevant background of the song’s lyrics.
Moreover, songs like “Phenom”, in which a 21-year-old ponders his ability to live up to his own hype – “Man of the hour, and that’s 400 percent of your 15 minutes of fame, and they say that I’m the most in the Washington Post… I just want to stick around for a while” – resonate outside of the sport they pay tribute to on an allegorial/metaphorical level. I love the relentless (and hopeless) optimism of “Cubs 2010”, the jangly, swinging, Woodie Guthie-ish singalong of “30 Doc”. And I’ve never been to or even cared about a baseball season opening day, but I can, nevertheless relate to the sense of excitement and expectation of “All Future and No Past” – Before a game is played! Before an out is made! – especially when the song sounds like They Might Be Giants fronting the Byrds on a Bob Dylan cover.
