Now For the Educational Portion of our Program...

Video Week continues with my personal favorite of all the "Multiplication Rock" segments:

Video Week Continues

Yes, it's, as you've seen, Video Week at The Word From On High, mainly because, after a month off, I want to get back into updating the blog, but I still don't really feel like writing anything nor do I really have anything important to say, so I'll just raid You Tube for a couple of more days until some inspiration strikes me or America's Got Talent debuts on NBC.

So..today's video is one of my favorite songs, and I'm sure one of yours, because everybody loves Supertramp.

Covington's "Different World" in a World of It's Own.

You know, I'm not exactly sure how old Season5 American Idol finalist Bucky Covington actually is, but I know he isn't yet even 30, and probably not even 25. In his debut single, "A Different World," which is, to my disappointment, not the theme from the 198o's Cosby Show spin-off, Covington croons about a redneck's idealized version of what seems to be the 1950's, when times were simpler and, once presumes, better. It's a backwoods paradise where moms smoked and drank, cars had no seatbelts, and there were only three channels on TV, and Covington sings about it as if were his childhood that he's describing. That may be the case for whoever actually wrote the song, but the Buckster is, as I stated above, in about his mid-20's and thus came of age in the 1980's and 90's where the dangers of smoking and drinking were well documented, seatbelts were nearly universal and their use mandated in many states, and cable channels proliferated.

However, Covington has become a stronger singer than he was back in his Idol days, and "A Different World" really isn't such a bad song if you don't think too much about it--which I suppose is true for all country music (and the majority of rock and pop, too, to be fair.)

Sad Songs Say So Much

It is a popular cliche that cliches are cliches because they are true.

That is to say that most, if not all, cliches are merely universal truths of human existence repeated over and over to the point of triteness. One such truth is that emotional pain can often inspire great art; or suicide, which will not seem as unrelated to anything I'm about to write by the time we get to the end of this.

A couple of nights ago, I was listening to Fleetwood Mac's 1977 masterpiece Rumours, which is what inspired all this deep (for me, at least) thought about the nature of cliches and the genesis of art. Break-ups and divorces are a particularly fertile breeding ground for both heartache and great music, especially when the couple (or couples) splitting up are in the same band. Rumours stands as quitessential proof of this thesis.

Written and recorded at a time when the band's two couples, Lindsay Buckingham and Stevie Nicks and John and Christine McVie, were both deep into the process of disintegrating, the songs on Rumours are sad, bitter, bittersweet, and, ultimately, hopeful, sometimes all at once. Rereading that sentence, it seems odd that a project this emotionally intense and personal would become the top selling record of the 1970's, yet the group did couch their despair in the catchy, poppy melodies and flawless harmonies that by then had become their trademark.

Another example of what I'm going on about here is ABBA. Until late in their career, the Swedish quartet was known for light, fluffy, and, frankly, not very good, pop singles. it wasn't until the two married couples who comprised the group simultaneously divorced that ABBA began making music that mattered, or was, at the very least, worth listening to. Songs like "The Winner Takes It All" and, most especially, "Knowing Me, Knowing You" are such haunting and beautiful expressions of melancholy and regret that it is difficult to fathom that they came from the same outfit responsible for "Dancing Queen."

I will assume that you are beginning to hope for some sort of point to all this, but as I wrote the first draft of this piece in my spiral notebook while I was listening to Rumours, I honestly didn't think there was one--except for me just wanting to share my not so original observations about the great album that I was listening to right that moment.

Or perhaps the point was that it is true, and thus, to not so neatly bring this rambling mess full circle, a cliche that great art and commercial success need not be mutually exclusive.

Or maybe I just felt an odd need to justify the fact, before the entire world, or at least the five people who read this blog, that I truly, and without any trace of faux hip "irony," really dig ABBA.

Actually, that's not it at all. None of it. It finally occurred to me that what this shambling monster of a blog post is about is the choices that we all, each and every one of us, must make many times in our lives; choices about how we deal with heartache and pain and loss. We can either pick ourselves up, go on with our lives and try to make something positive of the experience--such as, say, the sixth best selling album ever--or we can give up; stop taking taking chances for fear of being hurt again and, in essence, stop living.

In a WHAM! video from the 1980's, george Michael is wearing one of those oversized T-shirts with giant black letters that were inexplicably fashionable at the time decorated with the phrase Choose LIFE. It has been taken by many, and may even have been intended by Michael, as an anti-abortion statement, but I choose to think that it means pretty much the same thing that, ultimately, is the elusive "point" of this piece:

Don't Give Up.

Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow.

Choose LIFE!

Random Bits of Randomness

Here are some other stories that, as they say on TV, we are following here in the Word From On High newsroom:

As far as I know, Captain America, much like Generalissimo Francisco Franco, is still dead.

Van Halen, whether or not they really belonged there, could, for the most part, not even be bothered to show up to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The eponymous Van Halen brothers and original lead singer "Diamond" David Lee Roth skipped the shindig, leaving only lame substitute Sammy Hagar and the other guy in the band who's name no one ever remembers (and I remember the name of the "other guy in Wham!") to accept the accolades.

Viacom is suing Google and its recently aquired subsidiary YouTube for copyright infringement. I want to find out more about this story before I formulate any opinions for public consumption.

I'll have my full American Idol update for the week in a day or two, but I think it's safe to say that Sanjaya Malakar, who belongs in Idol's Top 12 as much as Van Halen belongs in the Rock Hall of Fame, is safe for another week. His vocals may have been weak and totally overwhelmed by the band and background singers, but at least he remembered his lyrics onstage. Look for one of the three or four amnesiacs to check out tonight.

More and these stories and others as they develop.

More Rock Hall of Fame Ranting

Here's another quote from later in that USA Today article I cited yesterday. This wonderfully idiotic nugget of crap comes from someone introduced to the reader as "New York writer Roger Wade," who contends: "This is supposed to be a hall of fame, and denying both the fame and influence of Rush and Kiss makes the institution look ridiculous."

Wade is being entirely too literal minded and completely missing the whole point. (Maybe he should come to Columbus and write for The Other Paper.) Perhaps he would prefer that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame change its name to the Rock and Roll Hall of Achievement or the Rock and Roll Hall of Accomplishment. Those are what the "Hall of Fame" concept, whether it be the Rock Hall, or the Baseball or Football Halls of Fame or whatever "Hall of Fame" you care to cite as an example, is meant to recognize and honor. Being popular and influential is not an achievement or an accomplishment. As most people learned in high school, any idiot can be popular and influential. Nobody gets inducted into a "Hall of Fame" just for being famous. (Unless it were the Fame Hall of Fame, which would honor people who are famous simply for being famous, like Paris Hilton. It would be the only Hall of Fame in which any tangible accomplishment would actually count against you.)

Now, once again I ask you, besides selling a lot of records, what did Van Halen really contribute to history of Rock and Roll or its growth as an art form? Not much of anything, to tell the truth, and that's why I was against their induction into the Hall of Fame. However, they're in now, and Poison (who actually aren't eligible 'til 2012) can't be far behind.

Meanwhile, according to a sidebar to the USA Today piece, Guns N' Roses also comes eligible for induction into the Rock Hall in five more years. (God, has it really been two decades since Appetite For Destruction came out? I feel old all of a sudden.) Given my railing about Van Halen's admission, I bet you're thinking that I'm going to say that GN'R should be left out of the Hall. But no, I'm all in favor of letting them in.

Sure, to be totally honest, Guns N' Roses' career consists of one good album followed by twenty years of mediocre, or worse, crap. Then there's the decade or more long wait for Axl Rose to finish the Chinese Democracy Album. Not exactly a "Hall of Fame" showing.

Until, that is, you consider that their one good album was actually not just a good album; not just a great album; Appetite For Destruction was, is, and shall be for all eternity a freakin' bloody brilliant album and quite possibly the best heavy metal/hard rock record ever made. It might seem wrong to admit a band to the Hall of Fame on the strength of one album, but when that album is Appetite For Destruction it is absolutely mandatory.

By the way, when/if Chinese Democracy does come out, it will, of course be a huge disappointment, even in the unlikely event that it's better than Appetite For Destruction, because expectations will have risen so high over the interminable period during which Axl was recording it that absolutely nothing could meet them. It's sort of like when Tom Schultz of Boston took nine years to put out the album Third Stage, and while the result was a fairly good album, most people who heard it thought, "I waited nine years for this crap?"

Latest Sign of the Approaching Apocalypse: Van Halen In Rock Hall of Fame

Tonight in New York City, the annual Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony will be taking place. Don't feel too bad if you can't make it to the show, as you'll probably soon be able to watch it endlessly on VH-1.

As soon as this year's crop of honorees was announced some two months ago, the inclusion of pioneering rap group Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five raised eyebrows among rock critics. The Five are the very first rap act to be admitted to the hall and the skeptics have questioned whether they, or any hip-hop act for that matter, belong there.

The tempest in a teapot over Grandmaster Flash has directed attention from the truly questionable choice among this year's inductees.

I am referring, of course, to Van Halen.

Make no mistake, I like Van Halen. I'd even go so far as to call myself a fan. (Keep in mind, however, that when I say "Van Halen" I mean the real, "Diamond" David Lee Roth led incarnation and not the weak-ass "Van Hagar" simulacrum that popped up in 1985.) Van Halen was, arguably, the finest hard rock band of its era, which, to be honest, is sort of a left handed compliment considering the "competition." To totally honest, they produced fairly generic, radio friendly pseudo-metal calculated to appeal to preteen proto-headbangers. Despite Eddie Van Halen's guitar virtuousity, the band could hardly be called groundbreaking either musically or lyrically. Van Halen made great party records, but that's hardly a qualification for entrance into any sort of "Hall of Fame."

Actually there's a quote from an article on USA Today's web-site that pretty much sums up what I'm trying to say. It's from a man identified as "music writer Brett Milano, author of The Sound of Our Town: A History of Boston Rock and Roll," who says: "Eddie Van Halen taught a million people to overplay, and David Lee Roth ushered in the era of the comedian as rock 'n' roll front man. With Van Halen, we're to the point of bands getting in pretty much only because they sold a lot of records."

Hell, if you're gonna put Van Halen in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, you might as well let KISS in, too. In fact, KISS probably deserves the nod more than Eddie and his pals. They were at least groundbreaking; not musically, but in the savvy way they managed the business side of the band. They merchandised the hell out of themselves, putting their mildly freakish faces on everything from bubblegum cards (anybody else remember when bubblegum cards actually came with bubblegum?) to lunchboxes to T-shirts to comic books (they even made a cameo appearance in an issue of Howard The Duck.)

Maybe KISS will get in to the Hall of Fame next year. Hell, maybe they'll just throw open the doors and admit Poison, Whitesnake, and Twisted Sister, too.

Goolies Get Together!

About a dozen years ago, a CD called Saturday Morning's Greatest Hits came out featuring "alternative" rock acts doing songs from TV cartoons. It was mostly theme songs, but there were a few tunes featured in individual episodes, such as The Violent Femmes tearing up the Jetsons classic "Eep-Op-Ork-Ah-Ah (Means I Love You)." Sadly, no one chose to cover that chase scene classic, "Hey, Girl, Ya Got Me Runnin'," from Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? though that show's theme as rendered by Matthew Sweet is featured.

Also on the disk is the Toadies version of "Goolies' Get Together" the theme from The Groovy Goolies Show, in which they sing the lyrics as "Everybody shout--C'mon, now, sing out! It's time for the Goolies' Get Together!" For years, I was convinced that those were not the correct lyrics. I distinctly remembered the song being, "Everybody shout--Let the bells ring out!" At least, I thought I did. Until yesterday, when I found the opening of the Goolies on YouTube, and, sure enough, the lyrics were, indeed, "C'mon, now, sing out!" as you can hear in the clip below. (more below)

Howover, I'm not totally sure that I'm completely wrong. You might remember that in the early 70's it was practically mandatory that the cast of a Saturday morning show double as a bubblegum pop band and do a number at the end of each episode. I seem to remember that one of those segments featured a version of "Goolies' Get Together" and that may be from where I am remembering the "Let the bells ring out!" lyric.

If anybody out there has any knowledge or recollection of an alternate version of the Goolies theme, let me know. Leave a comment here or e-mail me at wasted_potential1965@yahoo.com and if you happen to have video of it, post it on YouTube and send me a link.

Anyway, just for the sake of comparison, I leave you with the Toadies version of "Goolies Get-Together." Dig it.

Yeah, So I Was Watching The Grammys Last Night...

I did not want to watch the Grammy Awards. I tried to avoid them. I even watched the last half hour of Grease: You're the One That I Want, which proved to be the lame-ass American Idol rip off that I thought it was. Finally, I gave up and checked out the Grammys for about an hour before going to bed, and I have one question:

Wasn't it supposed to be an awards show?

Ok, the performances were actually really good, especially the Carrie Underwood/Rascal Flats tribute to the Eagles and Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy," but during the entire hour that I watched, I think that maybe three, at most, awards were actually presented and two of those went to the Dixie Chicks.

(I'm sure Underwood winning for Best New Artist was not what CBS execs were hoping for. After all, her win pretty much amounted to free publicity for one of their competitors shows, American Idol.)

Of course, the music is why people tune in to the show, and I'll bet most people watching didn't care at all who won what. So if that's the case, why not just dispense with the awards altogether. Present the cheesy little statues in a private ceremony, and have a TV special later that's nothing but the winners and select nominees performing and isn't bogged down by the boring awards presentation stuff.

Walking In Memphis

Well, I didn't post anything yesterday because I really didn't have anything to say, and I really still don't, so I thought I'd share this song with you. This has been one of my favorite songs ever since the first time I heard (yet in the fifteen years since its release, I still haven't gotten around to buying this CD), and sharing stuff that I like and care about is why I started this blog.

Idol Finalist Covington Helps Make Has Been Star Search Winner Feel Useful Again

Yesterday, by clicking on one of the ads contained in this very blog, I happened upon the MySpace domain of 2006 American Idol finalist Bucky Covington. It contained snippets of songs from Covington's upcoming debut CD, due out in April. I must say that for country music--a genre I generally despise and will usually go far out of my way to avoid hearing--they weren't all that bad.

The bio on said page reveals that the Buckster's CD is produced by Mark Miller of the country band Sawyer Brown. There seems, to me, to be a certain symmetry in that, sort of like a circle being completed. Bucky would still be playing in bars in small towns in North Carolina, and no one ever would have heard of Sawyer Brown if weren't for another, earlier TV talent show: Star Search, where SB took the top prize for Best Vocal Group during the show's debut season of 1983. It's only fitting therefore that Miller should aid Covington in capitolizing on his Idol spawned success. Besides, it's not like he's busy or all that in demand or anything as Sawyer Brown hasn't had even a minor hit since since 1999.

(Now, THAT'S Trivia! #22) Video Quiz

As you've probably noticed, I've discovered YouTube in a big way. I might've gone a little overboard in posting videos here. I guess I've been kind of like a kid with a new toy. However, YouTube certainly is useful for covering American Idol, since I can show you things that may be hard to describe, and I can rely on someone posting the worst of the auditions. Oddly, I'm finding that tracking down the good singers is a bit trickier.

Anyway, today's trivia question has nothing to do with Idol, but MTV and the answer will be a vid I found on YouTube.

Can you name the first video ever played on "Music Television"?

The answer, and the historic video itself, is at The Answer Blog.

More Mindless "Other Paper" Bashing

To be perfectly honest, I've got nothing earth shattering or interesting to say today, so I'll fall back on one of my favorite subjects: Bitching about The Other Paper, Columbus, Ohio's leading "alternative" weekly.

Have any of the writers at TOP ever had an original thought. It's not bad enough that Karen Graves, in her review of Taylor Hicks' eponymous CD, chooses to parrot someone else's ideas, but the least she could do is acknowledge it. At the beginning of the review, she says of Hicks, "In fact, he's more like America's embarassing uncle--the one who would cause a mortifying scene at a wedding reception." That should sound familiar to anyone who remember the last season of American Idol, because, although Graves does slightly reword it, Simon Cowell said that to Hicks himself on an episode of Idol. Did she think no one would notice her presenting someone else's thought, especially when it was originally spoken on the country's most watched television program.

Yeah...that was pointless, but maybe I'll actually have something worthwhile to write about...and even if I don't, I'll probably write about it anyway.

"Godfather of Soul" Dies

In the entertainment world, one message of a person's importance and influence is the number of nicknames he accumulates. "The Godfather of Soul" and "The Hardest Working Man in Show Business" are just two of the epithets coined to describe James Brown, the dynamic soul singer perhaps better known for his energetic on stage antics, especially after Eddy Murphy's dead on imitation of him on Saturday Night Live back in the 1980's when Murphy was still funny, than for his singing. He certainly didn't move like a 73 year old man, which is what he was when he died yesterday in Atlanta.

His energy was infectious. It's hard for me to hear a James Brown song and remain seated, or even standing still. You've just got to dance and shout along with him. "HEH! I feel GOOD!"

Although James Brown is gone, he will continue, through the music he left behind, to make people "feel GOOD" for a long time to come.

A Classic Christmas Special That Never Was

This time of year, the airwaves and cable bandwidth are saturated with holiday specials and movies, many of them based on popular and well know seasonal tunes, for example Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Frosty the Snowman. As I listening to The Waitresses' Christmas Wrapping, I wondered why no one has ever turned that song, with its tale of a series of romantic "near misses" culminating in a chance encounter at the grocery store on Christmas Eve, into a TV movie. It would make a great light romantic comedy perfect for, say, Lifetime. The story's all right there in the lyrics, just waiting for a good writer to add some details.

Honestly, I'm really surprised no one has thought of it in the two and half decades since that song was recorded.

Review of Taylor Hicks Disc

In order to review Taylor Hicks' new CD, I'm gonna have to actually listen to it, which I have yet to do. Fortunately others have and have put their thoughts in print. I do intend to check this disc out eventually and I'll give you my own impressions as they become available.

(STRAY THOUGHTS) Topic: Christmas Blessings

One of the very few things that I actually like about the Christmas season is that it is the only time of year that you get to hear a song by 1980's New Wave group The Waitresses played on the radio.

I'm grateful that the band had the foresight to record their holiday classic "Christmas Wrapping" before their slide into wholly undeserved obscurity.

(STRAY THOUGHTS) Topic: Poor Al

Y'know, I was thinking, as I typed in Monday's post about "Weird" Al Yankovic, that, in recent years, at least, it must really suck to be "Weird" Al. After all, in order to parody popular music, you actually have to listen to the crap.

A Seasonal Top 5

TOP 5:

Christmas Songs That Really Aren't All That Christmasy

In fact, none of the listed songs even mention the holiday.

5. Winter Wonderland

4. Let It Snow

These two songs are simply odes to the joys of foul weather, actually more appropriate for the middle of January.

3. Frosty the Snowman

Y'know, I think that a snowman suddenly coming to life and starting to dance around would actually scare the holy living crap out of most small children, and what's so Christmasy about that?

2. My Favortite Things

Unlike the other songs on this list, this one isn't even about winter.

1. Jingle Bells

This may seem like the quintessential Christmas song, or as Lucy says in A Charlie Brown Christmas, "I mean 'Jingle Bells.' You know, Santa Claus and HO! HO! HO! and mistletoe and presents to pretty girls." However, the truth is that this ditty about the supposed fun of freezing your tuchus while galavanting about the wilderness in an "open sleigh" references precisely none of those things, or anything else even remotely specific to the Christmas holiday.

Hicks CD Out Today

So, the first full length CD from unlikely American Idol winner Taylor Hicks hit stores today.
Personally, I'm wondering just how well Hicks will come over on on CD. As far as I'm concerned, while he's a fine singer, Hicks' main appeal is visual: the boyish face beneath a mop of prematurely gray hair; the apoplectic attempts at dancing. Simon Cowell hit the nail on the proverbial head when he compared Taylor to somebody's drunken uncle at a wedding. And unless he starts slurring his words, I don't know how Hicks can project that quality through vocals alone.