h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Some interesting statistics about the music industry
featured in a slick but inefficient commercial video.

http://youtu.be/_AMf_OpOIvo

"Gibson manufactures one guitar every second."


~jwf~

And the second before the next one is made is how long they spend on QC...

It's official: There ain't no cure for this machine's bloos . The next one will be a Mac, for sure.

To continue:

Cowgirl In The Sand - Neil Young
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6ibl6PIKPM

Old Man - Neil Young
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6ibl6PIKPM

On Broadway - George Benson
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwxNRpl9O-A

Hidden Treasure - Traffic
http://grooveshark.com/#/search?q=hidden+treasure+-+traffic

Low Spark of High heeled Boys - Traffic
http://grooveshark.com/#/search?q=hidden+treasure+-+traffic

The Royal Scam - Steely Dan
http://grooveshark.com/#/search?q=steely+dan+-+the+royal+scam

Everybody Wants to Rule the World - Tears for Fears
http://www.goear.com/listen/8642b1c/everybody-wants-to-rule-the-world-tears-for-fears

Johnny be Goode - Chuck Berry
http://www.goear.com/listen/3733381/johnny-b-goode-chuck-berry

Minnie the Moocher - Cab calloway
http://www.goear.com/listen/a57a02f/minnie-the-moocher-cab-calloway

The Tracks of my Tears - Smokey Robinson
http://www.goear.com/listen/04d39e4/the-tracks-of-my-tears-smokey-robinson

Ain't no Sunshine - Bill Withers
http://www.goear.com/listen/f2e8939/aint-no-sunshine-bill-withers

She's Leaving Home - The Beatles
http://www.goear.com/listen/f24a401/shes-leaving-home-the-beatles

I Got The [Blues] - Labi Siffre
http://www.youtube.com/user/OriginalSamples#p/u/324/9Xj7SbQ8cKc

The Secret service Sketch - Monty Python
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytJCuLh82cU

Do you play cricket?!

More:

Smiling Faces Sometimes - Undisputed Truth
http://www.goear.com/listen/097b800/smiling-faces-sometimes-undisputed-truth

Monkey See Monkey Do - Michael franks
http://grooveshark.com/#/s/Monkey+See+Monkey+Do/JaZpM?src=5

Working Class Hero - John Lennon
http://es.dilandau.com/descargar_musica/working-class-hero-lennon-1.html#1

Wet T-Shirt Nite - Frank Zappa
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lq4zpectoKQ&feature=related

Lucille Has Messed My Mind Up - Frank Zappa
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ha4UKVf3wk

Opus 4 November - The Art of Noise
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcpTZLVZwEY

No Blue Suene Shoes - Benjamin Zephaniah
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWvweHeLado

Home - Brian Eno & David Byrne
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06jFQMxPtxw

***k Everything - Jon Lajoie
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulIOrQasR18

That's the Way Love Is - Marvin Gaye
http://grooveshark.com/#/album/That+s+The+Way+Love+Is/5618467

Race With Devil On Spanish Highway - Al Di Meola
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zy4K7lFFZII

Whiskey Headed Woman No. 2 - Canned Heat
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGv5qXuOluw&feature=related

Cruel Sister - Pentangle
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTOrsXQWCC4&feature=related

Give Me The Night - George Benson
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imYJpr09IgQ

The Ipcress File Trailer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ui5ec35Toc4

Replacing bad link:

The Tracks of my Tears - Smokey Robinson
http://www.goear.com/listen/04d39e4/the-tracks-of-my-tears-smokey-robinson

Another one!

I Got The (blues)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Cp58rWCR8Y

Scraping the barrel:

Houses in Motion - david Byrne
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVme7RpTypw

Hard Head - Renee Geyer
http://mp3download.ws/mp3/ICkY2f6fQHM/Renea+Geyer/RENEE+GEYER+Hard+Head/

Walk on the Wild Side - Lou Reed
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAHRAKQMfzA

Willie The pimp - Frank Zappa
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaCCKrpCQDM

Love So far Away - Donald Byrd
http://grooveshark.com/#!/search?q=Donald+Byrd+-+Love+so+far+away

The Bluest Blues - Alvin Lee
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQdtU4MmTYw&feature=related

Everyday Normal Guy - John Lajoie
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PsnxDQvQpw

Redemption Song - Bob Marley
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNkr86zZaP4

Love Me With Feeling - Gregory Isaacs
http://grooveshark.com/#!/search?q=Gregory+Isaacs+-+Love+Me+With+Feeling

Dub Version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tFieOBLHeA

Tuning My Guitar - Melanie
http://grooveshark.com/#/search?q=melanie+-+tuning+my+guitar

Remember My Song - Labi Siffre
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yU8erMXlBVQ

Your Love is King - Sade
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1ljpLQ1V6Y

Never as Good as the First Time - Sade
http://www.goear.com/listen/796484f/never-as-good-as-the-first-time-sade

Rock and Roll was the product of a set of unique circumstances.

Those of us born during the Second World War shared and experienced in our most intense and formative years arguably the first and greatest truly global event- the Second World War.

Too young to be truly nationalistic amidst such catastrophe, we were all to some extent "children of the ashes" and inheritors of what Paramahansa Yogananda described in his autobiography in 1946 [a work of seminal influence on George Harrison- and through him others] of a "giant snowball of negative karma".

We grew up amongst shattered and damaged places and people, and yet along with the post-war "baby-boomers", we were treated often by total strangers as a special new innocent breed in all our individuality and isolation. In a world that was trying to pull itself together we were to be as the hope of the Future, those expected to produce a much better world, a world which was hidden and obscured from those older and burdened with the weight of history.

So we grew up in what was in many ways to quote a Santana a condition of "Earth's Cry. Heaven's Smile": and the polarity between the two producing an unprecedented creative energy. It was an energy that just swelled as the generation grew up, grew out of family, neighbourhood, nationality, culture and discovered a true sense of international brotherhood.

An important factor in this was the global focus on vastly expanding higher education for our generation that exposed more young people than ever to the role of universities in fostering a community of learning and thought, with certainly in the UK students still encouraged to embrace the Renaissance ideal of "The Universal Man". And "Universal" in the Sixties meant global, so our shared life experience at the most intense level was transcendental, constantly breaking down boundaries and producing energy by a chain reaction in which young people- not yet "in harness" took full advantage of a shared urge.

"If we can't find a way to be one world in harmony. Can't get no antitode for blues."

But- rather like those leaps of creative imagination in the sketchbook of Leonardo da Vinci- these were visions and aspirations of a special time of change that became associated with expressions of the art of a troubled and traumatised Twentieth Century.

The Sixties generation as adolescents and college students discovered some of the most creative, imaginative and challenging new thought from the inter-war period that post-war censorship and schooling had kept out of their way. The managed post-war reality had tended to reject as unstable, Futuristic and too "Modern" people like D.H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf,James Joyce, Picasso, Dali.


Such work and thought had led to the World Chaos of the mid-Thirties and then to totalitarian extremism. So much better to retreat back to selected ideas and ambitions of the 1890's. In a very lucid essay in the mid 20's D.H.Lawrence had described humanity as having progressed to the edge of a precipice and faced the choice of proceding over like lemmings, or retreating back to find a better way. After 1945 it was retreat to solid Victorian/Nineteenth Century dreams.

By the Sixties people were ready to kick-over "Victorian paternalism", but in an age of Cold War and the reality of planned nuclear holocaust it may have been OK to let people dream, but it was necessary to "get real" and offer them inducements that would win them over to the "status quo".

So what was on offer in "The West", and especially the American "role model" was a "Happy Days" culture of leisure and consumerism that fitted in with the strategy for undermining Communism and Socialism. And there were plenty of people who were prepared to embrace playing and listening to music that was all about "sex, drugs and rock and roll". Rock became wedded like earlier forms of popular music to money making, entertainment and reassuring everyone that this is a wonderful world.

In any case the OPEC OIL Crisis of 1973 showed very clearly that humanity was moving on and away from "One Worldism" based upon the global experience of late Nineteenth Century Imperialism- and its consequence the two world wars. The Sixties generation settled down, made homes and families, forgetting (or pushing to the back of the mind) the hopes and ambitions of their youth.

"These are our summers of discontent
We once had a dream, tell me which way it went.
Paradise bartered for dollar or buck
If you want it better, you'd better go suck".

So "Has rock become meaningless?"

There is obviously a lot of 'nostalgia value' for lost youth, and the questions that were often raised in an age of much better educated writers and audiences. So much of the modern stuff, seems meaningless, trite, self-indulgent and derivative. In place of the universalism of the Sixties global generation, now it seems everyone is entitiled to be a "ghetto" of one or at best a small group that invents its own philosophy and life-experience. By 15 or so years old they know it all.

But over the last 20 years it has been very apparent that some young people have been going back to those "past masters", even though in many cases they only mastered the art of postulating "Utopias" and making demands of the adult world. But the adult world is now "The Sixties Generation" and it is the time for its "Flower Power" etc to produce its fruit and help a world caught up in a new global crisis to find a Way Ahead if it is to avoid the dangerous drifts towards new major wars.


Cass

Speaking of War:

The World Is A Ghetto - War
http://www.goear.com/listen/97b9310/the-world-is-a-ghetto-war

A few of songs I love to perform my style

"Summer Breeze" (Isley brothers)-- presumably suffered from PC along with

"It's a Man's World" in spite of (though- "it would be nothing at all without a woman or a girl")

"Rainy Night in Georgia" (Randy Crawford)

and hardly a song really just a fragment that says it all

"In Between the Heartaches" (Bacharach/David)- which brings us back to Dione Warwick's last "performance" at Witney Houston's funeral. Witney Huston "the voice" in the rather Baroque sort of style in which the "art" of the performer became more important than the idea behind the actual creative process. Very few singers ever achieve the DW's level of marrying together words, melody and passion.

PS What a great song "Alfie" would be without the "Alfie"! Bacharach chose to perform it as one of his favourite ones and it really went right to the heart of that Sixties crisis in the search for some reason to justify our individual and collective existence.

What's it all about?
Is it just for the moment we live?
What's it all about
When you sort it out
Are we meant to take more than we give?
Or are we meant to be kind and dear.

What's it all about?
Then I guess it is kind to be cruel
And then life belongs only to the strong
What would you lend on an old golden rule.

As sure as I believe there's a Heaven above
I know there's something much more
Something even non-believers can believe in

I believe in love
Without true love you just exist
Until you find the love you've missed
You're nothing

When you let your heart lead the way
You'll find love anyday.

Cass

"A few of songs I love to perform my style"

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by that, but I do like your choices (and I remember 'Alfie' well).

There have been some excellent performances of 'It's a Man's World' - I might leave a few links here at some point.

Have you heard Neneh Cherry's 'Woman' http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zT9UA9q4pdg ?

It may be wishful thinking but it seemed to me that there was a significant Sixties input in the various campaigns that brought Obama to the US Presidency. It was very evident that grandfolks in the African-American community plus old civil rights activists made sure that their teenage grandchildren realised the significance of a young dream that they had had - and expected never to see in their lifetime-but which might just come true with one more heave.

It reminded me of an R&B song I wrote in the winter of 66/7 "Why is the Whitehouse White?"

Cass

Rudest Elf

Well like many Sixties "singer-songwriters" I focussed on finding my own individual musical "way" and writing all my own material.

I recall that I finally felt able to start playing e.g. Beatles songs once I could play them "my way".. Thus our son, who has caught much of the infection, told me a couple of years ago that he heard a Beatle record in the music shop where he works and asked who was doing "that version", for he only really knew it through me.


Cass

Interesting. Have you recorded?

Off for lunch and a looong siesta.

Inspired by Cass's posts:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AO073fekFfA

Rudest Elf

Short answer "not yet"..

Many years ago a young Geordie Lad came for a while to the folk blues club that I frequented "South of the river" and, after seeing me perform "The Grand Old Man of Rock and Roll Music",which I had just written for Elvis' fortieth or some such, hailed me as a "Sultan".. and described my music as "jazz".

We chatted and exchanged ideas over subsequent weeks,... Eventually he asked me if I would mind him putting me in a song, but for poetic reasons he would call me "Harry".

Not exactly "the day time job" has taken precedence over music: but rather what I wanted to achieve in my family, professional and intellectual life- because those were all real-core challenges on "The Front Line".

And in any case, to quote Eric Clapton, it has been a long Odyssey to "get the music right". Next phase. When I retired in 2004 my son organised the purchase of a 30 track Home Recording studio (like his own) and it has been patiently sitting , awaiting its time.

Cass

That's a big claim to make in a forum with as many active cynics as Hootoo!

Besides which, Clapton 'got the music right' when he was in Cream... and then spent all his time getting it wrong again.

End with a song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cqh54rSzheg (an interesting example I chose as it clearly shows the band playing the song differently to pretty much every 'correct' version I've seen transcribed on the intertube).