Psychological operations

Voodoo Album: Mob Rules (1981) Country Girl Album: Mob Rules (1981) by Black Sabbath Mob Rules is the tenth studio album by English rock band Black Sabbath, released in November 1981. It followed 1980's Heaven and Hell, and was the second album to feature lead singer Ronnie James Dio and the first with drummer Vinny Appice. Neither musician would appear on a Black Sabbath studio album again until the 1992 album Dehumanizer. Produced and engineered by Martin Birch, the album received a remastered Deluxe Edition release in 2010 and an expanded edition in 2021. The first new recording Black Sabbath made after the Heaven and Hell album was a version of the title track "The Mob Rules" for the soundtrack of the film Heavy Metal. The track "E5150" is also heard in the film but not included on the soundtrack. According to guitarist Tony Iommi's autobiography Iron Man: My Journey Through Heaven & Hell with Black Sabbath, the band began writing and rehearsing songs for Mob Rules at a rented house in Toluca Lake in Los Angeles. Initially the band hoped to record in their own studio to save money and actually purchased a sound desk; but, according to Iommi, "We just couldn't get a guitar sound. We tried it in the studio. We tried it in the hallway. We tried it everywhere but it just wasn't working. We'd bought a studio and it wasn't working!" The band eventually recorded the album at the Record Plant in Los Angeles. Mob Rules was the first Sabbath album to feature Vinny Appice on drums, who had replaced original member Bill Ward in the middle of the Heaven and Hell tour. Asked by Joe Matera in 2007 if working with a new drummer was jarring after so many years, bassist and lyricist Geezer Butler replied, "No, because Vinny was a big fan of the band and loved Bill's playing. Bill was one of his favourite drummers and so he knew all his parts and my bass parts and he adjusted accordingly to everybody in the band. He was brilliant. He came in and totally filled in Bill's shoes." In an interview for the concert film Neon Nights: 30 Years of Heaven and Hell, Butler cites "The Sign of the Southern Cross" as his favourite Mob Rules track because "it gave me a chance to experiment with some bass effects". The album was the last time the band worked with producer and engineer Martin Birch, who went on to work with Iron Maiden until his retirement in 1992. Iommi explained to Guitar World in 1992, "We were all going through a lot of problems at that time, most of it related to drugs. Even the producer, Martin Birch, was having drug problems, and it hurt the sound of that record. Once that happens to your producer, you’re really screwed." Mob Rules would be singer Ronnie James Dio's second and final studio recording with Black Sabbath until the Mob Rules-era line-up reunited for 1992's Dehumanizer. The seeds of discontent appear to have sprouted when Dio was offered a solo deal by Warner Brothers, with Iommi stating in his memoir, "After the (Heaven and Hell) record became such a great success, Warner Brothers extended the contract at the same time, offering Ronnie a solo deal. That felt a bit odd to us, because we were a band and we didn't want to separate anybody." Dio confided in an interview on the Neon Nights: 30 Years of Heaven and Hell DVD that the recording of Mob Rules was far more difficult for him than Heaven and Hell because "we approached the writing very much differently than the first one. Geezer had gone so we wrote in a very controlled environment in a living room with little amplifiers. And with Mob Rules we hired a studio, turned up as loud as possible and smashed through it all. So it made for a different kind of an attitude". Vinny Appice stated in a 2021 interview with Pariah Burke that the writing for the album was largely a collaborative process done through jam sessions. He stated, "We put [songs] together by jamming and playing together and putting ideas in the pot. It's a natural way of doing it and it works really well for us. That's how we did all the big albums like Mob Rules and Holy Diver. Nobody came in with a song.” Iommi reflected to Guitar World in 1992, "Mob Rules was a confusing album for us. We started writing songs differently for some reason, and ended up not using a lot of really great material. That line-up was really great, and the whole thing fell apart for very silly reasons — we were all acting like children." The major problem, noted by Mick Wall in his book Black Sabbath: Symptom of the Universe, was that the balance of power within the band had shifted: "With Bill and Ozzy happy to leave the heavy lifting to Tony and Geezer, in terms of songwriting, coming into the studio only when they were called, even as their flair deserted them over the final, dismal Ozzy-era albums, at least everybody knew where they stood. Now, though, the creative chemistry had shifted." "I still like that album", Iommi reflected in 1997. The cover of Mob Rules is adapted from a 1974 painting titled “Dream 1: Crucifiers” from a series of paintings by Greg Hildebrandt* of the Brothers Hildebrandt partnership. The paintings were created after a projected documentary on world hunger by the brothers under the guidance of the Catholic Church fell through. Greg’s relationship with the church soured, which resulted in the series of dream paintings. These paintings, including "Dream 1…" were published in 1978 by Ballantine Books in the book The Art of the Brothers Hildebrandt. *Popular for many Tolkien representative works. There were alterations, besides the inclusion of the band’s name and album title, in the artwork. A hook seen dangling from the left side of the torture implement was changed to a cross. The blood stain in the center of the piece was also altered to more closely resemble a devil’s head. Black Sabbath Ronnie James Dio – vocals Tony Iommi – guitars Geezer Butler – bass Vinny Appice – drums Additional performer Geoff Nicholls – keyboards Production Produced and engineered by Martin Birch Assistant engineers – Eddie DeLena, Angelo Arcuri Technicians to Black Sabbath – Ian Ferguson, Michael Howse, Les Martin, Peter Resty Remastered by Dan Hersch (2008 reissue) Cover illustration by Greg Hildebrandt Art direction by Richard Seireeni Voodoo Black Sabbath Say you don't love me, you'll burn You can refuse, but you'll lose, it's by me Say you don't want me, you'll learn Nothing you do will be new 'cause I'm through Oh Call me a liar, you knew You were a fool, but that's cool, it's all right Call me the devil, it's true Some can't accept but I crept inside you So if a stranger calls you Don't let him whisper his name 'Cause it's voodoo Fade into shadow, you'll burn Your fortune is free, I can see it's no good Never look back, never turn It's a question of time till you're mine and you learn So if a stranger sees you Don't look in his eyes 'Cause he's voodoo Say you don't love me, you'll burn You can refuse, but you'll lose, it's by me Say you don't want me, you'll learn Nothing you do will be new 'cause I'm through Voodoo Bring me your children, they'll burn Never look back, never turn Cry me a river, you'll learn Voodoo Country Girl Black Sabbath Fell in love with a country girl, morning sunshine She was up from another world, just to bust another soul Her eyes were an endless flame, holy lightning Desire with a special name, made to snatch your soul away We sailed away on a crimson tide, gone forever She left my heart on the other side, all to break it into bits Her smile was a winter song, a Sabbath ending Don't sleep or you'll find me gone, just an image in the air In dreams I think of you I don't know what to do with myself Time has let me down She brings broken dreams, fallen stars The endless search for where you are Sail on, sail on Sail on, sail on I fell in love with a country girl, morning sunshine She was up from a nether world, just to bust another soul Her eyes were an endless flame, unholy lady Desire with a special name, made to snatch your soul away Don't sail away on the crimson tide Don't leave your heart on the other side Her eyes are an endless flame Desire with a special name Don't ever fall in love Don't give your heart away No, never, never fall in love With a country girl

Tangerine Album: Led Zeppelin III (1970) That's The Way Album: Led Zeppelin III (1970) Gallows Pole Album: Led Zeppelin III (1970) by Led Zeppelin Led Zeppelin III is the third studio album, released on 5 October 1970. It was recorded in three locations. Much of the work was done at Headley Grange, a country house, using the Rolling Stones Mobile Studio. Additional sessions were held at Island Studios and Olympic Studios in London. As with the prior album, the band eschewed the use of guest musicians, with all music performed by band members Robert Plant (vocals), Jimmy Page (guitars), John Paul Jones (bass, keyboards), and John Bonham (drums). The range of instruments played by the band was greatly enhanced on this album, with Jones especially emerging as a talented multi-instrumentalist, playing a wide range of keyboard and stringed instruments, including various synthesizers, mandolin and double bass, in addition to his usual bass guitar. As with prior albums, Page served as producer on the album, with mixing done by Andy Johns and Terry Manning. The album was one of the most anticipated of 1970, and its shipping date was held up by the intricate inner sleeve design based around a volvelle, with numerous images visible through holes in the outer cover. It was an immediate commercial success upon release and topped the UK and US charts. Although many critics were initially confused over the change in musical style and gave the album a mixed response, Led Zeppelin III has since been acknowledged as representing an important milestone in the band's history and a turning point in their music. By 1970, Led Zeppelin had achieved commercial success in both the UK and the US with their first two albums. They were determined to have a proper break, having recorded most of Led Zeppelin II in various locations while on tour, financing the sessions with the album sales and tour receipts. Following an exhausting concert tour of North America that spring, lead singer Robert Plant recommended to guitarist and producer Jimmy Page that they should retreat to Bron-Yr-Aur, an 18th-century cottage in Snowdonia, Wales, on a hilltop overlooking the Dyfi Valley, three miles (4.8 km) north of the market town Machynlleth. Plant had spent holidays there with his family. This remote setting had no running water or electric power, which encouraged a slight change of musical direction for the band towards an emphasis on acoustic arrangements. Page later explained that the tranquillity of Bron-Yr-Aur stood in sharp contrast to the continual touring of 1969, affecting the overall tone of the songwriting and dominance of acoustic guitars.[6] His playing was influenced by folk guitarists Davey Graham and Bert Jansch, who regularly used alternative guitar tunings. Plant also recalled the band were "obsessed with change" and enjoyed listening to John Fahey. The band specifically wanted a change in direction, to show they could play any style of music they wanted. Robert Plant would sometimes introduce Tangerine at concerts by saying: "This song is for our families and friends and people we've been close to. It's a song of love at its most innocent stages." Jimmy Page wrote Tangerine and first recorded it when he was with still with The Yardbirds. This was the last Zeppelin song Page wrote without any input from Robert Plant. It's also the only track on Led Zeppelin III for which Plant didn't write the lyrics. Jimmy Page played a pedal steel guitar on Tangerine. He told Guitar Player magazine in 1977: "On the first LP there's a pedal steel. I had never played steel before, but I just picked it up. There's a lot of things I do first time around that I haven't done before. In fact, I hadn't touched a pedal steel from the first album to the third. It's a bit of a pinch really from the things that Chuck Berry did. Nevertheless, it fits. I use pedal steel in 'Your Time Is Gonna Come.' It sounds like a slide or something. It's more out of tune on the first album because I hadn't got a kit to put it together." Why does Tangerine fade to silence a few seconds in? Jimmy Page explained when previewing the song for Melody Maker in 1970: "That's commonly known as a false start. It was a tempo guide, and it seemed like a good idea to leave it in – at the time. I was trying to keep the tempo down a bit. I'm not so sure now it was a good idea. Everybody asks what the hell is going on." Led Zeppelin played Tangerine during acoustic sets on their early tours. Tangerine was used at the end of the 2000 movie Almost Famous in a scene where a bus drives away. This was the second Zeppelin song named after a fruit. "The Lemon Song" was the first. According to Jimmy Page, Tangerine was dedicated to Jackie DeShannon, who was his girlfriend when he wrote the song. DeShannon, a member of the Songwriting Hall of Fame, had hits as a singer with "What the World Needs Now Is Love" and "Put a Little Love in Your Heart." Tangerine was recorded on April 4, 1968 at one of the last studio sessions for The Yardbirds, under the title "Knowing That I'm Losing You." This first version performed by The Yardbirds, featured music almost identical to "Tangerine" by Led Zeppelin, but with different lyrics (vocals by Keith Relf), and was never officially released. It was supposed to be included on the Cumular Limit compilation (which was released in 2000), together with other materials from the same sessions, but interestingly enough, Page vetoed the release of the song. Since then, the version from The Yardbirds has leaked onto the internet, and Page has been accused of ripping off a Yardbirds composition, simply changing the majority of the lyrics (probably initially written by Keith Relf) in order to avoid any problem with the other members of his previous group. This would explain his veto against the release of the original song. It is not easy to ascertain the above, as the remaining members of The Yardbirds haven't spoken about the subject so far. As pointed out in Stephen Davis's Hammer of the Gods, That's The Way's lyrics reflected Robert Plant's views on ecology and environment. Jimmy Page and Robert Plant wrote this in Wales on a retreat to the Bron-y-Aur cottage, where they wrote many of the songs on the album. They took a long walk with a guitar and tape recorder (yes, they carried a tape recorder on their hikes), sat down in a ravine, and wrote this. One of the most mellow Zeppelin songs, That's The Way reflects the quiet countryside in Wales where it was written. It's not typical of the Led Zeppelin sound, but the band was always evolving. "It was not all blood and thunder," Plant told Dan Rather in 2018. "There was a delicacy about it too, and a lot of great craft." That's The Way was the first song Led Zeppelin authorized for use on a film soundtrack. After seeing a rough cut of Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous in 2000, Page and Plant agreed to let him use some Zeppelin songs on it, but this is the only one that is on the soundtrack. Other Zeppelin songs in the movie are "Tangerine," "The Rain Song," "Bron-Y-Aur" and "Misty Mountain Hop." The lyrics "I can't believe what people saying, you're gonna let your hair hang down, I'm satisfied to sit here working all day long, you're in the darker side of town" reflects the way Zeppelin was treated in their earlier days in America. In the south it was common for Zeppelin to receive death threats before concerts. When they walked into restaurants they were usually asked to leave, but not before being spit on or having a gun pointed at them for their long hair. The original title of "That's The Way" was "The Boy Next Door". According to Robert Plant, That's The Way was written 30 minutes before Page's daughter Scarlet was conceived. "Gallows Pole" is based on an old blues song called "Gallis Pole," which was popularized by Leadbelly. The song is considered "traditional," meaning the author is unknown... so it's not stealin'... Jimmy Page got the idea after hearing the version by the California folk singer Fred Gerlach. "Gallows Pole" is an updated arrangement of a traditional folk song called "The Maid Freed from the Gallows", inspired by a version recorded by Fred Gerlach. Page explained when previewing the song for Melody Maker: "He was one of the first white people on Folkways records to get involved in Leadbelly. We have completely rearranged it and changed the verse. Robert wrote a set of new lyrics. That's John Paul Jones on mandolin and bass, and I'm playing the banjo, 6-string acoustic, 12-string and electric guitar. The bloke swinging on the gallows pole is saying wait for his relatives to arrive. The drumming builds nicely." The lyrics are about a man trying to delay his hanging until his friends and family can rescue him. Although there are many versions of this song, Led Zeppelin's is unusual in that it ends with the hangman hanging the protagonist despite all of his bribes. Most other versions end with the hangman setting the protagonist free. A similar folk song called "Slack Your Rope" was sung by an Arkansan named Jimmie Driftwood. He adapted the words from a fifteenth century British Ballad when any crime could be paid off with money right up to the last step of the gallows. In his version, the criminal is definitely a woman and her lover rides up and pays her fee. >> This is the only Led Zeppelin song that features a banjo. Jimmy Page wrote it on a banjo he borrowed from John Paul Jones. He had never played the banjo before. Jimmy Page and Robert Plant teamed up again to record this song for an MTV Unplugged set. It's featured on the The Very Best of MTV Unplugged album and the duo are listed simply as Page and Plant. Jimmy Page has claimed Gallows Pole as his favorite song on Led Zeppelin III. The band used some lyrics from Gallows Pole on their 1975 track "Trampled Underfoot." This is a rare Led Zeppelin song that speeds up as it goes along, a technique Jimmy Page also used on "Stairway To Heaven." In 1994, Page and Plant re-recorded Gallows Pole in Wales for their album No Quarter. On that version, Page played a hurdy-gurdy, an odd instrument resembling an organ grinder that sounds like a bagpipe. Gallows Pole was performed only two or three times live in concert, in an electric-only version. However, a few verses of the song (especially the final one) were sometimes included in some medleys (for instance in "Communication Breakdown," or "Trampled Underfoot").

Bad Reputation Album: Bad Reputation (1981) I Love Rock and Roll Album: I Love Rock And Roll (1981) Crimson and Clover by Joan Jett Jett wrote Bad Reputation with Kenny Laguna, who produced the album and helped her establish a solo career after her group, The Runaways, broke up. In a Songfacts interview with Laguna, he said: "It's about Joan having been kind of a wild woman in The Runaways, and us trying to make a record deal, going around having people say, 'No, she's too crazy, like the punks and nazis.' Joan had this bad reputation, no label would sign her - that's why we own the records. It was so frustrating, we thought we should write a song about it. Speaking with Rolling Stone in 2022, Jett talked about her bad reputation. "I always wore it as a badge of honor," she said. "Because what people were saying to me was I had a bad reputation because I played an electric guitar and I had black hair and a leather jacket, and maybe I swore... So I turned around the meaning of it, and I'm proud of my bad reputation." This song made a very bold statement, establishing Jett as an independent-minded rocker with no concern for traditional gender roles in rock. Her co-writer Kenny Laguna told us: "'I don't give a damn about my reputation, it's a new generation,' that was the whole thing, a girl could do what she wants to do. When she was singing those lyrics, it was radical because there were no girls doing anything other than what they were supposed to do, they were all supposed to be like the girl groups. They were supposed to be dainty, wear dresses. They weren't supposed to play instruments. The song was definitely autobiographical." Laguna had worked for The Who's European record company and was friends with the band. The Who fronted money so he and Jett could make the album, which was called Joan Jett. In Europe, the album was released on a German label called Ariola Records. They didn't want to use this song as a single, and instead released "Jezebel" and "You Don't Know What You Got." They didn't do very well and Laguna bought the record back from Ariola for $10,000. In the US, they released the album on their own label, Blackheart Records, and changed the track order so Bad Reputation led off the album. Joan Jett made the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2015 and developed a reputation as a leading lady of rock, but around this time, she was struggling to get noticed and trying to get airplay. Kenny Laguna said how "Bad Reputation" ended up on one very influential station, which gave it the push it needed. "I remember Dan Neer, who was one of the top DJs in New York at WNEW, his girlfriend was helping us out with publicity," he said. "She brought him down to see Joan play in Brooklyn and he left after three songs - I thought he hated it. The next day WNEW started playing 'Bad Reputation,' which is not the song we wanted them to play, we wanted them to play 'Do You Wanna Touch Me,' but it became their breakout song of the week. In those days, the AOR stations were alternative, but real alternative, not like today's alternative which is really a Top 40 format and is all about record company priorities. These guys were playing something on an independent label. Every time a station didn't want to play 'Touch Me' or burned it out, we would make them play 'Bad Reputation.' That was the beginning of the song becoming known. Then there were a few bands that covered it, and it just took off." When the song started getting airplay, it attracted the attention of record labels and Jett signed a deal with Boardwalk Records. The album was then remixed and the title was changed to Bad Reputation. The next year, Jett released "I Love Rock And Roll," which was a huge hit, but not the one Jett wanted to be known for the rest of her life - she didn't write that one. Bad Reputation became Jett's signature song, and although it's very well known, it was never released as a single. Speaking about recording this song, Kenny Laguna said: "We tried to do one of those speedy punk rock songs. The day we recorded it, we didn't know it too well, we just managed to get a good drum track. Joan had to play all the guitars - the rhythm track was pretty good. I put on like a Jerry Lee Lewis piano, but until the piano went on, it really sounded kind of unfinished." Bad Reputation was the theme song to the NBC TV show Freaks And Geeks. The show was about a group of kids trying to deal with high school. It was canceled after one season in 1999-2000, but had a large cult following and was praised by critics who felt it would have gotten better ratings if NBC gave it a chance. Some of the movies Bad Reputation has been used in include Shrek, Wonderland, Kingpin Baby Mama, Kick-Ass and 10 Things I Hate About You. It's very popular for scenes that portray an outcast in a lighthearted way. When Jett was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2015, she was the first to perform at the ceremony, and opened her set with this song. "I Love Rock And Roll" was originally recorded by a British group called The Arrows in 1975, and it was written by their lead singer Alan Merrill and guitarist Jake Hooker. Merrill explained in an interview how this song came about: "That was a knee-jerk response to the Rolling Stones' 'It's Only Rock 'N' Roll.' I remember watching it on Top of the Pops. I'd met Mick Jagger socially a few times, and I knew he was hanging around with Prince Rupert Lowenstein and people like that – jet setters. I almost felt like 'It's Only Rock and Roll' was an apology to those jet-set princes and princesses that he was hanging around with - the aristocracy, you know. That was my interpretation as a young man: Okay, I love rock and roll. And then, where do you go with that?" The song was released as a B-side with The Arrows' "Broken Down Heart." The group was recording for RAK Records, which was run by Mickie Most. As Merrill explains, "I Love Rock And Roll" didn't suit his current tastes, as during that time Most preferred ballads and blues. Most's wife Christina Hayes encouraged him to flip the sides, but the song didn't catch on, as it suffered from a poor run of luck at the time of its release. First, it had to be re-released as an A-side. Second, the song came out during an English newspaper strike, so new songs weren't getting the exposure they'd normally get. Third, The Arrows were feuding with their record label. As a result, the song didn't chart and was banished to obscurity. All was not lost, however, as The Arrows performed this song when they were guests on the UK TV series Pop 45. The show's producer, Muriel Young, was so impressed that on the strength of this performance, she gave them their own TV show, simply called The Arrows Show, which ran from 1976-1977 in the UK for two full 14-week seasons on the ITV network. It was this show that Joan Jett saw in 1976, which prompted her to acquire a copy of "I Love Rock and Roll" and later cover it in 1981, producing what is arguably one of the most successful covers in rock history. Jett was touring England as a member of an all teenage girl group called The Runaways when she discovered I Love Rock And Roll. She wanted to record it with The Runaways, but the other members didn't like the song and made the mistake of passing it up. So, in 1979, Jett recorded it with Paul Cook and Steve Jones of The Sex Pistols and released it as a B-side. Finally, in 1981, Jett recorded the song with her band The Blackhearts, resulting in a monster hit. When the Runaways broke up, Joan Jett and her producer Kenny Laguna put her first solo album together with studio time and travel arrangements fronted by The Who. They struggled to get a record deal and had to form their own label, Blackheart Records, to release the album in America. Jett and Laguna both thought "I Love Rock and Roll" was a great song, but since they didn't have the backing of a major label, they held off on it until they could establish themselves and get better distribution. When "Do You Wanna Touch Me" and "Bad Reputation" started getting airplay, they got a deal with Boardwalk Records. That first album, which was called Joan Jett, was remixed and renamed Bad Reputation. Now that she had a record deal, Jett released "I Love Rock and Roll," which was her first single on a major label and was included on her second album. The Runaways' bass player, Michael Steele, went on to join the Bangles, and their guitarist Lita Ford had a successful solo career, but Joan Jett emerged as their most famous alumna. Kenny Laguna plays a big part in her story, as he helped Jett get started as a solo artist and worked with her throughout most of her solo career. In 1972, after working with acts like Tommy James & the Shondells and Tony Orlando, Kenny was looking for work and found it through Peter Meaden, who managed The Who when they were still known as The High Numbers. Meaden got Kenny a job working at Mobile Records in England, where he became friends with The Who and met The Runaways' manager, who asked him to produce what would be their last album. Kenny didn't work on that album, but when The Runaways broke up, he started working with Jett. Peter Meaden, who introduced Kenny to The Who and helped revive his career, was the manager of The Arrows, the group that wrote and originally recorded "I love Rock and Roll." If Kenny had accepted the job and produced The Runaways' last album, there is a good chance he would have made them record it, since he thought it was a hit. Jett's 1979 version of I Love Rock And Roll was owned by The Polygram company, who were not enthusiastic about Joan or the song. Laguna explains: "They could care less about Joan Jett, they were busy signing every other Runaway. They thought Joan was the loser and they signed the other girls, who we're all friends with, but I looked at the band and thought she was the Mick Jagger and Keith Richards of the band. The company decided that if I would pay the studio cost of $2,300, I could have all the rights, and I got three songs. I got 'I Love Rock and Roll' with The Sex Pistols, I got 'You Don't Own Me' - they did a great version of the Lesley Gore hit, and they did a song Joan wrote called 'Don't Abuse Me.' So I buy these songs back. In the meantime, Joan has a couple of fans. Rodney Bingenheimer of K-ROCK, KMAC in Long Beach, BCN in Boston, LIR in Long Island, they were playing The Sex Pistols' kind of cruddy version of the song, and it was #1 on the alternative stations. It was really alternative music, they were way-out stations that would play some pretty adventurous stuff, that's why they would play Joan, because Joan was not getting a record deal, Joan was way on the outside, like a Fugazi of her day. We saw some kind of potential there. I remember these guys from the big record distributors in Long Island kept calling and saying, 'This is a hit record, we're getting so many requests for it.' So we cut it over and did a really good version of it." The line "Put another dime in the jukebox" was dated by the time Jett released her version, as very few jukeboxes took dimes. "Quarter" didn't sound good in the lyrics, and as jukeboxes slowly disappeared or became computerized contraptions accepting paper currency, it didn't matter anyway. Jett's next two singles, "Crimson And Clover" and "Do You Wanna Touch Me (Oh Yeah)" were also covers of songs originally recorded by male singers. In the US, I Love Rock And Roll was #1 for seven weeks in 1982. "Ebony And Ivory" by Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney did the same a few weeks later. The video of I Love Rock And Roll was directed by Arnold Levine, who also did many of the Loverboy and Bruce Springsteen clips. Jett wore a red leather outfit to the shoot, which took place at New York club called Private's with an assortment of fans that showed up that day forming the crowd. When Jett and Levine looked at the edit, the colors were a mess, with way too much red and mauve in the shots because of poor fashion choices. This was not the rock and roll video they imagined, but when Jett saw the black-and-white work copy, she loved it. Without the color, the clip looked gritty and retro, which is what they were going for. This black-and-white version stood out on MTV among far more colorful clips by the likes of the Go-Go's and The J. Geils Band. It became a huge hit on the network, which had launched just months earlier and was becoming a criterion of cool. The video helped send I Love Rock And Roll up the charts and establish an image for Jett as a rough-hewn rocker. Hooker stated publicly that he wrote the song in 15 minutes, but in an interview with Vive Le Rock, Merrill countered that claim, saying Hooker added basically nothing. "When it came to songwriting sessions, Jake was basically an enthusiastic cheerleader for the most part," Merrill said. He went on to say that the reason he included Hooker on writing credits on I Love Rock And Roll was because Hooker, who received regular financial support from his mother in the band's early days, paid for a plane ticket from London to Tokyo in 1974. Merrill had already built an audience in Tokyo with his earlier band Vodka Collins. Because of that ticket purchase, Merrill promised to always include Hooker's name in the songwriting credits. Hooker died (suicide, according to Merrill) in 2014, so hasn't been able to respond to the claims. After the Arrows broke up, he went on to manage the music career of his wife, Lorna Luft, as well as some other acts (including, briefly, Merrill). The Arrows were based in England, where they don't have dimes - they would put a sixpenny in the jukebox to buy a song. They could have made it universal with "put another coin in the jukebox," but Mickie Most liked dime because it sounded American. The album cover was shot by Mick Rock, who in the '70s did a lot of work with David Bowie and Lou Reed - he shot the covers of Reed's albums Transformer and Coney Island Baby, and directed several of Bowie's videos. Jett didn't have much of a budget, but Rock was friends with her lawyer and agreed to do it. "They came to my studio around midnight and we worked for two to three hours," Rock said in an interview. "When I shot that, I remember seeing her somehow as a female Elvis Presley with that slightly rockabilly outfit on. I brought together the lettering on the cover, and there it was." The song's co-writer, Alan Merrill, died at 69 on March 29, 2020, one of the first high-profile victims of the coronavirus pandemic. Joan Jett offered condolences on Twitter, posting: "I can still remember watching the Arrows on TV in London and being blown away by the song that screamed hit to me." Weird Al Yankovic recorded an ice cream-themed parody titled "I Love Rocky Road" for his 1983 debut album. Jett wasn't a fan.

Time In A Bottle Album: You Don't Mess Around With Jim (1972) Operator (That's Not the Way It Feels) Album: You Don't Mess Around With Jim (1972) I Got A Name Album: I Got A Name (1973) by Jim Croce "Time In a Bottle," was released in late 1973 as a single after Croce died in a plane crash. Jim Croce wrote Time In A Bottle the night that he found out his wife, Ingrid, was pregnant. The couple had been married for five years, and Ingrid found out she was pregnant when she went to a fertility specialist. She recalls a mix of terror and delight in Jim's reaction when she told him the news. The child was a boy named Adrian, who grew up to become the singer-songwriter A.J. Croce. "Time In A Bottle" hit #1 in America 14 weeks after Croce was killed in a plane crash. Croce started touring after he completed his last album, I Got A Name. On September 30, 1973 a plane carrying Croce and five others crashed upon takeoff as he was leaving one college venue to another 70 miles away. No one survived the accident, and among those killed was Maury Muehleisen, who played guitar on Croce's albums. Terry Cashman, who produced Croce, told us, "Jim and Maury got together and all of the sudden Jim started writing these great songs, and Maury came up with these really wonderful guitar parts - the two guitars were like an orchestra." "Time In A Bottle" entered the Top 40 of the Billboard Hot 100 chart for the week ending December 1, 1973 and finally reached #1 for the week ending December 29, a little over three months after he died. Time In A Bottle was never intended to be a single - it was released on Croce's first major-label solo album You Don't Mess Around With Jim in 1972. The album had already yielded the #8 title track and #17 "Operator (That's Not the Way It Feels)." His second LP, Life And Times, had given Croce his first #1 single, "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown." "Time In A Bottle" became a hit over a year after it was first released when it was used in the ABC made-for-TV movie She Lives, about a woman dying of cancer. The song's producer, Terry Cashman, was less than thrilled with the idea of recycling old songs, but ABC Records management loved the idea and OK'ed the use of Time In A Bottle in She Lives. The movie aired September 12, 1973 (as Croce was putting the finishing touches on his I Got A Name LP). Television stations were deluged with telephone calls from viewers who wanted to know where to buy the song. The next day, ABC Records had received orders for 50,000 copies of You Don't Mess Around With Jim, with sales of about 200,000 by the end of September 1973. Time In A Bottle was also included in the soundtrack of the movie The Last American Hero. The international drug lord in the movie The Hangover 2 sings Time In A Bottle while he and the gang are going up an elevator in Bangkok to make a money for hostage deal. Time In A Bottle was featured in a 2016 commercial for the iPhone 6, where Cookie Monster (of Sesame Street fame), uses the hands-free Siri function to set a timer for the cookies he's baking and play his "waiting" playlist. This is the first song, and as it plays, Cookie Monster gets agitated waiting for his treats. When he asks Siri to check the timer, only a minute has passed. Ingrid Croce, who was married to Jim from 1966 until his death in 1973, told the story of this song: "'Operator' is one of my favorite songs. I think it's a pretty interesting song in the way in which it was composed. It's probably like a lot of songs of Jim's, but it's one that I think a lot of people relate to in a whole bunch of different ways. Jim and I had gotten married in 1966, and we had been waiting for him to go in the service. He was a National Guard, which he had joined with the hope that he would not be sent over, and he would be able to continue his education and his music career. So he signed up for the National Guard, and just as soon as we decided to get married - in August of 1966, the week before our little wedding - he got a letter that said that he would be leaving within two weeks for his National Guard duty down in South or North Carolina, so he was leaving with a very heavy heart. My dad had been very ill and shortly after that passed away. And we had just waited... wanted to get married and have some time to be together after all those years of waiting. All of the sudden here he is the National Guard, and Jim is not very good with authority. And he's in the South, and they were not very good with making pasta. He was missing good food, he was missing me, he was missing life in general. He's one of the few guys I think who went through basic training twice... he really couldn't follow the system. He'd always find things that were funny, like a handbook that he put together in dealing with the service with a whole bunch of quotes of how to deal with people in the Army. But anyway, he was standing there in the rain at a payphone. And he was listening to these stories of all these guys, the 'Dear John' stories, that were standing in line waiting their turn in the rain with these green rain jackets over their heads - I can just picture it, all of them in line waiting for their 3-minute phone call. Most of them were getting on the phone and they were okay, but some of them were getting these 'Dear John' letters, or phone calls. I think that was the most important aspect of the song, because it was just so desperate. You know, 'I only have a dime' and 'You can keep the dime' because money was very scarce and very precious, and I think if you look at the words to the song there are so many aspects of our generation that are in it. 'Operator, could you help me place this call?' I'm picturing Jim out in the rain and this long line of guys where they're really trying to reach somebody. It was hard to get through, so you always had the operator do it for you." Jim Croce had a way of relating to a diversity of people, which was reflected in his songs. Ingrid explains how some of his life experience came into play on this song: "We used to work at this place called The Riddle Paddock which was a bar out in Lima, Pennsylvania, and it was absolutely the wildest most unusual bar in that it had everything... the kind of people that would come there would be, like, sheepherders from the towns nearby that were from Australia, and then they'd have people that were from the mushroom paoli which was, I think, the center of mushrooms in the United States. And then they'd have your normal city folks that would come out to The Riddle Paddock. All these people would hang there, and it was a real bar atmosphere, and people would come in every single night to hear Jim play, and most of the time he wouldn't repeat a song - he had a repertoire of over 3,000 songs. Many of them got to know Jim and me pretty well, and they'd come and tell stories, or you'd know stories about who wasn't with someone that night, and so Jim would always sing a special song for them. And I think that part of that story is kind of engaged in 'Operator,' where people would kind of break the relationship up. We never knew who would go into the Paddock that night, because if Jim was playing they wouldn't want to see each other. That's one of those sad kind of stories, and I think that anybody can relate - everybody has to have their heart broken at least once or twice before they have a real relationship." Ingrid Croce opened a restaurant and bar of her own in 1985 called Croce's that served to honor Jim's memory. In 2000, the Martin guitar company produced 73 guitars in honor of Jim Croce. In each of these guitars, an uncirculated 1973 dime was inserted in the third fret fingerboard in honor of this song and the final line, "You can keep the dime." Having the last name Croce made things interesting for Ingrid when she needed the services of an operator. "You can imagine how many operators over the years have said to me, 'Are you any relation?' You don't get in touch with operators very much any more, but in the olden days when you'd call up and you'd say, 'Can you help me?' 'Oh, what's the name?' I said, 'Well, my name is Croce.' 'Like in Jim? Oh, we just love that 'Operator.' Hey Sadie, this is Ingrid Croce - you know, Jim Croce's widow. And oh, we just love that song so much. He wrote it for us, we know he did..." I mean, from every aspect the song is truly Americana. And I think it really hits all generations, but certainly that one." This was the second single from Jim Croce's breakthrough album, You Don't Mess Around with Jim. Croce was broke and working construction when he wrote the songs that would appear on the album, and he even asked his manager to shop them to other artists hoping for any kind of payday. "I Got a Name" was released in the wake of Croce's death. The week that "I Got a Name" hit #10 (November 17, 1973), it was finally released as a single. Six weeks later, it became the third posthumous #1 of the rock era (after "Dock Of The Bay" and "Me And Bobby McGee"). I Got A Name was the theme song for the 1973 movie The Last American Hero, starring Jeff Bridges as a stock car racer. The movie is based on the true story of the stock car driver Junior Johnson. I Got A Name is a rare song that Croce recorded but did not write. Ingrid Croce, who was married to Jim from 1966 until his death in 1973, said: "It was written by Norman Gimbel and Charles Fox. And they were wonderful guys, really nice people. Jim had been selected to sing this song for this particular movie. He really enjoyed this opportunity, because he went into the recording studio and it was a little awkward for him not to hold his guitar - his guitar is kind of like a bar for the bartender, having that prop between him and the audience was just a real security, it made him feel very comfortable. So putting down the guitar to sing, just to sing the song in the studio, was a very unusual thing for Jim, and he thoroughly enjoyed it. It was a brand new start for him in some ways, to use his vocals in a different way. I think it's one of the most powerful songs he does on that album for sure. I loved it." Explaining how this song was a good fit for her husband, Ingrid says: "More people think he wrote that song. His voice was so unique... the timbre in his tone and his warmth and his generosity, everything came through that voice. So when he took a song, he'd make it his own, and I think he did a great job with 'I've Got A Name.' So many people like to think of Jim with that song that I hate to tell them it isn't his." The album I Got A Name was produced by Terry Cashman and Tommy West, who had a hit as Cashman & West with "American City Suite." Says Cashman: "We recorded it because Jim was going to get a lot of money to record the song, and if it was released as a single, it would be the main title of a movie called The Last American Hero. So it wasn't a song that Jim wrote on the guitar with Maury [Muehleisen]. Tommy and Jimmy and Maury and myself came up with the arrangement together. It was a different kind of animal. We did that song with just the tracks for us, and then recorded Jim's voice over it, which is the way most people did records in those days. But most people think that Jim wrote that song because it sounds like the other songs, and then the production of course is a little bit more elaborate. It was different in that way, but Maury has a big guitar part and it certainly sounded like one of his records. And it became one of his most popular records. You know, a lot of people have covered that song, and it's been used in a number of other movies." (from a Songfacts interview with Terry Cashman) I Got A Name was the last song Croce played before his death. He performed it as an encore at show in Natchitoches, Louisiana at Northwestern College. The crowd was small, as many folks stayed home to watch the Billie Jean King vs. Bobby Riggs "Battle of the Sexes" tennis match that night. Croce's plane, taking off in the dark after the concert, clipped a tree and crashed, killing all six people on board. Quentin Tarantino used I Got A Name in his 2012 film Django Unchained. The film is set in 1858, but features some modern music, including cuts by Rick Ross and John Legend. The song was used in a scene were Django (Jamie Foxx) has been freed. Other films that have used I Got A Name include The Ice Storm (1997) and Invincible (2006). Lena Horne sang I Got A Name in 1976 on the first season of The Muppet Show. Horne's appearance earned the show a great deal of credibility, making it easier for the show's producers to find guests willing to perform with puppets. Jim Croce's son A.J. Croce recorded I Got A Name for a 2018 Goodyear tire ad that pays tribute to famed racecar driver Dale Earnhardt Jr, whose father, NASCAR Hall of Fame member Dale Earnhardt Sr. died in a car crash at age 49. Both A.J. and Earnhardt Jr. lost their fathers young, and Croce said that the similarities between Earnhardt Jr.'s life and his own made contributing to the commercial appealing to him: "There aren't a lot of people that grow up in the shadows of a famous musician, or race car driver," he explained to ABC Radio. "I get what he lived through, and he gets what I lived through."

Living In The Past Album: Living In The Past (1969) Mother Goose Album: Aqualung (1971) Teacher Album: Living In The Past (1972) by Jethro Tull "Living in the Past" is Jethro Tull's highest-charting single on the US Billboard and UK Singles charts. It first appeared as a 1969 single which had been recorded for their album Stand Up; however, it saw album release on Living in the Past in 1972. One of the most famous aspects of Living In The Past is its nonstandard time signature: It uses 5/4. This puts it in the category of "quintuple meter," where there's five beats per measure. If you need some more familiar context, try singing the lyrics to "Living in the Past" to the tune from the theme from the TV show Mission: Impossible. But not too loud, lest the whole office hear you. Maybe the most famous example of this unusual time signature is "Take Five" by the Dave Brubeck Quartet. Ian Anderson is one of the most intellectual popular artists in rock, and also one with the sliest sense of humor so "Living in the Past" is clearly poking fun at somebody, being about wishing to live in a peaceful time before a war. But is it directed at the fighters ("Now there's revolution, but they don't know what they're fighting"), or at the ones who chose to close their eyes to the fighting? We'll leave it to the jury. Here's what Ian said: "Two or three times I have in the early days tried to write something that was deliberately in a more pop context. 'Living in the Past' was written specifically as a single, albeit a little bit of an oddball song, being in 5/4 time signature, it wasn't obviously the choice of a listening public to have a complex time signature. But I tried to work within that framework of doing something that set out with a non-common time signature, but would have some catchy appeal because of the musical rhymes and the title, and that succeeded." As quoted in a 1984 interview for the UK music magazine Kerrang!, Ian Anderson said of Living In The Past: "To be honest, I've always loathed and detested that song. In fact, when it was first a hit, I used to hide in a corner and cringe. But the guys in the band now are keen to play it, and you know, I'm beginning to grow accustomed to the damn thing." A bit if trivia, Ian Anderson became a big-shot businessman. He managed a string of successful salmon farms, dealt in guns, and owned a group of other non-music-related businesses. Oh, and don't forget his hobbies, which include wild cat sheltering, motorcycling, and Indian cuisine. Anderson told Mojo December 2011 that he wrote Living In The Past after Jethro Tull's manager, Terry Ellis, challenged him to write a hit single, "to keep the pot boiling." To humour him Anderson replied, "Sure Terry, just give me a couple of hours and I'll run upstairs to my room and write a hit single, as you do." So the Jethro Tull frontman "fiddled around with an acoustic guitar and a flute line, and it was done, really, in a couple of hours." And "to further humor Terry and amuse me, I decided I'd write the least commercial thing I could by using an uncommon 5/4 time signature and a definitely not-trendy title, 'Living in The Past.'" Ian Anderson explained Living In The Past's meaning to Mojo: "Lyrically it was a bit of a rejection of the swinging fashion of that post-Beatles, slightly hippy idealistic period," he said. "There were a lot of people talking pompously about love and peace and revolution and, you know, people then as now were quick to jump up and scream and shout, but they're not actually really quite sure what they're stamping their feet about." With Tull keyboard player John O'Hara handling the arrangements, Ian Anderson reworked Living In The Past with the Carducci Quartet for the album Jethro Tull: The String Quartets, released in 2017. This version, titled "In the Past," opens with the 5/4 riff played with plucked strings. "Mother Goose" is the fourth track from their album Aqualung which was released in 1971. "Mother Goose" was written by Ian Anderson. Anderson, who recalled writing the song in the summer of 1970, singled out the song as one of the earliest written for the band's 1971 album, Aqualung. He also noted the song as being somewhat atypical of his writing style, commenting, "I tend to be more in social realism, in terms of subject matter, but I do stretch to the more whimsical, surreal songs like 'Mother Goose'." Anderson, who has also called the song a "surrealistic pastiche with summery motives", views the song as an expression of visual art: "Music was such a natural extension of the thing that we were principally interested in, which was the visual arts. ... I can go back to the very early songs of Jethro Tull on the Aqualung album; things like "Mother Goose", for example; it's a visual reference. Right now I can see the picture in my head from which those words came." The song has since appeared on several Jethro Tull compilation albums, including The Best of Jethro Tull - The Anniversary Collection (1993), The Best of Acoustic Jethro Tull (2007), and 50 for 50 (2018). The song also appears in live form on Ian Anderson Plays the Orchestral Jethro Tull (2005) and Aqualung Live (2005). Teacher tells the story of a socially awkward fellow who buys plane ticket for a more jovial chap (the "teacher") so they can go on vacation together. On the trip, the freeloader ends up having all the fun while the narrator remains as neurotic as ever. Teacher's an odd storyline for a Jethro Tull song, but it's also one of just a few songs that Ian Anderson wrote strictly for mass appeal. When we asked Anderson if there was a specific inspiration for the song, he replied: "Only in as much as it was the need to come up with a pop song format that might get us some radio play or be in the singles charts. It was a deliberate attempt to write a piece of more generic pop/rock music. Which is probably why I don't really like it very much. It just seemed a bit forced, a bit too structured in that kind of vein. So it's not one that I'm comfortable with at all, no." Ian Anderson: flute, acoustic guitar, percussion, vocals, backing vocals Martin Barre: acoustic and electric rhythm guitar, percussion Jeffrey Hammond: alto recorder, backing vocals (Credited on Aqualung album as Jeffery Hammond-Hammond) Clive Bunker: percussion John Evan: Mellotron The Mellotron was replaced by the accordion on the Aqualung Live album played by Andrew Giddings.

In My Time Of Dying Album: Physical Graffiti (1975) Ramble On Album: Led Zeppelin II (1969) by Led Zeppelin AI still has uncanny valley eyes... Like many Led Zeppelin songs, In My Time Of Dying "borrows" from an old Blues tune, in this case a song of the same name also known as "Jesus Make Up My Dying Bed," which was performed by Blind Willie Johnson in the 1920s. Bob Dylan recorded an adaptation of the song on his first album, which Led Zeppelin used as the basis for their version of "In My Time Of Dying." The ending was not written when the band started recording the song. They jammed on it and improvised an ending - you can hear drummer John Bonham say at the end: "That's gotta be the one." In My Time Of Dying runs 11:06. Excluding their live cuts, it is the longest Zeppelin song. In My Time Of Dying was one of the few live songs where Jimmy Page switched to his black and white Danelectro guitar. He also used this guitar for "White Summer." Zakk Wylde of Ozzy Osbourne's band and Black Label Society released his version of In My Time Of Dying on the second disc of his re-issued Pride & Glory album. Jimmy Page, The Edge and Jack White played In My Time Of Dying's main riff together in the music film/documentary It Might Get Loud. Soundgarden sometimes covered In My Time Of Dying in concert. The last song lead singer Chris Cornell played was their track "Slaves And Bulldozers," where he interjected some of "In My Time Of Dying," using these lyrics: In my time of dying, ain't gonna cry, ain't gonna mourn All I need for you to do is drag my body home Well, well, well, so I can die easy Jesus, gonna make up my dyin' bed The show took place at the Fox Theatre in Detroit on May 17, 2017. He was found dead later that night. Some of Robert Plant's lyrics in Ramble On were inspired by the work of J.R.R. Tolkien, author of The Lord of The Rings. The references are to the adventures of the Hobbit, Frodo Baggins, as he goes to "the darkest depths of Mordor" and encounters "Gollum and the evil one." Plant later admitted in an audio documentary that he was embarrassed by the Tolkien references, as they don't make all that much sense - a fair maiden wouldn't be found in Mordor, and Gollum would want nothing to do with her anyway, since his only concern is the precious ring. Ramble On is one of Led Zeppelin's most enduring songs, but they never performed it live from start to finish while the band was active. It was in their set when Zeppelin reunited for a one-off concert at the O2 Arena in London on December 10, 2007. John Bonham's son Jason filled in on drums at that show. Zeppelin recorded Ramble On in New York when they were on their first US tour. What John Bonham played as percussion to supplement his drums on Ramble On is not clear. It sounds like bongos, but has been reported to be a plastic garbage pail or a guitar case. The concept of the troubadour "rambling on" - going from place to place and constantly moving forward - is one Robert Plant embraced. In his post-Zeppelin career, he went from one project to the next, refusing to fall back on nostalgia. It was Plant who kiboshed the proposed Led Zep reunion tour in 2007. The group Train covered Ramble On on their 2001 Midnight Moon album. Their lead singer, Pat Monahan, was once in a band that did entire sets of Zeppelin songs. Producer Brendan O'Brien heard Train's version and agreed to produce their second album. This was sampled by the Insane Clown Posse for the song "50 Bucks" on their rare album Psychopathics From Outer Space and was also the single that accompanied The Pendulum #7, a 12-comic series of the group done by Chaos! Comics. Along with "Going To California," this is one of two Led Zeppelin songs used in the 2019 indie film The Friend. The band agreed to license the songs at a much lower rate than usual after hearing pleas from the filmmakers. The movie tells the true story of Nicole Teague, a woman with terminal cancer. The songs were part of her story and played an important role in the narrative.

You And Me Album: Lace and Whiskey (1977) Love's A Loaded Gun Album: Hey Stoopid (1991) Ballad Of Dwight Fry Album: Love It To Death (1971) by Alice Cooper FYI, this is not AI, consider this as you watch and ponder the idea of "space". Not at all typical of Cooper, You And Me is a very romantic soft rock song by the Grandfather of Goth. It is every man's love song to his significant other - celebrating the everyday pleasures of two people sharing their lives together. You And Me was a significant departure from Cooper's usual dark-themed rockers. It was the last in a trilogy of ballads Cooper recorded, following "Only Women Bleed" and "I Never Cry" He has described this genre as "heavy metal housewife rock." In an interview with Creem magazine a few months after the release of "You and Me," Cooper discussed the impetus behind his trilogy of ballads: "I did those songs totally out of spite," he said. "I kept reading so many interviews and articles that I said I was never considered musical. Best rock show they ever saw, but musically lacking. 'They aren't as good as ELP.' Of course not," he laughed, "we didn't want to be." You And Me was written by Cooper and the renowned rock guitarist and songwriter Dick Wagner. During his long and distinguished musical career, Wagner has played lead guitar and written songs for many big-name bands and artists. In addition to Cooper, some of the other notable musical acts he has worked with include KISS, Lou Reed, Peter Gabriel, Tori Amos, Frank Sinatra, Meat Loaf, Etta James, Ringo Starr, Guns N' Roses, Rod Stewart, Air Supply and Tina Turner. Wagner contributed to several Alice Cooper albums, both as a guitarist and songwriter; he and Cooper usually collaborated on ballads. In addition to "You and Me," other rock ballads Wagner co-wrote include "I Never Cry" and "Only Women Bleed." This was the lead single off the 1977 album Lace and Whiskey, which was the shock-rock legend's third album as a solo artist following the breakup of the original Alice Cooper band in 1974. Cooper decided to change up his sound a bit on this collection and soften his image. He considered it a concept album based on a 1940s-era detective he called "Inspector Maurice Escargot." For his 1977 tour, Cooper divided his show into three sets: Oldies, Hell, and Lace And Whiskey. This third part he performed in his Escargot character. Lace and Whiskey was produced by Bob Ezrin, who co-wrote most of the album's tracks with Cooper and Dick Wagner. He also played keyboards on the album. Ezrin is a well-known figure in the music industry, particularly in the rock world. He was one of the most commercially successful producers in the 1970s and has done production work for a slew of top artists and bands, including KISS, Pink Floyd, Lou Reed, Rod Stewart, Jane's Addiction, Hanoi Rocks, Deftones, Berlin, Nine Inch Nails and Peter Gabriel. Ezrin produced eleven albums for Cooper, including the hugely successful LPs Billion Dollar Babies and School's Out. This song climbed to #9 on the US Billboard Hot 100, marking his last Top-10 on the chart until "Poison" in 1989. The song also hit #23 on the Adult Contemporary chart, and # 3 on the singles chart in Australia. Cooper performed You And Me on The Muppet Show in his 1978 season 3 appearance, doing it as a duet with the appropriately creepy Beakie, a bird-ish Muppet who was actually the embodiment of Miss Piggy after she was transformed by Cooper. "Love's a Loaded Gun" is taken from the 1991 album Hey Stoopid. The single managed to peak at No. 38 in the UK and No. 31 on the Mainstream Rock Tracks chart. It was one of three singles released from the album (the other two being "Hey Stoopid" and "Feed My Frankenstein") that launched "Hey Stoopid" into the top 40. The single featured a B-Side, a cover of Jimi Hendrix's "Fire". Ballad Of Dwight Fry is a salute to the actor Dwight Frye, who played maniacal characters in many Universal horror films, including Renfield from the original Dracula (1931). Cooper dropped the "E" from the name to avoid a lawsuit. In concert, Cooper would perform this song in a straitjacket from which he would escape and strangle a nurse. Later live performances of this song included a mock beheading of Cooper onstage with a fake guillotine. The audio of a live performance provided here. The shock rock legend wrote Ballad Of Dwight Fry with guitarist/songwriter Michael Bruce, who was an original member of the Alice Cooper Group. During his tenure with the band, Bruce wrote or co-wrote many of their biggest hits, including "No More Mr. Nice Guy," "I'm Eighteen," and "School's Out." He also played keyboards and contributed vocals on their records. The child's voice at the song's intro was actually a woman in her early 20s, who was a friend of the band. Ballad Of Dwight Fry a track from Love It To Death, the third studio album by Alice Cooper (the band). Co-produced by Bob Ezrin and Jack Richardson, the album climbed to #35 on the US Billboard 200 album chart and #28 on the UK album charts. It also featured the track "I'm Eighteen," which brought the band its first big mainstream hit and became one of Cooper's most recognized songs. The band established their accessible Heavy Metal sound on this collection. The album also marked the beginning of a productive, long-term working relationship between Cooper and Ezrin. Following Love It To Death, Cooper recruited Ezrin to produce a number of albums for both the Alice Cooper Group and his solo releases. Among the notable albums he produced for Cooper include School's Out, Billion Dollar Babies, Welcome to My Nightmare and Lace and Whisky. Throughout the '70s, Ezrin was one of the most successful and in-demand music producers on the rock scene. In addition to Cooper, other notable acts he has worked with include KISS, Lou Reed, Peter Gabriel, Pink Floyd, Dr. John and Rod Stewart. In addition to Ballad Of Dwight Fry, Michael Bruce also contributed to the writing of five other tracks on the album, two of which he penned entirely on his own: "Caught in a Dream" and "Long Way to Go." A gaggle of inmates at an insane asylum were among the first to hear this song. The Alice Cooper Band worked it up after moving from Los Angeles to the Detroit area in 1970. They were living and rehearsing at an abandoned farm in Pontiac, just north of Detroit, right next to an insane asylum. "The inmates would stand by the fence and listen to them rehearsing, working on the songs in a barn," Gary Graff, author of Alice Cooper at 75, explained on a Podcast. They had the doors thrown open and the window of the hay loft thrown open. How appropriate was it that Alice Cooper's test market would be the residents of an asylum next door? That had some influence on 'Ballad Of Dwight Fry.'"

A Day In The Life Album: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967) Dear Prudence Album: The White Album (1968) While My Guitar Gently Weeps Album: The White Album (1968) by The Beatles A 41-piece orchestra played on A Day In The Life. The musicians were told to attend the session dressed formally. When they got there, they were presented with party novelties (false noses, party hats, gorilla-paw glove) to wear, which made it clear this was not going to be a typical session. The orchestra was conducted by Paul McCartney, who told them to start with the lowest note of their instruments and gradually play to the highest. A Day In The Life was recorded in three sessions: first the basic track, then the orchestra, then the last note was dubbed in. The beginning of A Day In The Life was based on two stories John Lennon read in the Daily Mail newspaper: Guinness heir Tara Browne dying when he smashed his lotus into a parked van, and an article in the UK Daily Express in early 1967 which told of how the Blackburn Roads Surveyor had counted 4000 holes in the roads of Blackburn and commented that the volume of material needed to fill them in was enough to fill the Albert Hall. Lennon took some liberties with the Tara Browne story - he changed it so he "Blew his mind out in the car." Regarding the article about Tara Browne, John Lennon stated: "I didn't copy the accident. Tara didn't blow his mind out. But it was in my mind when I was writing that verse." At the time, Paul didn't realize the reference was to Tara. He thought it was about a "stoned politician." The article regarding the "4000 holes in Blackburn, Lancashire" was taken from the UK Daily Express, January 17, 1967 in a column called "Far And Near." John's friend Terry Doran was the one who completed John's line, "Now they know how many holes it takes to fill..." Terry told him "fill the Albert Hall, John." McCartney contributed the line "I'd love to turn you on." This was a drug reference, but the BBC banned it because of another section, which they assumed was about marijuana: Found my way upstairs and had a smoke Somebody spoke and I went into a dream The ban was on A Day In The Life finally lifted when author David Storey picked it as one of his Desert Island Discs. Speaking with GQ in 2018, Paul McCartney explained A Day In The Life's origin story: "It was a song that John had started. He had the first verse, and this often happened: one of us would have a little bit of an idea and instead of sitting down and sweating it, we'd just bring it to the other one and kind of finish it together, because you could ping-pong - you'd get an idea. So he had the first verse: 'I read the news today oh boy,' and we sat in my music room in London and just started playing around with it, got a second verse, and then we got to what was going to lead into the middle. We kind of looked at each other and knew we were being a little bit edgy where we 'I'd love to turn you on.' We knew that would have an effect. It worked. And then we put on another section I had: 'Woke up, fell out of bed, dragged a comb across my head.' Then we finished the song up and did a big sort of epic recording of it with a big full orchestra and everything. And then did that crescendo thing in the middle of it with the orchestra, which was an idea I'd had because I'd been talking to people and reading about avant-garde music, tonal stuff and crazy ideas. I came up with this idea. I said to the orchestra, 'You should start, all of you.' And they sat all looking at me puzzled. We've got a real symphony orchestra in London who are used to playing Beethoven, and here's me, this crazy guy out of a group and I'm saying, 'Everyone start on the lowest note your instrument can play and work your way up to the highest at your own pace.' That was too puzzling for them, and orchestras don't like that kind of thing. They like it written down and they like to know exactly what they're supposed to do. So George Martin, the producer, said to the people, 'You should leave this note and this point in the song, and then you should go to this note and this note,' and he left the random thing, so that's why it sounds like a chaotic sort of swirl. That was an idea based on the avant-garde stuff I was into at the time." The final chord was produced by all four Beatles and George Martin banging on three pianos simultaneously. As the sound diminished, the engineer boosted to faders. The resulting note lasts 42 seconds; the studio air conditioners can be heard toward the end as the faders were pushed to the limit to record it. That's the only part of the song I didn't mess with levels... I did cut just a bit out to fade in the next tune. The rising orchestra-glissando and the thundering sound are reminiscent of "Entry of the Gods into Valhalla" from Richard Wagner's opera "Das Rheingold," where after the rising glissando, Thor beats with his hammer. George Martin said in his 1979 book All You Need is Ears that the glissando was Lennon's idea. After Lennon's death, Martin seems to have changed his mind. In his 1995 book Summer of Love: The Making of Sgt. Pepper, he states that the rising orchestra-glissando was McCartney's idea. A Day In The Life being the last song on the album, The Beatles found an interesting way to close it out. After the final note, Lennon had producer George Martin dub in a high pitched tone, which most humans can't hear but drives dogs crazy. This was followed by a loop of incomprehensible studio noise, along with a voice saying something like, "never could see any other way," all spliced together. It was put there so vinyl copies would play this continuously in the run-out groove, sounding like something went horribly wrong with the record. Another good reason to own vinyl. As for what that voice is really saying, even Martin didn't know. Responding to a query in Melody Maker, he wrote: "Everyone wants to know what The Beatles say at the end of the record, but we just don't know! The boys were fooling about on one of their sessions and the actual words uttered were just meant as nonsense and have no significance whatever. It was left on the master tape just for fun, and no-one, not even The Beatles, can remember what was said that day. Actually, most record players switch the record off before these words are heard, but they are on every record." In 2004, McCartney did an interview with the Daily Mirror newspaper where he said he was doing cocaine around this time along with marijuana. "I'd been introduced to it, and at first it seemed OK, like anything that's new and stimulating," he said. "When you start working your way through it, you start thinking, 'This is not so cool and idea,' especially when you start getting those terrible comedowns." The movie reference in the lyrics ("I saw a film today, oh boy. The English Army had just won the war") is to a film John Lennon acted in called How I Won The War. McCartney's middle section (woke up, got out of bed...) was intended for another song. The Beatles started this with the working title "In The Life of..." "A Day In The Life" is a rare Beatles song with a title that is not part of the lyrics. Another one is "Yer Blues." That's Mal Evans doing the counting during the first transition from John to Paul. He set the alarm clock (heard on the recording) to go off at the end of his 24-bar count. Evans also helped with the composition of a couple of songs on the Sgt. Pepper album. Although he never received composer's credit, the Beatles did pay his estate a lump sum in the 1990s for his contributions. Evans died January 5, 1976 after a misunderstanding with the police. George Martin (from Q Magazine, July 2007): "John's voice - which he hated - was the kind of thing that would send shivers down your spine. If you hear those opening chords with the guitar and piano, and then his voice comes in, 'I heard the news today, oh boy' It's just so evocative of that time. He always played his songs to me on the guitar and I would sit on a stool as he strummed. The orchestral section was Paul's idea. We put two pieces of songs together that weren't connected in any way. Then we had that 24-bars-of-nothing in between. I had to write a score, but in the climax, I gave each instrument different little waypoints at each bar, so they would know roughly where they should be when they were sliding up. Just so they didn't reach the climax too quickly. With 'A Day In The Life,' I wondered whether we were losing our audience and I was scared. But I stopped being scared when I played it to the head of Capitol Records in America and he was gob smacked. He said, That's fantastic. And of course, it was." In the original take of A Day In The Life, the 41-piece orchestra was not used. Instead, Lennon had roadie Mal Evans count to 21 in a very trippy manner and set off an alarm clock after the 21 counts. This version is on the second Anthology CD, and is very different than the one on Sgt. Pepper. David Crosby was at Abbey Road studios when The Beatles were recording this. In an interview with Filter magazine, he said: "I was, as near as I know, the first human being besides them and George Martin and the engineers to hear 'A Day In The Life.' I was high as a kite - so high I was hunting geese with a rake. They sat me down; they had huge speakers like coffins with wheels on that they rolled up on either side of the stool. By the time it got the end of that piano chord, man my brains were on the floor." The orchestral bit was used in the Yellow Submarine movie. Photos of different geographical areas were shown as The Beatles were apparently traveling in the submarine to try and find Pepperland. When asked by Rolling Stone magazine what songs of his dad's constantly surprise him, Sean Lennon said: "I've listened so much to that stuff that there are very few surprises. But I do think 'A Day In The Life' is always inspiring." The American rock band Hawthorne Heights originally named themselves A Day in the Life after this song. In 2003, lead vocalist/rhythm guitarist JT Woodruff changed it to their current name. On June 18, 2010 John Lennon's handwritten lyric sheet for this song featuring corrections and alternate crossed-out lines was auctioned at New York Sotheby's. It was sold for $1.2 million to an anonymous American buyer. A Day In The Life was rated the greatest ever Beatles song in a special collector's edition issue by The Beatles: 100 Greatest Songs. The list was compiled to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the Fab Four's final studio album, Let It Be. There is term for the techniques The Beatles used in arranging the final chords of this song: Deceptive Cadence. Glen Burtnik, who was a member of Styx and was also in a popular Beatles tribute band, told us: "It's an instance where the listener assumes the next chord, or melody note, will go somewhere it doesn't. Even though all the indications lead you to expecting a certain outcome, the writer/arranger intentionally surprises you by going someplace else musically. Not sure it's simple to understand, as you're conditioned to being used to the outcome." Peter Asher, who worked for The Beatles at Apple Records and produced the biggest hits of James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt, considers A Day In The Life the greatest Beatles song from a production standpoint. "'A Day In The Life' certainly combined Beatle ideas and George Martin ideas very effectively,". Keith Richards named his second son Tara after Tara Brown, the Guinness heir who smashes his car in Lennon's first verse of A Day In The Life. Richard's son was premature and died soon after birth. While Mia Farrow inspired such men as Andre Previn, Frank Sinatra and Woody Allen, her sister Prudence left her mark on John Lennon. According to Nancy de Herrera's book, All You Need Is Love, Prudence met The Beatles on a spiritual retreat with their guru, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, in India, which she attended with Mia. When Prudence, suffering depression, confined herself to her room, Lennon wrote "Dear Prudence" hoping to cheer her up. It did. According to American flautist Paul Horn, who was also with them in Rishikesh, Prudence was a highly sensitive person, and by jumping straight into deep meditation, against the Maharishi's advice, she had allowed herself to fall into a catatonic state. Horn stated, "She was ashen-white and didn't recognize anybody. She didn't even recognize her own brother who was on the course with her. The only person she showed any slight recognition towards was Maharishi. We were all concerned about her and Maharishi assigned her a full-time nurse." Prudence Farrow wanted to "Teach God quicker than anyone else," according to John Lennon. She would lock herself in her room trying to meditate for hours and hours. From A Hard Day's Write, by Steve Turner: "At the end of the demo version of Dear Prudence John continues playing guitar and says: 'No one was to know that sooner or later she was to go completely berserk, under the care of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. All the people around were very worried about the girl because she was going insane. So, we sang to her.'" Prudence Farrow explained years later that she was just trying to take Transcendental Meditation seriously. She said in Mojo magazine, September 2008: "They were trying to be cheerful, but I wished they'd go away. I don't think they realized what the training was all about." Ringo had left the group as the White Album sessions got very tense, so Paul McCartney played drums. When Ringo came back a short time later, there were flowers on his drum kit welcoming him back. According to the singer-songwriter Donovan, who was on the retreat in India with The Beatles, he taught John Lennon a "clawhammer" guitar technique that he used on this track. "He was so fascinated by fingerstyle guitar that he immediately started to write in a different color and was very inspired," Donovan said in an interview. "That's what happens when you learn a new style." The clawhammer style, is played with the strumming hand formed into a claw, using the backs of the fingernails to strum down on the strings. John Lennon's handwritten lyrics to Dear Prudence were auctioned off for $19,500 in 1987. Lennon considered Dear Prudence one of his favorites. Siouxsie And The Banshees covered Dear Prudence in 1983. Their version went to #3 in the UK and became their biggest hit. "Dear Prudence" was the second Beatles song that the Banshees had covered from their White Album. Previously, they'd recorded a version of "Helter Skelter" for their 1978 LP The Scream. "Helter Skelter was very much part of our live show before we recorded it," mused Siouxsie Sioux to TeamRock. "The great thing was that the two Beatles songs we chose – 'Helter Skelter' and 'Dear Prudence' – were not originally singles by The Beatles, so it wasn't necessarily a surefire: 'Oh, they're doing a Beatles song.' And it was also a bit irreverent as well, I suppose. A good test of doing a cover version is when people think that you've written it. Quite a lot of people thought Dear Prudence was an original." Dear Prudence was in the movie Across the Universe, which was based on The Beatles music. In the movie, Prudence (played by T.V. Carpio) locked herself in a closet after discovering that Sadie and JoJo were together when she thought she loved Sadie. Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood), Jude (Jim Sturges), Sadie (Dana Fuges) and Max (Joe Anderson) sing this to make her feel better. It gets her out of the closet and they end the song at a anti-Vietnam War rally. Siouxsie and the Banshees' take on the song added to The Beatles' simple original arrangement. "It was kind of an undeveloped song on the White Album," Siouxsie said. "and so there was a lot of scope to put in your own stuff, really. What did I want to bring? Oh, some psychedelic transformation there [laughing]." "No, I think that actual track's fairly restrained, simple and understated on the White Album," she added. "I was listening to singles like Itchycoo Park by the Small Faces, so I think it was wanting to capture the 60s, and all that kind of phasing. Also, it was where we were at the time." He wasn't credited on the album's liner notes or anywhere else, but Eric Clapton played lead guitar on "While My Guitar Gently Weeps". He and George Harrison were good friends, but George had to convince him to come to the studio because Clapton was worried the other Beatles wouldn't want him there. Clapton's presence eased the mood in the studio at a tense time for The Beatles - they were at each other's throats during recording of The White Album, but they all relaxed when Clapton showed up. Harrison often had to fight to get his songs on the albums. John Lennon and Paul McCartney were not interested in While My Guitar Gently Weeps at first, but came around when Harrison brought Clapton to the studio. According to A Hard Day's Write by Steve Turner, Harrison was reading I Ching, the Chinese book of changes, and decided to write a song about the first words he saw, which were "Gently Weeps." This explains the very zen lyrics like "I look at the floor and I see it needs sweeping." This was originally recorded as an acoustic ballad with just Harrison on acoustic guitar and Paul McCartney on organ. This version can be found on some bootlegs and on The Beatles Anthology 3. While My Guitar Gently Weeps was the first song Ringo Starr played on after leaving the band in frustration a few weeks earlier. He returned to find flowers on his drums to welcome him back. Clapton used a Les Paul guitar on While My Guitar Gently Weeps. Later in his career, he switched to a Fender Stratocaster. Even though While My Guitar Gently Weeps was not a hit, it is one of the most enduring Beatles songs. It remains popular on classic rock radio. When George Harrison arranged a trip to India for The Beatles to study Transcendental Meditation, they were joined by their good friend Donovan, a singer-songwriter who had hits with "Sunshine Superman" and "Mellow Yellow." They shared a lot of ideas on this trip, many of which influenced The White Album. In an interview with Donovan, he said that John Lennon wanted to learn the clawhammer guitar style, while Harrison was interested in Donovan's chord structures. The A minor descents Donovan showed him ended up in "While My Guitar Gently Weeps." After working on While My Guitar Gently Weeps, Eric Clapton became good friends with John Lennon and played with him on some of his solo work. When George Harrison threatened to leave The Beatles in 1969, Lennon was ready to replace him with Clapton. In his solo career, George Harrison played While My Guitar Gently Weeps more than any other. He toured as a headliner just once, in 1974, and included the song on this setlist. In 1991, he jumped on the Japanese leg of Eric Clapton's tour, and they teamed up to perform the song as an encore for these shows. Harrison and Clapton also played it together in 1971 at the Concert For Bangladesh, which Harrison organized to bring aid to the war-torn region. Clapton was one of the "special guests" at the show and gave it lots of additional star power. Jeff Healy covered While My Guitar Gently Weeps on his 1990 album Hell To Pay. In the Las Vegas show, LOVE, While My Guitar Gently Weeps is included. In the show they use the Anthology version with a cello added. George Harrison came up with the idea for LOVE, though he died before the show was ever performed. Carlos Santana covered While My Guitar Gently Weeps on his 2010 album Guitar Heaven. His version features vocals by India Arie and cello by Yo-Yo Ma. "When I think of that song," Arie told Rolling Stone, "I always had this vision of George Harrison being at home with his wife and his kids, and going in at five o'clock in the morning and playing his guitar to himself. I imagined that and put a sensual energy on it."

Freeze Frame Album: Freeze Frame (1981) Centerfold Album: Freeze Frame (1981) Angel In Blue Album: Freeze Frame (1981) J. Geils Band A freeze frame is a still image taken from a piece of moving video - perhaps the most famous one is Judd Nelson with his fist in the air at the end of The Breakfast Club. In this song, the singer recounts a memorable week with a lovely lady through the use of film production metaphors. Let's take a look: It was a rough cut Tuesday - A "rough cut" is an early version of the work, often without details like graphics or music. It's what you look at to get a basic idea of how it's going to turn out. Thursday morning was a hot flash factor - Not really a film term, but a "hot flash" could be a burst of light used to capture a still image. It shows that the singer is warming up to the girl. Friday night we danced the spotlight grind - We all know what a spotlight is, and we can assume that things worked out well if he did the "spotlight grind." Now I'm looking at a flashback Sunday - A flashback is a device where you go back in time to see something that happened earlier. He probably can't stop flashing back to his spotlight grind. There are other film terms in the song as well, including "zoom lens" and "proof sheet." It's all a clever way of describing an interesting week. Freeze Frame was written by J. Geils Band lead singer Peter Wolf and keyboard player Seth Justman, who also produced the album. Wolf brought an energy and swagger to the songs he worked on, while Justman was often the creative engine, specializing in various keyboard sounds. Justman joined the band a few years after they formed, adding piano and organ to their mix, and quickly becoming a primary songwriter. The group was one of the first rock bands to emerge from Boston, with a sound that also incorporated blues and soul. Throughout the '70s, they earned widespread acclaim but just modest chart success, with their most successful song the 1974 track "Must Of Got Lost," which made #12 US. In the '80s, keyboards came into vogue, which was perfect for Justman. His song "Centerfold" was the first single from the Freeze Frame album, and a monster hit, going to US #1 in February 1982 and staying for six weeks. "Freeze-Frame" was the next single, and it peaked at #4 in April. In March, Peter Wolf was on the cover of Rolling Stone (sharing space with the subhead: "Herpes, The Pill, VD: Why Sex Isn't Fun Anymore"). They went from club gigs to arenas, opening for The Rolling Stones. The fame was sudden, and few outside of Boston knew that the band had been around since 1967. Many bands hate doing videos because they are so tedious, but in the early '80s, they were usually shot quickly with just a loose concept. In this one, the fun the band was having was real. Peter Wolf told Goldmine in 1983: "By the time an album is finished, there's less pressure on you and the video serves as a kind of release. Hence, us throwing paint all over each other in the 'Freeze Frame' video." It also helped that they had a sympathetic director: Paul Justman, brother of the band's keyboard player Seth. He also directed the J. Geils videos for "Centerfold" and "Land of 1,000 Dances." Perhaps Paul helped out with the film references in the lyric. Unlike most hit songs, there's not much to the chorus in Freeze Frame - it's basically Peter Wolf yelling "Freeze Frame" and the band calling it back. Each chorus lasts about 10 seconds. The hook is in the keyboard riff, and the sparse chorus leaves lots of time to develop the story in the verses. Freeze Frame has a very unusual opening, with the gang yelling "Freeze Frame," and then a series of camera clicks. Around this same time, Duran Duran's "Girls On Film" was big - that song also opened with camera sounds. Freeze Frame was used in the movies Lucky Numbers (2000), Middle Men (2009) and A Few Best Men (2011). It also appeared in two episodes of The Simpsons: "Home Away from Homer" (2005) and "Homerazzi" (2007). Centerfold is about a guy who had a crush on a sweet, innocent girl in his homeroom in high school. Years later, he's looking through a girly magazine and sees his homeroom crush as the centerfold, and it rocks his world - no longer is she the innocent girl in a fuzzy sweater that he dreamed about. Rather than being titillated, he is disappointed, as his "memory has been sold." The J. Geils Band signed with Atlantic Records in 1970 and made a name for themselves as a great live act with a blues-based sound. "Centerfold" was a musical departure for the band - a new wave sound similar to what The Cars and The Police were doing. It was also their biggest hit, earning them a slot touring with The Rolling Stones, the cover of Rolling Stone magazine, and heavy rotation on the new cable network MTV with a video showing the band playing in a classroom surrounded by girls in Catholic school uniforms. Centerfold was written by the band's keyboard player Seth Justman. He insists that the reason you didn't hear much synthesizer on earlier J. Geils albums is because they couldn't afford them: The band was trapped in the record company debt cycle, constantly owing money despite their success. The Centerfold video was directed by Paul Justman, brother of the song's writer Seth. Freeze Frame was the band's third album with EMI; they signed with the label leaving Atlantic. In earlier years, the band chose their singles, but EMI picked "Centerfold" as the lead single and were handsomely rewarded when it went to US #1 for a startling six weeks and also helped send the album to the top spot. Centerfold was used in The Office episode "Customer Survey." While Dwight and Jim are talking, Dwight blasts it in his car in case customer service is eavesdropping on their conversation. Centerfold also appeared in these movies: Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle (2003) The Watch (2012) Grown Ups 2 (2013) And in these TV shows: The King of Queens ("Fatty McButterpants" - 2000) My Name Is Earl ("Jump For Joy" - 2006) The Office ("Customer Survey" - 2008) Glee ("Naked" - 2013) The Goldbergs ("The Circle Of Driving" - 2013) "Angel in Blue" is a song written by Seth Justman. Cissy Houston and Luther Vandross appear on the song as back up vocalists. "Angel in Blue" was also released on a number of J. Geils Band compilation albums, including Centerfold, The Very Best J. Geils Band Album Ever and Best of The J. Geils Band, as well as several multi-artist compilation albums. "Angel in Blue" was released as a single in 1982, where the song reached the Top 40, following the Top 10 hits "Centerfold" and "Freeze Frame" from the Freeze Frame album. It peaked at #40 on the Billboard Hot 100, remaining there for two weeks. It also reached #39 in Canada and #55 in the UK.

Arthur Firstenberg The Invisible Rainbow Key Points The study of electricity should be restored to biology and medicine. Personal wireless communication must be phased out because the radiation that carries all the messages is destroying life on earth. Mobile phones must be replaced with landline phones, WiFi with ethernet cables, and other wireless consumer devices with devices connected by wires and cables. Mobile phone antennas and masts must be phased out and removed. Wireless technology must be removed from vehicles. Smart meters must be replaced with analog meters. Smart highways, smart cities, and the Internet of Things must cease being developed and deployed. Radar stations must be limited in number, location and power. Radar (microwave) ovens should not be used for heating food. An international treaty on electrosmog, addressing radiation on land, in the oceans, and in space, must be drafted. Introduction Electrosmog is the totality of the electric fields, magnetic fields, and electromagnetic radiation that bathes us 24/7 from all electrical and electronic devices, electric wires, power lines, and wireless devices and antennas. With wired communication, information is transmitted via the wires, and the electromagnetic fields (EMFs) and radiation are unintentional. Proper engineering can reduce these unwanted fields and radiation to a minimum. By contrast, with wireless communication, the radiation is the product. Radiation substitutes for wires in transmitting information. Wireless means radiation. The ability to use a mobile device everywhere on earth means that every square meter of the earth must be irradiated at all times. Mobile devices operate in the microwave spectrum, with the result that the entire planet is now swimming in a sea of microwave radiation that is millions to billions of times stronger than the radiation from the sun and stars with which life evolved (1). Life is based not only on chemistry but more fundamentally on electricity (2, 3). The unimpeded flow of electrons is essential to the functioning of our nerves, heart, and metabolism (3). Interference with these electric currents causes neurological diseases, heart disease, metabolic diseases such as diabetes, and cancer (4). Organisms that have a very high metabolism, such as bees and other insects, are being wiped out (5, 6). Thousands of studies document the devastating effects of wireless radiation on mammals, birds, insects, amphibians, and forests (7). Because EMFs are not a foreign substance to living beings, a toxicology model does not apply and there is not a dose response: reducing the power does not reduce the effect. Even a signal that is almost immeasurably weak can interfere with normal biological functioning (8). “While the dose rate/SAR concept is adequate for description of acute thermal effects, it is not applicable for chronic exposures to N[on]T[hermal] M[icro]W[aves].” (9). Even at near-zero power levels, microwave radiation has been found to change the structure of DNA (10) and alter brain waves (11). Some studies have even found an inverse dose response. When the power of the radiation was reduced 1000-fold, damage to the blood-brain barrier increased (12). A review of 113 studies found that radiation with the lowest power tended to cause the greatest ecological damage (5). In another review of 108 experimental studies, a lower exposure level tended to have a greater biological effect, and the difference was highly significant (p < 0.001) (13). The damage done to our health and our world by wireless devices and their infrastructure is caused not only by the microwave carrier frequencies, but also by the low-frequency modulation and pulsations that carry the transmitted information. “Thus modulation can be considered as information content embedded in the higher frequency carrier wave that may have health consequences beyond any effect from the carrier wave directly” (14). No matter what the carrier wave, the modulation is the same because it has to carry the same information. Therefore using light as the carrier wave, as is being done over short distances with LiFi, or using sound as the carrier wave, as is being done in the oceans, does not reduce the harm. The finding that only a single two-hour exposure to a mobile phone during their lifetime, even when the power of the phone was reduced 100-fold, caused permanent brain damage in young rats (15) makes it likely that we are raising, and perhaps have already raised, a generation of children with brain damage. There is no question but that this must cease, and that cell phones are not safe at any power level, at any distance from the head, and for any duration. Purpose of This Document This policy brief provides an overview of an immediate threat to life on earth—even more immediate than climate change—that has been allowed to get completely out of control because it has been completely ignored. The source of the threat is a technology to which everyone has become addicted, and which, during the past two and a half decades, has become firmly entrenched in every aspect of life. Although more scientific studies have been published on the health and environmental effects of EMFs than on almost any other pollutant except for mercury and tobacco smoke, the impact of all this research upon public policy to date has been zero. Average citizens still do not even know that a mobile device emits radiation. Much less do they suspect that it is causing them brain damage or threatening their life and their future on this planet. The purpose of this brief is to outline actions that are required to be taken by political leaders, religious leaders, environmental organizations, public schools, medical schools and doctors to educate the public and to begin to dismantle this existential threat to the earth. Share Essential Actions Required by National and International Leaders and Organizations I. An International Treaty or Convention on Electrosmog must be adopted by all nations The number of antennas and their distance from people and wildlife must be strictly regulated. The elements of an international treaty should include the following: A. Phasing out and eventual prohibition of personal wireless devices, including mobile devices and WiFi At present there are about 15 billion mobile devices and 6 million mobile phone masts; the earth cannot survive this. Private individuals should not have the right to irradiate their neighbors. Businesses should not have the right to irradiate their patrons. B. Limiting antennas and devices that emit radiation to radio and television stations, emergency services such as police and fire departments, and radar for civil defense, aviation and shipping C. Limiting the location, number, and power of civil defense radars The present situation of unlimited power has allowed 3-billion-watt radars such as PAVE PAWS, which has irradiated millions of people on both coasts of the United States for more than four decades (16). A five-year investigation into the health and environmental effects of a civil defense radar in Latvia after the end of the Cold War resulted in the decommissioning and removal of that radar. School children in the area—even children who lived 20 kilometers away—had impaired motor function, memory and attention, reduced lung capacity, and elevated white blood cell counts. The entire local population suffered from headaches, sleep disturbances and elevated white blood cells. Human reproduction was affected: 25 percent fewer boys than girls were born during the years the radar operated. Chromosome damage was found in local cows. Nest-boxes near the radar were occupied by extremely low numbers of birds. The average growth rings of trees during the years of the radar’s operation were only half as wide as before the radars were constructed, and study of pine cones revealed the trees were aging prematurely. Seedlings in the area grew into deformed plants with reduced reproductive capacity (17, 18, 19, 20,21, 22, 23, 24). D. Phasing out weather radars, as they do more harm than good There are an estimated 1,500 of these extremely powerful installations scattered throughout the world. Each of the 160 NEXRAD radars in the United States has an EIRP (Effective Isotropic Radiated Power) of 32 gigawatts (32 billion watts) (25). These radars are heavily irradiating people and wildlife, and are neither reliable nor essential to weather forecasting (26). E. Prohibition of antennas inside national parks, wildlife preserves and protected nature areas A 2015 report to UNESCO detailed the devastating impact of communication antennas inside a World Heritage Site in Australia. When a telecommunication tower atop Mount Nardi began to convert its antennas from 2G (primarily voice communications) to 3G (voice and data) in 2002, a steady increase in species diversity suddenly reversed and became a steady decrease in species diversity. In 2002 insect populations and diversity began to decline. In 2009, enhanced 3G was installed, along with an additional 150 pay television channels. 27 bird species promptly left the mountain, and insect volumes and species dropped dramatically. In late 2012 and early 2013, 4G was installed, and 49 more bird species promptly left the mountain. “From this time, all locally known bat species became scarce, 4 common species of cicada almost disappeared, as well as the once enormous, varied population of moths & butterfly species. Frogs and tadpole populations were drastically reduced; the massive volumes and diverse species of ant populations became uncommon to rare… [F]rom 70 to 90 % of the wildlife has become rare or has disappeared from the Nightcap National Park within a 2-3 km radius of the Mt. Nardi tower complex” (27). F. Prohibition of the manufacture of vehicles with wireless technology and radar WiFi, Bluetooth, wireless ignitions, wireless CarPlay, wireless tire pressure monitors, and radar are just a few of the in-car systems that have turned the small, reflective metallic bodies of vehicles into intensely microwaved chambers. To these are being added in-car 5G hotspots that are turning many new vehicles into autonomous mobile devices, using vehicle-to-vehicle, vehicle-to-pedestrian, vehicle-to-network, and vehicle-to-highway communication. G. Prohibition of smart meters, smart highways, smart cities, and the Internet of Things Smart meters are being placed on every home and business in the world, and are turning all the wiring inside the walls of every home and business into a radiating antenna. Microchips and antennas are being placed in every machine, every appliance, and almost every consumer product in the world as part of the Internet of Things, and there are predictions of as many as one trillion antennas communicating wirelessly with one another in the near future. These all irradiate the entire population at close range, including inside their homes and businesses, without any choice and without possibility of escape. H. Halting the launch of satellites, and phasing out most private, public and military use of space The functioning of all living organisms is regulated by their electromagnetic environment, including the magnetic field of the earth, the vertical electric field between earth and ionosphere, the global electric circuit, the Schumann resonances, etc. If the electromagnetic environment of the earth is altered, life on earth will not long survive. Both the number of satellites in orbit and the radiation they emit are completely out of control. Some satellites already have an effective radiated power of 83 million watts. Some are capable of emitting 5,000 individual beams. More than 8,000 satellites are already in orbit, and thousands more are being sent into space by near-daily rocket launches. Not only are they exposing every square meter of land and oceans to their radiation, but they are polluting the global electric circuit, which includes our bodies, with all of their pulsations and modulation patterns. This is degrading all of life and causing pandemics, extinctions, and forest die-off, which cannot be successfully addressed without halting the radiation in and from space (4). I. Prohibition of underwater wireless communication in the oceans Along with national parks and nature preserves, the oceans should be absolutely protected from radiation. Governmental, commercial and military interests have been collaborating to create Smart Oceans and build the Internet of Underwater Things. To do this they are building cell towers on the ocean floor, putting relay antennas in the depths of the ocean, and deploying smart ships, smart submarines, and underwater robots. The goal is to enable broadband wireless communication from any point on or in the oceans to anywhere else on the planet, up to and including “real-time video streaming from underwater” everywhere in every ocean (28). Radio Frequency (RF) radiation is being used in the oceans for short- to medium-range communication, and is destroying ocean life the same way it is destroying land-based life. Acoustic waves are being used for long-range communication, and are deafening fish and ocean mammals with sound as loud as 202 decibels. The fishing industry is also using underwater radar to locate and capture fish with a precision and on a scale that is devastating to ocean life (29). All underwater wireless communication and radar must be halted. II. Churches and other religious buildings should remove antennas and WiFi networks from their premises Churches have become a prime target by telecommunications companies for the installation of antennas, often hidden inside false chimneys or fake bell towers. These antennas earn a lot of money for churches but turn them into hazardous environments for their worshippers and visitors. III. Schools must remove mobile phone masts and WiFi routers and prohibit mobile phones Schools are among the most intensely irradiated environments in society today, consequently the worst and unhealthiest places for our children to spend their growing years. Every classroom has one or more WiFi routers in it, together with dozens of children sitting in close proximity to one another every day all day, all of them with cell phones and wireless computers, irradiating one another at all times. Like churches, schools are earning money renting their properties to telecommunications companies for the installation of mobile phone masts. All masts and all WiFi antennas must be removed from all school properties, and children must be prohibited from bringing cell phones to school. IV. Religious, political and community leaders should encourage congregations and constituencies to get rid of their cell phones and other wireless devices Nothing is more important today in the stewardship of our planet. V. Medical schools should incorporate education on EMFs into curriculums, and classes in electromagnetic health should be required for continuing education The books and studies are there by the tens of thousands. They sit on the shelves of medical school libraries gathering dust and being ignored. All that is required is to organize them into the curriculum and the base of knowledge required of every physician in order to earn a medical degree. VI. Environmental organizations must form chapters on electrosmog, and must cease using wireless technology as a tool for monitoring and research The rapid declines in biodiversity and species populations cannot be successfully addressed without reducing electromagnetic pollution which is causing half or more of the observed declines. As long as electrosmog is not addressed head-on, all of these problems will continue to be blamed on other things: climate change, land use, deforestation, pesticides, etc. Some of the means now being used to combat climate change, for example solar and wind energy, are worsening electrosmog and further decimating species. Some of the means to study these problems, for example GPS and radio tracking of wildlife, are diminishing wildlife instead. All antennas must be removed from protected nature areas, wildlife preserves, and oceans. Radio tracking devices are deadly (30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37). They must be removed from all wildlife and not put on any more animals, birds, insects, or fish. VII. Non-ionising radiation must be regulated by national environmental agencies with no conflicts of interest In many countries, RF radiation from telecommunications facilities and devices is regulated by the same agency that is charged with promoting those facilities and devices. This is an obvious conflict of interest. Most governments defer to guidance from the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP) or the World Health Organization, which also defers to the ICNIRP. The ICNIRP is not an environmental agency. It is a self-appointed private organization with 14 members answerable to no one (38). Its exposure guidelines are based on heating only, as though there were no other effects. In the United States, the agency that both regulates and promotes the telecommunications industry is the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Like the ICNIRP, the FCC bases its exposure guidelines for humans on heating effects only, and completely ignores the effects on the environment. RF radiation should be regulated transparently within each nation by their own environmental agencies based on the totality of science. It should be addressed within the UN not by the World Health Organization, but by the United Nations Environment Programme, which presently does not address it at all. And it should be subject to an international treaty and a convention on Electrosmog, as per point 1. Conclusions The policy considerations presented in this brief have their basis in science, and in the protection of human rights, human health and the environment. They were developed in response to an emergency situation in which the irradiation of the earth is accelerating at such a rapid rate that it has become the single most urgent threat to life on earth today. The recommended actions by political leaders, religious leaders, organizations, schools, and government agencies provide a path to health and survival. Share Arthur Firstenberg President, Cellular Phone Task Force Author, The Invisible Rainbow: A History of Electricity and Life Administrator, International Appeal to Stop 5G on Earth and in Space Caretaker, ECHOEarch.org (End Cellphones Here On Earth) P.O. Box 6216 Santa Fe, NM 87502 USA phone: +1 505-471-0129 info@cellphonetaskforce.org Acknowledgments The following individuals contributed to the drafting of this Policy Brief: Arthur Firstenberg Kathleen Burke Ian Jarvis Christof Plothe Dr Tess Lawrie, MBBCh, PhD​

All The Small Things Album: Enema Of The State (1999) What's My Age Again Album: Enema Of The State (1999) Adam's Song Album: Enema of the State (1999) by blink-182 blink-182 guitarist Tom DeLonge wrote "All The Small Things" for his girlfriend after she complained that he always writes songs about other girls. He was afraid it wouldn't be good so he kept telling her it was terrible. It ended up being a hit and she was very pleased with it. According to DeLonge, the lyrics are true. His girlfriend really did leave him roses by the stairs after a long night in the studio. The music video, directed by Marcos Siega, finds blink-182 mocking boy bands and other TRL mainstays by parodying concepts from contemporary pop videos, such as identical outfits, choreographed dance routines, and romantic beach scenes. For example, they don matching white suits and disembark from a private jet at Van Nuys airport a la the Backstreet Boys' "I Want It That Way," and wear camo pants and tight black vests (with nothing underneath) as a jab at 98 Degrees. In a riff on Britney Spears' "Sometimes" video (as well as Christina Aguilera's sandy "Genie In A Bottle" clip), a beach stroll goes wrong for Mark Hoppus when a little dog attacks him while Tom DeLonge, dressed as Spears, stands on a rock and clutches a beach ball. Travis Barker gets in on the action by rolling around the surf and sand with a sexy model. The guys also run naked together across the sands of Santa Monica State Beach as a callback to their famous nude spree across Los Angeles for the "What's My Age Again?" promo. According to Siega, the concept was meant as good-natured ribbing rather than a "f--ck you" to boy bands. "In some ways, they're poking fun at themselves," he explained to The Ringer. "Because they were a part of that. They were on TRL as well and running around naked. I think they just knew how to express themselves in a way that never came across as, 'We're bigger and better than those guys.'" Blink-182 bass player Mark Hoppus met Skye Everly, the woman who would become his wife, on the shoot for All The Small Things video. At the time, Everly was a talent executive for MTV. All The Small Things was used in the 2003 Simpsons episode "Barting Over" when Bart got a "split" from Homer and moved into the row under Tony Hawk's skate/party room. Blink-182 also made a cameo appearance in the episode. Aside from appeasing his girlfriend, DeLonge had another aim when writing the song. He figured the record label would put the pressure on for a catchy radio hit, so he decided to craft an earworm that would fit the bill. "It was obvious from the beginning it would fit that format," he noted in Total Guitar in 2006. Tom DeLonge admitted to NME in 2014 that he can no longer listen to this song. "It came on the radio the other day," he said, "and I was like, 'I sound like I'm f--king 11.'" "It's still played everywhere, but I don't know why," DeLonge added. "Blink has some really great songs that I think have legs to stand around for a long period of time. But that's not one of them and it haunts me!" The band's naked hijinks weren't just for the camera - a fact a disgruntled sound engineer discovered when Hoppus stripped down in the studio during the recording of this tune. "We were in the booth singing and Mark did this naked handstand," DeLonge told Blender. "I'm holding his legs and his dick's right next to this expensive microphone. The engineer was so pissed!" Enema Of The State producer Jerry Finn confirmed Blink's penchant for nudity, telling Entertainment Weekly, "I saw them naked more than I ever care to see anyone naked. In the mastering studio - pretty much anywhere." The group performed All The Small Things at both the 1999 and 2000 MTV Video Music Awards. At the 2000 performance, where it won for Best Group Video, a bunch of "little people" joined the band. Many of them danced on stage, and a few swung from wires while pyrotechnics exploded overhead. Some of the same actors appeared in the video for "Man Overboard." In 2010, Irish pop duo Jedward recorded their own version of All The Small Things on their album Planet Jedward. Their version reached #21 in the Irish singles charts. Hoppus told Spinner UK that he was happy for the former X-Factor finalists to cover the track. Said Hoppus: "I have heard the cover. It's funny 'cause all of a sudden on the online forums and my Twitter people started talking about this band covering 'All the Small Things' - it was everything from 'Finally a good band plays this song' to 'How did you guys ever let a band cover your song?' I think that bands can cover whatever songs - we never gave permission for them but I don't think we needed to, I think any band can cover anyone else's song." (If you're unfamiliar with Jedward, you can see them in action here. And Hoppus is correct, anyone can cover any song as long as they pay the mechanical licensing fee.) All The Small Things was originally titled "Babycakes-Buttermuffin." DeLonge said he incorporated the "na na na's" in the lyrics as a nod to the Ramones. It also helped because he couldn't think of any other words. The band played All The Small Things on Saturday Night Live on January 8, 2000. This was also used in these TV shows: In The Dark ("The Big Break" - 2019) Family Guy ("It's A Trap!" - 2011) Boston Legal ("'Til We Meat Again" - 2005) Meet The Barkers ("It's Moving Day For The Barkers!" - 2005) Tru Calling ("Reunion" - 2004) Buffy The Vampire Slayer ("Something Blue" - 1999) And these movies: Hope Springs (2003) Clockstoppers (2002) Charlie's Angels (2000) US singer Mike Geier covered "All The Small Things" for the 2022 UK John Lewis Christmas advert. The commercial, sountracked by Geier's delicate version of the song, follows a middle-aged man learning how to skateboard. The UK department store John Lewis' Christmas ad has become a staple of the festive period. In the past, it has featured songs by the likes of Taken By Trees, Ellie Goulding, Slow Moving Millie, Gabrielle Aplin, Lily Allen, Tom Odell, Aurora, Vaults, Elbow, Dan Smith and Celeste. Near the end of the video, we see some of the band's devoted fans holding up signs, including one that says "Travis I'm Pregnant." To announce her baby news, Travis Barker's wife, Kourtney Kardashian, held up a similar sign at the band's June 16, 2023 concert in Los Angeles. "What's My Age Again?" was inspired by blink bass player Mark Hoppus, who was often told (usually by women) that he was immature. By the end of the song, the meaning becomes clear: It's OK, you shouldn't care what people think of you. The original title was "Peter Pan Complex," but their record company (MCA) changed it during production because they thought the audience wouldn't understand (a "Peter Pan Complex" describes someone who doesn't want to grow up). The band was not happy with this decision. In the What's My Age Again video, the band members are naked and causing all kinds of mischief. Adult film star Janine Lindemulder also appears, which got a lot of attention. Responding to a question about nudity in the clip, Mark Hoppus said, "The scene with the butt shots, when we were running down the street, were actually the only real nude scenes. We wore skin-colored Speedos for most of the scenes and when we were running, I realized how unattractive male genitals are. Everything dangling and such. I didn't think I could be embarrassed easily, but I really was." While the nudity was concealed in comedic ways throughout the video, at the end of the video it is uncensored. This is the first Blink single to feature Travis Barker on drums. The former Aquabats stickman filled in for their original drummer, Scott Raynor, while he was MIA during a mini tour of the West Coast in mid-1998. After Raynor was fired for his excessive drinking, Barker became his permanent replacement. Janine Lindemulder also appears on the Enema Of The State album cover in a nurse uniform. Since hooking up with blink-182 for the video and album artwork, the porn actress has led a colorful life. In the early 2000s, Lindemulder was married to West Coast Choppers founder Jesse James before he wed Sandra Bullock. However, their marriage ended after Lindemulder was arrested for assaulting James. She was arrested again on tax evasion charges in 2008 and sentenced to spend six months in a federal prison. In 2011, Lindemulder found herself in trouble with the law again after sending threatening emails and voicemails to her former husband. blink-182 acolytes Simple Plan were heavily influenced by What's My Age Again, as were many pop-punk bands of the '00s. Their lead singer, Pierre Bouvier, says "What's My Age Again" and "Basket Case" are the defining songs of the genre. "Those two songs paved the way for bands like Simple Plan and Good Charlotte and New Found Glory, and all the ones that came afterward, like Yellowcard,"... "I think we owe a huge debt of gratitude to those two songs - those are the ones that really solidified the pop-punk genre and created a whole scene for us." The opening riff of What's My Age Again was inspired by the bass intro for Green Day's 1995 song "J.A.R. (Jason Andrew Relva)." Hoppus explained to Less Than Jake co-frontman Chris Demakes on his Chris Demakes A Podcast he was trying to play it on his guitar but messed up the progression and played it incorrectly. However, he thought the end result was "kinda cool" and it became the basis for the start of this track. In early pressings of the Enema Of The State album, Janine Lindemulder's nurse's hat on the cover has a red cross, the symbol of the American Red Cross. blink-182 had the cross removed on later pressings when the organization told them it violated the Geneva Convention. blink-182 already had a reputation for their juvenile antics on tour, which involved crass jokes and asking the ladies in the crowd to "show their boobies." After the album blew up and the spotlight shone more brightly on the band, the latter request got them in a bit of hot water in the press, who claimed they were misogynists. Hoppus thought the claim was overblown, considering what he witnessed from other acts that they toured with. "We were on the Warped tour with Ice-T," he told Melody Maker in 1999, "and he's up onstage going, 'This next song's called 'Shut Up And Suck Dick, Bitch.' We get up there and go, 'Hey, we like boobies and everyone's like, 'Blink are sexist!' I think we're easy targets because we're three suburban white kids." I think we're easy targets because we're three suburban white kids. I think we're easy targets because we're three suburban white kids. Mark Hoppus' band +44 sometimes covered What's My Age Again when they toured. The band performed What's My Age Again on the January 8, 2000 episode of Saturday Night Live. This was used on the sitcom Two Guys, A Girl And A Pizza Place ("Au Revoir Pizza Place" - 1999) and the romantic comedy Loser (2000), starring Jason Biggs and Mena Suvari. Adam's Song is a departure for Blink-182, a skate-punk trio known for their goofy antics and love of toilet humor. The band's bass player, Mark Hoppus, wrote it when he was in a state of depression about being on tour and having no one to go home to. "Tom [DeLonge, guitarist] and Travis [Barker, drummer] always had girlfriends waiting back home, so they had something to look forward to at the end of the tour. But I didn't, so it was always like, I was lonely on tour, but then I got home and it didn't matter because there was nothing there for me anyway," he told Rolling Stone in 2000. Although the lyrics to Adam's Song unfold like a suicide note, the end of the song is a message that things will get better - which was true for Hoppus, who met his future wife on the set of the Enema Of The State video "All The Small Things." Hoppus was also influenced by a tale of teen suicide. Guitarist Tom DeLonge explained: "The story behind that is Mark read a letter someone sent him as an email, that a kid wrote before he committed suicide to his parents. We kind of got together and wrote this sad, slow song. It came out sadder than we ever thought it would, which is good too. Any song that moves you is good. Some people listen to it and go 'Wow, that's a real bum-out of a song.' But it's one of those things, a story of a kid not being happy in his life, crossed with us being really lonely on tour. At the end of it there's a better way out, there are better things to do than kill yourself." The lyrics, "I traced the cord back to the wall, no wonder it was never plugged in at all," were inspired when guitarist Tom Delonge was playing in his garage and he and his amp were in a puddle. Luckily, the amp was not plugged in or he could have been electrocuted. The line, "I took my time, I hurried up, the choice was mine, I didn't think enough," refers to the 1991 Nirvana's song "Come As You Are." There, the line is, "Take your time, hurry up, the choice is yours, don't be late." Mark Hoppus explained during a Twitter Q&A session that one of the lyrics referred back to an incident in his childhood days when his parents were "headed for divorce." Remember the time that I spilled the cup Of apple juice in the hall "They were arguing in their room behind a closed door and I was in the hallway listening, frightened, to their muffled voices," Hoppus said. "Suddenly the noise stopped, their door opened, and I ran, spilling my apple juice." The song came under fire after 17-year-old Greg Barnes played it on repeat as he committed suicide in his family's garage. Barnes, a Columbine High School student, was grieving the loss of his best friend who was murdered in the mass shooting at the school a year earlier. The band was devastated by the news, but took to MTV to stress the song's anti-suicide theme. Hoppus told MTV News: "I was actually out shopping, and management called me up and told me the story of what happened, and I was like, 'But that's an anti-suicide song!' It felt awful. I mean, the things that the kid had had to go through in his life were very saddening, and then to end it that way was really depressing. But 'Adam's Song,' the heart of the song is about having hard times in your life, being depressed, and going through a difficult period, but then finding the strength to go on and finding a better place at the other side of that." According to Travis Barker, despite the song's anti-suicide message, its title was inspired by a sketch from the '90s comedy series Mr. Show where the metal band Titannica plays a song encouraging a fan to commit suicide. This was the album's third single, following "What's My Age Again?" and "All The Small Things." It peaked at #2 on the Modern Rock chart. The album was produced by Jerry Finn, who mixed Green Day's hit 1994 album, Dookie, and produced Rancid's And Out Come The Wolves... in 1995. Punk rock was heading towards a more polished sound, and Blink hoped Finn would help take them to the next level. "He was involved with the cooler punk rock bands that were doing really big, produced albums," DeLonge told Wondering Sound in 2014. "So that was the thing to do, was to elevate the art form, and we wanted to be on par with the most elevated." The band worked with Finn through two more albums until he died of a brain hemorrhage in the summer of 2008. Roger Joseph Manning Jr., a session musician who played in Beck's backing band for several years, played piano on the track. The music video, directed by Liz Friedlander (Celine Dion, Deftones), features the band performing in a warehouse decorated with photos that tell stories of quiet desperation from unnoticed folks in their vicinity - from a man being left alone after an argument with his girlfriend at a Blink show to a sad-looking woman attempting to make a phone call outside of a convenience store where the guys browse magazines inside. For Friedlander, it was important to highlight the people who typically go unnoticed in our day-to-day routines. "We never know what's going on in other people's lives - people who we have relationships with, but also the people you sit next to at a concert or pass on the street, these humans you brush up against," she told NPR in 2018. "We all are dealing with our stuff, and we don't look, and don't see, and so then we don't notice." This was used in the 2022 movie Good Mourning, starring Colson Baker and Megan Fox. It was also featured in the TV shows Daria ("Just Add Water" - 1999, "Of Human Bonding" - 2000) and Roswell ("Blind Date" - 2000).

Funkadelic Bring The Funk Album: Mothership Connection (1975) Night Of The Thumpasorus Peoples Album: Mothership Connection (1975) by Parliament The collective's origins date back to the doo-wop group the Parliaments, formed by Clinton during the late 1950s in suburban New Jersey. By the late 1960s, Clinton had gained experience as a producer-writer for Motown Records and, inspired by artists such as Jimi Hendrix, Sly Stone, and Frank Zappa, he relocated to Detroit and enlisted musicians from his New Jersey days in his own two sister bands Parliament and Funkadelic; the first would go on to develop a commercially successful style of science fiction–inspired funk, while the second pursued a heavier sound which blended funk with psychedelic rock. The name "Parliament-Funkadelic" became the catch-all term for the dozens of related musicians recording and touring different projects in Clinton's orbit, including the female vocal spinoff groups the Brides of Funkenstein and Parlet. Mothership Connection is the fourth album, released on December 15, 1975 on Casablanca Records. This concept album is often rated among the best Parliament-Funkadelic releases, and was the first to feature horn players Maceo Parker and Fred Wesley, previously of James Brown's backing band the J.B.'s. Mothership Connection became Parliament's first album to be certified gold and later platinum. It was supported by the hit "Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof off the Sucker)," the band's first million-selling single. The Library of Congress added the album to the National Recording Registry in 2011, declaring that it "has had an enormous influence on jazz, rock and dance music." "Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof off the Sucker)" is a funk song by Parliament. It was released as a single under the name "Tear the Roof off the Sucker (Give Up the Funk)". It was the second single to be released from Parliament's 1975 album Mothership Connection (following "P. Funk (Wants to Get Funked Up)"). With its anthemic sing-along chorus, it is one of the most famous P-Funk songs. It also became Parliament's first certified million-selling single, going Gold in 1976. The album is held together by an outer-space theme. Describing the concept, George Clinton said "We had put black people in situations nobody ever thought they would be in, like the White House. I figured another place you wouldn't think black people would be was in outer space. I was a big fan of Star Trek, so we did a thing with a pimp sitting in a spaceship shaped like a Cadillac, and we did all these James Brown-type grooves, but with street talk and ghetto slang." The album's concept would form the backbone of P-Funk's concert performances during the 1970s, in which a large spaceship prop known as the Mothership would be lowered onto the stage. BBC Music described the album as a pioneering work of Afrofuturism "set in a future universe where black astronauts interact with alien worlds." Journalist Frasier McAlpine stated: "As a reaction to an increasingly fraught 1970s urban environment in which African-American communities faced the end of the optimism of the civil rights era, this flamboyant imagination (and let's be frank, exceptional funkiness) was both righteous and joyful." Vocals - George Clinton Horns - Fred Wesley, Maceo Parker, Michael Brecker, Randy Brecker, Boom, Joe Farrell Bass guitar - Bootsy Collins, Cordell Mosson Guitars - Garry Shider, Michael Hampton, Glenn Goins, Bootsy Collins Drums and percussion - Tiki Fulwood, Jerome Brailey, Bootsy Collins, Gary Cooper Keyboards - Bernie Worrell (Minimoog, Wurlitzer electric piano, ARP Pro Soloist and String Ensemble, RMI Electra Piano, Hammond organ, grand piano, Fender Rhodes, Clavinet Backing vocals and handclaps - Gary Cooper, Debbie Edwards, Taka Kahn, Archie Ivy, Bryna Chimenti, Rasputin Boutte, Pam Vincent, Debra Wright, Sidney Barnes

American Music Album: Why Do Birds Sing? (1991) Blister In The Sun Album: Violent Femmes (1982) Color Me Once Album: The Crow: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (1994) by Violent Femmes In 1991,"American Music"reached No. 2 on Billboard's alternative rock chart, making it the most commercially successful single ever for the Violent Femmes. Gordon Gano populated the song with dozens of lyrical couplets that sound familiar, but are largely nonsensical when strung together — sections about being born too late, lamenting the lack of a prom date, and having done too many drugs, for example. Taken altogether, "American Music" is an elaborate pastiche of subtle homages to American music — it's a '60s-style pop song about pop music written and produced to sound like a slick, '60s-style pop song. In its first form, "American Music" was a typical Violent Femmes loud-acoustic number inspired by the Ramones, a punk band with a sound alluding to that of '60s girl groups. "But [drummer] Victor [DeLorenzo] thought that Ramones approach wasn't right for the song and said, 'Why don't we do it as a shuffle?'" bassist Brian Ritchie told Radio Milwaukee. Then the band got to work. "There is a lot of arranging on that song. We put many, many pop music and rock references into the melody of that song," Ritchie said. There are some Beach Boys motifs, and the use of sleigh bells was taken from the production work of Phil Spector. The rapid tempo escalation at the song's end is a nod to "Heroin" by the Velvet Underground. Blister In The Sun was Written by Violent Femmes lead singer Gordan Gano. Body and beats I stain my sheets I don't even know why My girlfriend, she's at the end She is starting to cry Gano says it isn't, and that he didn't hear that interpretation until years later. "I don't think there's a whole lot to understand with the lyrics," he told the Village Voice. "But I can see where people could get that idea." Gano is coy in discussing Blister In The Sun, but he has explained that it's about the strung out feeling that comes from drug abuse. The girlfriend is at her wit's end because he keeps staining the sheets, as he lacks sexual control. Blister In The Sun is the first song on the first Violent Femmes album, introducing the band with the famous guitar riff and snare hits. The band made inroads with songs like this one about adolescent insecurities delivered in a deprecating tone. Gordon Gano was just 19 when the album was released. Blister In The Sun had a cult following and was favorite on American college radio in the '80s. In the early '90s, as "alternative" and "modern rock" radio stations went on the air, it got a lot of airplay because it was considered a classic of the genre. The album gradually sold over one million copies and earned the Violent Femmes a formidable fan base. The line, "Big hands I know you're the one" is in the song because Gano has small hands. In the song, he's in a self-loathing state where he knows the girl is just going to take up with some big-handed guy. In 2007, Blister In The Sun was used in commercials for the fast food purveyor Wendy's. Gordon Gano authorized its use, which triggered a lawsuit by the group's bass player Brian Ritchie, who stated: "I don't like having my sound misappropriated to sell harmful products, such as fast food… that's not why we made the music. It should not be hijacked." Ritchie cited misappropriation of jointly owned intellectual property as the basis for his suit. Ritchie also blasted Gano in the publication OnMilwaukee, where he wrote, "When you see dubious or in this case disgusting uses of our music you can thank the greed, insensitivity and poor taste of Gordon Gano, it is his karma that he lost his songwriting ability many years ago, probably due to his own lack of self-respect as his willingness to prostitute our songs demonstrates. Neither Gordon (vegetarian) nor me (gourmet) eat garbage like Wendy's burgers." The band was still touring when this went down, but they broke up soon after. They didn't return to action until 2013, when they played the Coachella festival. Blister In The Sun was featured in the 1997 John Cusack film Grosse Pointe Blank. The soundtrack includes two versions of the song, the original 1982 release and a remake entitled "Blister 2000." The remake is slower and has kind of a funky instrumental sax solo in the middle. A multi-instrumental cover of Blister In The Sun was used in a 2012 television commercial for the Hewlett-Packard DV6T notebook. In the ad, the song in played in various styles, including gospel, Mariachi and metal. The barefoot child peeking into an old building on the album cover is three-year-old Billie Jo Campbell, who photographer Ron Hugo spotted walking with her mother in Los Angeles. Speaking to MTV News in 2007, Campbell recalled: "I remember looking into that building, and they kept telling me there are animals in there. I had no idea there were photographers there. I was pissed off that I couldn't see the animals." The Violent Femmes album went Gold four years after its release and reached Platinum sales status four years later, despite never reaching the top 150 of the Billboard 200 album chart. Gordon Gano wrote Blister In The Sun for a woman he met at a poetry reading. "She wanted to form a band like The Plasmatics, and maybe I'd play guitar, and I wanted a song I could offer," he told Mojo magazine. "But the rehearsal got canceled and I never heard from her again. I hear she joined a cult and moved to Canada." Color Me Once (1994) Color Me Once was released as part of The Crow: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack and is one of the more mellow Violent Femmes tracks. The song reflects on a relationship that's lost its color and features some great slide guitar work from Gordon Gano. It is about as close to a country song as the Femmes ever got and is a welcome change of pace from some of their more frantic material.

The Pusher Album: Steppenwolf (1968) Don't Step On The Grass, Sam Album: The Second (1968) by Steppenwolf The Pusher is about a drug dealer. It is one of the first songs to deal with harsh realities of drug use, and condemns "the pusher" as a heartless criminal who is only after your money. Hoyt Axton wrote The Pusher after one of his friends died of a drug overdose. Axton struggled with addiction for much of his life and was keen on exposing the dangers, which he did on "The Pusher" and on another song recorded by Steppenwolf: "Snowblind Friend." Axton had a viable solo career at the time, but when his album My Griffin Is Gone flamed out in 1969, he focused on writing for other artists and landed a #1 when Three Dog Night did "Joy To The World," which Steppenwolf rejected. In the mid-'60s, "The Pusher" was popularized by a Canadian group called The Sparrows, who played it as a long jam during their concerts. Three members of that group - lead singer John Kay, organist Goldy McJohn, and drummer Jerry Edmonton - formed Steppenwolf in 1967 and recorded a much shorter, more radio-friendly version for their first album, released in 1968. In an interview with John Kay, he explained how he came across the song. "In the summer of 1964, after having been an East Coast guy in Toronto, and later in Buffalo, New York, I was in Los Angeles," he said. "This was the folk music revival, and I played in little coffeehouses. But the places where the pros played were The Ash Grove - which was where traditional people like Son House performed - and The Troubadour in West Hollywood. I hung out there in order to learn from the pros that played there. I hung out there so much that Doug Weston, the owner of The Troubadour, said, 'I can use you at the box office. I'll pay you a buck an hour.' But the main reason for me to be there was to learn, and one of the guys that played there regularly was Hoyt Axton. I immediately liked what he played - a bluesy-styled acoustic guitar. And he had a voice that I really liked. He wrote songs that connected, and one of them, of course, was 'The Pusher,' which brought down the house every time he played it. It's a simple three-chord song, and I learned it. I did not really meet Hoyt at that time, even though I was hanging around, so when I hitchhiked back to the East Coast with my guitar on my shoulder and wound up in Toronto in a coffeehouse, 'The Pusher' had become part of my solo acoustic repertoire and found its way into The Sparrows, which was the Canadian band I joined. So, when The Sparrows eventually migrated from Toronto through New York and to LA and busted up there, from the ashes of that band was formed Steppenwolf." Along with Steppenwolf's "Born To Be Wild," "The Pusher" was featured in the 1969 movie Easy Rider, starring Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper. The film is considered a landmark of '60s counterculture, and using this song in the movie was important because it portrayed the downside of doing drugs. The lyrics certainly "pushed" the limits as to what was acceptable for broadcast in 1968. It was far from the first song to make abundant and obvious drug references, but it was the first major release to include the phrase "God damn," which appears in the line, "God damn the pusher man." The following year, the Grateful Dead included the epithet in their song "Uncle John's Band." The Second is the second studio album released in October 1968 on ABC Dunhill Records. Track 5, last song on Side one. The background of the original ABC LP cover was a shiny "foil", in contrast to later (MCA Records) LP issues and the modern CD sleeve. Steppenwolf John Kay – lead vocals, rhythm guitar, harmonica Michael Monarch – lead guitar Goldy McJohn – organ, piano Rushton Moreve – bass Jerry Edmonton – drums, vocals, co-lead vocals on "Don't Step on the Grass, Sam"

This Is It Album: Keep The Fire (1979) Footloose Album: Footloose Soundtrack (1984) I'm Alright Album: Caddyshack Soundtrack (1980) by Kenny Loggins Kenny Loggins and Michael McDonald wrote This Is It after Kenny's father had a serious heart problem and didn't know what to do about it. So they came up with this song about a man who is suffering terrible pain, looks to find his miracle and needs to "stand up and fight." After Loggins won a Grammy for the song in 1981 (Best Male Pop Vocal) he played it for his father, who lived four more years. Michael McDonald sang backup and played keyboards on This Is It. The two also collaborated on "What a Fool Believes." McDonald would go on to write several other songs for Loggins (and vice versa). The gospel singer Kirk Franklin rewrote this song as "Declaration (This is It)" for his 2007 album, The Fight Of My Life. Franklin's version is about faith in God. Kenny Loggins spoke to American Songwriter magazine November/December 1987 about this song: "The best musical statements are usually the ones that aren't calculated and the ones that come out in the largest chunks. Michael McDonald and I must have written 'This Is It' four times. The first three times it was a love song, 'Baby I this, baby I that…,' and we both said, 'Eh! This is boring. This song is not working as a love song.' Then I had a fight with my dad when he was going into the hospital because he gave me the feeling that he was ready to check out. He'd given up, he wasn't thinking in terms of the future, and I was so pissed at him. It was real emotional. That afternoon, I was meeting with Michael to work on new tunes and I walked in and said, 'Man, I got it. It's 'This Is It.' And Michael said, 'This is it?' I said, 'Trust me. This is it.' But that one took a while. And then one review said it was your average boy-girl song and the writer didn't understand why people were making such a big deal out of it. The fact of the matter was, he didn't understand the song and it didn't move him because he wasn't in a situation to be moved. But immediately after that, I got a letter from a girl who had just recently gotten out of the hospital from a life-and-death situation and that was her anthem. She was holding onto it. That means so much more to me. She hadn't read the press about my father or anything. All she knew was that the song was on the nose for her, exactly what Michael and I intended. That makes you feel like you're doing something important." Nas sampled this on "We Will Survive," a track from his chart-topping 1999 album, I Am.... This Is It was Loggins' first single to make the R&B chart, where it peaked at #19. It also went to #17 on the Adult Contemporary chart and #11 on the Billboard Hot 100. This was used on the sitcom WKRP In Cincinnati ("Venus Rising" - 1980). It was also featured in the movies Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues (2013) and Stay Cool (2009). Loggins and McDonald were spooked after their first collaboration, "What A Fool Believes," became a hit for McDonald's band The Doobie Brothers and won a pair of Grammys for Song of the Year and Record of the Year. Fearing they couldn't top their first hit, they put off working together again for a while until Loggins insisted they meet up and write "a shitty song" to shake out their nerves. They ended up writing "This Is It." Footloose was the theme from the movie of the same name starring Kevin Bacon in his breakout role; Rob Lowe and Tom Cruise also tried out for the part. He plays a teenager who moves to a small town where dancing is illegal. Dean Pitchford, who wrote the screenplay to the film and the lyrics to all the songs in the movie, got the idea from a 1979 newspaper article about the town of Elmore City, Oklahoma, where a law against dancing was on the books since the 1800s. The 14 high school seniors decided they wanted a prom, and got the town council to overturn the antiquated interdiction so they could dance. Pitchford visited Elmore City to research his screenplay, where he spent a week immersing himself in their culture. Pitchford was an actor, appearing in stage productions of Godspell and Pippin before getting a chance to write lyrics for songs in the 1980 movie Fame. He started working on Footloose when he was a staff songwriter for Warner Brothers Publishing. For a while it looked like 20th Century Fox was going to pick up the screenplay, but it ended up being produced by Paramount, who were rewarded with $80 million in ticket sales from the film, which cost about $8 million to make. Dean Pitchford called his screenplay "Cheek To Cheek" as a placeholder for a real title. Once it became clear that studios were interested, he had to come up with a real title. In a 2012 Songfacts interview, Pitchford explained: "I really had to come up with a better title. So I did what I do with lyric writing: I took a yellow legal tablet, and any ideas that I had, I did not edit. I just wrote down, line after line after line. I filled page after page after page with variations and ideas that I had for it. About Day 2, I wrote down 'footloose and fancy free,' and then I wrote down 'footloose,' and then separately 'fancy free.' When I went back over the list, I think I had four that I thought might be good ideas. But 'Footloose' was by far my favorite. I typed up hypothetical title pages, and I put, 'this title by Dean Pitchford,' as the title of the new screenplay. Then I put the four of them in a stack, and I put 'Footloose' on the bottom. I took them into a meeting with Craig (Melnick) and Dan (Zadan, producers at Fox), and I said, 'Here are some ideas for the title.' They looked at number one, they went, 'Okay. All right.' And they flipped it over, and number two, and they flipped it over, and number three, 'Okay.' And then they flipped over the last one, which was 'Footloose by Dean Pitchford,' and they lit up like a Christmas tree. I had deliberately done it that way, because it was my favorite and I was saving it for the end. And they felt what I felt, which was it was just such an interesting looking word and it didn't mean anything, but it did. And all those 'O's' gave it a visual kind of punch. We all just went for it. It sort of sold itself. I certainly didn't have an idea for a song, because I hadn't yet gotten together with Kenny Loggins. But it's one of those interesting words that looks good on paper - you see it scrawled across a billboard, and it sells itself." Kenny Loggins was a big star and helped make Caddyshack a huge success with his song "I'm Alright" in 1980. In 1982, he had a hit with "Don't Fight It," which he wrote with Pitchford and Steve Perry, who also sang on the track. Getting Loggins for the title track was huge for Pitchford, who had never written a screenplay before and was trying to sell a movie based around nine songs - not a popular concept at the time. Losing Loggins could have derailed the entire project, and when Kenny broke a rib from a fall he took at a show in Provo, Footloose almost met its doom. Loggins had to take time off to recover, and the only chance for Dean to write with him was during his engagement at Lake Tahoe, Nevada, where he was performing before heading to Asia. Said Pitchford: "Paramount was chomping at the bit. They wanted to know that Kenny Loggins was going to be doing the title song, and if he wasn't then we had to move on and get somebody else. So it became absolutely vital that as soon as Kenny was back on his feet, I had to go and seal the deal, and the only place that we could seal the deal, he was going to attempt to get himself back on his feet in Tahoe, play one last engagement in the States, and then go off to Asia. So it was decided that although Kenny lived at the time in the L.A. area, I should fly to Tahoe, and during the days when he was playing a show at night, we would try to at least get the beginning of a song so that I could go back to Paramount and say, 'Look, Kenny Loggins is pregnant, he is on board.' So I flew up to Tahoe in January of 1983, I think. I flew up sick, and I proceeded to get sicker and sicker and sicker while I was there. I had strep throat, as it turned out, but I could not let on to Kenny that I had strep throat, because I didn't want him going, 'Ooo, I can't come to your room, we can't be doing that.' And he was indeed coming to my room, because his wife Eva was there, and they had three kids at the time. I think she had given birth to their third, Isabella, so there were two little boys and a baby in his room. So that was not a place to work. So each day he would come to my room with a guitar and he was still taped up, with gauze and tape around his midriff while his rib was healing. He would show up with a guitar and he would ease himself into a chair, and it was obvious that sitting down was painful - if he was standing he was fine. I was spraying my throat full of Chloraseptic to kill the pain and taking decongestants so it didn't sound like I had a cold or any kind of problems. I was running a fever, like 101, but I wasn't going to let on to him, because I didn't want him running out of my hotel room. I think it was two or three days we kept up this charade with him showing up on his painkillers and me on my painkillers, and us getting the gist of the song. We wrote the verses and the chorus melodies, we wrote the first verse, and we knew what we were going to do for the chorus. Then he went off and he left me with the melody for 'I'm Free,' which is his other contribution to the movie. While he was gone, I wrote the rest of the lyric to 'Footloose,' except the bridge. We finished the bridge after he came back to the States and I went over to his house, which may have been in the Valley. I was newish to L.A. so I was kind of foggy on where the neighborhoods were. But we wrote two verses and two choruses in advance, and then put the 'First we got to turn you around,' all that stuff was the final addition that completed the song." A key songwriting device on Footloose is the use of various names: Louise, Jack, Marie and Milo. Marie was Dean Pitchford's mother; Milo was Loggins' idea because he liked the sound of the vowels. Pitchford explained: "Once I had cracked the back of the song with the 'Oo-wee, Marie, shake it shake it for me,' once we had the idea of using names throughout the chorus and calling out, 'Jack, get back, come on before we crack,' once that had been set up as a convention, he threw out Milo because he liked the way that the words felt in his mouth. And there may have been one or two other lines that he came up with. And he did that on several other songs that we wrote. Like, we did a song for his next album called 'Let There Be Love,' and he gave me a couple of not even lines, at least the ends of lines. The word that he wanted the line to end on, or the word that he wanted the high note to be on. So it was like somebody stepping up to a canvas and putting a couple of strokes of paint on and saying, 'Okay, now go finish the painting,' and you having to figure out how to incorporate the strokes of paint into the ultimate picture." There were nine original songs the Footloose movie, and six of them were Top 40 US hits. The film was released on February 17, 1984, and the week of April 14, four songs from the movie were in the Top 40: the title track, "Let's Hear It For The Boy" (by Deniece Williams, it also peaked at #1), "Holding Out For A Hero" (Bonnie Tyler) and "Dancing in the Sheets" (Shalamar). "Almost Paradise" entered the chart in May and became a #1 Adult Contemporary hit; the last single was the other one from Kenny Loggins, "I'm Free (Heaven Helps The Man)." Another popular song in the film that was not released as a single was "The Girl Gets Around" by Sammy Hagar. Dean Pitchford wrote the lyrics to all of these songs with a variety of co-writers. He knew what kind of songs he wanted in different part of the film, and he also wanted to avoid repetition. This led to a variety of styles and some serious crossover success. The soundtrack spent 10 weeks at #1, knocking Michael Jackson's Thriller album from the top spot in the US. We know it doesn't make a lot of sense, but we really thought Kenny Loggins was "punching my car" and kicking off his "Sundance shoes," when he was really punching his card and putting on his Sunday shoes (which goes along with the religious theme in the movie - church shoes aren't good for dancing). When we asked Pitchford about the way Loggins sang his words, Dean replied: "The way that Kenny sings, I was just so in love with the way that his voice worked around the words, I was never really aware that they were hard to understand, because I knew what the words were, and I never called him on that. But I would imagine maybe if you were listening to the song for the first time, there might be a couple of things that you go, 'Come again?'" Pitchford adds that as he got older, he got more particular about how his lyrics were sung. He even asked Barbra Streisand to redo a vocal on his song "If I Never Met You" to clarify a word, which she graciously did. After the film was released, Dean Pitchford realized that in a way, he was telling his own story with Footloose. He told us, "I was asked to speak at a seminar in Seattle for a film festival. This was about two years after Footloose opened, the original movie in 1984. I was picked up at the airport by an intern who on the way into town was making conversation. He'd obviously done his research, and he asked me whether or not my writing Footloose had anything to do with the fact that when I was a teenager, my family had been uprooted - I had grown up in Honolulu and I moved to Kansas City, Missouri, where my father had gotten work, and I was really a fish out of water there. He asked me whether my choosing to write a story about a boy who was transplanted to a small Midwest town had anything to do with my having been transplanted myself. And I was stunned, because in the entire time that I had been writing that movie, making that movie, promoting that movie, I had never made that connection, and it took this guy who had done a little bit of research about my background to draw the line to that connection. I honestly had never thought of it." This single was released a few weeks ahead of the movie, and the video, which used scenes from the film, got a lot of airplay on MTV, building anticipation for the release. By the time the film hit theaters, the song was already in the Top 40, and it went to #1 on March 31, 1984, where it remained for three weeks. MTV played a key role in marketing the film, and movie studios tried to follow this template, enlisting major acts to record a song for their movies and producing slick videos with scenes from the movie, essentially creating a preview. Dean Pitchford refused to make a sequel to Footloose, but he did help turn it into a Broadway play that ran from 1998-2000. In 2011, a remake of the movie hit theaters, with the Country star Blake Shelton recording a new version of this title track. Shelton told The Boot about it: "It's like a lot of stuff from that era - it was rock at the time, but is pretty much what we hear on country radio today. So I knew that we didn't have to stray that far away from the original," said Shelton. "When I open my mouth, what comes out is country. It was going to sound country no matter what, but I didn't want it to be too different. There's two ways to bring back a song: one is to try to make it your own, and in this instance, you have to remove yourself from it and step into the role of what's best for the movie and that particular scene. There's really only one way to approach it when you think of it that way: a fun, uptempo, catchy version just like Kenny Loggins did." This was the biggest hit and the only #1 for Loggins. It exposed him to an international audience when the movie did well outside of America. Two years later, Loggins contributed "Danger Zone" to the Top Gun soundtrack. Loggins stated in 2007 that of all his soundtrack hits, this is the one he most likes performing. "It's such a lighthearted tune. It's like doing a Chuck Berry song every night," said Loggins. Kevin Bacon revealed to Conan O'Brien that he bribes DJ's at weddings with cash so they won't play the song. "I go to the disc jockey and hand him $20 and say, 'Please don't play that song,'" he told the talk show host. "Because, first off, a wedding is really not about me. It's about the bride and groom." In The Office episode "Jury Duty" (2012), Andy Bernard rocks out to this while he trashes the warehouse. Loggins told Professor of Rock that he took inspiration from a couple of his favorite songs. The drum groove was based on David Bowie's "Modern Love," and he got the idea for the chorus melody from Mitch Ryder's "Devil With A Blue Dress On." Nathan East's bassline also shares a similarity with a Little Richard classic. "Basically he took 'Lucille' out to the next level," Loggins told Professor of Rock. Loggins said the drum breakdown in the middle was created for the Simmons electronic drum kit that was just starting to become popular. It was arranged and played by Tris Imboden, who became Chicago's drummer in 1990. When Loggins wrote "I'm Alright" for Caddyshack, he was able to watch footage from the scene first but that wasn't the case with the Footloose theme. "This was the only time I wrote to a screenplay," he told Professor of Rock. "I love writing to the screenplay because then you're not held down. There was an advantage that when they danced, they danced to the real music instead of temp music - which is why white people have such a bad reputation about dancing 'cause they're always dancing to the wrong song and then you fill it in later." But according to Pitchford, Footloose wasn't ready by the time director Herbert Ross started shooting the film in Utah, so Ross and the choreographer did have to use a placeholder song for all of the "Footloose" sequences: a sped-up version of Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. Goode." Footloose was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song but lost to "I Just Called To Say I Love You," Stevie Wonder's song for the Gene Wilder movie The Woman In Red. Footloose was used on the sitcom Young Sheldon in the 2021 episodes "An Introduction To Engineering And A Glob Of Hair Gel" and "Crappy Frozen Ice Cream And An Organ Grinder's Monkey." This was also used in these TV shows: Mom ("Hot Butter And Toxic Narcissism" - 2019) The Final Space ("The Other Side" - 2019) Bloodline ("Part 30" - 2017) Grace And Frankie ("The Coup" - 2016) The Goldbergs ("The Dirty Dancing Dance" - 2016) It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia ("The Gang Hits The Slopes" - 2016) Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt ("Kimmy Kisses A Boy!" - 2015) Raising Hope ("The Father Daughter Dance" - 2014) Glee ("Girls (And Boys) On Film" - 2013) The Simpsons ("How The Test Was Won" - 2009) American Dad! ("Four Little Words" - 2007) Everybody Hates Chris ("Everybody Hates Promises" - 2006) Will & Grace ("Bacon And Eggs" - 2002) The Oblongs ("The Golden Child" - 2001) 3rd Rock From The Sun ("Dick's Big Giant Headache: Part 1" - 1999) South Park ("Roger Ebert Should Lay Off The Fatty Foods" - 1998) Quantum Leap ("Piano Man - November 10, 1985" - 1991) Fame ("The Heart Of Rock 'N' Roll" - 1984) And these movies: Me You Madness (2021) Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising (2016) Razzle Dazzle (2007) Not Another Teen Movie (2001) Romy And Michele's High School Reunion (1997) Summer Rental (1985) Taipei Story (1985) Kevin Bacon celebrated the end of the actors' strike in 2023 by posting a video where he reprises his "Footloose" dance from the movie. "I'm Alright" is the theme to the movie Caddyshack, and plays at the beginning and end of the film. The song is associated with the gopher who fends off the attacks of overeager and slightly deranged groundskeeper Carl Spackler (Bill Murray), who blows up most of the golf course in an attempt to kill the creature. After the blast, the gopher emerges, safe and sound, and dances to this song. Loggins saw a rough cut of the movie before he wrote the song. He used the character Danny Noonan, who was a caddy with hopes for a brighter future, as inspiration. Loggins told the St. Petersburg Times: "The character was trying to figure out where he fit. But at the same time he wanted people to leave him alone and let him find his own way. So I wanted to grab him and summarize that character, and that's what 'I'm Alright' is doing." According to Loggins, the rough cut was to a Bob Dylan song. (Perhaps "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)"?) Eddie Money was recording in a nearby studio, and Loggins convinced him to sing a line on this song. That's him in the background singing, "You make me feel good!" Money was unhappy that he never got credit for his contribution. "I'm not a fan of Kenny Loggins to tell you the truth," he told Cincinnati morning show host Kidd Chris of WEBN in 2014. "I sang the bridge in that. We were label mates, you know." Loggins also provided the theme to the 1988 movie Caddyshack II with his song "Nobody's Fool." Loggins couldn't help this movie, as it was reviled by Caddyshack fans who felt it desecrated the original. "I'm Alright" was used in a 2004 commercial for American Express where Tiger Woods plays Bill Murray's character from Caddyshack and battles the gopher, re-creating many of the scenes shot-for-shot. This time though, he catches the gopher with the help of a pest control expert who lures him out of his hole by playing "I'm Alright." When Loggins launches back into the chorus partway through the song, he stutters on the lyric, singing, "I- I'm Alright," which was a happy accident. "I actually misjudged the entrance. In the arrangement, I delayed that entrance but I forgot when I was doing the lead vocal," he told Rock History Music. Then he remembered when the Mamas & the Papas had a similar fortuitous flub in "I Saw Her Again," so he decided to keep it in. Loggins first met Jon Peters, the executive producer of Caddyshack, when he wrote the song "I Believe In Love" for Peters' 1976 production of A Star Is Born, starring Barbra Streisand. This was also used in these TV shows: The Simpsons ("Wad Goals" - 2021) Lucifer ("Who's Da New King Of Hell?" - 2019) American Dad! ("Francine's Flashback" - 2005) Futurama ("Obsoletely Fabulous" - 2003) The X-Files ("Je Souhaite" - 2000) Freaks And Geeks ("Pilot" - 1999) And in these movies: Zombieland: Double Tap (2019) Bring Me The Head Of Mavis Davis (1997) If you're gonna do a Caddyshack spoof, you're pretty much obligated to use this song. It shows up along with Serena Williams, Tony Romo, Alex Morgan, Brian Cox, Canelo Alvarez, Michael O'Keefe, Nneka Ogwumike and the gopher, in a 2023 commercial for Michelob Ultra set at Bushwood Country Club. The spot aired during the Super Bowl. almost 23,000 characters..

Shine On You Crazy Diamond Parts I Thru V Album: Wish You Were Here (1975) by Pink Floyd This is a tribute to Syd Barrett, an original member of Pink Floyd - notice the title, S-hine On Y-ou Crazy D-iamond. He was their lead guitarist and wrote most of their early hits, but he gradually went nuts and was kicked out of the band in 1968, three years after the group started. Drugs played a big role in his mental illness. During the final mixing sessions of this song in June of 1975, Barrett wandered into the studios, ready to help out. He was fat, bald, and as crazy as they remembered, but they let him stay for a while. Barrett wanted to rejoin the group, but they learned in 1967 and 1968 that having an insane member was not good for a band. Before he was kicked out, Barrett would get on stage and either refuse to play or play the same note over and over. According to the Pink Floyd autobiography A Saucerful of Secrets by Nicholas Schaffner, when Barrett came into the control room, the remaining members of Pink Floyd were listening to the finished recording of the album. This was the eve before Pink Floyd were going on a US tour. David Gilmour didn't recognize him at first - they hadn't seen him in years. Syd was fat, bald, had shaved eyebrows and was wearing a white trenchcoat with white shoes. When someone tried to break the ice by asking Syd how he had put on so much weight, he maniacally replied, "I've got a very large fridge in the kitchen, and I've been eating a lot of pork chops!" That was the last time any of the Pink Floyd members have seen him. Gilmour came up with four notes that became the basis for this. Roger Waters thought they conveyed emotions Barrett must have been feeling, and wrote lyrics about him. Waters sang lead. He recorded the vocal line by line over and over again, and killed his voice in the process. That's why English folk singer Roy Harper was brought in to sing "Have A Cigar." He was close friend of the band's, as well as Led Zeppelin. On the album Wish You Were Here, this is split into two parts, with "Have A Cigar," "Welcome To The Machine," and "Wish You Were Here" in between. It was going to be continuous, but Waters decided it should be split. This was very difficult to record. They redid it a few times before getting a version they liked. Dick Parry was brought in to play sax on this. He also played on "Us And Them" and "Money" from Dark Side of the Moon. Pink Floyd started playing this live over a year before the album came out. The band thought they could improve on songs if they played them at concerts before recording them. At the time, it was known as "Shine On." This was the last song Richard Wright got a writing credit for before Roger Waters kicked him out of the band during The Wall sessions 4 years later. A combination of Waters' increasing control over the group and Wright's mounting personal problems are what led to his departure. He would not rejoin the band until 1987, after Waters himself had left. In 1986, Waters left the band and became enraged when they continued on without him. At subsequent Pink Floyd shows, they played this with Gilmour on vocals. In The Simpsons episode "The Old Man and Lisa," Monty Burns meets a hippy at a recycling center and says to him, "Shine on you crazy diamond." Remember when you were young? You shone like the sun. Shine on, you crazy diamond Now there's a look in your eyes Like black holes in the sky Shine on, you crazy diamond You were caught in the crossfire Of childhood and stardom, Blown on the steel breeze Come on you target for faraway laughter; Come on you stranger, you legend, You martyr, and shine You reached for the secret too soon You cried for the moon Shine on, you crazy diamond Threatened by shadows at night And exposed in the light Shine on, you crazy diamond Well, you wore out your welcome With random precision Rode on the steel breeze Come on you raver, you seer of visions; Come on you painter, you piper, You prisoner, and shine Nobody knows where you are, How near or how far Shine on, you crazy diamond Pile on many more layers And I'll be joining you there Shine on, you crazy diamond And we'll bask in the shadow Of yesterday's triumph And sail on the steel breeze Come on you boy child, you winner and loser, Come on you miner for truth and delusion, And shine.

Donald Trump is not a Christian Kamala = Amalek... Amalek is the archetypal enemy of the Jews and the symbol of evil in Jewish religion and folklore. Nur Masalha, Elliot Horowitz, and Josef Stern suggest that the Amalekites represent an "eternally irreconcilable enemy" that wants to murder Jews. In post-biblical times, Jews associated contemporary enemies with Amalek or Haman and, occasionally, believed pre-emptive violence is acceptable against such enemies. Groups identified with Amalek include the Romans, Nazis, Stalinists, ISIS, and bellicose Iranian leaders such as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. More metaphorically, to some Hasidic rabbis (particularly the Baal Shem Tov), Amalek represents atheism or the cynical rejection of God, which leads to unethical hedonism. This is sometimes known as the "Amalekite doctrine". In contemporary times, religious Jews associate Amalek with violent antisemites, nihilism and Jewish doubt in God. During the Purim festival, the Book of Esther is read in commemoration of the salvation of Jewish people from Haman, who plotted to kill all Jews in the Persian Empire. It is customary for the audience to make noise and shout whenever "Haman" is mentioned, in order to desecrate his name, based on Exodus 17:14. It is also customary to recite Deuteronomy 25:17–18 on the Shabbat before Purim. (beginning in October 2023), Benjamin Netanyahu said that the Israeli government was "committed to completely eliminating this evil from the world", and he also stated: "You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible. And we do remember". At an argument to the International Court of Justice about allegations of genocide in the 2023 Israeli attack on Gaza, South Africa presented the comments as inciting genocide against the Palestinian people. Netanyahu denied that was his intention, stating the South African accusation reflected a "deep historical ignorance" since he was referring to Hamas, not Palestinians as a whole. Some commentators have discussed the ethics of the commandment to exterminate all the Amalekites, including children, and the presumption of collective punishment. It has also been described as genocidal, according to genocide scholars like Norman Naimark. Kluger believes that the extermination verses can be explained by the Israelites seeing the Amalekites as their "unwelcome brother" and the "rejected son", possessing all the negative qualities that the Israelites inherently saw within themselves, which Kluger sees as a form of self-hatred. However, she notes that the Hebrew Bible is surprisingly neutral when describing the Amalekites and that the texts do not provide an adequate explanation on why they were singled out for complete annihilation, compared to the Egyptians and Canaanites for example. Ergo... Everyone in Gaza according to Bibi is Amelek and it is a stated "religious" genocide.

Asshole Album: No Cure For Cancer (1993) by Dennis Leary The chorus is often heard on The Howard Stern Show. This song samples Dolly Parton's "Old Flame (Can't Hold A Candle to You)." The song reached #37 on MuchMusic's "50 Most Controversial Videos Of All Time" for its profanity, making fun of handicapped people, and threatening to destroy the environment. In a 2008 appearance on The Opie and Anthony Show, comedian Louis CK claimed that Leary stole his "I'm an asshole" routine, which was then expanded upon and turned into a hit song by Leary. On a later episode of the same show, Leary challenged this assertion by claiming that he (Leary) co-wrote the song with Chris Phillips. In North America, the music video for "Asshole" received airplay on MTV and MuchMusic in a censored form. In Australia, the song became a hit; it reached No. 2 on the ARIA Singles Chart, ended 1994 as Australia's 26th most successful single, earned a Platinum sales certification, and was voted No. 1 on the Triple J Hottest 100 poll of 1993. The song also found some success in New Zealand, where it peaked at No. 22 on the RIANZ Singles Chart, and in the United Kingdom, reaching No. 58 on the UK Singles Chart in January 1996. On August 3, 2016, Leary appeared on the US talk show The Late Late Show with James Corden, during which he performed an updated version of the song in character as Bill Clinton, in duet with James Corden playing a caricature of US Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and criticizing rival candidate Donald Trump. For broadcast, the "-hole" part of the title was bleeped, a fact that is discussed by Leary and Corden during the song.

Dixie Chicken Album: Dixie Chicken (1973) Spanish Moon Album: Feats Don't Fail Me Now (1974) this is the live version from their 1978 album Waiting for Columbus by Little Feat Dixie Chicken is of the "I've been there" variety. The story is of a man who meets the woman he believes is the love of his life in the lobby of the Commodore Hotel, and immediately makes a lifelong commitment to her, promising her the storied house on the edge of town with the white picket fence, but in the end she leaves him crying in his beer. The narrator is telling his story to a bartender, about how much he loved her and how badly he misses her. Then, one at a time, other guys in the bar start adding to his story until he realizes they'd all been scammed by the same girl. In the end, they're all singing in harmony about the "Dixie Chicken" and having a wistful but hearty laugh about all being part of this well-populated men's club. "Dixie Chicken" is the title track to Little Feat's third album, which sported a new lineup, with Kenny Gradney replacing Roy Estrada on bass, and conga player Sam Clayton and guitarist Paul Barrere added. Their new sound was less blues-rock and more New Orleans-style Dixieland, making the title apropos. Little Feat frontman Lowell George wrote this song with Martin Kibbee, who is credited as "Fred Martin." The pair were in a band together before Little Feat formed. Kibbee wrote the lyric, which was sparked when he drove past a sign in Los Angeles that said "Dixie Chicken" (apparently advertising a restaurant). He says that by the time he drove home, he had the lyric written in his head. Bonnie Bramlett of the duo Delaney & Bonnie sang lead on this with Lowell George. New Little Feat members Kenny Gradney and Sam Clayton had both been in Delaney & Bonnie's band. To promote this song, the band delivered fried chicken to radio stations with Lowell George in a chicken suit. The boxes read: "Finger Pickin' Good" - a play on the Kentucky Fried Chicken "Finger Lickin' Good" slogan - and had the girl from the album cover in place of Colonel Sanders. Like their first two albums, Dixie Chicken sold quite poorly at first, but the group was signed to Warner Bros., which tended to sign bands they believed in and give them time to find an audience. When Little Feat hit the road, they picked up momentum and found a following. Their next album, Feats Don't Fail Me Now, sold 500,000 copies, and their 1978 album, Waiting For Columbus, sold a million. The song "Dixie Chicken," little heard when it was first released, became a favorite on Album Oriented Rock radio, and later, on Classic Rock. Despite their success, it was a rough ride for Little Feat. Lowell George produced Dixie Chicken himself and dominated the album. His bandmates took more control of subsequent releases, but there was always a lot of tension. In 1979, the group broke up, and two months later George died while touring as a solo artist. Little Feat re-formed in 1987. The popular all-female country group The Dixie Chicks, which formed in 1989, took their name from Dixie Chicken. In 2020, they dropped the Dixie and became "The Chicks" in response to the #BlackLivesMatter movement (two weeks earlier, Lady Antebellum re-branded as Lady A). The word "Dixie" refers to the "Confederate-era" South. Garth Brooks recorded Dixie Chicken for his hit 1992 album The Chase. Surprisingly, the country singer had never heard the tune until the early '90s when he was listening to music on his tour bus and it started playing. Trisha Yearwood sang harmony on Brooks' version. "Spanish Moon" was written and sung by guitarist Lowell George, who was a creative powerhouse in the early years of Little Feat. The song is about a fictional place called the Spanish Moon - a seedy club with whiskey and bad cocaine, but a girl singer that made it worth it. There are many dangers at the Spanish Moon, but the ones likely to do you in are the women. Lowell George was an excellent storyteller and created the Spanish Moon from his imagination, but he lived through the vices he describes in the song, especially cocaine. Around this time, his addictions were starting to overpower him, his health started failing, and he developed hepatitis. Feats Don't Fail Me Now was the last Little Feat album where he was clearly the leader; his contributions to the band slowly tailed off, and in 1979 he released a solo album. While on tour supporting it, he died of a heart attack at 34. "Spanish Moon" is the only Little Feat song produced by Van Dyke Parks, famous for his work with The Beach Boys. Parks was friends with Lowell George, who wanted him to produce the Feats Don't Fail Me Now album. The band, though, was struggling financially and held on a tight leash by their record company, Warner Bros., which wasn't thrilled with Parks, known for blowing budgets quickly with his elaborate productions. They recorded "Spanish Moon" with Parks in the Sound Factory studios in Los Angeles, but after that recording, the band members dispersed to work as sidemen so they could earn a living: George went to New Orleans to work on Robert Palmer's album; keyboard player Bill Payne hooked on with The Doobie Brothers; and other members recorded for the reggae star Johnny Nash. The band pulled back together when one of their managers got them cheap studio time at a studio in Maryland that had just opened up. They completed the album there and got some money in their pockets when it did well. "Spanish Moon" was released as a single and became one of their most popular songs. Like John Fogerty, Lowell George was from Southern California but could make music that would make you think he was from Louisiana. "Spanish Moon" is a great example of his talent for swampy funk; Van Dyke Parks called it "vanilla grits." The Tower of Power horn section played on this track. "They were on the same label as us and I'd heard of them but had no idea what they sounded like," their sax player Emilio Castillo told Songfacts. "We walked into the session and met the producer, Van Dyke Parks, who was an extremely esoteric cat. One of the first things he said to us was: 'I want the horns on this track to sound the way it does when the cow pie hits the side of the barn.' We just looked at him in amazement and said, 'No problem.' He played us the track and I heard Lowell George singing for the first time along with that slow funk groove and it was mesmerizing. We were all immediately captivated by The Feats. In my opinion, the horn arrangement really took the track to another level. The introductory riff is priceless in that it sets the vibe for the whole song before you even hear the first verse and from there it just gets better and better with all these sneaky-sounding horn riffs appearing throughout the track. We wound up sitting in at live gigs with them later on and 'Spanish Moon' always brought the house down. ToP Horns played on several Little Feat albums but 'Spanish Moon' was always my favorite track. A live version appears on Little Feat's 1978 album Waiting for Columbus, recorded at four shows in London in 1977. It's one of the Little Feat songs Lowell George played on his ill-fated solo tour in 1979. Little Feat short-timer Fred White, half brother of Maurice White from Earth, Wind & Fire, played drums on this track. The band had parted ways with drummer Richie Hayward and brought White in to replace him. After a few months, they had second thoughts and brought Hayward back.

Thirteen uploaded Friday October 13th 2023 Glenn Danzig formed Danzig in New Jersey in 1987. The project is the singer's third major commercial venture, after the punk bands The Misfits and Samhain. In 2009, Danzig's song "Thirteen" was chosen by director Todd Phillips to open the highly successful movie The Hangover. In 2011, Danzig recorded a new song called "Black Hell" specifically for the sequel, The Hangover Part II. Danzig Written by: Glenn Danzig Album: 6:66: Satan's Child Released: 1999 Bad luck wind been blowin' on my back I was born to bring trouble wherever I'm at With the number '13' tattooed on my neck That ink starts to itch Black gon' turn to red I was born in the soul of misery And I never had me a name They just give me a number when I was young Got a long line of heartache I carry it well The list of lives I've broken Reach from here to Hell And a bad luck wind been blowin' on my back Pray you don't look at me And I pray I don't look back I was born in the soul of misery And I never had me a name They just give me a number when I was young Found me with a preacherman confessin' all I done Catch me with the devil playing 21 And a bad luck wind been blowin' on my back I was born to bring trouble wherever I'm at I was born in the soul of misery And I never had me a name They just give me a number when I was young When I was young When I was young When I was young Johnny Cash cover Written by: Glen Danzig Album: American Recordings Released: 1994

Hungry like the Wolf Album: Rio (1982) A View to a Kill Album: A View To A Kill Soundtrack (1985) by Duran Duran Hungry like the Wolf was the band's breakthrough hit in the US. It's success originated from MTV, which had only just come on air, showing their video of the band in the Sri Lanka jungle (they also shot the clips for "Lonely in Your Nightmare" and "Save a Prayer" on this trip). It was an early sensation particularly in the Deep South where the channel was being trialed. In a pre-MTV world where Duran Duran could be heard but not seen, it is unlikely that they would have broken through in America. Duran Duran were asked in an interview with Q magazine (February 2008) for their memories of the video. Drummer Roger Taylor recalled: "We'd go to Alabama or Texas and the girls would be screaming and the guys in cowboy hats would be looking at us with clenched fists. I don't suppose they'd seen so many guys in make-up pouting before." Singer Simon Le Bon added: "It worked for us though. Video made it possible to create a cult of personality across the globe. You arrive on a tour bus and they'd already seen us on a yacht in a video." In 1982, new synthesizers and sequencers were coming on the market that changed the landscape of Pop music, as groups like The Eurythmics and The Human League coaxed new sounds out of them. Duran Duran guitarist Andy Taylor was able to take advantage of the technology on Hungry like the Wolf, creating the distinctive track by linking a Roland 808 drum machine with a sequencer and a Roland Jupiter 8 keyboard. In an interview with Blender magazine, guitarist Taylor explained that the track "came from fiddling with the new technology that was starting to come in." According to the band's Blender interview, lead singer Simon Le Bon's lyrics were inspired by the fairy tale Little Red Riding Hood, which features the Big Bad Wolf. The first Grammy Award for Best Short Form Video was given at the 1984 ceremony, and it was given to Duran Duran as a joint award for "Hungry Like The Wolf" together with "Girls On Film." The video was loosely based on the movie Apocalypse Now, with the rest of the band searching for Simon Le Bon in an exotic locale. It was shot in the Sri Lanka city of Galle, with scenes of Simon running through a market. The night before the shoot, Le Bon went to a stylist to get blond highlights in his hair, but she botched the job and his hair turned orange. That's why he's wearing a hat in the video. Russell Mulcahy, who was Duran Duran's go-to director, did the video. If you were watching MTV in the early '80s, there's a good chance you would see his work - he even did the very first video the network aired: "Video Killed The Radio Star" by The Buggles. The lyric started with the title, which Simon Le Bon had written down in his notebook, inspired by Jim Morrison's "Lizard King" persona. The band's girlfriends contributed makeup that helped shape their look, and keyboard player Nick Rhodes' girlfriend Cheryl appeared on this song, providing the laugh at the beginning and the moaning at the end, possibly the sounds of the wolf sating his hunger. Cheryl also did the laughing you hear on "Rio." Speaking with the A.V.Club in a 2012 interview, John Taylor said the song was "written very quickly." He recalled: "It was a Saturday afternoon, we were in EMI's demo studio, a studio they had up in Manchester Square HQ, and I think Nick [Rhodes] and Andy [Taylor] were kind of messing around. Andy had the riff, Nick developed this sequence, Simon had a thing, Roger [Taylor] came in and played 'cause he'd just bought some Simmons drums, so that was where he got those big fills from. I came in, and they'd been working for maybe two hours, and I just knew exactly what to play. The song was probably written by cocktail hour. [Laughs.]" The outfit bassist John Taylor wore in the video was used as the basis for styling the character Sonny Crockett, played by Don Johnson on 1980s TV show Miami Vice. Also in 1982, the punk band X released a song called "The Hungry Wolf." That one was produced by Ray Manzarek of The Doors, who also directed a video for the song. "A View to a Kill" is the theme song to the 1985 James Bond movie of the same name starring Roger Moore and Grace Jones. It is the only theme from a Bond movie to hit #1 in America. The story behind A View to a Kill, according to the bassist John Taylor, was that he approached the longtime Bond producer, Albert R. 'Cubby' Broccoli, while extremely intoxicated when they were both at a party. He stated that he was a long time fan (Major Bond geek would be more accurate. An Aston Martin was said to be one of his first "rock star" purchases, and he frequently mentioned his Bond video collection in interviews) of the series, but the music for the last few movies had been mediocre. He then offered to have his band fix the problem and Broccoli took the idea under advisement. If you are a complete Duran Duran nut, you will notice during the video that there seems to be communication between three band members (Le Bon, Rhodes, and Roger Taylor), while the other two members (John and Andy Taylor) are doing things like shooting the deployed cameras and setting Rhodes's ear mike to explode. John and Andy were the members who left for Power Station. The other three made up the band Arcadia. A View to a Kill was the last single Duran Duran released before they took time off to pursue side projects. John and Andy Taylor joined Robert Palmer to form The Power Station, while Simon Le Bon, Nick Rhodes, and Roger Taylor formed Arcadia. A year later Le Bon, Rhodes and John Taylor continued recording as Duran Duran. Duran Duran performed A View to a Kill from the Philadelphia stage at Live Aid in 1985. At the time, it was the #1 song in the US, and their performance was the first song broadcast by ABC as part of their coverage of the event. MTV broadcast most of the show in the US, while the BBC aired it in England. Looking back at this song during a 2012 interview with the A.V.Club, John Taylor commented: "Bond songs have to be big songs, don't they? They have to have the grandiosity. It's like designing a Rolls-Royce. You want it to be completely state of the art, but it's always going to have the honking great radiator grill on the front. There's certain criteria that have to be fulfilled. But I think we nailed it with that song. We really did nail it." Being asked to perform the theme song for a James Bond movie is a great honor, but the requirement to include its title in the lyrics can be challenging. Just ask John Taylor. "To this day we are forever grateful that we didn't get Quantum Of Solace," he said.

All She Wants To Do Is Dance Album: Building The Perfect Beast (1984) Sunset Grill Album: Building The Perfect Beast (1984) by Don Henley Don Henley didn't write All She Wants To Do Is Dance - Danny Kortchmar did. Kortchmar spent much of the '70s playing guitar and piano on seminal albums by James Taylor (Sweet Baby James, J.T.), Warren Zevon (Excitable Boy), and Carole King (Tapestry). When Henley launched his solo career, he tapped Kortchmar's talents not just a musician, but also as a songwriter. Songs they wrote together include "Dirty Laundry," "New York Minute" and "I Can't Stand Still." Kortchmar also wrote some songs on his own for Henley, becoming one of the few writers whose words the Eagles founder would put to tape. "All She Wants to Do Is Dance" is one of these completely Kortchmar compositions. In a 2013 interview, Danny told how it came together: "I had the groove and the music going. That record was made back when the technology had just started to really take over in music. I had one of the first Yamaha DX 7s, which was a keyboard that was used a ton in the '80s, but we ended up luckily getting one of the first ones in the United States. It's a synthesizer keyboard, and I used it to get that sound that you hear the record starting with. I was fooling around with that and created a track at home while we were making one of those albums. The next morning I woke up and wrote the whole lyric in about 20 minutes - wrote the whole thing. It came very easily. I can't really tell you the process, just that the music suggested to me what I wanted and then it just came out very quickly." The '80s were a banner decade for Don Henley, formerly of the Eagles' fame, who in his solo career had eight charting Top 40 hits, and five of those made it into the Top-10. And that's just counting the Billboard Hot 100; when you count Adult Contemporary, Mainstream Rock, and Dance charts, Henley dominated half the decade. His second studio album Building the Perfect Beast spawned four charting singles, of which "All She Wants to Do Is Dance" is the second-highest. The song became a staple of Classic Rock radio and a favorite at Henley's concerts. Danny Kortchmar draws on classic literature for song inspiration. This one has two specific inspirations: 1) The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925) Says Kortchmar: "You've got this really rich couple that's oblivious to what's going on around them." 2) The Ugly American by Eugene Burdick and William Lederer (1958) Says Kortchmar: "A book about Americans coming into third-world countries and acting like they own the place." This is one of these songs that has been endlessly analyzed, but came very quickly for the writer. Kortchmar says he wasn't thinking very hard about the song when he wrote it - it "just came out." What came out, however, were some very introspective words that stand in contrast to a deliciously danceable tune. The lyrics are often interpreted as a critical observation of the rebel side of youth culture in America - kids more interested in partying than in their professed aims to change the world. The mid-Reagan years were seen as a period where - to twist an old metaphor - Rome fiddled while Nero burned. If this line of critique of social movements sounds familiar, you've probably heard the same thing said of every generation's protest movements from the 1960s' Yippies to the 2000s' 4chan's Anonymous. Dwelling a bit further on the lyrics: A "Molotov cocktail" is a kind of homemade fire-bomb. One popular recipe (and we're not telling you anything you can't find out in a hundred other websites out there) is gasoline mixed with melted styrofoam in a milk jug, with a gas-soaked rag shoved through the cap as a fuse. Light it and throw. Dozens of variants on ingredients exist. Excellent examples are on display in any evening news broadcast whenever some third-world country is having a bit of civil unrest. Don Henley wrote Sunset Grill with guitarist Danny Kortchmar and keyboard player Benmont Tench. Kortchmar, who played on popular albums by Carole King, Jackson Browne and Warren Zevon, was a key contributor to Henley's first three solo albums, co-writing and producing many of the tracks. Tench is a member of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers - he has also written songs with Lone Justice ("Sweet, Sweet Baby") and Hal Ketchum ("Stay Forever"). The Sunset Grill is a real place and a favorite spot for Henley. Located on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, it's a place where Henley could see how everyday people interact, which isn't always easy to do when you're a celebrity in LA. Henley had the title and lyrical theme in mind for this song, but needed the right music to go with it. As he did with "New York Minute," Danny Kortchmar came up with a tune that he thought fit what Henley had in mind, and they hashed out the song from there. Sunset Grill is about more than just a hamburger joint. In an interview with Danny Kortchmar, he explained: "Sunset Grill is a real hamburger place on Sunset Boulevard that Don used to go to. He admired the fact that the same family and the same people had run it for many years, and that the burgers were made with love - they were everything he liked about American society. So he used that Sunset Grill as a metaphor for what he liked, what he thought was great about society. And then he also used it to describe what he didn't like, which is plenty." What Henley didn't like is the vapid commercialism and duplicity that was so common around Hollywood. In many ways, the song answers the question many denizens of Los Angeles ask: "why do we live here?" The answer is found in the last line of the song: "all our friends are here." FLCL (Japanese: フリクリ, Hepburn: FURI KURI, pronounced in English as FOOLY COOLY) is an original video animation (OVA) anime series created and directed by Kazuya Tsurumaki, written by Yōji Enokido, and produced by the FLCL Production Committee, which consisted of Gainax, Production I.G, and King Records. FLCL is a story following Naota Nandaba, a twelve-year-old boy whose suburban life is disturbed by the arrival of the mysterious Haruko Haruhara. The six-episode series was released in Japan from April 2000 to March 2001 alongside a manga and novel adaptation. In 2016, two new seasons totaling 12 episodes were announced as a co-production between Production I.G, Toho, and Adult Swim. The second season, FLCL Progressive, premiered on June 3, 2018 on Adult Swim's Toonami programming block, while the third season, FLCL Alternative, premiered on September 8, 2018. In Japan, Alternative and Progressive had theatrical screenings as compilation films with Alternative opening on September 7, 2018 and Progressive opening on September 28, 2018. The first episode of FLCL Alternative premiered unannounced on April Fools' Day 2018 at 12 a.m. ET on Toonami in Japanese with English subtitles as part of Adult Swim's annual stunt. Two additional seasons were ordered by Adult Swim in 2022, titled FLCL: Grunge and FLCL: Shoegaze, respectively. Both seasons premiered in Northern America in 2023. The first season of FLCL is a coming-of-age story and revolves around Naota Nandaba, a 12-year-old, working-class boy living with his widower father and grandfather. His life in the Japanese city of Mabase is interrupted by the arrival of a Vespa-riding maniac named Haruko Haruhara. She runs over Naota then revives him with CPR before hitting him on the head with her left-handed, electric bass guitar (a blue, vintage Rickenbacker 4001) and proceeds to stalk him. Finding Haruko weaseling her way into his life as a live-in maid, Naota discovers that the head injury she caused created an "N.O." portal, which giant robots produced by a company known as Medical Mechanica emerge from periodically. The first of these robots is hit on the head by Haruko and becomes a friendly service robot later named Canti. Canti ingests Naota to assume the reddened form he first had when fighting the robots sent after him. The six-episode series was released in Japan from April 26, 2000 – March 16, 2001. It originally debuted in the United States on Adult Swim in August 2003, where it managed to gain a significant cult following and was widely acclaimed, despite its short length. The series would continue to air on the network in the following years, including reruns on the network's Toonami programming block from October 2013 to January 2014, and in April 2018. The series is also available via iTunes, adultswim.com and Funimation's website. Six DVD compilations, each containing one episode, have been released in Japan by Gainax. In addition, a DVD collection box, containing all six DVD compilations, was released in Japan on August 13, 2005. Three DVD compilations were released by Synch-Point in North America. A DVD collection box, containing all the DVD compilations of the English episodes, was released on January 23, 2007, but have since gone out of print. In January 2010, Funimation announced that they had acquired the license for the series and would be releasing it on DVD and Blu-ray Disc in February 2011. Shortly after, it has been released in Australia and New Zealand by Madman Entertainment on a 3-disc DVD set and on Blu-ray Disc. It is also licensed in the United Kingdom by MVM Films. The series also aired in the United States on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim programming block from August 4 to August 13, 2003.

Funkytown Album: Funkytown (1980) How Long Album: Pucker Up (1980) by Lipps Inc. Lipps Inc. started as a project of Steven Greenberg when he was a wedding DJ who wanted to try his hand at writing disco songs. He had intended to use the name Lip Sync, but it was in use by another group, so instead he chose the homophone Lipps Inc. Greenberg was the sole member of the group until he met Cynthia Johnson while auditioning singers for his song "Rock It". Johnson joined the project, and Lipps Inc. became a duo. The "Funkytown" is New York City. A songwriter and producer named Steven Greenburg wrote the song when he became bored with Minneapolis and wanted to move to New York, which he called "Funkytown." Lipps Inc. (pronounced "Lip Synch") was formed especially for this song. The vocals were by Cynthia Johnson, who was Miss Black Minnesota 1976. The group continued to record until 1985 with a changing lineup, but they failed to see the success they'd had with their first hit. Steven Greenburg became A&R Vice President for Mercury Records, signing Hanson, among other acts. Later he headed the S-Curve Records label, signing the Baha Men and Joss Stone. The Australian pop group Pseudo Echo had a #1 hit in Australia and a Top 10 hit in both the US and UK with their rockier version of this song in 1986. Earlier that year, they made their debut on the US charts at #57 with "Living in a Dream." Their success in the States was short-lived, but the group did continue to impress in other corners of the world. They won the top prize of $10,000 at the 18th World Popular Song Festival (aka Yamaha Music Festival) in Tokyo for their performance of "Take on the World." This song has been used in a number of TV series, including: Everybody Loves Raymond (High School - 1997) Will & Grace (Will Works Out - 1999) Malcolm in the Middle (Rollerskates - 2000) Futurama (Amazon Women in the Mood - 2001) Friends (The One Where the Stripper Cries - 2004) Parenthood (Left Field - 2012) Gotham (Penguin's Umbrella - 2014) It has also featured in these movies: History of the World: Part I (1981) North Shore (1987 - Pseudo Echo version) Selena (1997) Shrek 2 (2004) The Dictator (2012) A cover by Alvin and the Chipmunks returned this song to the Billboard Hot 100 in January 2008, reaching #86. The Chipmunks version featured in the 2007 film Alvin and the Chipmunks. St. Vincent released a cover for the soundtrack of the 2022 animated family movie Minions: The Rise of Gru. The group originally consisted of lead vocalist Cynthia Johnson and a changing line-up of session musicians including guitarist David Rivkin, guitarist Tom Riopelle and bassist Terry Grant. Steven Greenberg, the creator of the act, wrote and produced most of the group's music. The 'face' of the group in the Netherlands was the British dancer Doris D (Debbie Jenner), who playbacked the song in TopPop with her dancers. Due to the success of this performance, they were invited to perform as Lipps Inc. in other European countries, including Germany. Jenner and her dancers then had success as "Doris D & the Pins" in early 1981. "How Long" is the debut single by the English band Ace, from their 1974 debut album, Five-A-Side. It reached No. 3 on both the US and Canadian charts, and No. 20 on the UK Singles Chart. Lipps Inc. covered How Long in 1980, hit No. 4 on the U.S. dance chart, No. 29 on the U.S. soul singles chart, No. 42 in Canada (2 weeks), and No. 44 in Australia. Their cover version sold one million units in Mexico. In a 1981 issue of Smash Hits, Phil Collins named the song as one of his top 10 favourites, describing it as a "classic single". Although widely interpreted as being about infidelity, How Long was in fact composed by lead singer Paul Carrack upon discovering that bassist Terry "Tex" Comer had been secretly working with the Sutherland Brothers and Quiver. The guitar solo is by lead guitarist Phil Harris. Alan "Bam" King was the band's rhythm guitarist, formerly with the Action. Lead vocals are by Paul Carrack. The band had originally tried to record How Long as a Motown-type single for Anchor Records, but gave up in favour of recording their first album at Rockfield Studios in Wales. The song was recorded for the album. In March 2020 – 45 years after its original release, and in the weeks following its use in a advertisement for Amazon Prime – the song returned to the charts, reaching No. 1 on Billboard's Rock Digital Song Sales chart, selling 4,000 downloads, with 831,000 streams and an increase in sales of more than 2,000%

Wind Of Change Album: Crazy World (1990) by Scorpions The story goes... the band wrote this during a visit to Moscow in 1989. The previous year, they became the first hard-rock band to play in Russia, and they returned to play the Moscow Music Peace Festival. At this show, they were inspired by the sight of thousands of Russians cheering them on even though they were a German band. In a Songfacts interview with Scorpions guitarist Rudolf Schenker, he called this song, "A kind of message soundtrack to the world's most peaceful revolution on earth." Lead singer Klaus Meine told NME about the concert that inspired this song: "Everyone was there: the Red Army, journalists, musicians from Germany, from America, from Russia-the whole world on one boat. It was like a vision; everyone was talking the same language. It was a very positive vibe. That night was the basic inspiration for Wind Of Change." The "Wind of Change" that was blowing was the fall of the Soviet Union, which is what the song is about, but when the Berlin Wall fell on November 9, 1989, the song became the unofficial anthem for the German Reunification, an event that politically lasted from the fall Wall to the official reunification on October 3, 1990 (The Scorpions are a German band). The music video plays to this interpretation, with footage of the Berlin Wall being dismantled. The Berlin Wall didn't come down until a few months after the song was written, though, and the inspiration came in Russia, not in Germany. This is confusing stuff for those not familiar with the time the song was written, so to put all of this in context we'll need a (very condensed) history lesson. In 1917 the Bolsheviks overthrew the existing government in Russia in an event called the October Revolution. From there, Soviet Russia was born. In 1922, Soviet Russia became the Soviet Union after it officially unified with the Transcaucasian, Ukrainian, and Byelorussian Republics. In 1924, Joseph Stalin took over control of the Soviet Union. The already authoritarian control became even more so. Though the Soviet Union was ostensibly composed of free bodies operating under the shared ideological banner of socialism, the truth was that all of it was tightly controlled from Moscow. Stalin viciously cracked down on anyone he thought might oppose his rule. This went beyond actual political saboteurs and included anyone who might harbor dissident ideas. During World War II (1939–1945), Russia fought Nazi Germany. The Germans were initially the aggressors, but once engaged in conflict, the Soviets did not relent. The period of conflict gave the Soviets the opportunity to overtake many parts of Europe, and the Soviet Union expanded dramatically. When World War II ended, the Allied nations and Russia divvied up sections of the defeated Nazi Germany. The western parts of the country went to Western influence, while the eastern went to Russia. The Berlin Wall was built to separate the two sides, with people on the western side living under the liberal political systems of Europe and those on the eastern side living under the harsh authoritarian control of the Soviets. The Scorpions were formed in Hanover, a city in West Germany, and grew up in the metaphorical shadow of the Berlin Wall. The harsh reality of the Soviet Union was very real in their minds throughout their entire lives. So, when they were given the chance to play in Russia, after that nation's isolationism had finally started to soften a bit, they took the event seriously. They played there the first time in 1988 in Leningrad as part of their Savage Amusement tour, becoming just the second Western music act to do so (Uriah Heep was the first, playing in December 1987). The Scorpions got a chance to perform in Russia again in 1989, this time as part of the Moscow Peace Festival, where they were part of a lineup including Ozzy Osbourne, Mötley Crüe, Cinderella, and Skid Row. Bon Jovi headlined, which didn't go over well with the Scorpions. Lead singer Klaus Meine later explained that while the festival was a cool feather for the caps of the American acts, it was something much more significant for the Scorpions. They'd lived with the tension of the Soviet presence for all of their lives. They had friends behind the Soviet "Iron Curtain." As Meine told Rolling Stone, "We were not just a band singing about these things; we were a part of these things." The band were in Moscow for about a week leading up to the festival. On one of the press days before the Peace Festival performance, the inspiration for "Wind of Change" struck Meine. The opening lyric for the song is "I follow the Moskva." That line is a reference to the Moskva River, which passes through Moscow. On one of the days leading up to the festival, Scorpions manager Doc McGhee decided to get a boat trip together to have a BBQ. This was no easy task in that part of the world at that time, and he later said that arranging the boat trip was as monumental as putting the concert together. While floating down the Moskva and witnessing the decades-old cultural and political (and sometimes literal) barriers falling apart, Meine started whistling the melody for "Wind of Change." The song started to coalesce in his mind. "We took the boat down the Moskva River," Meine told Rolling Stone. "And we were on this boat with all the bands, with MTV journalists, with Red Army soldiers... It was an inspiring moment for me. It was like the whole world was in that one boat talking the same language: music." The second line of the song is "down to Gorky Park." It's a reference to Moscow's Gorky Park, which opened in 1928. The park sits on the shore of the Moskva River. So, the first two lines of "Wind of Change" are tracking Meine's journey down the Moskva River. Though the song didn't have a name or final shape yet, McGhee remembers it coming together. "The second night that we played in Moscow," McGhee said, "we were in the bus coming back from the gig, and Klaus was whistling 'Wind of Change.' He had this idea in his head. And then the next day he pretty much had the whole song written. The actual basis of the song." After returning from Russia, Meine and the band started working on the song in full. A few months later, it was released on their album Crazy World. The song eventually became an international sensation, topping the charts in more than a dozen different countries. It did well in the United States, but throughout the European nations it was something more than a hit song: It was a rallying call for freedom and for unification, and a message of hope. From a political standpoint, it's one of the most important popular songs ever recorded. Meine wrote the song by thinking of the words and whistling the melody, so he thought that whistling was the logical way to open the song. The record company staunchly opposed the idea and resisted opening with a whistle, especially because the Scorpions were known as a savage hard rock group - they wanted a heavy guitar intro instead. The band tried it the record company's way, but it just wasn't working. They finally decided to go with the whistling intro in tandem with a clean guitar. That opening whistle became one of the most iconic song openings ever. The Moscow Music Peace Festival was organized by the band's manager Doc McGhee, and by Stas Namin, whose uncle invented the MIG fighter jet. That aircraft gave Russia air superiority over most of the world for a long time. It can also be seen in the 1986 film Top Gun. The band also recorded versions in Russian and Spanish. The Russian one was particularly difficult for Meine to sing, but ever since then he's made sure to sing at least one chorus in Russian when performing in that country. Nobel Prize winner suspect Mikhail Gorbachev led to the softening of authoritarian Soviet rule and, eventually, the total collapse of the system. He led the Soviet Union when the Scorpions played at the Moscow Peace Festival. Gorbachev invited the band for a personal visit in 1991. They accepted, but expected a dog and pony show for the press. Gorbachev surprised them when he dismissed the journalists covering the event and had a private sit-down with the band. Russia was in a dangerous state of flux at that time and Gorbachev's time was extremely limited, so taking time to meet with the group was quite an honor. The Scorpions gave him $70,000 accrued from "Wind of Change" royalties. Half of the money was theirs, and the other half was from their record company, Mercury-Polygram. Regarding the line, "let your balalaika sing what my guitar wants to say," the balalaika is a Russian stringed instrument, very similar to the guitar, but with a triangular body and only three strings. Viewers of the German public broadcaster ZDF voted "Wind Of Change" song of the 20th century in 2005. I follow the Moskva Down to Gorky Park Listening to the wind of change Following the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Scorpions changed some of the lyrics for the perestroika power ballad. "To sing 'Wind of Change' as we have always sung it, that's not something I could imagine any more," vocalist Klaus Meine told Die Zeit. "It simply isn't right to romanticize Russia." When performing "Wind Of Change" during Scorpions' 2022 tour, Meine sings: Now listen to my heart It says Ukraine Waiting for the wind to change

Tomorrow's Dream Album: Vol. 4 (1972) Track 2 Laguna Sunrise Album: Vol. 4 (1972) Track 8 St. Vitus Dance Album: Vol. 4 (1972) Track 9 by Black Sabbath Tomorrow's Dream is about "how fleeting fame could be," according to Black Sabbath bass player Geezer Butler, who wrote the lyric. He explained that bands around this time would suddenly get very popular, but then they would fade away and he'd never hear about them again. The Bay City Rollers are an example. "Tomorrow's Dream" is a very heavy song even by Black Sabbath standards. It's powered by Tony Iommi's guitar, which could rattle the room when cranked up on good speakers. Tomorrow's Dream is part of the fourth Sabbath album, Vol. 4, released when the band was at a creative peak in 1972. They released five albums from 1970-1973 that helped define heavy metal. After that, drug use and infighting impaired the band, and in 1979 they parted ways with lead singer Ozzy Osbourne. In 1980, Sabbath started their second act with the acclaimed album Heaven And Hell, their first with new frontman Ronnie James Dio. That same year, Ozzy started even more remarkable resurgence with his first solo album, Blizzard Of Ozz, which includes the classics "Crazy Train" and "Mr. Crowley." "Laguna Sunrise" was inspired by a sunrise Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi saw at Laguna Beach in California after a night of partying. Spock, a crew member who could play guitar and write music, helped Iommi write out the orchestral parts for this track. Disc jockey Alan Freeman, aka Fluff, used this song to open his radio show. Tony Iommi later gave a nod to this with his instrumental track "Fluff" on Sabbath Bloody Sabbath. Legend has Vitus, the only son of a senator in Sicily, become a Christian when he was twelve. When his conversions and miracles became widely known to the administrator of Sicily, Valerian, he had Vitus brought before him, to shake his faith. He was unsuccessful, but Vitus with his tutor, Modestus, and servant, Crescentia, fled to Lucania and then to Rome, where he freed Emperor Diocletian's son of an evil spirit. When Vitus would not sacrifice to the gods, his cure was attributed to sorcery. He, Modestus, and Crescentia were subjected to various tortures from which they emerged unscathed, and were freed when during a storm, temples were destroyed and an angel guided them back to Lucania, where they eventually died. So much for the legend. What is fact is that their cult goes back centuries and that they were Christians who were martyred in Lucania. A great devotion to Vitus developed in Germany when his relics were translated to Saxony in 836. He is one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers and is the patron of epileptics, those afflicted with St. Vitus' Dance (named after him}, dancers, and actors, and is a protector against storms. Feast day - June 15th. According to his legend, he died during the Diocletianic Persecution in AD 303. In the Middle Ages, he was counted as one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers. In Germany, his feast was celebrated with dancing before his statue. He is also said to protect against lightning strikes, animal attacks and oversleeping. His feast day is celebrated on 15 June. In places where the Julian calendar is used, this date coincides, in the 20th and 21st centuries, with 28 June on the Gregorian calendar. In AD 756, Abbot Fulrad is said to have brought the relics of St. Vitus to the monastery of St-Denis. They were later presented to Abbot Warin of Corvey in Germany, who solemnly transferred some of them to this abbey in AD 836. From Corvey the veneration of St Vitus spread throughout Westphalia and in the districts of eastern and northern Germany. His popularity grew in Prague, Bohemia when, in AD 925, king Henry I of Germany presented as a gift the bones of one hand of St. Vitus to Wenceslaus, Duke of Bohemia. Since then, this relic has been a sacred treasure in the St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague. Other relics of Saint Vitus were taken in Pavia (they were kept in the church of San Marino) by the emperor Charles IV in 1355 and were brought to Prague. The veneration of St. Vitus became very popular in Slavic lands, where his name (Sveti Vid) may have replaced more ancient worship of the god of light Svetovid. In Serbia his feast day, known as Vidovdan, is of particular historical importance. The day is part of the Kosovo Myth — the Battle of Kosovo occurred on that day; several events have symbolically occurred on that day, such as the 1914 assassination of the Austrian royal couple; Vitus was the patron saint of the Kingdom of Serbia. In Hungary he has been venerated as Szent Vid since the early Middle Ages. In Bulgaria, it is called Vidovden (Видовден) or Vidov Den (Видов ден) and is particularly well known among the Shopi, in the western part of the country. In Croatia, 123 churches are dedicated to St. Vitus. In the Netherlands, Vitus is the patron saint of Winschoten, as well as of the region of the Gooi, where in each of the three largest towns (Hilversum, Bussum and Naarden), the main Catholic Church is dedicated to St Vitus. Vitus is one of the Fourteen Martyrs who give aid in times of trouble. He is specifically invoked against chorea, which is called St. Vitus Dance. He is represented as a young man with a palm-leaf, in a cauldron, sometimes with a raven and a lion, his iconographic attribute because according to the legend he was thrown into a cauldron of boiling tar and molten lead, but miraculously escaped unscathed. The names of Saints Modestus and Crescentia were added in the 11th century to the Roman Calendar, so that from then on all three names were celebrated together until 1969, when their feast was removed from the General Roman Calendar. Vitus is still recognized as a saint of the Catholic Church, being included in the Roman Martyrology under 15 June, and Mass may be celebrated in his honor on that day wherever the Roman Rite is celebrated, while Modestus and Crescentia, who are associated with Vitus in legend, have been omitted, because they appear to be merely fictitious personages. Vitus is the patron saint of the city of Rijeka in Croatia; the towns of Ciminna and Vita in Sicily; Forio on the island of Ischia, the town of Sapri in Campania; the contrada of San Vito, in Torella dei Lombardi, in Avellino; the town of Rapone, Italy; the Gooi region in the Netherlands; the Italian colony of San Vito in Costa Rica; and the town of St. Vith in Belgium. Various places in Austria and Bavaria are named Sankt Veit in his honour. The saint's feast day is also the subject of a popular weather rhyme: "If St. Vitus' Day be rainy weather, it shall rain for thirty days together". This rhyme often appears in such publications as almanacs; its origin is uncertain. Michael J. Towsend writes that "the phrase 'The patron saint of Methodism is St Vitus' summed up with reasonable accuracy many people's impressions of the Methodist Church. Methodists, surely, are supremely busy people, always rushing around organizing things and setting up committees to do good works. They can generally be relied upon to play their part in running Christian Aid Week, the sponsored walk for the local hospice or the group protesting about homelessness, and they are known, even now, to be activists in trades unions and political parties." Though the production of Vol. 4 is officially credited to Black Sabbath and Patrick Meehan, the bulk of the actual production was performed by guitarist Tony Iommi. "It's the first album we've produced ourselves," said vocalist Ozzy Osbourne in 1972. "Previously we had Rodger Bain as a producer – and, although he's very good, he didn't really feel what the band was doing. It was a matter of communication. This time, we did it with Patrick (Meehan), our manager, and I think we're all very happy… It was great to work in an American studio." Meehan had little actual involvement in the album's production but nonetheless insisted he be listed as producer, according to Iommi... The recording was plagued with problems, many due to substance abuse. In the studio, the band regularly had speaker boxes full of cocaine delivered. Iommi claims in his autobiography that Ward almost died after a prank-gone-wrong during recording. The Bel Air mansion the band was renting belonged to John du Pont and the band found several spray cans of gold DuPont paint in a room of the house; finding Ward naked and unconscious after drinking heavily, they proceeded to cover the drummer in gold paint from head to toe. in gold paint from head to toe. in gold paint from head to toe... In his autobiography I Am Ozzy, Osbourne speaks at length about the sessions: "In spite of all the arsing around, musically those few weeks in Bel Air were the strongest we'd ever been." But he admits, "Eventually we started to wonder where the fuck all the coke was coming from ... that coke was the whitest, purest, strongest stuff you could ever imagine. One sniff, and you were king of the universe." During a show in support of Vol. 4 at the Hollywood Bowl, the cocaine abuse caught up to Iommi. "Tony had been doing coke literally for days. We all had, but Tony had gone over the edge. He walked off the stage and collapsed," said Osbourne. During soundcheck earlier that same day, a crazed Christian man attempted to storm the stage and stab Iommi with a dagger, but he was tackled by members of the band's crew. According to Butler, "we wanted to take a break" at that point. The guitar intro on 'St. Vitus Dance' possesses a jaunty, Led Zeppelin-flavoured quality, while 'Laguna Sunrise' is an evocative neo-classical Iommi instrumental." After being up all night and watching the sunrise at Laguna Beach, Iommi composed the song. In the studio, an orchestra accompanied Iommi's guitar, although they refused to perform until their parts were properly written out.