Head Tale - Yet Another Librarian's Blog

Music Monday - "I got a letter from the government the other day/Opened it and read it/It said they were suckers/They wanted me for their army or whatever"

by Jason on Mon 08 Mar 2010 08:30 PM CST

When I was in England in 1995, this song (and the album it appeared on) were consistently rated at or near the top of the "best of" lists for that year by the NME, Melody Maker and Q.

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Monday, March 1

Music Monday - "We are the 'what' in 'what's new'."

by Jason on Mon 01 Mar 2010 12:05 AM CST

The Olympics are over and the reactions are all over the place from claims from a perhaps unexpected source (Dave Bidini, not the National Post) that Canada has been changed for the better forever to claims that the debt will weigh down on our citizens for decades.

Anyhow, for today's Music Monday, I thought I'd re-visit one of the most pleasant surprises from the Opening Ceremonies two weeks ago - a slam poet captures Canada...

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Monday, February 22

FTRW 2010 - Music Monday "Listen, little girl, it's near the hour...I've got the righteous power"

by Jason on Mon 22 Feb 2010 08:33 PM CST

So yeah...

I was trying to think of a good clip to feature for Music Monday now that it's Freedom to Read Week. I thought about posting Elvis' infamous early Milton Berle appearance which led to him only being filmed from the waist up when he later appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show. But that's pretty tame by today's standards - sort of like how people still want to challenge "Catcher in the Rye" because the words "heck" and "gosh-darn" are in there.

Then I remembered a song I heard when I first moved into college dorms - pretty much fresh off the farm at 17 - when the most rebellious music I knew was Def Leppard.

I actually didn't even hear the song from the shock rock outfit, the Mentors (and until about five minutes ago, had never heard it.) Instead, a a floormate quoted some of the lyrics to me and they have been seared into my brain ever since.

Still, that famous line about "I may not agree with what you say but I'll defend to the death, your right to say it" applies here. It has to because if it doesn't, freedom of expression is absolutely meaningless.

I'm actually nervous about hitting the "Submit" button this post because this is some pretty disturbing stuff and people always confuse the defense of something with an endorsement. But ultimately, that's what Freedom of Expression is about. I am not going to run out and buy a Mentors CD (probably - unless I need to shock some other sheltered small town kid!) but some people do and did. Some people went to their shows. As long as there's nothing illegal happening, that's completely within their rights - the band's rights, the fans' rights and according to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, that's within anyone's rights (as is your right *not* to click through to any lyrics or music I link to in this post. And trust me, the lines I quoted in the title of this post are pretty much the only two lines in the song that I felt comfortable doing so!)

I'll save you the pain and link to a clip of the live version of the song where the lyrics are hard to understand (here's a link to the album version of the song for the braver souls among you - I won't censor but I will warn you that you can't un-hear this song once you hear it!)

[Edit: I forgot to bring it back to Elvis the Pelvis like I originally wanted to. One of the strongest anti-censorship arguments that I know is to compare the comments made by people who were disgusted by Elvis with those who were/are disgusted with Eldon Hoke below - "filthy", "depraved", "sick", "demonic", etc. Notice something? They're the exact same words! To me, that shows that the people who hated Elvis in the 1950's are the exact same type of people who hated Eldon Hoke in the 1990's - even though those same anti-Hoke people in the 1990's probably liked Elvis, took family vacations to Graceland and will shell out for the new Cirque du Soleil Elvis show the next time they're in Vegas. So to me, it's *really* important to keep in mind that it's all very relative. Something that offends me today (and Eldon Hoke definitely comes really close!) will probably be a Broadway show that Pace goes to see with his family in thirty years.]

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Monday, February 15

Music Monday - "But like the rise and fall of a country squall/I'm getting ready to fade away"

by Jason on Mon 15 Feb 2010 02:09 PM CST

Hard to believe that today marks two years since Willie P. Bennett passed away. Fred Eaglesmith has apparently started covering a Willie P. song at the end of his concerts as a tribute to his long-time sideman...

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Monday, February 8

FTRW 2010 - Music Monday - Ten Most Controversial Music Videos of All-Time

by Jason on Mon 08 Feb 2010 06:17 PM CST

I know I could get my entire month's worth of Freedom to Read Week Month "Music Monday" clips out of this list but I'll post them as a group since that's how I found them.

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Monday, February 1

FTRW 2010 - Music Monday - "I guess there's gotta be a break in the monotony/But jesus when it rains, how it pours."

by Jason on Mon 01 Feb 2010 09:12 PM CST

It's February which means Freedom to Read Week is coming at the end of the month. Every year, I try to do a few posts during that week to celebrate and draw attention to this important subject.

For the past year, I've been bookmarking various stories I've come across that I thought had potential for the week. I've got more than seven but less than thirty but I think I'm going to try to do an entire month's worth of Freedom to Read Week posts (give or take - since I'll exempt myself for a few of those days - some of the Music Mondays, most of the Friday Fun Links and some of the Saturday Snaps - though maybe a pic of Pace reading "Where The Wild Things Are" would be appropriate. That or "Lolita".

)

To start things off, here's a bit of background about something I've always wondered - why do some artists prevent the embedding of their videos on YouTube? Buzz band, OK Go, who saw 50 million people watch their "dance routine on treadmills" video on YouTube and catapult them to, well if not massive success, definitely a lot wider recognition.

This story isn't really about censorship or Freedom of Expression per se but really is about how business models are changing and confused by technology - the band's label refuses to allow the videos to be embedded (or even viewed in certain countries) because they don't get a share of revenue from ad clicks unless people watch the video directly on YouTube. The band naturally wants to reach the widest possible fan base and explains their side of the story.

"four years after we posted our first homemade videos to YouTube and they spread across the globe faster than swine flu, making our bassist’s glasses recognizable to 70-year-olds in Wichita and 5-year-olds in Seoul and eventually turning a tidy little profit for EMI, we’re – unbelievably – stuck in the position of arguing with our own label about the merits of having our videos be easily shared. It’s like the world has gone backwards."

The lead singer was also recently interviewed in Time magazine on the subject.

Here's the video that started it all - which I've posted before but not in the context of a Music Monday clip and anyhow, it's worth watching again (er, embedding disabled by request).

(And here's a semi-related story as a bonus - a member of The Roots which is the house band for "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon" - discusses the behind-the-scenes of walk-on music - the themed music that plays for celebrities as they walk onto talk show sets. In most cases, this is straight forward but some music is so expensive to license, even for a few seconds, that house bands are forbidden from using it. This came up because Conan's band played the Beatles' "Lovely Rita" for one of Conan's guests on his last "Tonight Show", Tom Hanks whose wife is named Rita. That ten seconds cost NBC something like $400 000!)

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Monday, January 25

Music Monday - "I'd have given anything/To have my own Pac-man game at home/I used to have to get a ride down to the arcade/Now I've got it on my phone."

by Jason on Mon 25 Jan 2010 07:51 PM CST

I don't listen to as much country music as I did in my smalltown youth but this song caught my ear when I heard it.

I love how the first couple verses are just typical "I remember this, I remember that" cuteness but then the tone changes slightly leading to that whopper of a last verse that seriously brought tears to my eyes the first time I heard it. Fun video too!

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Monday, January 18

Music Monday - "You were the first girl at school to get breasts/And Martin said you were the best/Oh, the boys all loved ya but I was a mess/I had to work to try to get you undressed."

by Jason on Mon 18 Jan 2010 08:41 PM CST

Pulp's "Different Class" album is a classic, topping many UK "Best of" polls for 1995 in a year when Oasis and Blur were stealing all the headlines. (Linked clip is in French but the description sums up that rivalry.)

"Common People" was the defining song on the album (and the Shatner cover is all kinds of awesomeness) but my own personal favourite from the album was this one: