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WOW

Under the radar.

Lucinda Williams career is one to long for. Having won three Grammy’s she is Nominated this year for Best Rock Song. I like her career because she never got crazy famous, but since her songs are of great quality she has been able to sustain a long career with real fans supporting her as appose to those who listen to anything “trendy.”

Me VS Rollingstone: Part One

I am an avid reader of Rollingstone Magazine and I frequent their website as well.  Truth be told they are the reason I started writing and sharing my opinions with those of you who read this.  See I really appreciate what they use to be.  The articles and opinions use to be objective and even if I didn’t agree with what the writer would communicate I still appreciated the authentic viewpoint.

Now Rags like RS and other seem to have a slanted view if the money is right.  They are no worse then the LA Times or Fox News.  It bums me out… alot.  I wish it was different, but I do get it… bills need to be paid, the staff needs their paycheck, and politics has to be played.

So, with that tidbit of info RS released their Grammy predictions , and I thought it would be fun to compare their expertise to my opinion on the same matter.  Now understand that they have a “who should win” and a “who will win” category.  We both agree that the Grammy committee is quite a bit bias so there is a larger margin of error do to their lack of absoluteness.

Album Of The Year

Nominees: Foo Fighters, Vince Gill, Herbie Hancock, Kanye West, Amy Winehouse

Who’s Going to Win (RS): Amy Winehouse. Forget the disaster that is her personal life: The Grammy voters love women, they love singers who can actually sing and they love well-produced, classic-feeling albums — and Winehouse fits the bill on all three counts.

Who’s Going to Win (MBP) I agree Amy Winehouse will win.  She is a disaster, she is all over the media which it keeps here in peoples mind come voting time.  Where I disagree is the girl can’t sing for anything.  If the saftey of the world depended on her “live” voice we would all die a painful death.  The album is well produce, however Berry Gordy called and he wants his sound back.

Who Should Win (RS): Kanye West; the best hip-hop album of the year by a mile, and probably his most consistent record yet.

Who Should Win (MBP): The Foo Fighters; yet another album that has a collection of songs the create an album not just radio singles.

Record of The Year

Nominees: Beyoncé, “Irreplaceable”; Foo Fighters, “The Pretender”; Rihanna feat. Jay-Z, “Umbrella”; Justin Timberlake, “What Goes Around … Comes Around”; Amy Winehouse, “Rehab”

Who’s Going to Win (RS): Beyoncé, “Irreplaceable.” A big hit with enough pop appeal and traditional chops to sway the conservative Grammy voters.

Who’s Going to Win (MBP): Amy Winehouse, “Rehab.” The song is bigger then Beyonce, not to mention that she is still trying to prove that she is better then Jennifer Hudson which is clauting her song selections.

Who Should Win(RS): Rihanna. Can anybody really say that this wasn’t the record of the last twelve months?

Who Should Win (MBP):  Foo Fighters “The Pretender.” This song is a huge anthem, one that is hard to forget.

Best New Artist

Nominees: Feist, Ledisi, Paramore, Taylor Swift, Amy Winehouse

Who’s Going to Win (RS): Amy Winehouse. Hard to imagine her getting bumped by an iPod ad or a country teen-pop phenom.

Who’s Going to Win (MBP): RS is right!!!

Who Should Win (RS): Winehouse. No one else provided the potent combination of a great album, great tabloid copy and forward-thinking coifs.

Who Should Win (MBP): Feist should win, the case could be made however that they are not a new band.

Song Of The Year

Nominees: “Before He Cheats”; “Hey There Delilah; “Like a Star”; “Rehab”; “Umbrella”

Who’s Going to Win(RS): “Before He Cheats,” by John Kear & Chris Tompkins. Aside from just liking Carrie Underwood (who sang this one), Grammy voters like a song with conventional structure and smart, straight-ahead lyrics.

Who’s Going to Win (MBP): “Before He Cheats,” John Kear & Chris Tompkins

Who Should Win (RS): “Umbrella.” Any tune that identifies an extra syllable in a word is cool with us.

Who Should Win (MBP): “Before He Cheats.” Besides being lyrically perfect the song in its intirety has no blemish.

In a country mood.

currently just listening to good ol country music. The good stuff, not the pop stuff.

Shooter Jennings

10 weeks = 2.8 Million

Josh Groban’s Noël claimed an unprecedented fourth straight week at number one, a feat never before accomplished by a holiday album. Elvis Presley set the previous record, three weeks, half a century ago with 1957’s Elvis’ Christmas Album.

For the week ended Sunday, Noël topped the chart and rewrote the record books by selling an incredible 669,000 copies, according to the latest Nielsen SoundScan numbers.

Groban, whose single “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” topped the AC charts this week as well, has sold nearly 2.8 million copies of Noël in its 10-week run. That puts Noël in the lead as the year’s bestselling album, and if the trend holds, it’ll become the first holiday album to top year-end sales in the SoundScan era.

Capitalism at its best.

I apologize.

for the previous post.  Just though I would try a little expeirment.  And yes, it worked.  Here is a little masterpiece for your trouble.

Pat Monahan from from train singin a little Stevie from NYC a month or so ago.

Jaime Lynn Spears…

…has nothing to do with this website. Being that gossip travels so fast these days I figured I could bump up my stats while peeps look for the real story.

Jenny Lewis

The best lyricist since Dylan… That’s right!!! I said it. Go ahead, challenge me on it. Here is one of my favorite pieces:

If I run uphill I’m out of breath
If I spend all of my money I’ve got no money left
If I place all of my chips on only one bet
I’m all in

And it’s a surefire bet I’m gonna die
So I’m taking up praying on Sunday nights
And it’s not that I believe in your almight
But I might as well as insurance or bail

Cause institution’s like a big bright lie
And it blinds you into fear and consuming and fight
And you’ve been in the desert underneath the charging sky
It’s just you and God
But what if God’s not there?
But his name is on your dollar bill
Which just became cab fare

For the Evangelist, the Communist, the Lefts and the Rights
And the hypocrites and the Jesuits and the blacks and the whites
It’s in the belly of the beast
In the Atlanta streets
Or up in Laurel Canyon
The verge of Middle East

Still they’re dying on the dark continent
It’s been happening long enough to mention it
Have I mentioned my parents are getting back together again
It’s been 25 years
Of spreading infection
Somehow we’re not affected

So my mom, she brushes her hair
And my dad starts growing Bob Dylan’s beard
And I share with my friends a couple of beers
In the Orlando streets
In the belly of the beast

Legend

Kris Kristofferson moved to Nashville after resigning his commission in 1965, intent on becoming a professional songwriter. He worked a variety of odd jobs while struggling to make it in the music business, burdened with expensive medical bills as a result of his son’s defective esophagus. He and his wife soon divorced.

He got a job sweeping floors at Columbia Studios in Nashville. There he met Johnny Cash, who initially took some of his songs but ignored them. During Kristofferson’s time working as a janitor for Columbia, Bob Dylan was recording his landmark 1966 album Blonde on Blonde at the studio. Though Kristofferson was able to watch some of the sessions, he never got to meet Dylan because he was afraid that he would be fired for approaching him.

He was also working as a commercial helicopter pilot at the time for a south Louisiana firm called Petroleum Helicopters International (PHI), based in Lafayette, Louisiana. Kristofferson recalled of his days as a pilot, “That was about the last three years before I started performing, before people started cutting my songs… I would work a week down here [in south Louisiana] for PHI, sitting on an oil platform and flying helicopters. Then I’d go back to Nashville at the end of the week and spend a week up there trying to pitch the songs, then come back down and write songs for another week… I can remember ‘Help Me Make It Through The Night’ I wrote sitting on top of an oil platform. I wrote ‘Bobby Mcgee’ down here, and a lot of them in south Louisiana.”

In 1966, Dave Dudley released a successful Kristofferson single, “Viet Nam Blues”. The following year, Kristofferson signed to Epic Records and released a single, “Golden Idol”/”Killing Time”, but the song was not successful. Within the next few years, more Kristofferson originals hit the charts, performed by Roy Drusky (”Jody and the Kid”), Billy Walker & the Tennessee Walkers (”From the Bottle to the Bottom”), Ray Stevens (”Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down”), Jerry Lee Lewis (”Once More with Feeling”) Faron Young (”Your Time’s Comin’”) and Roger Miller (”Me and Bobby McGee”, “Best of all Possible Worlds”, “Darby’s Castle”). He also gained some success as a performer himself, due to Johnny Cash’s introduction of Kristofferson at the Newport Folk Festival.

Kristofferson got Cash’s attention when he unexpectedly landed his helicopter in Cash’s yard and gave him some tapes including “Sunday Morning Coming Down”.

Kristofferson signed to Monument Records as a recording artist. The label was run by Fred Foster, also manager of Combine Music, Kristofferson’s songwriting label. His debut album for Monument in 1970 was Kristofferson, which included a few new songs as well as many of his previous hits. Sales were poor, although this debut album would become a success the following year when it was re-released under the title Me & Bobby McGee. Kristofferson’s compositions were still in high demand. Ray Price (”For the Good Times”), Waylon Jennings (”The Taker”), Bobby Bare (”Come Sundown”), Johnny Cash (”Sunday Morning Coming Down”) and Sammi Smith (”Help Me Make It Through the Night”) all recorded successful versions of his songs in the early 1970s. “For the Good Times” (Ray Price) won ‘Song of the Year” in 1970 from the Academy of Country Music, while “Sunday Morning Coming Down” (Johnny Cash) won the same award from the Academy’s rival, the Country Music Association in the same year. This is the only time an individual has won the same award from these two organizations in the same year for different songs.

In 1971, Janis Joplin, who dated Kris until her death, had a #1 hit with “Me and Bobby McGee” from her posthumous Pearl. She performed the definitive version of the song as it ranked high on Rolling Stones 500 greatest songs list and stayed on the number one spot on the charts for weeks.