iTunes is great

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52FM
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iTunes is great

#1 Post by 52FM » Mon Aug 22, 2005 9:33 am

I was just looking for a few more songs to buy and load on my iPod, and they have a feature that says "listeners who bought this also bought...". You can really get lost in surfing through those suggestions, and last night it led me to a song I hadn't heard in many years that I really love: "Wear your love like heaven" by Donovan Leitch.

I bought it, along with about 30 other songs, and listened to it on the way in. Unfortunately, I've been feeling a bit strong on the emotional side and (since this is an anonymous board I'll admit) I started to cry. I think the instrumentation is beautiful, with an organ sound that's hard to describe and vibraphones in certain places. But it's the lyrics mainly -

Lord, kiss me once more, fill me with song
Allah, kiss me once more
That I may, That I may
Wear my love like heaven...

I also bought a lot of Crosby, Stills, Nash (and sometimes Young); made the mistake of following "Heaven" with "Helplessly Hoping", which got me going again.

So I switched to Jimi Hendrix, but it was too early for that; so I settled on the Moody Blues.

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#2 Post by 52FM » Mon Aug 29, 2005 1:21 pm

I found another very obscure song that I used to love form the mid-late sixties. I doubt anyone hear ever heard of this band (though Congruous and I are about the same age, it's unlikely he ever heard of them either, but I could be wrong.

Their name was Vanilla Fudge, and they only put out two albums (maybe three?) and what they did was "cover" songs but arrange them in very different and in a sense risky ways - not always to good results. But their one "hit" was You Keep Me Hanging's On; four guys (organ, guitar, bass, drums) but the blend was very unique and soulful, as was the singing. This particular song takes on a whole new meaning when listenign to them versus Diana Ross singing it.

(Please note - the lyrics of this song hold no personal meaning to me whatsoever - past. present or future. Just to set the record straight since I so often comment on movies and songs relating to my personal life.)

As a former bass player, I really love the interplay between the bass and the bass drum (foot pedal).

I remember hearing of this band from a friend who lived across the street - he saw them on Ed Sullivan (I have a DVD of that performance along with a lot of other sixties bands on his show. I loved Ed Sullivan becasue the bands always played live - no lip-syncing allowed!) Anyway, he was so enthused he bought the album the next day; I heard it once and bought it that same day. The second album (not on iTunes yet) has a long song that blended in Fur Elise and Moonlight Sonata; I hope that comes out next.

And that's my obscure hits from the 60's report for this week.
"Willoughby. Next stop is Willoughby."

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#3 Post by 52FM » Mon Aug 29, 2005 2:23 pm

The internet is wonderful. There is a fan site for this band; turns out they put out several albums; I on'y recall two of them; they faded pretty fast I think; the second album (The Beat Goes On) has the Beethoven comoilation along with a Mozart compilation; I don't think it was on iTunes but I will check again tonight. The other albums are intriguing since I don't recall them at all; I think I may have been disappointed with the second album overall and moved on to other artists. I don't remember; this was all when I was around 15-16 years old in the 60s.

(And no comments about how if you remember the 60s then you really didn't live through them.)
"Willoughby. Next stop is Willoughby."

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Re: iTunes is great

#4 Post by Autumn Child » Mon Aug 29, 2005 3:51 pm

52FM wrote:I was just looking for a few more songs to buy and load on my iPod, and they have a feature that says "listeners who bought this also bought...". You can really get lost in surfing through those suggestions
Amazon is good for that. It tells you what people who bought each item also bought, and also makes recommendations based on what you view/rate/buy/arent interested in, and thats for music, books, dvds, videos, electronics, everything!

i love amazon :D
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#5 Post by You Make it Easy » Mon Aug 29, 2005 5:46 pm

I use http://cduniverse.com works fast.
Waiting to be found...

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#6 Post by 52FM » Tue Sep 06, 2005 9:05 am

60s hits continued...

This week I want to mention a couple of show tunes, but from one of the first (if not the first) show of its kind - Hair.

I imagine most people are at least somewhat familiar with the 5th Dimension oldie verion of Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In. Did you know that they were two separate songs in the play - Aquarius opened the show and a composition called The Flesh Failures/Let the Sunshine In closed the show (with audience members invited up on stage to sing and dance - my girlfriend/futire wife did not want to go up on stage - myself, I wanted to grab the bass and play along.)

The 60s were a decade of turmoil of course with the Vietnam War, but also pollution was a very large problem - not just car exhaust but industrial waste going into lakes and rivers (thus the birth of the EPA in the US). The lyrics of the Flesh Failures point that out:

We starve look at one another
Short of breath, walking proudly in our winter coats
Wearing smells from laboratories, facing a dying nation...

which eventually leads into the optimism of the refrain "Let the Sunshine In"

And that is our 60s musical lesson for the week. (by the way, I wasn't reallly a hippie, but I had the look for a while. People - like my kids - are amazed at that since I seem so conservative now. I tell them I can be described, but I can't be labled.)
"Willoughby. Next stop is Willoughby."

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#7 Post by lemoncupcake » Thu Sep 15, 2005 9:50 pm

Wow! This is the first time i've seen another person mention Donovan's Wear your love like heaven! I was given a box of records from an Aunt that was moving and that was in the lot.I love that song.
I've been listening to The Left Banke a lot lately.I don't know why,i like how all their songs sort of flow.
Another thing i've played so many times that my Dad finally said "Please load that on to your iPod,i can't take anymore of it" was Brian Wilson's "Smile".
Have you heard it? I think it's brilliantly wonderful.
My iPod is full of a very strange variety of music. Everything from Showtunes,Nancy Sinatra (I like her voice on "Bang Bang My Baby Shot me Down),Bob Dylan (Mostly the Blonde On Blonde album these days),Nirvana,Kylie Minogue,Every Springsteen album ever made (I'm a big fan).

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#8 Post by 52FM » Thu Sep 15, 2005 11:52 pm

Quite a wide range of musical genres as well as time periods.

My selections tend to be 60s and 70s - I need to learn more about 80s and 90s music - maybe I'm missing something.

I have a strange collection on my iPod; alphabetically it goes from Aerosmith to Yanni. I like saying that to people when they ask me what's on my iPod, so I'll probably never add any ZZ Top (not that I like them much.)

I also have an old live Buddy Rich album (not that there are any new ones, since he's been dead a while) that I bought when I was about 13-14 years old. I saw his band in a small club in Chicago around Rush Street called the Scotch Mist (long gone). They had a "kid's day" matinee; I played drums at the time - was just learning guitar (bass came in HS); anyway, it was very small and I was no more than 20 feet from him. Stuck with me all these years.
"Willoughby. Next stop is Willoughby."

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#9 Post by lemoncupcake » Fri Sep 16, 2005 12:14 am

The 80's had a good mix of things.I really love the New Wave that came out of it.I love The Cure,Joy Division,and a few other bands from that era.
I love Buddy Rich! My Dad plays him sometimes.

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#10 Post by 52FM » Fri Sep 16, 2005 11:06 am

So is your Dad into 60s/70s music? From your age, I suspect your Dad is about my age (early 50s).
"Willoughby. Next stop is Willoughby."

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#11 Post by lemoncupcake » Fri Sep 16, 2005 8:19 pm

He's about a decade or more older than you :)
His musical tastes are a bit odd.
He amuses me greatly.
He knows "songs" as opposed to artists.
I'd say there's many ten to twelve artists he has cd's of.
He's funny,he won't buy that many cd's because he says he made
the mistake with buying so many records years ago and then everything went to cassette,and then cd.He said this constant upgrading is hard to keep up with LOL
The rest,he just sticks to the oldies station.
He jokingly calls the oldies station the soundtrack of his life.He said anything he could ever want to hear is played on there.

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#12 Post by 52FM » Fri Sep 16, 2005 9:15 pm

So I'm guessing this whole iPod thing is not for him. I look on the train when I commute to/from work and I am the oldest person by far with an iPod. Though I first saw one from my wife's cousin and her husband (our age) and bought my wife one shortly thereafter. It was the first generation - $300 and only 5gig. We'lll save it as a collector's item of sorts when it finally dies. I wish I would have saved our first brick cell phone.
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#13 Post by I65 » Fri Sep 16, 2005 9:21 pm

LOL speaking of old electronics, I threw out a Tandy 64 a few years back. Anyone remember those? lol.

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#14 Post by lemoncupcake » Fri Sep 16, 2005 10:38 pm

They keep the oldies station on at his work.His new car has a cd player in it and lately he's had me make him some mixed cd's.I used to be really bad about not marking them,and he'd take the wrong ones,then come home and tell me about how he put a cd in on the way to work,and he had to take it out,it was so awful,"there was a guy screaming like someone was stabbing him" LOL.

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#15 Post by 52FM » Fri Sep 16, 2005 11:38 pm

I do remember the Tandy 64 (didn't Commodore have the same model - just marketed under different names?

Then of course we can get into video gaming -
Big snowstorm of 1979 in Chicago; so I bought an Atari 2600; my wife to this day hates computer games - and it may stem back from a "snow day" (she's a teacher) that I came home from work and she was playing Breakout all day trying to beat her best score. There are times I think she is still trying to get that day back somehow! :lol:
Last edited by 52FM on Fri Sep 16, 2005 11:57 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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#16 Post by 52FM » Fri Sep 16, 2005 11:41 pm

It jsut occurred to me, lemoncupcake (can we call you "lemon"? If I call you cupcake I feel like I should slap myself.) Anyway - you must have a turntable. We threw ours out years ago during our last move - though we still have many of our albums - including a very poor condition copy of Meet The Beatles!

By the way - want to judge how old I am? I saw the Beatles in concert.
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#17 Post by I65 » Fri Sep 16, 2005 11:46 pm

lol ya the day my dad brought home "pong" will always be a vivid memory. That was the greatest thing since sliced bread...

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#18 Post by lemoncupcake » Thu Sep 22, 2005 3:13 pm

you aren't old
stonehenge is old :)

yep,i have a turntable and love it dearly.
i had to get a new one last year.
i love the way music plays on it.
the audio quality is better (to my ears) than cd's are
it's hard to explain,i wish i could explain it all properly and technically but i can't.
if i put on one of my cd's that i have the record of
it just sounds different,i can't describe it.
i hate my cd of bruce's born to run
but i absolutely love my record album of it
supposeofly the new remastered release of it that's coming out soon will sound exactly like the record.
i hope it does.
but either way,i'm not getting rid of my records anytime soon
i love them too much

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#19 Post by 52FM » Thu Sep 22, 2005 4:11 pm

Yeah, lemon, I guess I'm not old - though some days I wake up feeling about in the same shape as Stonehenge! (Without having been drinking the night before!)

You are correct that perfect vinyl sounds better (on a very good stero with a high quality turntable and stylus) This is because it plays music as an analog representation; CDs are digital. (However, CDs quality won't get worse as vinyl will).

Think of music graphically - sound waves. If you draw a curve on paper, you have an infinite number of points. Scan that into a computer and it is limited by the number of pixels (or dots) that it is represented as. It won't really be a curve, it will be a series of finite dots. That's essentially what CD music is - and therefore you miss the "color" or the "shades" because of the digital representation.
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#20 Post by lemoncupcake » Thu Sep 22, 2005 7:12 pm

aawwww yeah but you still love music and life,and are embracing new technology and other lovely things so once you get that "i'm old" feeling,you should just laugh it off :)
hehe i knew i wasn't crazy with the record vs cd thing. thank you for explaining it better than i could :)
i've been lucky with all my records,they're still in great shape.
i've only had to replace one,thankfully they're still pressing them (and you can get them super cheap on ebay)

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