NEW YORK—Noted rapper/producer Sean “Puffy” Combs released his hotly anticipated new single Tuesday, “Tha Kidd (Is Not My Son),” which samples Michael Jackson’s 1983 smash “Billie Jean” in its entirety and adds nothing. “When I was in the studio mixing and recording, I decided ‘Tha Kidd’ would work best if I kept all the music and vocals from the original version and then didn’t rap over it,” Combs said. “So what I did is put in a tape with ‘Billie Jean’ on it, and then I hit record. The thing turned out great.” Combs’ current number-one hit, “Eye Of The Tiger,” is dedicated to slain rapper Notorious B.I.G.

of course this news was sampled from The Onion I added nothing!

After some hosting issues which were mostly mistakes on my end, all the dog sales adverts are gone from the site again. Now onto new adventures!.

When I entered a festival terrain last Sunday I totally missed an opportunity to take a picture of a sign saying:

<—–Artists         Strawberries —->

That was exactly the phrase what drew my attention to watch this movie. For more than 20 years this was the monster reunion in the making everybody was dying to see and hear.
Now count to ten and realize that this is 2009 and 2 of the Beatles passed away. Basically, if you go to a Paul mcCartney concert and he calls Ringo Starr on stage to sing one single song, that is the closest you can get to a reunion.
Flashforward to 2035. Due to a living lying on his back besides the swimming pool, Ringo Starr outlived Paul McCartney  who did some extensive touring up until his death.
Start selling tickets because Ringo can set up his drums and play Carnegie hall for the ultimate Beatles reunion He’ll be singing ‘With a little help from my friends’, Yellow submarine, and do the intro from ‘Come together’ on drums as a encore, shouting : ‘What’s my name!?’

sigh.

Last month Lynyrd Skynyrd keyboardist Billy Powell passed away at age 56 due to -supposedly- a hart attack.

On stage mr.Powell played on a white grand piano AND a white Hammond B3 organ. The two instruments would stand on a motorized round turning plateau, so whatever instrument he was playing, the plateau would turn him facing the audience. For that single reason alone he was my hero.

According to Louisbellson.info, Mr.Bellson was hospitalized after a hip breaking fall in November 2008. He was still in recovery when unexpectedly passing away on Feb 14 2009. He was 84 years old.

I had the pleasure of attending one of his concerts a few years back. It was stunning to see one of the founding fathers of swing doing his thing. The concert went a little like this:

Like I said: I am in the middle of doing morning radio-shows this whole week with my 60s band ‘the revolvers’

Everyday we do a chalenge: How would this modern song have sounded when it was made in the 60s.

So far we did 4

You can check them out over at www.revolvers.nl , or you can browse to the radio2 site (less dutch jibberish, very fast,  but windows only   )

Radio2 -news -the revolvers

Su 30 November 2008, Pakhuis Wilhemina Amsterdam.

60s beat&soul band ‘the Revolvers’ are celebrating their 10th anniversary party with a BANG, right HERE.
(Dj Leo Blokhuis will be playing obscure 60s songs before and after the set)
(you be there, you spot me, sitting behind the Hammond & the Rhodes, we wave, we be cool)
Click picture for more info.

Never bet on something improbable. For 15 years Axl Rose was working in his new album and some at some point in time someone at a Dr.Pepper said: ‘If the New Guns’n Roses album gets released I’ll buy everyone a Dr.Pepper.  Guns ‘n Roses weren’t even in on this deal. Now, since the album release is today, the term ‘everyone’ was a bit slimmed down. By ‘everyone’ they mean everyone in the USA apart from former band members Slash and Buckethead. So regardless if your a fan, you are going to buy this album, or -like me- don’t want to come near this album within 10 yards, you can get your free Dr.Pepper here (by downloading a coupon which is valid until Februari 28. You have until 12 am EST. I tried and tried but the server was down all day. It seems America is thirsty.

—update- the site is up again, so get yours now! —

Now about this album: It is called ‘Chinese Democracy’.
You work for 15 years on one single album and this is what you come up with? I think that says a lot about Mr. Rose’s creativity. More appropriate would be:

-’Sorry I am late’
-’So how were the nineties?’
-’SURPRISE!’ , or if they really want to have a Chinese angle: ‘SUPLIES!’

Now this is annoying. Dalhousie University professor Jason Brown has made an extensive study about the opening chord of ‘A Hard Days Night’. The reason why is because this chord sounds so fat, no guitar player ever could copy it. For the one reader who has no clue what I am talking about, press play will ‘ya!

In my humble opinion this starts with the proper guitar, the proper amplifier AND record that in a proper room, and be done with it, but it goes one step further. Because of a new version of Melodyne (a pro -audio plugin for mangling and surgically alter sounds) he could extract each note of that chord and listen to it. I am not going to bother you with the details, you can read all about that in this 4 page pdf, but I can pretty much sum up the study in a few lines.

The reason the chord is so fat was, according to producer George Martin, because they knew that single chord was the opening of the album AND the movie. They were just going for the biggest bang they could come up with.
What’s in this study is a piece of music-geekdom I don’t even want to touch with a ten foot pole.
George playes a 12 string guitar in his solo, so it is safe to assume he uses the same guitar for the opening chord. He uses these notes, but that leaves out these notes, which could be played by John’s guitar. ***insert schnauzer gagging here***

To me a good record is like a movie: I don’t want to know how it’s made, I want to enjoy the organ sound, recorded through a fan, a wah-wah pedal an routed through a Marshall stack to give it some extra oomph. It’s still sounds like an organ, but it will be ‘different’

Every beatle recording has been extensively documented numerous books about those have been released over the last 40 years. To me further studies in that is just a waste of money and time.

I don’t know how much money went into this study, but I just took the sample and reproduced it in 5 minutes…by taking the 21th century route: SAMPLING!  I even played smoke on the water with it, because that was the stupidest thing I could think of commenting on this news. (on a sidenote: what I did was illegal, but that is a whole different discussion)
Thank you very much.

A hard days smoke

source

This advertisement appeared in my gmail-window today.  Google is good, very good! They know, yes they know…