The Muppets continue their saga of awesomeness…

Bohemian Rhapsody

I tripped across a Celebrities Who Died in 2009 slideshow this morning, which is what inspired the last two posts.

As the title indicates, it was a bad year for the reformed Lynyrd Skynyrd.

Keyboardist Billy Powell died in January, and bassist Ean Evans died in May.

Evans himself replaced original bassist Leon Wilkeson, who died in 2001.

Diane Warren is a song writer. She’s the thirty-fifth most successful songwriter in singles chart history in the UK. Or so says wiki.

I’m not sure about the UK, but over here, she’s been pretty damn successful. She has written a ton of songs that you would know, and her songs have been performed by pretty much everyone (including Kiss and Haylie Duff).

At one point she had 7 different songs by 7 different artists on the Billboard singles chart. She’s also been nominated for a variety of Golden Globes and Oscars for her songs in movies.

A sample of some of her hits:

• Cher – “If I Could Turn Back Time”
• Celine Dion – “Because You Loved Me”
• Toni Braxton – “Unbreak My Heart”
• Aerosmith – “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing”
• Bad English – “When I See You Smile”
• Ace Of Base – “Don’t Turn Around”
• LeAnn Rimes – “How Do I Live”
• Milli Vanilli – “Blame it on the Rain”

But my personal favorite: Starship’s Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now

There is lyric in Sweet Home Alabama that specifically mentions Neil Young. I’ve never known what that was about, until I accidentally tripped on that knowledge last night.

It turns out that SHA was an “answer song” to two of Neil Young’s songs: Alabama, and Southern Man, both dealing with racism/slavery in the South.

The boys from Skynyrd took offense to Young’s broad characterization of southerners, specifically Alabamans, being racist. So they wrote a song about it.

Turns out there are many Answer Songs, mostly from the Country and Hippity Hop genres. I don’t know if I’ve heard of any of them.

If Marilyn Manson doesn’t like this post, he’s gonna git me!

He recently posted on My Space (My Space is so 2008!):

“If one more ‘journalist’ makes a cavalier statement about me and my band, I
will personally or with my fans’ help, greet them at their home and discover
just how much they believe in their freedom of speech,”

“I dare you all to write one more thing that you won’t say to my face. Because I will make you say it. In that manner. That is a threat.”

Manson, whose career was one of the casualties of Columbine, is apparently A) in a band and B) is still talked about in the media.

Source: Dave Ryan and here.

File under Things I Knew but Forgot…

Color Me Badd, by definition one of the Badd(d)est music groups ever, had more than one “hit” song.

I mean, everyone is familiar with the classic love tune I Wanna Sex You Up (”Let’s do it ’till we both wake up…” somehow…), but I had totally forgotten about their smash hit All 4 Love until I heard it on the XM station in a store the other day.

Fortunately these two dudes never forgot about it, as evidenced by their super baddd dance moves.

Other Badddd Hits:

• Slow Motion (”I like to love you in slow motion…” Until we both wake up, of course.)
• I Adore Mi Amor
• And of course the self titled groove- Color Me Badd

I think I speak for us all when I say: Tick Tock Get Up Stop.

BTW, The complete collection of Baddddd Ass Tunes can be found at the Amazon.com MP3 Store.

I’ve never cared much for Steve Wonder’s music… it’s just not my cup of tea, as they say. But I might just have to go buy an album after reading this story:

My wife works at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta on the AFLAC Cancer Center. One of her patients is Leo, an 18-year-old kid with terminal cancer, and his dad told her early on that Leo is a huge Stevie Wonder fan.

Beth (the wife) works with Rock Against Cancer, and through their local volunteer and the Atlanta NBC station, she got in touch with Stevie’s management ahead of the concert he played here last night. Leo and his family got to meet with Stevie before the show, and not only did Stevie walk out and dedicate the show to Leo, he brought the kid out onstage, sat him down on the piano bench next to him, and kept him there the entire show. We were up on the lawn (the Ampitheater at Encore Park in Alpharetta), and you could literally see the grin on the kid’s face from way back there. They also had dinner together after the show.

Wonder also hung out with the kid after the show. What a class act.

Oh, and don’t worry, I’ve contacted the writer about his illegal use of The Wife^®, which as you can see, is a registered trademark of mine.

via NRO.

One of those things I just can’t bring myself to not write about…

In which a wholesome American icon teams up with two significantly less wholesome people (Snoop Dog and Soulja Boy) to produce a new hippity hop classic.

Proceeds from the iTunes sales of the song benefit Aldrin’s ShareSpace Foundation.

Also, Buzz has a new autobiography out. You can buy it here:

Update: AoSHQ points out this far more entertaining video of Aldrin decking one of those “we never landed on the moon” conspiracy theory nutcases. A true American hero indeed!

For those of you following the saga, we’re building a patio in the back yard. So naturally, we have the radio on to provide some background music.

For the first few working weekends we had the radio on some random station. It’s the one where I heard Casey Kasem.

However, after hearing Pink! for the 3,435th time I cracked and shut the radio off. Silence is better than Pink! But the other day, The Wife^® decided to try to find another radio station, and found one that we haven’t heard before.

It’s called 93.3 KDKB (Everything that Rocks). In addition to having a DJ of unidentifiable gender on the weekends (turns out it’s a chick), they play Rock music. You know, everything that rocks.

(They also pronounce the name of the station funny. Like it’s a name: “Katie Cabee”. It sounds odd. But I digress.)

Anyway, it turns out that there are wayyyyy more Rock songs that are entirely about Rock than I ever knew. It seemed like every third song had inane “Rock Rules” lyrics. I can only remember a few, but there are a ton more.

Here’s the partial list:

• There’s Only One Way To Rock – Sammy Hagar
• Rock and Roll Ain’t Noise Pollution – AC/DC
• For Those About to Rock (We Salute You) – AC/DC
• Rock and Roll All Nite – Kiss
• Detroit Rock City – Kiss
• R.O.C.K. In the U.S.A. – John Mellencamp (Don’t call me Bones. I mean Cougar.)
• And of course, Rock Me Amadeus – Falco

Feel free to add your own in the comments. Or don’t. Whatever.

Allegedly, there was a decade called “the 80’s” which occurred sometime between 1979 and 1990.

Aqua (a Danish pop group, known for their hit, Barbie Girl) has a new throwback hit to the decade. It debuted at #1 on the Danish charts. The song references Jerry curl, a black Michael Jackson, Huey Lewis and the News, Rubik’s Cubes, and Ronald Regan. All of which are apparently real things or people per Wiki.

Check your insulin, the song is quite sugary.

Source Wiki