Encore, Encore!

You've just spent over an hour singing, swaying and screaming at the top of your lungs as you watch your favourite singer/band rock it out. Suddenly, and all too soon, it's the last song, and you give all you've got left in you for this closing crowd-pleaser that brings the house down. The song ends with a “Goodnight New York/LA/Omaha/insert city name. Thank you for being such a great audience!” The singer exits the stage, the lights go down, and that's when the shrieking really starts. Why the sudden commotion? Is everyone present in the audience afraid of the dark?

Nope. You have just found yourself at that hallowed part of the show they call the Encore.

Musicians measure success by record-breaking sales, albums going platinum, Twitter followers and Facebook likes, and concerts selling out in under 30 seconds (ahem, Bieber). I don’t think it’s offensive to say that a common characteristic of most musical artists is a healthy dash of egotism. But all those measures of success I mentioned? They are all markers of popularity that occur completely removed from the artists themselves. You can’t really soak up adulation from a blog post, magazine blurb or radio interview.

The Encore is different. In the few moments before the artist re-emerges, the audience becomes desperate. Pleading, “If we haven’t been an enthusiastic enough audience, we promise we’ll be better if you just please play a few more songs. And also, haven’t you not yet played your current biggest hit? This can’t yet be over, right? Right?????”

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Crank It to 11, Blow another speaker

I was having a conversation a few days ago with a friend of mine who wasn’t allowed to listen to any music whatsoever when he was growing up. He asked me what he missed out on in the 1990’s. I started playing some music for him, I played “Smells like teen spirit” I played “Black Hole Sun” I played “Mr. Jones” all good songs, but none of which blew him away.

Side Note- He had heard all these songs at some point but never knew who sang them and never paid attention to them. For all intents and purposes, these were virgin ears.

Then I played him a personal favorite of mine, “I’ve Seen Better Days” by Sublime. He loved it. He was so excited about it too. It’s like all of a sudden there was a whole new favorite food he could eat that he hasn’t grown tired of already.

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JLo vs. LDP

Do you ever think about how two seemingly similar people can go in two completely different directions on the path of life?

Kind of deep, I know. But, let me bring it back to the shallow end for ya.

I’m not talking about anything or anyone of any importance here (shocking I know for this website), I’m talking about two actors/performers. 

When I was a kid, I loved movies that had musical numbers.  What kid doesn’t?  Somehow on the endless cycle of cable television, I found myself hooked on 2 movies in particular.  The 1987 classic La Bamba, about the metoric rise and untimely death of Ritchie Valens and the 1997 classic Selena, about the metoric rise and untimely death of Selena Peres.

These movies popped up in a conversation I was having the other day and it got me thinking.  What the hell happened to Lou Diamond Phillips? And why is JLo so popular?

See, those were the 2 stars of those movies.  LDP playing Ritchie, JLo playing Selena.  Although these movies came out a decade apart, they are nearly identical in story line.  Aside from the fact that Ritchie dies in a plane crash and Selena is murdered, they are virtually the same movie about the successful, short-lived careers of Hispanic singers. 

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Groovin' to the Tunes of WWF: The Music

We all make dumb purchases with our hard earned money. 

This is a fact of life.

Listen, sometimes you can’t pass up on bulk beef jerky from Costco, or a life-size cardboard cutout of Darth Vader. I get it. I’m not judging.

I was thinking about some of the ridiculous purchases I’ve made over the years and realized most of the came when I was a kid.  It’s not that they cost a lot of money, but to think that there was a point in time when I saw a pack of baseball cards with characters from the hit Kevin Costner movie Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves on them and thought to myself, “I gotta have that!” is a little ridiculous.  

Maybe the funniest purchase that I made, and frankly made multiple times as a kid, is a collection of what used to be called WWF: The Music.  That’s right, I used to buy CD’s that only had theme songs of popular wrestlers.  Not one CD.  Multiple CD’s. As in Volumes 1-5. And not only that I think I would still buy one if saw it on the shelf of an FYE (If FYE is still business that is, haven’t seen one in a while).

So this very long preface has really been a way to justify me giving you my favorite WWF theme songs of the WWF: The Music Era.  These are very subjective, so feel free to add your own input in the comment section.

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T³: Top Ten Thursday- Desert Island Albums

We’ve all played the Ten (insert item here) You’d Take on an Island game. And we’re going to play it again right now.

10) The Who’s “Tommy”: It’s literally an epic story set to music. My kind of album.

9) Led Zeppelin’s “IV”: It might be the most mainstream of Zeppelin’s discography, but it earned that reputation because it is, in my opinion, their strongest work. Zeppelin’s in-your-face style was taken to another level on this album, particularly on “Black Dog” and “When the Levee Breaks,” the opening and closing tracks, respectively.

8) Rush’s “2112”: I’m pretty sure the statement “Rush is awesome” is one of the phrases found on the Rosetta Stone. And “2112” proves why. Imagine a brilliant, epic classical piece by Bach or Beethoven, except with one of the best drummers on Earth and rocking guitar. That’s “2112.”

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