Billy Squier’s Rock Me Tonite is so 80s, it’s brilliant. The song is Squier’s highest charting U.S. single, peaking at number 15 on the Billboard Hot 100 and hitting the Top 10 on the Cash Box singles chart. It also returned him to #1 on the Top Rock Tracks chart in August 1984. Despite its major success, the single is sometimes associated with the end of Squier’s career as a singles artist due to the music video, which was maligned by fans and critics alike. Squier’s concert ticket sales immediately suffered, and he later fired his managers. He has accused Ortega of deceiving him and altering his original concept, which Ortega denies.
Not sure how much can be blamed over a music video, but there you go. I hope he received massive checks due to the hundreds of artists who sampled his The Big Beat single.
It’s even better when you remove the music (although the song is pretty good, too).
The young, pre-Smiths Steven Patrick Morrissey spent quite a bit of time honing his craft for words with a touch of biting (while funny) anger towards the music press and artists by writing to UK magazines like NME and Record Mirror. Here are just a few of his published works.
Thirty-five years ago today (July 18, 1981), the then New York-based thrash/metal band Anthrax was formed and started on the road to help change the history of music.
David Taylor, Anthrax fan, compiled a this video of the 1988 classic “Antisocial” over the past three-plus decades, as a a celebratory gift for the band and their 35th anniversary.
Said co-founder Scott Ian, “Thirty-five years have passed since that day and my life has changed profoundly. I am a husband, I am a father. I am a long way from the 17-year-old soon-to-be-college dropout who co-founded a heavy metal band. The only thing that hasn’t changed in 35 years, the one constant, is that I am still the rhythm guitar player in Anthrax. It’s what I GET to do. I GET to play in a band and I never take that for granted.”
So, with all those years, all those experiences, all those memories, what’s the one big takeaway experience that stands out for the guys? Was it when legendary author Stephen King included the band in one of his “Dark Tower” series books?
Or in 2012 when Anthrax became the first metal band to have its music played on Mars, when NASA played “Got The Time” to wake up the Mars Rover, Curiosity? Or how about in 1991 when they received their first Grammy nomination? Maybe it was when the band was caught up in the 2001 U.S. anthrax attacks and considered changing their name due to the PR nightmare that was caused. Or possibly it was when Anthrax made a cameo appearance on the popular 1992 TV series, “Married…with Children.”
Remembers Charlie Benante, the band’s drummer since 1983, “We had such a ball doing that show. We taped the episode twice, once in the afternoon then another one in the evening, which was done with rewrites. They changed some of our lines, but we got bigger laughs the second time so it was all worth it. After the show, we went to a sit-down dinner with the entire cast and crew at a restaurant in Hollywood. Here I am sitting next to Al Bundy [played by Ed O’Neill), and I look over at the booth across from us, and there are Clint Eastwood and Morgan Freeman having dinner. Al said, ‘hey, let’s go talk to Clint and Morgan,’ and I went ‘whaaaaa???’ He took us over there and introduced us to them – and I’m thinking ‘where am I? Am I here right now? This is actually happening?’ It was just surreal. That stands out as one of the highlights. It wasn’t really a musical thing, but music got us to that. I’m just a guy in a band making music…what am I doing here with these stars?”
Then there is newest member, lead guitarist Jonathan Donais who has a completely different take on his “best Anthrax moment.”
“It was probably 1989 or ’90, whenever the ‘Anti Social’ video blew up at Dial MTV,” he remembers. “It was the first time I’d ever heard Anthrax, and I immediately fell in love with the band.” Donais’ “best Anthrax memory” now happens like Groundhog Day: “I brought a tape of the Dial MTV performance to my guitar teacher and told him I wanted to learn how to play it. Now I get to play every night with the band!”
The most memorable time as a member of Anthrax could have been on September 14, 2011 as it was named “Anthrax Day” in the Bronx. Or June 22, 2010 when The Big Four played together on the same stage for the first time ever in Sofia, Bulgaria.
For Anthrax’s Ian, it was a different occasion. “My ONE thing of thousands of things I’ve done in Anthrax that stands out the most in the world would be playing Yankee Stadium,” he said, referencing The Big Four’s second of only two U.S. concerts, held on September 14, 2011. “For me that is the pinnacle. My mecca. The most NY thing a NY band could ever do. I got to play on stage on the field, in the building where so many of my heroes since I was a child played. It was surreal and overwhelming and I was in tears almost the entire first song, I had so much emotion pouring out of me. Like the words to the song say, I was ‘King of the hill, top of the heap.’
“So, to quote the Scottish poet Robbie Burns,” Ian adds,”‘Here’s to us; who is as good as us? Damn few, and they’re all dead.’ Thank you my friends…35 and counting.”
On September 30, Oh Boy Records will release John Prine’s latest, For Better, Or Worse, a duet album and follow up to the Grammy nominated In Spite of Ourselves. In this timeless album, produced by Jim Rooney, John sings with country sweethearts Iris DeMent, Alison Krauss, Miranda Lambert, Kathy Mattea, Kacey Musgraves, Fiona Prine, Amanda Shires, Morgane Stapleton, Susan Tedeschi, Holly Williams, and Lee Ann Womack.
The classic songs on For Better, Or Worse, originally recorded by artists such as Hank Williams, George Jones, Ernest Tubb, Buck Owens and others, are in John’s blood. “I cut my teeth on Hank Williams songs,” he says. “When I sing these songs there is a small pipeline straight from my heart to my lips.” The tracks take listeners through the universal cycle of love’s pull, love’s bend, love’s life, and love’s end.
This fall, John will celebrate both the new album and his approaching 70th birthday with two shows at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium, Sept. 30th & Oct. 1st, where he will be joined by some of the duet partners from For Better, Or Worse.
The growing importance of streaming playlists on Spotify is highlighted in a fascinating new feature on Buzzfeed, which also reveals/reiterates some killer stats about the format, including:
Half of Spotify’s 100 million-plus global users are listening to its human-curated playlists – not counting the algorithm-driven Discover Weekly;
Spotify currently employs a 50-person human curation team which has created over 4,500 playlists, more than 30 of which have over 1 million followers;
Spotify’s playlists cumulatively generate more than a billion plays per week;
According to estimates 1 in every 5 plays on all streaming services today happens inside a playlist – a number that’s growing.
“Time can be a villain or it can be a friend. No matter which it choses to it be, it affects us all, some less so so than others. Chicago artist Nathan Wright thinks time will kind to today’s black stars. They will bear up well in the coming years.”
On January 1, 1943, American folk singer Woody Guthrie (July 14, 1912 – October 3, 1967) produced a list of 33 “New Years Rulin’s”.
Transcript
1. Work more and better
2. Work by a schedule
3. Wash teeth if any
4. Shave
5. Take bath
6. Eat good — fruit — vegetables — milk
7. Drink very scant if any
8. Write a song a day
9. Wear clean clothes — look good
10. Shine shoes
11. Change socks
12. Change bed cloths often
13. Read lots good books
14. Listen to radio a lot
15. Learn people better
16. Keep rancho clean
17. Dont get lonesome
18. Stay glad
19. Keep hoping machine running
20. Dream good
21. Bank all extra money
22. Save dough
23. Have company but dont waste time
24. Send Mary and kids money
25. Play and sing good
26. Dance better
27. Help win war — beat fascism
28. Love mama
29. Love papa
30. Love Pete
31. Love everybody
32. Make up your mind
33. Wake up and fight
Along with specializing in one-liners and rapid-fire delivery of jokes—which were often self-deprecating, Bob Hope was celebrated for his long career performing United Service Organizations (USO) shows to entertain active service American military personnel. He made 57 tours for the USO between 1941 and 1991, and Hope was declared an honorary veteran of the United States Armed Forces in 1997 by act of the U.S. Congress.
Some great news for anyone and everyone who falls into the talk radio category – your favorite NPR stations are coming to iHeartRadio. In a brand new collaboration with NPR, more than 260 NPR member stations can add their live News Talk programming to iHeartRadio, to stream directly their 85 million registered users.
Adding NPR member stations to iHeartRadio adds even more signature content and best-in-class News Talk programming, plus it allows NPR stations to reach their audience across more than 80 unique device platforms. NPR listeners who tune in through iHeartRadio will also have the option to donate to the station to support public programming. Talk about a win-win!
