Stairway to Heaven was one of the biggest rock songs of the 1970s – loved, imitated and sometimes parodied. Now Led Zeppelin’s classic track is back on the turntable, on a re-mastered version of the band’s fourth album. 43 years after its release, the song continues to hold a place in many music fans’ hearts.
Guitarist Jimmy Page gives a personal account of how a rock anthem came together.
That’s the voice of Grace Slick, of Jefferson Airplane in the video below. She was featured in nearly every episode of Sesame Street‘s debut season in 1969, singing counting songs over psychedelic free jazz and groovy animation. The Jazz Number segments, featuring race cars and spies, debuted in the first test pilot, and was first broadcast in the first episode of the series. Jazz #3 appeared in the second test show.
Composer Denny Zeitlin remembers:
“John Magnuson of Imagination, Inc. hired me to compose and perform that soundtrack, which is called “1 to 10”. I’m playing piano and clavinet on it, with Bobby Natanson on drums, and Mel Graves, bass. Some time after we recorded it, Grace Slick over-dubbed her parts.”
Jazz #8 was often followed by an Ernie and Bert sketch, which begins with Ernie watching (and singing along to) the end of the segment on his TV.
The film for #2 was included on Old School: Volume 1, as part of episodes 1 and 536, and in Old School: Volume 2, as part of the test pilot. The film for #10 was included in the Sesame Street Unpaved special.
True legend of Australian music, Fast Times apparel’s good friend and Customer Nick Cave has teamed up with them to produce an exciting and rad collection. After discussing lyrics and a theme, it was agreed Nature Boy best suited the Melbourne Skate Scene and vibe of Fast Times. The lyrics are taken from Nature Boy, a track from’s Nick’s Abattoir Blues album which also features on the accompanying Fast Times Skate clip. Once the mood was set Artist Chuck Sperry hailing from San Francisco worked with them to come up with a design, one of Chuck’s women is seen tangled in her long golden locks wrapped in a psychedelic bed of flowers.
Belissa Escobedo, Rhiannon McGavin, and Zariya Allen, members of the Get Lit organization perform “Somewhere in America”.
From The Next Web:
Shazam will soon extend its music identification service to include objects.
Speaking at this year’s Mobile World Congress, chief executive Rich Riley told Reuters, “Shazam is already a verb. We want to expand the universe of what you can Shazam. The famous blue button that our users love will remain on the home screen but will be able to do much more.”
The new feature is kind of like an advanced version of Google Goggles. The company says its app will soon let users identify products and learn more about them. For example, you could point your phone at a cereal box to get in-depth nutritional information, or at a DVD case to buy the soundtrack from your device.
From Techcrunch:
Do you run a Facebook Page? Heads up: your page’s “Like” count is probably going to drop a bit soon, and it’s totally not your fault.
The short version: Facebook is changing the way it’s counting likes, subtracting any accounts that have been either manually deactivated or “memorialized” after its owner passed. It’s something that probably should have been done since the beginning — but since it wasn’t, it’d be easy to think your Likes had dropped because of something you’d done.
One thing that’s important to note: it seems that this only accounts for profiles that have been manually deactivated. Likes from profiles that could be considered “inactive” because the user just hasn’t logged in for a while will continue to count.
A Single Life is an animated short film in which Pia finds a vinyl single. When playing the mysterious single, Pia is suddenly able to travel through her life. If she spins the record forward, she becomes older. If she skips backwards, she gets younger.
So wrong, and so funny.
http://youtu.be/AnBsFXIgAZM
Peter Gabriel’s “Sledgehammer” was produced by Daniel Lanois and found on his massive “So” album. It hit number one in Canada on 21 July 1986, where it spent four weeks; number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the United States and number four on the UK Singles Chart, thanks in part to a popular and influential music video. It was his biggest hit in North America and ties with “Games Without Frontiers” as his biggest hit in the United Kingdom.
The song’s music video has won a number of awards, including a record nine MTV Awards at the 1987 MTV Video Music Awards[5] and Best British Video at the 1987 Brit Awards.[ Gabriel was also nominated for three Grammy Awards: Best Male Rock Vocal Performance, Song of the Year and Record of the Year. As of 2011, “Sledgehammer” is the most played music video in the history of MTV.
Peter’s vocals start at the 0:50 mark.
http://youtu.be/RY5g5k8yqus
Here’s the original award-winning video:
The image above is a slection from a fascinating chart in the Washington Post. You can see a history of the English language web as sites rise, fall, and disappear from 1996 to 2013. Notice how Penthouse made the chart back in 1996, along with four universities. I’m not sure if there’s a correlation. And anyone even remember Grab? Uproar?
Follow us on Instagram @thatericalper
Eric Alper is a 6-time nominee for Publicist of the Year during Canadian Music Week and has overseen the publicity campaigns for over 183 JUNO Award-nominated albums (and 16 in 2025), 45 Grammy-nominated albums, including 47 JUNO Award, 58 Canadian Folk Music Award, 126 Maple Blues Award-winning albums and is also truly honoured to work with some of the biggest and most important artists of our time.
Contact me: eric@thatericalper.com
© Copyright - That Eric Alper
