The Rolling Stones Want You To Pay $1,853.50 For Their “Tongue Pit Package”

23 Oct 2012 Leave a comment

by Ed Cyphers in General Posts Tags:

(Text and photo: BuzzFeed)

The Rolling Stones are going to play two concerts at the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey on December 13th and 15th to celebrate their 50th anniversary as a band. Demand for these tickets is basically off the charts – these two gigs are their only shows in North America this year and they haven’t played on this continent since 2006 – so naturally, the base ticket prices are very, very high.

Here are your options for premium seating:

Ooof! The cheapest seats in the house are $114.80 including service fees, and the next step up from that – well, not so much a step so much as a leap across a very wide economic chasm – is $813.00. And that’s before the tickets start getting scalped on the secondary market!

But hey, they’re The Rolling Stones! This could be your last chance to see them. Don’t you want to cash out your 401k and get in their…Tongue Pit?

Pirate Bay vs The RIAA: It’s Copyright Infringement vs Ginormous Record Industry Greed

22 Oct 2012 Leave a comment

RIAA vs. The Pirate Bay

Image by Ed Cyphers

To New Blog Followers

17 Oct 2012 Leave a comment

by Ed Cyphers in General Posts

If you’ve recently signed on as a follower of this blog I want to make sure you’re aware of the option to set up a weekly update, so that you receive only one email per week rather than an email for every item I post.

Of course, it’s up to you, but I don’t want to fill anyone’s mailbox with an overabundance of stuff.

Also, if you access the blog on your phone, make sure you scroll to the bottom of the page and click on “View Full Site“. This will show you the site as it’s intended to look, with all the categories in the column on the right side.

Welcome, and thanks for reading! Your comments and feedback are most welcome.

Women Who Have Inspired Pop Songs

17 Oct 2012 2 Comments

by Ed Cyphers in General Posts

  • Marilyn Monroe – “Candle in the Wind” (Elton John/Bernie Taupin)
  • Elizabeth Taylor – “Emotionally Yours” (Bob Dylan)
  • Christine Brinkley – “Uptown Girl” (Billy Joel)
  • Joni Mitchell – “Our House” (Graham Nash)
  • Billie Jean King – “Philadelphia Freedom” (Elton John/Bernie Taupin)
  • Joan Baez – “It Ain’t Me, Babe” (Bob Dylan)
  • Kylie Minogue – “Suicide Blonde” (Michael Hutchence)
  • Marianne Faithfull – “Wild Horses” (Mick Jagger)
  • Geri Halliwell – “Eternity” (Robbie Williams)
  • Patti Boyd – “Layla” (Eric Clapton)
  • Rita Collidge – “Delta Lady” (Leon Russell)
  • Judy Collins – “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” (Stephen Stills)

(Source: Promo Only)

I would add:

  • Caroline Kennedy-“Sweet Caroline” (Neil Diamond)
  • Margaret Thatcher-“Tramp the Dirt Down” (Elvis Costello)

…and let’s not even go into Yoko/John territory.

There must be others out there. Can you name any?

Mumford Revisited

17 Oct 2012 Leave a comment

by Ed Cyphers in General Posts Tags: ,

Following up on my post of Oct. 8th: https://edcyphers.wordpress.com/2012/10/08/mumford-sons-in-a-league-with-the-beatles-um-no/

(taking issue with an item in Paste which hyped Mumford & Sons’ latest album by comparing the sales of its singles to the Beatles’ chart successes)

The following is from the today’s Rolling Stone online feed:

Folk-rockers continue their slow decline

LOSER OF THE WEEK: Mumford & Sons. Look at the numbers:  600,000, 169,000, 96,000. Not an impressive trajectory for a smash album. Babel had a fantastic debut two weeks ago, but its sales plunged 72  percent last week and another 43 percent this week. And the band’s single “I  Will Wait,” despite a respectable 6.6 million YouTube views, seems to be  petering out as well – it’s down 14 slots on BigChampagne’s Ultimate Chart  (which tracks Internet criteria) from Number 16 to Number 30. It’s still  possible for Mumford to maintain its positioning with a slow-burning, Lady  Antebellum-style, release-great-singles-over-time strategy, but for now, its  chart run appears to be declining.

And just to be clear, the BigChampagne chart didn’t exist in the Beatles’ day (and they’d have owned it if it did) so the Billboard singles chart makes for the best apples-to-apples comparison. Billboard’s chart shows “I Will Wait” at #32 this week, down from its peak of #23. So the statement still holds true: Mumford & Sons still haven’t cracked the top twenty with a single. And the drop from 600,000 in album sales to 169,000 the following week is quite spectacular.

And as for a “release-great-singles-over-time strategy”, there were already (as Paste correctly pointed out) six Mumford singles on the chart simultaneously as of two weeks ago. So much for doing that.

Not saying they aren’t great. Just saying it takes more than a single great week on the chart to earn anyone a comparison to any all-time great. Especially the Beatles.

Hmph.

Symphony of Science: Education (Auto)Tuned to Young People

17 Oct 2012 2 Comments

The world of science is indeed full of wonders. Would you ever have believed you could buy a 7″ vinyl record of a song by Carl Sagan?

That would be “A Glorious Dawn”, one of 17 or so bits of science-as-entertainment produced so far by a project called Symphony of Science. The songs and their accompanying videos give scientific and philosophical concepts a pseudo-chillwave musical treatment and feature (with the help of our old friend auto-tune) such prominent figures as Sagan, Isaac Asimov, Stephen Hawking and Bill Nye the Science Guy.

Check out the site for more:

http://www.symphonyofscience.com/

Video by Ed Cyphers

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