M Is FOR MASHUP - June 5th, 2019
The AudioBoots French Boots Album Arrives
By DJ Useo
At Audioboots Mashup Forum
( audioboots.com/frontpage.html )
, we like to do themed mashup compilations a few times a year. A favorite theme once more was French mashups. To be eligible for the comp, all you had to do was employ French vocals. ( & you had to pass your track by the pre-release team ) The mixed offerings ( submissions, some call them ) flowed in, resulting in a collection that really "Pops". ( As the new generation says )
Co-owner Chocomang
( chocomang.org/Mashup2/ )
ably stepped up, & handled all aspects of this new 2 disc set, including producing, co-ordination, site-construction, & mixing a wonderful batch of mixes himself. The theme helped draw in an ideal group of home producers, including Amoraboy, DJ GIac, DJ Rudec, Hahnstudios & so very many more. Every contributor is an accomplished regular releaser of mashups, & worthy of following.
To give you an idea of the collected content, there's an overview sampler on the download page here
( audioboots.com/Albums/FrenchBoots/ )
Videos are expected. Look for links to them in the forum thread here
( audioboots.com/forum/index.php?p=/discussion/1979 )
The entire two disc set is available gratis from this page here
( audioboots.com/Albums/FrenchBoots/ )
All past volumes are still available here
( audioboots.com/forum/index.php?p=/categories/compilations )
Here's a link to stream my preview track,
"Getting Away Enfant" ( Yelle et Electronic )
( sowndhaus.audio/track/13117 )
The combos are inspired, & the tracks are mixed with proficiency. Look for pairings like Alizée vs Depeche Mode, Stromae vs Plastic Bertrand, Edith Piaf vs Etienne Daho, plus a substantial additional number of rewarding blends. This isn't even the last of the Audioboots new albums, as the new "It Is To Laff" comp will appear within the month. Don't fret, I'll clue you in regarding when it becomes available. Woot!
PS. Thanks to all contributors. Your contributions are highly appreciated.
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Bruce took the day off.
David Bruce's Amazon Author Page
David Bruce's Smashwords Page
David Bruce's Blog #1
David Bruce's Blog #2
David Bruce's Blog #3
David Bruce's Lulu Storefront
David Bruce's Apple iBookstore
David Bruce has over 100 Kindle books on Amazon.com.
Presenting
Michael Egan
responded:
In memory.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
Team Coco
CONAN
from Bruce
Anecdotes
• Charles Bukowski worked at lousy jobs for much of his life, but he wanted to be a writer. In 1969, John Martin, publisher of Black Sparrow Press, made him an offer: For each and every month of the rest of Mr. Bukowski's life, Mr. Martin would pay him $100. Mr. Martin atttached a condition: Mr. Bukowski had to quit his job at the post office. Instead of working at lousy jobs, he would have to write. Mr. Bukowski, age 49, gladly accepted the offer and quit his job and wrote. In 1971, Black Sparrow Presspublished Mr. Bukowski's first novel: Post Office. After 15 years of receiving $100 each and every month, Mr. Bukowski wrote Mr. Martin a letter in which he expressed his appreciation at not having to work at lousy jobs. In part, he wrote, "I remember once, working as a packer in this lighting fixture company, one of the packers suddenly said: 'I'll never be free!' One of the bosses was walking by (his name was Morrie) and he let out this delicious cackle of a laugh, enjoying the fact that this fellow was trapped for life. So, the luck I finally had in getting out of those places, no matter how long it took, has given me a kind of joy, the jolly joy of the miracle. I now write from an old mind and an old body, long beyond the time when most men would ever think of continuing such a thing, but since I started so late I owe it to myself to continue, and when the words begin to falter and I must be helped up stairways and I can no longer tell a bluebird from a paperclip, I still feel that something in me is going to remember (no matter how far I'm gone) how I've come through the murder and the mess and the moil, to at least a generous way to die. To not to have entirely wasted one's life seems to be a worthy accomplishment, if only for myself."
• Maurice Sendak, who died on 8 May 2012, wrote and illustrated many books for children. Of course, he received letters from his readers. He liked the ones that were actually voluntarily written by the kids - adults assigned too many of the letters he received. He gave an example: "Dear Mr. Sendak, Mrs. Markowitz said would you please send a free book and two drawings?" But the ones from children who actually felt the urge to write him were wonderful and wonderfully honest - Mr. Sendak appreciated honesty. After he wrote Outside Over There, a little girl from Canada read it and wrote him, "I like all of your books, why did you write this book, this is the first book I hate. I hate the babies in this book, why are they naked, I hope you die soon. Cordially…" Her mother wrote this note that accompanied the letter: "I wondered if I should even mail this to you - I didn't want to hurt your feelings."Mr. Sendak's feelings were not hurt. He said, "I was so elated. It was so natural and spontaneous. The mother said, 'You should know I am pregnant and she has been fiercely opposed to it.' Well, she [the little girl] didn't want competition, and the whole book was about a girl who's fighting against having to look after her baby sister." Mr. Sendak added, "If [the letter is] true, then you can't care about the vicious and the painful. You can only be astonished. Most kids don't dare tell the truth. Kids are the politest people in the world. A letter [that says, 'I hope you die soon'] is wonderful. 'I wish you would die.' I should have written back, 'Honey, I will.'"
• Jo Nesbø is the Norwegian author of Scanda-noir crime thrillers starring the character Harry Hole, about whose last name he said, "The Norwegian pronunciation is Hoola, but it's fine if you call him Hole." When Mr. Nesbøwas younger, he played in a rock band with a younger brother. Mr. Nesbø said, "When we started the band, we really weren't that good and we would change our name every week so that audiences wouldn't realize it was us playing again. So the band never really had a name. Eventually we got a bit better and fans would ask when di derre [Norwegian for 'those guys'] were coming back. So we called ourselves Di Derre." By the way, Mr. Nesbø is a soccer [European football] fan. When he was 10 years old, he thought about becoming a fan of the Arsenal football club, but an older brother forced him to become a fan of Tottenham. Mr. Nesbø explained, "I had been thinking about supporting Arsenal because I quite liked the shirts. But then my 15-year-old brother told me firmly that I wasn't and that I had two days to learn the entire Tottenham squad. He wasn't someone that you disobeyed." Harry Hole is a fan of Tottenham Hotspur football club, and in one of Mr.Nesbø's Harry Hole thrillers, the bad guys are drug dealers who wear Arsenal replica shirts. Mr. Nesbø said, "I've got a number of friends who support Arsenal, and they gave me a lot of grief about that. They said, 'Only a coward uses his power as a writer to do something like that.' […] I told them to sod off."
• One of the stories told about Kurt Vonnegut is how he quit his job writing for Sports Illustrated. He was assigned to write a story about a horse that jumped over a fence during a race and tried to run away. Supposedly, Mr. Vonnegut stared for hours at a blank sheet of paper, and then he wrote "The horse jumped over the f**king fence" and quit. Later, as a famous author, he made a cameo in the movie Back to School. He played himself, and the character played by Rodney Dangerfield hired him to write a term paper on the novels of Kurt Vonnegut. After Mr. Dangerfield handed in the paper and the professor read it, the professor recognized that the paper was plagiarized and added, "Whoever did write this doesn't know the first thing about Kurt Vonnegut."
***
© Copyright Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
***
Bonus Links
Jeannie the Teed-Off Temp
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
JD is on vacation.
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
More June Gloom - burned off late afternoon.
World's Richest Female Musician
Rihanna
Singer, makeup entrepreneur, lingerie designer and now the first black woman to head a top luxury fashion house -- Rihanna has racked up a $600 million fortune to become the world's richest female musician, Forbes said Tuesday.
The 31-year-old -- born Robyn Rihanna Fenty in Barbados -- has amassed wealth exceeding that of Madonna ($570 million), Celine Dion ($450 million) and Beyonce ($400 million), whose husband Jay-Z was just named the world's first billionaire rap star.
Rihanna's ranking puts into fresh perspective one of her signature lyrics -- "work, work, work, work, work," which opened her 2016 dancehall smash "Work."
Since bursting onto the scene in 2003, she has spun her triumphs in music into entrepreneurial gold, launching her makeup brand Fenty Beauty -- co-owned by French luxury giant LVMH -- in September 2017 online and with Sephora.
She makes the majority of her money from touring and musical releases, according to Forbes, but also co-owns her Savage X Fenty lingerie line.
Rihanna
Claim Is 'Delusional'
London Fanfare
NBC's chief foreign correspondent, Richard Engel, said that President Donald Trump (R-Unstable) sounded "delusional" when he told reporters at a Tuesday press conference that there were "thousands of people in the street cheering" his presence in the United Kingdom.
Trump was met with protesters this week as he toured London with members of the British royal family and U.K. political leaders as part of an official state visit. Speaking to reporters alongside U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May, the president said he saw thousands cheering during his first two days in London.
"I didn't see any protests," Trump said. "I did see a small protest today when I came ? very small. So a lot of it is fake news, I hate to say."
"That sounded to be somewhat delusional," Engel said. "Instead we've seen people quite boisterously expressing their opposition to President Trump. They say they don't want him here and they're upset the British government has rolled out the red carpet."
"There's something deeply disturbing about President Trump claiming that he saw 'thousands of people' here who were celebrating him and welcoming his arrival," the journalist said. "There were thousands of people on the streets. They were protesting Trump, not celebrating his arrival."
London Fanfare
Releases New Version
Ty Herndon
It's been 25 years since Ty Herndon released the song "What Mattered Most" about losing the love of his life - a blue-eyed girl from Baton Rouge. At the time, the country star was in a loving (but closeted) relationship with a man.
The 57-year-old, who came out as gay in an exclusive interview with PEOPLE in 2014, is in a much different place these days. On Tuesday, Herndon is re-releasing the hit single that launched his country music career. This time, the alternative version features lyrics that accurately reflect who he is on the inside. It also marks the first single off his new album, Got It Covered, dropping Aug. 23.
"In the [original] I say the word "she" or "her" something like 36 times," Herndon tells PEOPLE exclusively. "I'm doing this song 25 years later the way I wish I could've recorded it back then."
Herndon feels at peace with whatever response may come from the re-release. As the first male country singer to come out as gay, he says he's developed a thick skin when it comes to the public's opinion.
In addition to releasing his song, Herndon will present and co-host the Concert for Love and Acceptance with CMT's Cody Alan in partnership with GLAAD on Thursday evening in Nashville.
Ty Herndon
Every System
Chicago
A music critic who has spent years covering the alleged abuses of R. Kelly said Tuesday that "every system in Chicago has failed" the "dozens of young black women" who said they were victimized by the singer.
Nearly 20 years ago, Jim DeRogatis helped break the first story with allegations against Kelly. In his new book, "Soulless: The Case Against R. Kelly," he says he knows of 48 women who were allegedly abused by the singer over 30 years.
DeRogatis said he first became aware of allegations against the singer when he received a fax in 2000, around the time of Thanksgiving. He originally threw it on the slush pile of hate mail he received for writing about hip-hop, he said, "but there was a tone in that fax" that made it stand out.
"'Mr. DeRogatis, I'm writing to you hoping that you can help,'" he recalled the fax as saying. "'Robert has a problem. His problem is young girls.'"
DeRogatis estimates that "thousands" of people were aware of or witnessed the "damage" Kelly allegedly caused in the nearly 20 years that followed.
Chicago
$10 Million On Lobbyists
Catholic Church
The U.S. Catholic Church spent $10.6 million on lobbyists to prevent victims of clerical sex abuse from suing for damages.
According to a new report, the money was doled out from 2011 through 2018 in eight northeastern states where bills to reform statute of limitations laws were either in the works or being considered.
"This report lays out what we have known all along - that the Catholic Church refuses to take responsibility for the decades of abuse that took place knowingly under its watch," said attorney Stephen Weiss, who works for one of the law firms that commissioned the study.
"Statute of limitations reforms give survivors more time to obtain some measure of closure on the atrocities committed against them," attorney Gerald Williams added. "The church has yet to implement meaningful reforms, and by working to prevent these laws from passing, the church is clearly demonstrating that it does not stand with survivors."
The report was commissioned by Seeger Weiss LLP, Williams Cedar LLC, Abraham Watkins and the Simpson Tuegel Law Firm, which collectively represent 300 survivors of clergy sex abuse nationwide. The data in the report was obtained from public filings in the individual states.
Catholic Church
Global Measurements Spike To Record High
Carbon Dioxide
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced Tuesday that global carbon dioxide concentrations last month were the highest since it started recording them more than half a century ago.
With CO2 peaking at 414.7 parts per million in May ? the month when global CO2 is typically at its highest ? the measurement marks the seventh consecutive year of concentrations steeply rising and the second-highest annual jump in CO2 since NOAA started recording this data 61 years ago.
"It's critically important to have these accurate, long-term measurements of CO2 in order to understand how quickly fossil fuel pollution is changing our climate," Pieter Tans, a senior scientist in NOAA's Global Monitoring Division, said in a news release Tuesday.
The current growth rate of CO2 concentrations is shocking and unprecedented, but if anything, Tans said, the measurements are conservative, and they've "underestimated the rapid pace of climate change being observed."
"The last time humans experienced levels this high was... never," Peter Gleick, a climate scientist and co-founder of the nonprofit Pacific Institute research group, tweeted last month when data showing CO2 at nearly 415 ppm was released.
Carbon Dioxide
Discounting Climate Change
EPA
Borrowing one of President Trump's favorite refrains, Environmental Protection Agency administrator Andrew Wheeler criticized the news media at length Monday for focusing on only dire environmental news.
"We need to fix this perception, and we need the help of the press," Wheeler said at a luncheon at the National Press Club on Monday. "The public needs to know how far we've come, as a nation, protecting the environment." He then read a number of statistics he deemed deserving "more attention," including ones regarding the reduction of air pollutants, the decrease in particulate matter, the decrease in carbon emissions and the remediation of waterways.
"The media does a disservice to the American public, and sound policymaking, by not informing the public of the progress this nation has made," Wheeler argued.
Though he did not say so specifically, Wheeler was clearly alluding to the growing media attention to climate change. Though virtually nonexistent in previous decades, coverage of global warming has risen sharply in recent years, spurred in part by a rise in catastrophic weather events, such as floods, wildfires and hurricanes.
A former energy lobbyist, Wheeler has previously downplayed the effects of climate change, and Monday's remarks began and ended with media criticism, which Wheeler delivered firmly but without employing Trump's favored slight: "fake news."
EPA
First Female Dummy Created
CPR
An advertising agency has created a first-of-its-kind attachment to turn a standard CPR dummy into a female version.
The product, called the 'WoManikin', was created in response to a recent study by Duke University, which found women suffering from a cardiac arrest in public are 27% less likely to receive CPR.
This is believed to be related to women's breasts, which are not represented on a standard dummy model.
Last year, a University of Colorado survey found men are twice as likely to cite a fear of accusations of inappropriate touching or sexual assault as a reason for not administering CPR.
JOAN, the advertising agency that produced the WoManikin in partnership with the United State of Women, aims to tackle both sides of the problem.
CPR
Prime-Time Nielsens
Ratings
Prime-time viewership numbers compiled by Nielsen for May 27-June 2. Listings include the week's ranking and viewership.
1. NBA Finals Game 2: Golden State at Toronto, ABC, 13.89 million.
2. NBA Finals Game 1: Golden State at Toronto, ABC, 13.38 million.
3. "NBA Finals Post-Game" (Sunday), ABC, 9.89 million.
4. "America's Got Talent," NBC, 9.75 million.
5. "60 Minutes," CBS, 7.01 million.
6. "NCIS" (Tuesday, 8 p.m.), CBS, 6.14 million.
7. "The Big Bang Theory," CBS, 6.03 million.
8. "Young Sheldon," CBS, 5.86 million.
9. "NCIS" (Tuesday, 9 p.m.), CBS, 5.58 million.
10. "Songland," NBC, 5.51 million.
11. NHL Stanley Cup Finals Game 1: St. Louis at Boston, NBC, 5.27 million.
12. "Mom," CBS, 5.11 million.
13. "American Ninja Warrior," NBC, 4.84 million.
14. "Life in Pieces," CBS, 4.8 million.
15. "NBA Countdown" (Thursday), ABC, 4.77 million.
16. "Amazing Race," CBS, 4.75 million.
17. "The Bachelorette," ABC, 4.68 million.
18. "Blue Bloods," CBS, 4.52 million.
19. "Blood & Treasure," CBS, 4.23 million.
20. "Whistleblower," CBS, 4.14 million.
Ratings
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