M Is FOR MASHUP - October 13th, 2021
Lionel Vinyl Never Left!
By DJ Useo
Over the last weekend I was remastering a mashup box set from 2004. Sadly, one of the best tracks was improperly downloaded, & was missing the ending. It was a mix by FAKE ID, who I have very high regard for, as a bootlegger.
Back in those ‘early’ days of the internet(s) (sic), your downloads would often be interrupted, with no notice of the incompleteness of your file. The download managers would merely say “complete”, whether the file was, or not.
Yup, it was ultimately my own responsibility for determining the final-ness of all downloads, but I didn’t notice this one FAKE ID track was not all there, until the original link was long gone! Sigh.
Still, I reckoned there might be a mix or an archive that preserved the entire cut, so I did a search. Amazingly, I got way better results than I could have hoped for. On the wonderful Archive.org site I found a large gigabyte+ file that included the complete sought-after track.
In fact, the Archived file contained many tracks by the likes of FAKE ID, Gloomybear, Geoff Carpet, & Lionel Vinyl ( my favorite ). Examining the tracks revealed a fact previously unknown to me. All four producers were the same guy! Who’da thunk’it?!
Well, I had to share the link, as you’ll all love the artists used, & the mix manners employed. Here’s “mashup_Lionel_Vinyl_Fake_ID_Gloomybear_Geoff_Carpet” a 1.2 GB file that’ll leave you immensely satisfied.
( archive.org/details/mashup_Lionel_Vinyl_Fake_ID_Gloomybear_Geoff_Carpet )
If the size is daunting, there’s handy streaming links. I hope you’re already loving the host site. If not, you can hardly find a better source for past entertainment. One of my personal faves are the great classic radio shows.
I hope when I’ve departed someone hosts my stuff thusly. Look here next Wednesday for the premiere of the all-new Monster Mashup Halloween collection.
Have the day of good.
DJ Konrad Useo
from Bruce
Anecdotes
Actors
• For a while, Ray Engle was the voice of old-time radio hero Sky King. He carried a gun and acted like a character out of the Old West. One day, when a director criticized his performance, Mr. Engle drew his gun, shouted, “You can’t talk to Sky King like that!” — and shot a hole in a wall of the radio studio.
• The hit TV series Knight Rider, featuring a car that had artificial intelligence and communicated using a human voice, started life as a joke. Brandon Tartikoff, an NBC executive, used to joke that he needed a TV series that starred a talking car so that the leading man wouldn’t need much talent at acting.
• Gypsy Rose Lee starred as Phyllis Diller’s nosy neighbor in the TV sitcom The Pruitts of Southampton. Ms. Lee could be difficult. Getting ready to do the show one day, she started to scream. The man doing her hair complained, “I haven’t even touched you.” Ms. Lee replied, “But you’re going to.”
• Alan Young got the part of Wilbur Post in Mr. Ed after George Burns, the show’s producer (Mr. Burns became a TV producer after his wife, Gracie Allen, retired from show business), said, “I think we should get Alan Young. He looks like the kind of a guy that a horse would talk to.”
• In 1984, Lily Tomlin was nominated for an Emmy for an appearance as Ernestine the telephone operator in Live … and in Person. Ms. Tomlin dressed as Ernestine at the awards ceremony — when she lost, Ernestine pouted.
Ad-Libs
• While taping an appearance on TV in a special produced by Norman Lear called I Love Liberty, comedian Geri Jewell ran into a problem: No one was laughing. She stopped and told the audience, “I’m sorry. I need help. I need a line. I need … someone to laugh.” This ad-lib made the audience howl. Fortunately, Mr. Lear came on stage and told her what the problem had been — for the first part of her performance the microphone hadn’t been working and so the audience couldn’t hear her. She started over again, and this time the audience laughed throughout her performance.
• In the days of live television, mistakes did happen. Ed Wynn once forgot his lines and couldn’t see the cue cards. He ad-libbed, “I must have something to say — otherwise I wouldn’t be standing here.”
Advertising
• In the 1960s, the advertising company W.B. Doner and Company created a series of TV commercials that asked about Tootsie Pops, “How many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop?” In one commercial, a young boy is advised by his angel side to keep on licking, while his devil side advises him to give in to temptation and bite the Tootsie Pop to get to the Tootsie Roll center quicker. The boy gives 187 licks before giving in to temptation and biting the Tootsie Pop. The commercial ends with these words: “How many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop? The world may never know.” This commercial was so popular that people wrote the Tootsie Roll Company about how many licks it takes to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop. The company responded by giving the writers Clean Stick Award certificates.
• In the early days of television, everything was live — which allowed for the opportunity to make mistakes. In Columbus, Ohio, a man named Spook Beckman often did a commercial for Big Bev hamburgers, in which he took a big bite out of a hamburger, then said (after pushing the food out of the way of his tongue), “Big Bev — it’s delicious!” Unfortunately, the next thing the viewers saw one day was not the cartoon they were supposed to see. Due to a mistake at the TV studio, the viewers at home were treated to the sight of Mr. Beckman spitting the hamburger into a sink.
• Balanchine ballerina Allegra Kent appeared in a few television commercials, some of which were very successful, but she did not get every part she auditioned for. In one case, a sadistic producer told her that she did not get the part because she was “not nubile enough.” He also wanted her to recommend a nubile ballet dancer “aged 18 to 20.” Ms. Kent responded, “Oh, gee, I just can’t think of anybody that young, and you happen to be a tactless numbskull.”
***
© Copyright Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
***
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Presenting
Michael Egan
U.S.A. responded:
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION
BANDCAMP MUSIC
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION OF BANDCAMP MUSIC
Music: "Tomorrow"
Album: THE BAT BITES
Artist: The Bat Bites
Artist Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Info:
The Bat Bites are:
Merel: Guitar / Vocals
Mikey: Guitar / Vocals
Florian: Bass
Ivo: Drums
Price: €1 for track; €5 for 13-track album
Genre: Pop Punk
Links:
THE BAT BITES
The Bat Bites on Bandcamp
Merel on YouTube
Other Links:
Bruce’s Music Recommendations: FREE pdfs
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 Apple iBookstore
David Bruce has over 140 Kindle books on Amazon.com.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
David E Suggests
Home Office
David
Thanks, Dave!
New Venture
Michael Egan
Stephen Suggests
How Far
Bonus Links
Jeannie the Teed-Off Temp
Reader Comment
Current Events
Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone Alphabet Book Series To Get TV Adaptation By A+E Studios – Deadline
Sue Grafton's Alphabet Series Coming To TV, Contradicting Author's Wishes - Book Riot
Sue Grafton was totally clear about her wishes--asshole husband is selling her out for money and a producer title. Shame on him.
Bet it won't be long before he authorizes someone to write Z. What a jerk! Poor Sue--an ex so bad he inspired her to write the whole series and now her widower pisses on her grave. She was such a nice person. She deserves better.
Linda >^..^<
We are all only temporarily able bodied.
Thanks, Linda!
that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Computer issues. Sigh.
‘Blues Cover Band’
Paul McCartney
Paul McCartney did not shy away from his thoughts of where the Beatles stand when it comes to their peers the Rolling Stones in a new interview with The New Yorker. As far as musical palettes go, he told the magazine that the Beatles’ were broader. “I’m not sure I should say it, but they’re a blues cover band, that’s sort of what the Stones are,” he said. “I think our net was cast a bit wider than theirs.”
Despite it sounding like a dig — and McCartney has previously said that the Beatles are a better band to him — the decades-long rivalry is more friendly and good-natured than adversarial. Last year while speaking with Howard Stern on Sirius XM, he agreed with the host’s assertion that the Beatles were the better band, though he also made clear he was a fan of the Rolling Stones. “The Stones are a fantastic group,” McCartney said, adding that he goes to see them live when he can.
“They are rooted in the blues. When they are writing stuff, it has to do with the blues. Whereas we had a little more influences,” he told Stern. He added: “There’s a lot of differences, and I love the Stones, but I’m with you. The Beatles were better.”
Mick Jagger responded to McCartney’s comments to Stern shortly afterward in an interview with Zane Lowe during his Apple Music show. “That’s so funny,” he said, laughing. “He’s a sweetheart. There’s obviously no competition.”
Jagger also elaborated on the primary difference between the two. “The Rolling Stones have been a big concert band in other decades and other eras when the Beatles never even did an arena tour.”
Paul McCartney
Excluded From Grammys Country Album Category
Kacey Musgraves
Since her debut album Same Trailer Different Park won the Grammy Award for Best Country Album in 2014, Kacey Musgraves has been a mainstay in the category — nominated again in 2016 for Pageant Material, and winning for Golden Hour in 2019. But her newest record, Star-Crossed, won’t be in contention for the same honor at this year’s ceremonies. According to an email obtained by Rolling Stone, from Cindy Mabe, President of Universal Music Group Nashville, to the Recording Academy, the Academy has decided the album is not eligible for contention in the country album category. Star-Crossed was instead ruled eligible for Pop Vocal Album. The letter argues that excluding the record — which was tagged as “country” in streaming and metadata — sets a dangerous precedent for the genre.
“This decision from the country committee to not accept star-crossed into the country albums category is very inconsistent and calls into question the other agendas that were part of this decision,” Mabe writes. “The idea that a handful of people including competitors, who would benefit from Kacey not being in the country category, are deciding what is country only exacerbates the problem. The system is broken and sadly not just for Kacey Musgraves but for our entire genre because of how these decisions are made for music’s biggest stage. Building roadblocks for artists who dare to fight the system is so dangerous and against everything I think the Grammy’s [sic] stand for.”
The Academy previously used committees of industry insiders to determine nominees and winners, but following demands for change from artists like the Weeknd, the Academy shifted to a majority peer-to-peer voting system that the Academy said would place power “back in the hands of the entire voting membership body.”
Despite country radio’s reluctance to embrace anyone other than conservative straight white men (and a limited pool of straight white women), the Grammy Awards have historically been a crucial foothold for artists like Musgraves who don’t adhere to the genre’s “shut up and sing” norms. It’s where the Chicks found success for Taking the Long Way in 2007 after being banned from radio, where Mickey Guyton sang “Black Like Me” after denial from the industry, and where other independent-thinking artists like Sturgill Simpson have found recognition.
As Mabe points out, this year “country music has been mired in the controversy surrounding one of the formats biggest artists, Morgan Wallen, who used a racial slur and grew fans and audience from it. THIS IS NOT ALL THAT WE ARE,” she writes. “Under the surface are the artists that change it all and they are led by the example of Kacey Musgraves.” Wallen, notably, is nominated for a CMA Award for Album of the Year at the November CMA ceremonies.
Kacey Musgraves
Holds Off On Translation
Sally Rooney
Author Sally Rooney is holding off on allowing her current book to be translated into Hebrew, citing Israel’s “system of racial domination and segregation against Palestinians.”
In a statement issued Tuesday through her literary representatives, the Wylie Agency, the Irish novelist said she hoped to eventually find a Hebrew-language translator for “Beautiful World, Where Are You,” which came out last month, but will not do so through an Israeli publisher. Her previous novels, the best sellers “Normal People” and “Conversations With Friends,” were released in Hebrew through Modan Publishing House.
Modan, which said it had been informed the author did not want to publish her latest book in Israel, said Rooney’s previous works had sold “very well” in Israel. It declined to provide statistics. An Israeli official, meanwhile, called the decision “extremely unfortunate.”
In her statement, Rooney cited a pair of reports — by Israeli human rights groups B’Tselem and New York-based Human Rights Watch — that found Israel to be guilty of the international crime of apartheid because of discriminatory policies toward Palestinians within its own borders and in the occupied territories.
These reports, she said, “confirmed what Palestinian human rights groups have long been saying: Israel’s system of racial domination and segregation against Palestinians meets the definition of apartheid under international law.”
Sally Rooney
Drops Lawsuit
Joe Pepitone
Former New York Yankees star Joe Pepitone has dropped his lawsuit against the Baseball Hall of Fame that sought the return of a Louisville Slugger bat that Mickey Mantle used to hit his 500th career home run.
David M. Barshay, a lawyer for Pepitone, filed a notice of voluntary dismissal on Monday in U.S. District Court in Albany. The Hall of Fame had filed a motion demonstrating that the lawsuit was without merit.
Pepitone had filed the suit in July, seeking compensatory damages of at least $1 million. The bat is currently valued at over $500,000, he claimed.
The suit alleged Pepitone agreed to lend the bat to the Hall of Fame “with the understanding and upon the condition that it would be returned to him at any time upon his request.”
The Hall of Fame said the bat was donated and that it has owned it for more than 50 years.
Joe Pepitone
Removes Webpages
Texass
Texas officials removed two webpages in late August that provided resources for LGBTQ youths — including a link to a suicide prevention hotline — a few hours after criticism from one of Gov. Greg Abbott’s Republican primary challengers.
The candidate, Don Huffines, who owns a real estate development company in the Dallas area, wrote Aug. 31 on Twitter: “It’s offensive to see @GregAbbott_TX use our tax dollars to advocate for transgender ideology. This must end.”
Patrick Crimmins, the director of communications for the Department of Family and Protective Services, said in an email Tuesday that the review of the webpages “is still ongoing” and would not provide further comment about why the pages were removed.
The Houston Chronicle reported Tuesday that emails obtained through a public records request show that agency officials discussed removing the gender identity and sexual orientation webpage in response to Huffines’ tweet.
From Jan. 1 to Aug. 30, crisis calls from LGBTQ young people in Texas increased by 150 percent compared to the same period last year, according to data shared last week by the Trevor Project.
Texass
Record-High Rate
Workers Quit
The share of workers quitting their jobs hit the highest level in August since at least 2000 following elevated levels in the spring.
Nearly 4.3 million workers voluntarily left their jobs in August, according to the Labor Department’s latest JOLTS report, equating to a quits rate of 2.9%. This gauge of workers' confidence is well above the pandemic-era low of 1.6% in April 2020 and topped the previous high of 2.8% set in April of this year.
"There is likely some element of this that's due to Delta," Glassdoor Senior Economist Daniel Zhao told Yahoo Money. "By and large, the fact that quits are so high above pre-pandemic levels, and in fact at record highs, signals that workers have more power today."
Accommodation and food services recorded the highest quit rate in August of 6.8% and accounted for approximately two-thirds of the increase for that month. The quits rate in retail trade also increased to 4.7%, up from 4.4% in July. Quits levels in both industries are well above their pre-pandemic levels.
Workers Quit
Wolf Pups Killed
Idaho
Conservation groups have expressed outrage after the US Department of Agriculture revealed it killed eight young wolves in an Idaho forest.
The pups were part of the Timberline pack, a group of wild wolves tracked and studied since 2003 by students at the local high school in Boise.
Federal officials have defended their actions as a "necessary" measure in reducing the predators' population.
Earlier this year, lobbied by the livestock ranching community, Republican-dominated legislatures in Idaho and Montana passed measures that made it easier to hunt and kill wolves.
An official from the Agriculture Department confirmed federal agents had killed the animals in order to force the adult wolves to relocate.
Idaho
Strange Radio Signal
Galactic Center
Over the course of 2020, astronomers in Australia detected a mysterious batch of radio waves coming from somewhere near the center of the galaxy. But when the team trained a more sensitive instrument toward the source, they saw it only once more before it disappeared, behaving differently than it had before. The signal is described in a paper published today in the Astrophysical Journal.
“The strangest property of this new signal is that it has a very high polarisation. This means its light oscillates in only one direction, but that direction rotates with time,” said Ziteng Wang, an astrophysicist at the University of Sydney and the lead author of the new study, in a university press release. In other words, the radio waves were intermittently corkscrewing to Earth, without any rhyme or reason. And since they were detected, the trail’s gone cold.
The signal was discovered using the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder Variables and Slow Transients (ASKAP VAST) Survey, a radio telescope based in extremely remote Western Australia. The mystery object that produced the signal was named ??ASKAP J173608.2-321635, for the telescope that found it and its coordinates in the sky.
“This object was unique in that it started out invisible, became bright, faded away and then reappeared. This behaviour was extraordinary,” said Tara Murphy, also an astrophysicist at the University of Sydney and a co-author of the paper, in the same release.
When the radio source went dark, the team checked the visible light spectrum, finding nothing. They also turned to a different radio telescope, which yielded a similar amount of nothing. But then, using the MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa, the team at last spotted the object again, but it disappeared within a day. The researchers haven’t seen it since.
Galactic Center
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