RIAA is getting pretty nasty, and may just end up shooting themselves in the foot. In a panic mode they are going after their own customers, instead of finding ways to embrace digital technology in this new age.
Now, in an unusual case in which an Arizona recipient of an RIAA letter has fought back in court rather than write a check to avoid hefty legal fees, the industry is taking its argument against music sharing one step further: In legal documents in its federal case against Jeffrey Howell, a Scottsdale, Ariz., man who kept a collection of about 2,000 music recordings on his personal computer, the industry maintains that it is illegal for someone who has legally purchased a CD to transfer that music into his computer.
The industry's lawyer in the case, Ira Schwartz, argues in a brief filed earlier this month that the MP3 files Howell made on his computer from legally bought CDs are "unauthorized copies" of copyrighted recordings.
What next, one player per DVD? Buy another DVD to play in your car instead of using the one you play in your home?
The Tesla coil is named after its inventor, Nikola Tesla. Tesla used these coils to conduct innovative experiments in electrical lighting, fluorescence and x-rays. In simple terms it's a power supply, capacitor, transformer (coil) and a spark gap.
These are modern solid state dual resonant telsa coils built by Steve Ward. When you watch this keep in mind that it is actually the spark that is producing the sound. It is said to be so loud that some people hold their hands over their ears. While it isn't exactly theater quality music it does have a certain fascination... or maybe I think that because I worked in electronics my entire life.
Don't try this at home people, unless you understand the dangers involved.
Music from lost show by New Orleans LA Jazz Musicians
Troy Andrews - Trumpet
Kirk Joseph - Sousaphone
Roderick Paulin - Saxophone
Frederick Shepherd - Saxophone
Stephen Walker - Trombone
Mervin "Kid Merv" Campbell - Trumpet
Bob French – Drums
ABOUT THE STUDIO 60 AUDIO CLIP
This clip (above) is from the "Christmas Show." One of the sub-plots was that the LA musicians were on strike. A cast member, thinking fast, pulled together a group of displaced New Orleans musicians, who happened to be in LA, to fill in. The roles of the musicians were played by actual displaced New Orleans musicians, led by Troy "Trombone Shorty" Andrews. Their appearance was facilitated by the Tipitina's Foundation, a nonprofit organization that continues to work to aid New Orleans musicians and to bring the music back to New Orleans.
When Studio 60 was yanked off the air by NBC, the network also yanked away the free mp3 download of just the music of the entire song without the dialogue. I've scoured around the Internet and this is the best clip of it that I can find that's still online (before NBC finds this one and yanks it as well).
I would like to personally thank Eliose, for access to the Music Clip of O Holy Night that she obtained before STUDIO 60 was pulled by NBC and a MySpace Friend!
Band Members
Troy Andrews
Michael "Bass" Balllard (Bass Guitar)
James Martin (Saxophone)
Pete "Freaky Pete" Murano (Guitar)
Joey " ? " Peebles (Drums)
Since the Interview Video below, is done by Netscape the quailty is a bit jerkey on the audio, but the best I could find.
“UNBELIEVABLE! It’s just not anything you’re going to hear anywhere else.”
– The Edge
“Don’t get me wrong, we got it goin’ on in New Orleans, he is just better.”
– Allen Toussaint
“Troy possesses the rarest combination of talent, technical capability and down home soul.
I’m his biggest fan…”
– Wynton Marsalis
Hailing from Tremé, the most musical neighborhood in the most musical city – New Orleans, Troy "Trombone Shorty" Andrews has made the leap from child prodigy to Professional Master Musician.
At 21 years old Troy has already experienced more than most musicians three times his age, and he has the chops to prove it. Having traveled extensively in the United States as well as Cuba, Europe, South America & The United Arab Emerites, Troy's music has reached innumerable music lovers who will never forget his amazing live performances.
THE TOUR-BUS EVOLUTION OF TROMBONE SHORTY
"My jam-band friends returned from the String Cheese Incident's Beacon Theater shows in July singing the praises of 'that guy from New Orleans' who stepped onstage with a trombone and 'took the thing to another level.'"
-- Larry Blumenfeld, The Village Voice
A friend recently described what she considered an odd but common experience at work. She found that her bosses and peers resented her for being productive and increasing the firm’s revenue. Then we got into the discussion of another individual being damned, for his ability. The winner of a nationally televised talent contest in Britain by an Opera Singer named Paul Potts’s, with the same kind of resentment by critics raising its ugly head.
In an article published by Daniel J. Watkin titled “The People’s Tenor Pits the Sniffles Against the Sniffs:” He references several comments on Paul’s performance by less than elated Opera critics’, and this just a sample from many of them:
“Mr. Potts is the sort of bog-standard tenor to be found in any amateur opera company in any corner of the country,” wrote Philip Hensher in The Independent of London. “His tuning was all over the place; his voice sounded strained and uncontrolled; his phrasing was stubby and lumpy; he made a constipated approximation only of the fluid sound of the Italianate tenor.”
I’m not an Opera critic, nor am I well versed on Opera singers in general, but I know what I like when it comes to singing, as I was a ballad singer in some less than savory places in my younger days. The question then with Paul Potts’s, is why millions loved what he accomplished, and heaped loving praise, on this cellphone salesman, who won with his rendition of “Nessun dorma?” Then why is Paul Potts being damned by the elite Opera critics, the answer is below.
It is called the hatred of the good for being good. Ayn Rand described it as follows:
Today, we live in the Age of Envy.
Envy is not the emotion I have in mind, but it is the clearest manifestation of an emotion that had remained nameless; it is the only element of a complete emotional sum that men have permitted themselves to identify.
Envy is regarded by most people as a petty, superficial emotion and, therefore, it serves as a semi human cover for so inhuman an emotion that those who feel it seldom dare admit it even to themselves. Mankind has lived with it, has observed its manifestations and, to various extents, has been ravaged by it for countless centuries, yet has failed to grasp its meaning and to rebel against its exponents.
Today, that emotion is the leitmotif, the sense of life of our culture. It is all around us, we are drowning in it, it is almost explicitly confessed by its more brazen exponents–yet men continue to evade its existence and are peculiarly afraid to name it, as primitive people were once afraid to pronounce the name of the devil.
That emotion is: hatred of the good for being the good.
This hatred is not resentment against some prescribed view of the good with which one does not agree. For instance, if a child resents some conventional type of obedient boy who is constantly held up to him as an ideal to emulate, this is not hatred of the good: the child does not regard that boy as good, and his resentment is the product of a clash between his values and those of his elders (though he is too young to grasp the issue in such terms). Similarly, if an adult does not regard altruism as good and resents the adulation bestowed upon some humanitarian, this is clash between his values and those of others, not hatred of the good.
Hatred of the good for being the good means hatred of that which one regards as good by ones own (conscious or subconscious) judgment. It means hatred of a person for possessing a value or virtue one regards as desirable.
If a child wants to get good grades in school, but is unable or unwilling to achieve them and begins to hate the children who do, that is hatred of the good. If a man regards intelligence as a value, but is troubled by self-doubt and begins to hate the men he judges to be intelligent, that is hatred of the good. (A. Rand, The Age of Envy, The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution, p. 152-3).
In contrast to the hatred of the good, in his book _Prime Movers: Traits of the Great Wealth Creators_, Edwin Locke makes the case that virtue is the key to success. Further, the Prime Movers he examines are lovers of ability in others.
In the close of her essay, Rand provides guidance on the appropriate response to those that hate the good for being good:
What is the weapon one needs to fight such an enemy? For once, it is I who will say that love is the answer–love in the actual meaning of the word, which is the opposite of the meaning they give it–love as a response to value, love of the good for being the good. If you hold on to the vision of any value you love–your mind, your work, your wife or husband, or your child–and remember that that is what the enemy is after, your shudder of rebellion will give you the moral fire, the courage and the intransigence needed in this battle. What fuel can support ones fire? Love for man at his highest potential. (Ibid., p 186)
Paul Potts' reached that level, and I’ll offer you a version of (Por Ti Sere) in Spanish, also called “You raise me up” from his first CD called “One Chance” that is now the number one top selling Album in the UK, and you be the judge, as you listen to the voice, in another language you may not know.
Update: For those that hate and refuse to install Quicktime, I've added a flash MP3 player.
I just recently discovered a very shy, insecure Welsh tenor who appeared out of nowhere and has set the opera world, and perhaps the pop music world on fire. He lives in Port Talbot in South Wales. His name is Paul Potts, and even if you don’t care for Opera, or understand it, his is a name with a voice that is going to set your mind to love, your heart to sing, and your eyes to tears.
Paul's opera singing style - bel canto - is definitely my favorite style that...quite simply...unabashedly moves me to tears.
"Nessun dorma" is an aria from the final act of Puccini’s opera Turandot. The aria, whose title translates from Italian as "Let no one sleep", follows the proclamation by the Princess Turandot that no one shall sleep: they shall all spend the night attempting to find out the name of the unknown prince, Calaf, who has set the challenge. Calaf sings, indicating his certainty that their effort will be in vain
The aria achieved pop status after it was adopted as the official theme song of the 1990 Football World Cup. Prior to the World Cup it was the signature song of the famous Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotte, and has been associated with him ever since. Now that Pavarotte is seriously ill, the song Paul performed for the first time on ITV’s Britain’s Got Talent is even more poignant, and his final winning song of the competition was Con Ti Partiro or Time to Say Goodbye.
The libretto of Turandot doesn't translate easily because it's so heavily poetic. Not just the lyrics, but the entire plot, and doesn't make much sense if taken too literally. Forgive me if I recap most of the plot, but the poetry of the aria is too tied up in the story not to discuss it....
As you probably know, Turandot is the beautiful cold-hearted femme fatale princess who lures love-struck princes to their death. Anyone who wants to marry her is asked three riddles: If he answers them right he gets to marry her, but if he doesn't he is beheaded. This is stated at the very beginning of the opera as "the law" ("La legge è questa:"). It is not so much a government decree as a mythopoetic law, almost like a magic spell, which no one in the kingdom — not the emperor, not Turandot, not the ministers — can go against.
In the first act Calaf, the "Unknown Prince", rings the gong, signifying his declaration as a suitor to Turandot. In the second act he correctly answers the three riddles. According to the law, Turandot now has to marry him, even though she doesn't want to. But instead of claiming his prize, Calaf now poses a riddle of his own, saying to her: Tell me my name before morning, and at dawn I shall die
Take this literally and it's a bad move on his part — he's already won, why should he give her another chance to get away? — of course nothing in this opera makes sense if taken literally. Naturally, the Prince's statement is poetic. Furthermore he WANTS to "lose" the game; he wants her to tell him his name and he wants to "die." Besides being another instance of the Lohengrin/Rumpelstiltskin guess-my-name game the Prince is telling Turandot of his true goal. (Notice that he does not say "IF you guess my name....")
He doesn't want her to marry him reluctantly; he wants to defeat her cold-hearted defensiveness and have her fall in love with him. This is, in fact, exactly what happens at the end of the opera, and the metaphors are quite explicit. The veil which Turandot wears (and which Calaf rips) is described as "cold" ("fredda"), for instance.
So when the Prince poses the riddle, the name he refers to is not "Calaf", but rather the name she will ultimately give him: "Amor" ("Love"). That is, he wants her to love him. of course he does know; but poetically, Liù's statement is correct, because she's the only one who is in love with the Prince.
Where the Prince says "then I shall die", he really means "die" in the sense of lose himself completely to true love. Yes, I know, death-equals-love sounds like a pretty perverse metaphor, but it's a persistent one (and more common in Romance languages than it is in English). For an example in English (albeit written by an Italian), when Laetitia in The Old Maid and the Thief sings, "O sweet thief, I pray, make me die," she isn't hoping that he'll murder her.
The aria "Nessun dorma" is near the beginning of Act 3. At the end of Act 2 Turandot hasn't yet figured out all this love poetry business, and still thinks that she just has to get someone to reveal the Prince's name and then she can chop off his head. So she puts out a decree that no one in Peking is allowed to sleep until the name is revealed.
Act 3 opens in gloomy night with lugubrious chords in the orchestra (technically, minor chords with augmented 7ths and 11ths). Some heralds are announcing Turandot's decree, "Tonight no one in Peking sleeps, and the chorus gloomily repeats the words "no one sleeps. In the first words of his aria, the Prince is repeating the words of the chorus. The G major chord that opens the aria is the first optimistic-sounding chord we've heard since intermission and it breaks through the gloom like the light of dawn.
Hopefully now you have some idea, of the Opera’s story, the song, and the rendition given by Paul Potts, and did I mention that Paul’s winning prize, is to perform for the Queen herself. Get a hanky dear lady, you will need it.
I’ve also included the full “Nessun dorma" from three other tenors, as Paul only performed a small section (the end of the aria) for comparison. While you may find, more power and technique with the professionals, I believe you will find what I did in Paul Potts performance…. more heart and soul.
As J.S. Reidhead, said in his blog, “Oh, the voice? Move over Andrea Bocelli with Paul Potts in town, no one is going to remember your name. Potts has the potential to be one of the great tenors.”
Now watch the judges, from the beginning, as there ho-hum expresions turn to wonder!
I've decided to include the links only, and if you want to compare, as I did click on them, and come back one last time to Paul, and if he doesn't blow you away, get rid of your MP3's.
Andrea Bocelli Live
Bocelli is of course more a pop singer, as he is blind, and stage work in Opera, would be out of the general question, however there is more heart than Pavarotti.
Now badly done by Mark Janicello
I can't say enough about how poorly this was done, especially the last note, and no heart, just bad!
Mario Del Monaco
This version, was always my favorite, and done by an old school Opera Master, however Paul Potts, is going to be eventually counted among the greats.
Paul Potts very first Album, including Nessun Dorma, can be found at Amazon, the link provided above. He is so good, they sent him to a recording studio, right after his ITV win, and the purchase is worth the price.
As a final note, Paul sang for LUCIANO PAVAROTTE, as you will find in Reidhead's Blog, and one day may replace him, as one of the greatest tenors in our time. Paul was going to give up if he could not at least get in the finals, of course he did, and his struggle reminds me of this poem.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As tho' to breathe, were life.
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world,
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars.
And tho' we are not now the strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will,
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
When it comes to music I have to say that piano music is by far my favorite. Many years ago we used to go to a piano bar in San Francisco. We would often sit until closing time, or no one wanted to play anymore.
Although it was over 40 years ago (but I date myself) watching this clip brings back memories so vivid I can see the old black Grand piano where it sat between the bar and table area; the pianists drink siting on the corner.
H/T Jib who recomends: Make sure you have a drink at the ready before hitting the play button. I agree, this is brandy sipping music.
Update: If you want to sing along here are the lyrics: Originally by Billy Joel 1973. The pianist in this well directed clip is shown as Bill Martin.
Its nine oclock on a saturday
The regular crowd shuffles in
Theres an old man sitting next to me
Makin love to his tonic and gin
He says, son, can you play me a memory?
Im not really sure how it goes
But its sad and its sweet and I knew it complete
When I wore a younger mans clothes
La la la, de de da
La la, de de da da da
Chorus:
Sing us a song, youre the piano man
Sing us a song tonight
Well, were all in the mood for a melody
And youve got us feelin alright
Now john at the bar is a friend of mine
He gets me my drinks for free
And hes quick with a joke or to light up your smoke
But theres someplace that hed rather be
He says, bill, I believe this is killing me.
As the smile ran away from his face
Well Im sure that I could be a movie star
If I could get out of this place
Oh, la la la, de de da
La la, de de da da da
Now paul is a real estate novelist
Who never had time for a wife
And hes talkin with davy whos still in the navy
And probably will be for life
And the waitress is practicing politics
As the businessmen slowly get stoned
Yes, theyre sharing a drink they call loneliness
But its better than drinkin alone
Chorus
Its a pretty good crowd for a saturday
And the manager gives me a smile
cause he knows that its me theyve been comin to see
To forget about life for a while
And the piano, it sounds like a carnival
And the microphone smells like a beer
And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar
And say, man, what are you doin here?
