Music
Favorite Songs
CARLOS
SANTANA -
Oye
Como Va,
Black Magic Woman, and
Samba Pa Ti. He had such a unique sound,
mixing blues and rock with Latin flavors.
Then he wacked out in the 80's and did some truly weird stuff - totally wasted a tremendous
opportunity to draw upon his Hispanic culture. Oh well, there's
always his old stuff.
THE
BEATLES -
All I've Got to
Do, All My Loving,
and Till There Was
You. These are some of their lesser known songs from an early
album With The Beatles. For simple melodic songs, few can
match the Beatles not only for quality but quantity - simply
amazing.
ROLLING
STONES -
Can't You Hear Me Knocking,
Honky Tonk Women, and
It's Only Rock 'n Roll
Don't know much about the Stones but the
guitar riffs on these three songs are just fabulous.
ROY
ORBISON -
Only the Lonely,
Crying, and
Pretty Woman, Roy Orbison
was rumored
to be a huge influence on John Lennon and the Beatles and it's easy
to see why. I have a half
dozen of his songs and any one of them would be a great sampling
of his work... hard to choose.
The Music Meth Lab
Let's just cut straight to the point. I don't like the RIAA or any efforts to restrict the fair use of media purchased by consumers. Large companies in the industry have been ripping off consumers to such a degree that I applaud new technologies which might provide consumers with a chance to even the score.
A recent example was when I checked out my girlfriend's old Stevie Wonder CD. Now Stevie Wonder is a great artist and has many fabulous songs associated with his name. But this CD was called his "Greatest Hits", yet of the 12 songs listed only 5 were recognizable, let alone considered a "Greatest Hit".
$20 to buy a song or two and the rest of the CD is junk.
Another event that sent me to the dark side was a few years ago when I decided to purchase some music online. Mind you, I WANTED to buy music legally, but after checking it out I found way too many restrictions that came with each purchase - essentially I would be RENTING the music as opposed to actually OWNING what I bought.
iTunes locks you into playing your songs on an iPod with restrictions on how many times you can copy to CD or harddrive. Yahoo music had the same restrictions about what kind of MP3 player could be used. Rhapsody pretty much said you can listen but once you cancel your account all the music you bought disappears.
What the crap?
Out of such frustration was born what my sister lovingly refers to as the Music Meth Lab. It's a combination of subscribing to streaming music (such as Launch.com or Rhapsody) and streaming audio recording software such as Replay Music. All of this is legally purchased and in the end I have an MP3 file I can copy to as many players or computers or CDs as I like... in other words, I OWN THE MUSIC I PAID FOR.
Fast forward to the current music marketplace where Walmart and Amazon.com have songs you can purchase for 99 cents without any DRM (Digital Rights Management - yuck!). This is the way to go and I have supported them with purchases.
But the Music Meth Lab remains...