Monthly archive for October2014

As I mentioned in the previous post(scroll down) there were many great songs on the BillBoard Hot 100 Charts in 1966.  Follow this link to the chart to see for yourself, or listen ot these three I picked out.  You’re Welcome!

Simon & Garfunkel, The Sound of Silence (2 weeks at #1)

The Righteous Brothers, (You’re My) Soul and Inspiration (3 weeks at #1)

The Mamas & the Papas, Monday, Monday (3 weeks at #1)

Have a great weekend!

My quest to determine my “peak music year” continues this week.  As you may or may not recall (or care for that matter) I resolved to examine the BillBoard Hot 100 charts from 1965 to 1975, see who were the groups or artists with the most #1 songs in each year, then choose  a favorite from those and then deem the year that artist or group “won” as my peak music year.  Not very scientific, but it’s the best I have for now.  Anyhoo, last week we stated with 1965, so this week it’s 1966.

And the 1966 Winner is…The Beatles.  Again.  I think this may end up being a trend that will come to a halt after 1970.  However…I noticed a couple things that I hadn’t anticipated.  First is the fact that choosing a “winner” based on the quantity of #1 songs might not be fair.  For example, the Beatles had the #1 song for 4 different times for a total of 5 weeks, but with only two songs.  There was another artist who had only one #1 song that year (Sgt. Barry Sandler, The Ballad of the Green Berets), but it was at #1 for 5 weeks.  So, also 5 weeks at #1, but only 1 song.

Next, I noticed that there are a lot of awesome “one hit wonders” – songs that were at #1 a single time for one week only, some obscure and some iconic.  Case in point: Wild Thing by The Troggs; Good Vibrations by The Beach Boys.  You get the idea – take a look at the chart and see for yourself.  Even The Chairman of the Board, Frank Sinatra had a #1 that year with Strangers in the Night.  Doobie doobie doo indeed.  So I think I’ll have to give 1966 an asterisk for overall additional awesomeness.  By the way you can click on any of those song titles to listen.  And here, once again are The Beatles with their two songs that held the #1 position for a total of five weeks in 1966:  We Can Work It Out and Paperback Writer.  Enjoy!  Oh, and…comments!

The question comes to us courtesy of Popular Science.  And it appears that the answer to that question is much more liklely to be “yes” if you live in Japan.  Do those people have problems relating to one another or what?  They really seem to put alot of thought into robot existentialism if you ask me.  Don’t believe me?  Follow the link and read the article.

My next best friend will not be a robot.

Launched just over 37 years ago in September 1977, the probe is now about 18 light-hours away from home.  How do we know?  Why from reading Voyager I’s twitter feed that’s how.  Yup.  Voyager I is on Twitter.

Reminds me of this.  Long intro…stick with it though.  Or skip ahead to 0:45.  You’re welcome.

Cross posted at Men Out of Work Blog

Post title is a pull quote from the article: Fake Clown Attacks Put French Police On Alert and Trigger Vigilante Response

I guess the Wasco Clown thing has gone global.  Gangs of what are being decribed as “Fake Clowns” are apparently roaming the French counrtyside sowing  terror and committing at least a few crimes, as reported by the U.K. Guardian.  The fad, said to be fueled by social media, is to get into your clown gear and go act scary. There are more than a few people who are scared of clowns anyway, so someone wouldn’t have to do much to look menacing.  Just standing there might be enough.  But not satisfied with the subtle approach some are choosing to roam around in groups, carrying various weapons.  The story states some have pistols, but I doubt that.  This is France we’re talking about.

The term “Fake Clown” caught my eye.  How can you tell a fake clown from a genuine one?  Aside from the blood dripping fangs and the  weapons of mayhem I mean.  Do French clowns carry special ID’s?  I suppose the context would be a tip off.  Guy with a big bunch of balloons at the carnival?  Possibly geniune.  Large gang roaming the coutryside after curfew toting machetes and scythes?  Hmmm.  Probably not card carrying members of The Costumed Comic Entertainers Guild.  Anyway, as one French Newspaper put it, these clowns aren’t funny anymore.  Rather, ces clowns ne sont pas drôles plus.

All this bad publicity has France’s real clowns somewhat perturbed.  Phillippe Herrreman, who runs a team of eight clowns called The Clowns of Hope said that he hoped the evil clowns would soon disappear.  For some clowns there is always hope.

In the meantime, my prediction is that eventually one of these clowns is going to get killed.  Rather, l’un de ces clowns va se faire tuer.

I think it says “you’ve found one”

Res Ipsa Loquitur:

In my earlier post (scroll down) about the 1965 BillBoard Hot 100 charts, I mentioned that The Supremes were runners up to the Beatles with four #1 songs that year (the Beatles  had five).  The four #1’s for The Supremes were Come See About Me, Stop In The Name of Love, Back In My Arms Again and I hear a Symphony.  The only other groups with multiple #1’s that year were The Rolling Stones (Satisfaction, Get Off My Cloud) and Herman’s Hermits (Mrs. Brown You’ve Got A Lovely Daughter, I’m Henry VII, I am).  I’ll embed here one song from each group, but if you click on the other song titles, the link will take you to a YouTube video of that song.  Enjoy!

The Supremes

The Stones

Herman’s Hermits

Kind of hard to believe that the original Rolling Stones, most of them anyway, are still touring today considering all the drugs and alcohol they must have gone through.  Brian Jones did succumb to his excesses.

I have decided to embark on a journey of discovery to determine my Peak Music year, which you may remember me discussing in an earlier post, “What Does My Taste In Music Say About Me?” Initially I was at a loss as to how this could be accomplished, and after some thought I decided that there would be no truly scientific way to study this, that there would be a large measure of subjectivity involved.  Since we’re talking about my taste in music, which is really just my opinion, I figured subjectivity would be OK.  In some of my Music Friday posts where I give background on the songs I’ve chosen, I often reference where the song placed on the Billboard Hot 100 Chart in a certain year.  With that in mind I decided the measurement of a song’s popularity as measured by the BillBoard Hot 100 chart could form a basis of information to determine what year is my “Peak Music” year.  Fortunately all the Billboard charts going back to 1958 are archived online at the Billboard Magazine website.  1958 is plenty far enough for my purposes, since I was only born in 1956 and have decided arbitrarily that I would start my search at 1965 anyway.  Side note:  in addition to viewing the weekly charts, you can listen to the songs through Spotify.  If you don’t have a Spotify account you can set one up for free, you just need to provide your e-mail adress.

This is going to be a process.  Since I’ve decided that my peak music year is likely to fall between 1965 and 1975, I will research those years first.  If I am unsatisfied with the end result, I will expand the survey to earlier and later years.  Since the BillBoard Hot 100 chart is released weekly, there are 52 charts per given year, each chart with 100 songs on it.  Yikes!  I have decided, again arbitraily, to review only the #1 songs from each weekly chart and determine which artist or group had the most #1’s.  The artist or group with the most #1 songs in a given year I will deem the “most popular” of that year.  Then based on that I will decide which of those ten artists or groups are my favorite and that year they were the “most popular” will be my “Peak Music” year.  Make sense?  Probably not, but I’m going with it anyway.

Oh…and once I determine the winner for a given year, I will feature that artist’s #1 song (or songs) on that Music Friday.

So…the 1965 Billboard Hot 100.  Winner:  The Beatles with five #1’s – I Feel Fine, Eight Days a Week, Ticket to Ride, Help! and Yesterday.

Runners up were The Supremes with four #1’s.  The only other groups with multiple #1’s were The Rolling Stones and Herman’s Hermits with two apiece.

So Here are the Beatle’s #1 songs from 1965.  Since I just featured Eight Days a Week last Friday, follow this link for that song.  The others follow now.

Next week – 1966!  See ya!

What else is new?  Jumping off my ealier rant (scroll down) about Liberal Utopia Building in California, here’s a perfect example of our “leaders” using a bad idea to solve a non-existent problem.  Remember – when the government steps in to help, you’re either going to have your pocket picked or your going to get…umm…”molested”.  If you know what I mean and I think you do.

Case in point:  California Outlaws Plastic Bags and Ignore The Evidence.

Again, what else is new.  When the Legislature’s in session, there’s work to be done.  We don’t have time for “evidence” and “logic”.

New Hotness: If you build it they will go

Since the advent of one party rule, the effort to build the California People’s Republic of Zen Utopia continues apace.  The California Republic part was built a long time ago by Men Who Matched Her Mountains.  The Zen Utopia part is being manifested today by Persons Who Can’t Think Straight.

California was built and they did come.  It is the most populous state in the union, and was at one time the 9th largest economy on the planet.  We had industry, agriculture and infrastructure, good jobs and a vibrant economy.  Our public education system, K-12, State Colleges and Universities was the envy of the world, much less the Nation.  We had it made.

How can you improve on that?  What’s missing?  Well, we need some liberal fascism for sure.  What else?  Utopia ain’t cheap and people need to pay their fair share, so we’ll need high taxes and burdensome regulations to keep those evil businessmen and The Rich in line.  And don’t forget!  We need some good old idiotic feel good legislation.  Doesn’t matter if it’s a bad idea, as long as it sounds good.  And a train.  A giant money sucking hole of a train to nowhere.  No utopia can be complete without a train between Los Angeles and San Francisco, north and south utopia.

Can Utopia be built?  Well, California certainly has the scenery for it.  But if Utopia is a perfect community or society, can that be achieved in light of the fact that one man’s perfection is another man’s oppression?  Do you force everyone into groupthink?  If so, what becomes of our sacred “Diversity®”?  I thought it was to be celebrated as our greatest strength?  What’s that you say?  Diversity through conformity?  Oh.  OK.

California’s population has doubled since the 1970’s.  So we could probably use some new highways.  Or some new reservoirs so agriculture and our thirsty cities have more stable water supplies.  Oh…here’s an idea.  Let’s bring more power plants online so we have cheap and plentiful energy for industry and the population at large.  D’oh!  What am I thinking?  I took off my Birkenstocks for a minute and stopped thinking like a burnt out Haight-Ashbury refugee.  There can be no highways, dams or power plants in Utopia.  Utopians will not drive, shower or irrigate, nor use electricity.

So, it’s being built and…they’re leaving.  We’re leaving.

Well, nice try.  As my mother used to say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.  When everything you know is wrong and you set out to build utopia, what you may end up with is likely to be something quite different.  Judging by all the good intentions bandied about the Capitol, we must surely be on the road to hell.  We haven’t quite got there yet…but you can see it from here.