Precisely

 A new work week has arrived.  Notice my exuberance.  

They are forecasting rain for my weekend, which begins tomorrow, with high temps in the mid 50's (F).  Hopefully, I'll get some yardwork in between the showers.  Dahlias need to go into the ground in the front yard.  Lots of tuplipy things are sticking out of the dirt already.  And there are the dahlias.  My peonies are also sticking their buds above the soil.  And, of course, my roses are filled with budding leaves.

The Grammy's were on last night.  Meh.  I didn't' watch.  Pop music is so ephemeral.  No matter what you might want to believe, the timeless songs are very few and very far between.  Time has no problem burying trendy musical hooks.  I got into a discussion with a gent at the store about this very subject, and he said "look at all the great things Beyoncé is doing with music!  She'll be around forever!"  I replied, "they said the same thing about Madonna."  And he said, "What?  she's old!"  And I said, "precisely."

And tell me, does this look like the face of the most evil man on the planet?

I saw where someone had Tweeted that Joe Biden said "Rupert Murdoch is the most dangerous man in the world."  I believe that's a rather precise definition.  At 91, he maintains control over Fox News, and this bitter, old man has always desperately wanted to be a key player in politics.  He was a problem in the UK that was only solved by a legally forced separation: he was basically buying politicians.  The same thing is happening in the US with the Republican Party.  Here he buys them with frequent appearances on Fox News.  His mouthpieces are pro-Putin, and pro-Republican, spewing out lie, after lie, after lie.  As a result, the GOP, much to his delight, relies upon him.  That is precisely what he wants.  If there is any joy in American politics, it's that the political party he owns is blindly stabbing itself in the eye, and in the back, and in the foot, and, thanks to Loser #45, in the heart.

Beyonce - golden egg or turd?

Last week, to almost every body's surprise, Beyoncé dropped a new, self-titled album/ video compilation on ITunes.  Target was not happy and will not sell the CD when it is released.  I went to the Rolling Stone website and discovered there was some weird battle going on between the Beyoncé fans and the Taylor Swift fans.  This made me laugh since I don't listen to either one of those lady's music, it's Pop, here today and gone tomorrow.  I got another big laugh from some guy named Steve Stoute who published something on Linkdin.  Evidently Led Zeppelin is finally releasing their body of work on Spotify.  He figures Beyoncé was smarter by using ITunes, you know, making more money.  I think he's wrong.  Led Zeppelin wrote their music about 50 years ago and it's still popular, and it wasn't Pop.  You don't need a studio filled with electronics to duplicate their music.  They have created not only music, but durability.  While she may make oodles of money from this album, she minimized the possibility of a long term effect.  Down loadable music becomes forgettable music because something new is going to be available next week and it only takes a very short time to download it.

One of the things I found interesting about Beyoncé's surprise was that evidently you needed to buy the whole package at one time.  Single song sales usually tend to build album sales since most of a musician's fans will buy the album, but a hell of a lot more people will buy single songs, you know, the hits.  Like your great aunt Mabel in Oshkosh who hears one song and falls in love with it.  Chances are she's not going to buy the entire album.  Why should she waste the money when she only really likes one song?  This whole package deals sounds to me a lot like a bad Hollywood movie.  You know what I'm talking about.  Those films that don't have a leg to stand on, let alone legs to walk.  They make all of their money in that first weekend and then disappear.  From a marketing standpoint, I'd say forcing your audience to buy the entire album up front is bad business sense.  In order for that to work every song needs to be a diamond and all of those diamonds need to make up one hell of a crown of jewels.  Historically speaking there are only a handful of albums which have actually succeeded in pulling that off.

I'm sure someone, somewhere, thought this idea was going to go off like gangbusters and it did sell over 600,000 copies right off the bat, however it's the long term sales which are important.  If, down the road, listeners find they can begin purchasing the album a song at a time, people are going to ask "what's this shit about?"  Especially if they paid full price for something which only has five or six songs on it that they like.  Good move or bad move?  Who's going to really make out in the end?  I'd say probably Led Zeppelin.  Only time will tell us if Beyoncé dropped a golden egg or a turd.