Could you help me place this call?

I know a lot about music, but until this past Saturday, I had never heard the song "Operator" by Jim Croce.  For those who don't know, Jim Croce was a singer from 1966 until his death in 1973.  It is a very good song and I still can't believe I had never heard it.

Vinyls

My birthday is coming up (January 3rd) and I asked my parents to get me a record player.  I went down to the basement and brought up my mom's and dad's old records.  I took about 75 out of the 200 my parents still had!  But now I am looking for some more records to add to my collection.  If anyone has any suggestions of records I should buy, please write it in the comments below.  I want to make my collection the best it can be, so thank you if you help me!

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to everyone! I hope you all have had a wonderful two days. I will be returning to my blog starting tomorrow - the past week or so has been very hectic and I apologize. But for right now, I thought I'd share with you one of the things I received for Christmas. This Beatles book I got has some of the coolest things I have ever seen. This pack came with a DVD, posters of the band, and a bunch of little pieces of paper. The pieces of paper are copies of tickets from concerts of theirs from the 1960s, copies of handwritten set lists, and old gig posters. All of this is inside an amazing book that speaks of the members of The Beatles and tells their journey as the best band of all time.

The Voice

The Voice's third season has come to an end with Cassadee Pope.  Cassadee Pope started her TV debut with her blind audition singing "Torn" by Natalie Imbruglia.  In the "Battles" weeks, Cassadee sang "Not Over You", beating out fellow contestant Ryan Jirovec.  The next week, "The Knockouts", Pope sang Maroon 5's "Payphone" and won the knockout against Suzanna Choffel.  "The Live Playoffs" week, Pope advanced with the song "My Happy Ending".  During the week of "Top 12 Perform Live", Cassadee advanced with the song "Behind These Hazel Eyes" and advanced the following week, "Top 10 Perform Live", with "Over You", but the studio version of the song reached the top 10 on iTunes, so she got the iTunes vote times 10.  "Top 8 Perform Live", the same thing happened to Pope with the song "Are You Happy Now?".  And again, in the quarterfinals, Pope got the extra votes with the song "I'm With You" and her second song "Stand".  In the semifinals, Cassadee advanced with "Stupid Boy" along with receiving the extra votes and won the whole competition on December 18 with the song "Over You".

December 17th

1962: Bob Dylan arrived in England for the first time.

1968: The Who played their Xmas party at the Marquee Club in London.

1977: Elvis Costello, performing on "Saturday Night Live", stopped his performance of "Less Than Zero" saying "there's no reason to do this" and began performing "Radio Radio" which he was told not to perform.

1982: 30 years ago, Karen Carpenter made her last live appearance with The Carpenters in Sherman, CA.

2000: Bob the Builder went to Number-one on the UK charts with the theme song, "Can We Fix It".

My personal faves

I absolutely love music videos, especially those from the 1980s.  There's something about videos from the '80s that make you want to laugh, and I don't know what it is.

For example, Love Stinks by the J.Geils Band is hysterical.  The video starts off with a man jumping on a pogo stick while playing two trumpets and continues with many other odd occurrences like  someone cutting a tomato (which they show multiple times) and finishing off the song with a chimpanzee crawling away from a television.

Peter Wolf is probably just a funny guy, considering his song Come As You Are has a music video that is also pretty funny.  The whole video is him hopping through town.  Yes, hopping.

Cyndi Lauper's Girls Just Wanna Have Fun is another one.  From her parents yelling at her, to the pizza boxes, this is another video that a lot of people find goofy.

We're Not Gonna Take It by Twisted Sister is probably one of the corniest videos I have ever seen.  The father in the beginning is priceless and when the son starts playing guitar, the father flies out the window onto the ground.  And that's only one example.

Van Halen is a great band.  And Hot For Teacher is another video I have added to my list.  Dorky Waldo and the rest of the boys in his class have the hots for their new teacher that year.

Whip It by Devo...I almost have no words for this video.  The band is on a cheesy set holding whips and wearing the pot hats and then there's a cross-eyed woman.  Now tell me that's not odd.

Chevy Chase is a tall guy.  Paul Simon is a short guy.  And in the You Can Call Me Al video for Paul Simon's song, Chevy Chase is "singing" Paul's part and Paul is singing the parts with the low voice.  It's quite funny.

I apologize to The Flying Lizards, but Money is probably the worst video I have ever seen.  At one part she's dancing horribly and at another she's flying in mid-air.  I just don't understand.

Almost at the end

2012 is coming to an end, so I thought it would be a nice idea to remember some of the singers and musicians who have passed this past year.

• Etta James:  January 25, 1938-January 20, 2012
• Don Cornelius:  September 27, 1936-February 1, 2012
• Whitney Houston:  August 9, 1963-February 11, 2012
• Davy Jones:  December 30, 1945-February 29, 2012
• Earl Scruggs:  January 6, 1924-March 28, 2012
• Levon Helm:  May 26, 1940:  April 19, 2012
• Adam "MCA" Yauch:  August 5, 1964-May 4, 2012
• Donald "Duck" Dunn:  November 24, 1941-May 13, 2012
• Donna Summer:  December 31, 1948-May 17, 2012
• Robin Gibb:  December 22, 1949-May 20, 2012
• Kitty Wells:  August 30, 1919-July 16, 2012

12/12/12

Bon Jovi, Eric Clapton, Dave Grohl, Billy Joel, Alicia Keys, Chris Martin, The Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band, Roger Waters, Kanye West, Eddie Vedder, The Who, and Paul McCartney.  These thirteen performers will all be there tomorrow night at Madison Square Garden for the 12/12/12 concert for Sandy Relief.  This concert is being considered the largest event in music history, and it probably is.  So many websites, including YouTube and Hulu, will stream the concert live on their sites for people worldwide to watch along with 34 TV viewings.  Movie theaters in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut will also be showing the Sandy Relief concert.  Being from where Sandy hit the hardest, I know first-hand what really happened, so a concert like this is very important.

Music in movies

I realized that I have not yet spoken about the music in movies.  Some movies have fantastic music, while others seem to fall a little short.  Whether it's a musical or not, nothing is better than a movie with some decent tunes.  I created a list of movies with a great soundtrack (in no particular order):

1. Grease
2. Billy Madison
3. GoodFellas
4. Saturday Night Fever
5. Titanic
6. Pulp Fiction

I feel like I don't even need to explain why the Grease soundtrack is amazing.  If you have seen the movie, you probably agree with me that the songs in that movie are timeless.  And if you don't agree, then you're not cool.

Billy Madison is truly one of the funniest movies I have ever seen and the soundtrack just adds on to the fact that the movie is incredible.  You can never go wrong with artists like The Cars, The Ramones, Jackson 5, Billy Squier, E.L.O., and Styx.

GoodFellas is a classic movie about the mob.  The songs included in the movie are perfectly chosen to fit each scene they are in and that is an important factor when it comes to creating a movie.

Saturday Night Fever, according to some, is the BEST movie soundtrack EVER.  Most of the soundtrack contains the Bee Gees, the greatest disco band.  With some KC and the Sunshine Band and The Trammps' "Disco Inferno", the people may not be exaggerating and this may be the best movie soundtrack ever.

Now, I probably should not have put the Titanic on the list, being as though every song is instrumental except for "My Heart Will Go On".  But, "My Heart Will Go On" is simply an absolutely amazing song, so that counts, right?

In parts of the movie Pulp Fiction, you just feel the need to start laughing.  On this soundtrack, they include the scene with John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson, "Royal with Cheese".  While the songs are good, the dialogue makes the album.

Help me out, please

Music is my passion, in case you have not yet noticed, and I would love to make it into the music industry.  I want to attend the Video Music Awards.  I want to be invited to concerts.  I want to sit inside the recording studio.  And while I've tried to do it alone, I realized that I can't.  I need help, and of course my parents and family are there for support, but there's only so much power they have.  That's why I'm asking you all, my readers, to help me make it somewhere in this business.  I want to see you comment on my posts.  I want you to message me with your ideas on what I should blog about next.  Tell me what you want to see more of on my blog so I can try my best to make it where I want to go and enjoyable for you to read.  Please help me out and I thank you ahead of time.

Jordan xx