Category: Music

Fight the URGE

FiOS TV has added URGE Radio, on the stations that follow Music Choice. As I mentioned in a post in early June — unfortunately lost in the Great Database Debacle — the sound quality of the Music Choice stations is uniformly excellent. The same cannot be said of URGE Radio. Played over a digital coaxial cable going from the Motorola DVR into my Kenwood THX receiver, what I’ve heard so far sounds, at best, like a 128 Kbps MP3 at 22050 Hz. The player has four minutes of URGE Radio. Don’t judge the sound quality by this, as it’s encoded here at only 64 Kbps/22050 Hz.

[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/JUL07/URGERadio.flv 400 300]

As you can see, there’s a progress bar, but it doesn’t appear on all of the screens within a track, which sort of limits its usefulness. I’m not complaining about the service being added. I continue to be impressed with everything that FiOS TV offers for the money, but URGE Radio’s audio quality relegates it to the TV speakers.

Petula Clark: Blue Lady

Last November, the BBC ran a long overdue one-hour documentary on Petula Clark, called Petula Clark: Blue Lady. In thanks to whomever started the Petula Clark blog, here’s the entire show. Honor Blackman, the first leading lady of the The Avengers TV Series and Pussy Galore in Goldfinger, narrates.

[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Movies/Wordpress/NOV06/PetulaBBC.flv 440 330]

Maryann Price, A Lickette No Longer

I was just getting caught up on the local papers, and I spotted this article. Maryann Price is making an appearance tonight, not far from here. If I’d known sooner, I would have been interested in seeing her.

Who’s Maryann Price? She sang with Dan Hicks and his Hot Licks, a string-and-vocal group I enjoyed a lot back in high school and college. That’s Maryann on the left, and Naomi Ruth Eisenberg on the right. Together they were called, respectfully and not derisively, the Lickettes.

Dan Hicks with Maryann and Naomi

Rather than try to explain them, just give a listen. In the first song, “I Feel Like Singing,” Maryann does the scat bit heard in the left channel. The second song, “I Scare Myself,” features the spine-tingling violin playing of Sid Page.

[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/JUL07/IFeelLikeSinging.mp3,http://www.dograt.com/Audio/JUL07/IScareMyself.mp3]

Next, Maryann sings “I’m An Old Cowhand.” Can you tell I like songs with titles that start with “I”? All tracks were taken from the original vinyl disks I loved listening to 35 years ago.

[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/JUL07/ImAnOldCowhand.mp3]

Finally, if you read the article at the link above, you know there are recent home videos of Maryann on YouTube. This one includes a bit of her doing “I’m An Old Cowhand.”

Let’s Play Muzak DJ!

The cable TV service Music Choice has a channel with the genre that, as a kid, made my skin crawl, but now I’m coming to appreciate. Easy listening! It’s called Elevator Music, but for me the reason it made my skin crawl is that I always heard it at the dentist office, while having my teeth drilled!

The video has 12 minutes of the Music Choice Easy Listening channel, started at a totally random point. I’ll use that as the springboard for the rest of the post.

[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/JUL07/EZListening.flv 400 300]

Well, let’s see what’s in there. A bit of “Something,” followed by Zamfir doing the love theme to Sergio Leone’s Spaghetti Western, “Once Upon A Time In The West.” Then Acker Bilk did “Jean” — nice coincidence for my sister there — and blind pianist George Shearing had Petula Clark’s “Call Me,” which is a nice coincidence for me! Lastly is a portion of the old standard “Dream.”

Acker Bilk is best remembered for “Stranger On The Shore,” so let’s hear that.

[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/JUL07/AckerBilk.mp3]

And “Jean,” from the movie The Prime of Miss Jean Brody, was originally a single for Oliver. I have that, too.

[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/JUL07/Jean.mp3]

I’ve been woefully lax in posting all of the Petula Clark material that I have. I’ll get back to that at some point, with a vengeance. For the moment, I’ll give you the studio recording of “Call Me”…

[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/JUL07/CallMe.mp3]

… and here’s Pet’s 1970 appearance on Dean Martin’s show, after she stopped being so stiff and stagy, and was truer to herself — smooth and sexy. But yikes, those corny guest cameos are too much to take! Who wrote this stuff? I can see why variety shows didn’t survive the next generational shift. But having Dom Deluise, Paul Lynde, and Alan Sues, and Charles Nelson Reilly all appearing in the same bit …? The times were certainly changing!

[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/JUL07/CallMe.flv 400 300]

Sorry about the video quality. It isn’t one of my own transfers. I had to fix the aspect ratio, and that resulted in the jagginess of the image.

Finally, here’s “Dream” from Frankie’s album Nice ‘n’ Easy.

[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/JUL07/Dreams.mp3]