www.RogerWendell.com
Roger J. Wendell
Defending 3.8 Billion Years of Organic Evolution^SM

Music

Like everyone else, I love music! However, you won't find a lot of that popular "Top 40," let's-march-in-lock-step stuff on my pages (although some of it I like!) - my thirst is for those wild, radical, poetic or political tunes - doesn't matter what genre as long as it isn't that white-bread-let's-all-think-alike music that's been numbing our society for far too long now - Welcome!

Click Here for my lyrics page...

Click Here for my KGNU page!

Click Here for my page about movies!

Click Here for my poetry page!

Downloads

"Everything for everyone, and nothing for ourselves.  Everything for everyone, and nothing for ourselves.  Everything for everyone, and nothing for ourselves." - Rage Against the Machine, Zapata's Blood

"Music is the healing force of the Universe." - Albert Ayler (July 13, 1936 - November 25, 1970)

Politics

Lawsuits

In April, 2022 Ed Sheeran won a High Court copyright battle over his 2017 hit, "Shape of You." A judge ruled that the singer-songwriter had not plagiarised the 2015 song, "Oh Why" by Sami Chokri. Chokri, who performs under the name Sami Switch, had claimed the "Oh I" hook in Sheeran's track was "strikingly similar" to an "Oh why" refrain in his own track.   After the ruling, Sheeran said such "baseless" claims "are way too common." In a social media video Sheeran said there was now a culture "...where a claim is made with the idea that a settlement will be cheaper than taking it to court, even if there's no basis for the claim". He added: "It's really damaging to the songwriting industry. There's only so many notes and very few chords used in pop music. "Coincidence is bound to happen if 60,000 songs are being released every day on Spotify. That's 22 million songs a year and there's only 12 notes that are available."

Artists and their music, covers, and remixes:
(Roger's Recommendations!)
My Top 703 Favorites!

George Harrison

Note: What I've listed here are versions of songs that I love by artists I've heard rendering them. For example, I believe What's Left of the West was written by Greg Keeler but I've heard Peg Millet sing it, many times (in person!), and am hooked on that version! My favorite song, for the moment (it seems to change every couple years), is Robert Hoyt's Red River off his "Mind's Eye" CD. It's a poignant, even passionate, accounting of the loss of the real world (not this make-believe environ we've been creating for ourselves these past few thousand years). It's songs like Red River that really move me - not the goofy "fashionable" stuff that each generation shells out big bucks for. Anyway, what's YOUR favorite song??

Okay, it doesn't get any more weird than this, does it? I mean, here's a huge list of somebody's (my!) favorite music posted for who knows what reason!? Well, if it helps, I often refer to this list when I'm looking to put together music for a road trip or one of my radio shows. It's a great memory jog and is also pretty handy when I'm "tuning" around YouTube and other sites for music listening or videos. And, I've actually found the music lists of others kind of interesting at times as well. So, I hope you found some value on this page of mine. But, if you didn't, that's okay - I'll still be checking it out on those occasions when I need to jog my memory about a favorite tune or artist!

- Roger J. Wendell
(page created July 2003 - Golden, Colorado)

Click Here for KGNU - the world's most important radio station!

Definitions:

• Cover - A recording of a song that was previously recorded or made popular by another. Also called cover song.
• Remix - To recombine (audio tracks or channels from a recording) to produce a new or modified audio recording.

Street Music!

When it's good (and I'm in the mood), nothing can be more enjoyable than street musicians plying their trade on pleasant summer evening along the mall, in a park, or at a street corner. Click Here for my YouTube video of these two guys in action!

In July, 2010 we discovered a lot of pianos along Denver's outdoor 16th Street Mall!

Concerts

I don't get to many concerts anymore (mostly because they're
way too expensive...) but will try to post photos as I get
'em. This one was "Furthur" playing at Red Rock Amphitheatre
near my house west of Denver. I didn't actually get to see
the concert but rode my bike all around the grounds area...

Parking congestion

Motorcycle guest

More parking

Pedestrian bridge

Scalpers

Click Here for my YouTube video of the Furthur crowd!

My contact with musicians (and their statues...)

Me in KGNU's music library

Actually, I've been lucky to meet and listen to a lot of great artists and musicians through my long association with KGNU in Boulder. Unfortunately I've taken almost no pictures of those encounters so only have these few photograps to share at the moment:

Me and Jock Bartley of Firefall	Me and Tim O'Brien at KGNU	Me and John Lennon at Liverpool!	Met and spoke with Ray Gaskins (of Roy Ayers' Ubiquity Jazz group) on a flight out of Moscow, Russia, where he had just played for one night on the evening of September 5th, 2011. He tried to comfort me by saying he enjoyed Steely Dan when I confessed I knew almost nothing about Jazz. Unfortunately I didn't know much about Steely Dan, either...
Standn' on the corner in Winslow, Arizona with Jackson Browne...	Me and Steve Blechschmidt of Two Guitars Telling a Story	Me and Big Caz (of Bone Thugs 'n Harmony fame) at the Grizzly Creek rest stop in Glenwood Canyon, CO!	Me and Ken Crow (he's on the left) at the American Mountaineering Center (AMC) in Golden, Colorado. Ken Crow toured with Strawberry Alarm Clock "back in the day" with his most recent projects including Ghosts, Lila Bloom, The E Project, and The Crow Agency. He was at the He was at the AMC for the presentation of his musical commedy, The People's Cadillac, in September, 2017

Colorado Cowboy Poetry Gathering - Golden, Colorado

Gary McMahan, Me, and Chris.

Me and Liz Masterson

Chris and I attended the annual Colorado Cowboy Poetry Gathering in January, 2017 at the American Mountaineering Center. I thorouhly enjoyed listening to Gary McMahan's Beer Can Bob and Liz Masterson's Roads to Colorado. Was also fun taking pictures with these artists as well!

Kristyn Harris

Ernie Martinez

Dave Stamey

These three photos were taken at the Colorado Cowboy Poetry Gathering's 30th Anniversary show (January 17 - 20, 2019). In addition to the photos you see here, I also have a few more of their other artists on my Poetry page. More important than the photos, of course, are the actual performances! I encourage you to attend this or any other cowboy poetry gathering the next chance you get!

• Kristyn Harris was the Western Music Association Entertainer of the year in 2018.
• Ernie Martinez was the Western Music Association Instrumentalist of the year in 2018.
• Dave Stamey was the Western Music Association songwriter of the year (five times!).

Particle Physicist Fabiola Gianotti discusses the relationship between art and science:

"There are many similarities between music and physics, and music and science. Because there is an important mathematical component in music, particularly classical music, I mean Bach music, Haydn music, and music of the 17th century. A very strong and important structure, it follows rules of harmony which are really rules of physics and mathematics. So, when I listen to Bach music, I really listen to it at two levels; There are two different ones, the art and the mathematics, they are in harmony. I can almost perceive them at the same level of importance. Of course when we talk about more romantic music, Chopin, then the mathematical and physical structure is less evident.   "So, music has an important mathematical component at the same time physics has an artistic aspect, in that the laws of Nature are so simple, so elegant. The basic principles of physics are a symmetry principle and so there is an esthetical component to physics as well. And, also, you have perhaps visited and seen our beautiful experiment [CERN LHC]. There is also an esthetical component in it - they are nice. Clearly this principal of symmetry, which is one of the basic fundamental principles of particle physics is something which is, of course, common to other disciplines, in particular to art, to painting and sculpture.

So, I think there are several commonalities to the disciplines of art and physics which goes a little bit against what is the common belief. People think that physics and mathematics are something very dry, there is no passion and there is no elegance. And sometimes they are really in contradiction with art. And for me that's not the case. Actually it is demonstrated by the fact that many good physicists were very good musicians. Like Einstein himself."
 
Transcribed by Roger J. Wendell from the "Character Moments" portion of the Particle Fever documentary (2013) During the actual documentary, itself, Dr. Gianotti said;
 
"For me, music is a very important component of my life, I think. I am a modestly good physicist because I've been studying music. Music and physics are really very close to each other. They both require rules, mathematics. Music is based on harmony which is the physics of sound, essentially. A Bach cantata, for instance, is a piece of mathematics because Bach is really following the rules in a very strict way. On top of which Bach has put all of heart. So, music is rules and a lot of creativity and fantasy, as much as physics. For me, they're really two different expression of the same human [spirit?]."

Tom Petty

"Music is probably the only real magic I have encountered in my life.   There's not some trick involved with it.   It's pure and it's real.   It moves, it heals, it communicates and does all these incredible things."

An Alternative View...

"'Rock' is the music of slaves. Of adolescents pursuing the illusion of freedom and protest while the steel chains of technology bind them ever tighter." "Rock: Music to hammer out fenders by. Music for vomiting to after a hard day spreading asphalt. Vietnam music. Imitation-Afro, industrial air-compressor music."   Both from Edward Abbey's A Voice Crying in the Wilderness, p. 72

What's Happened to Country Music?

Okay, first for full disclosure - I've never been a country music fan although there are a half-dozen "classics" that I've always enjoyed. Second, I've never been much of a TV fan, either - I only watch it occasionally, and that's only in the presence of a friend or family member who is interested in it when we're together - otherwise I never turn on the television (ever!) and didn't even own one during the times when I was single in my life.   All of that being said, on the evening of November 21st 2024, I watched part of the Country Music Association's (CMA) 58th annual awards. What a disappointing freak show! All I could think of was to ask what happened to "country" music! Many of the "musicians" were covered with tattoos (some, even on their faces!), piercings, "gauges" (one overweight guy had what looked like a diamond encrusted carabiner connected through a very large ear gauge). Many of the "singers" were wearing outlandish clothing that barely resembled anything "country" other than and occasional cowboy hat or authentic boots. However, most important of all, wat that much of the "music" didn’t sound country at all – most of it was some kind of a techno-rap mix with pyrotechnic displays and rock-and-roll guitar players. Just my opinion, of course!!

Free downloads and stuff you can hear on-line:

Overpriced Music
[Ed. Note: After the first decade of the second millennium this complaint became moot
  as most music was readily available from a wide variety of sources off the internet. Since
  it may be of some historical interest I've left this note as it originally appeared on my website...]

Okay, as much as I love music it's clear that it's almost always grossly overpriced. Back in the late 60s, when I was a young kid wanting to buy albums (but couldn't afford it) pricing was ridiculously high. Of course outdoor concerts started to become popular but with the exception of Woodstock (the crowds were so huge they opened the gates up to anyone) those prices, too, were outrageous. In the early 1980s overpriced CDs hit the market and were followed by expensive DVDs a decade later. Then, in the early 2000s music "file sharing" became so popular it nearly crippled the music industry. Wow, what a surprise! Overpaid and underworked industry executives and concert promoters (and sometimes musicians) finally got a little payback! Well, don't think this is just the whining of an old man who can't afford Blu-Ray, read the techdirt.com piece below!

Econ 101:
Study Shows That If Record Labels Lowered Prices On Music, They Would Sell A Lot More
by Mike Masnick of techdirt.com (January 29, 2010)
from the profit-maximization dept

"Having talked with a bunch of music execs recently, as well as a few different companies that do analytics in the music space, one thing became clear: unlike most other industries, record label execs tend not to be particularly data or analytics-driven. Let's just say they didn't get into the recording industry because they were good at math. There are a few exceptions, obviously, but getting many industry execs to think logically and examine data isn't particularly easy. This isn't that surprising, given how many examples of actions by big record label execs that make little to no sense when thought about analytically."

"Yet another study has come out suggesting that the industry has pricing all wrong, pointing out that the increase in sales from dropping the price of music would increase profits. And yet what has the industry been trying to do? That's right: trying to raise the price. The study suggested that the "optimal" price for music might be closer to $0.60 per track. That still seems way too high to me when you look at how people flocked to services like Allofmp3.com, but in general I think the basic concept makes sense. You can maximize revenue by dropping prices, but it doesn't seem like many record industry execs have realized that."

Tom Morello - RATM

Zacharias Manuel de la Rocha

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