Harry P.

How about this definition: Someone who actually sings every note we hear in the finished product. No auto-tune, no studio enhancement other than the usual arranging and mixing of the separate tracks. In other words... we're hearing the singer actually (really) singing, and they would sound pretty much the same singing in your living room. There have always been studio tricks, but these days the technology is to the point where anyone can be made to sound good. Talent is literally not necessary anymore, "personality" is.

Nobody ever said it's coming next week...

You just touched that live wire again. Are you a slow learner?

Too bad. They made a lot of oddball stuff that nobody else would touch.

The only thing I wonder about is their desire for "increased customer intimacy." Are they getting into "other" product lines?

Makes no difference to me. There are already so many brands and types of paint available. Losing a few brand names is pretty inconsequential in the overall scheme of things. "Your opinion may vary."

More cowbell!

That is super clean! Great craftsmanship.

Wow! Beautifully doe, great detail, and very sharp and clean. And it has mirrors! Yay! The only thing I'm not too big on is the giant wheels, but that's just personal opinion. A very cool model, excellent craftsmanship.

http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2013/05/20/chrysler-working-supercharged-hellcat-hemi-v8/?intcmp=features

I think the thing is, these days while there is still good music coming out (and you have to hunt for it), there's far less of it coming out, whereas say in the late '60s we had so much good stuff coming out it was practically overkill. I mean, think about it... Beatles, Stones, Pink Floyd, Yardbirds/Zeppelin, CSN, The Byrds, Dylan, Motown, the "blue-eyed soul" of the Box Tops and the Grassroots, Jimi Hendrix, The Beach Boys, Janis Joplin, Simon & Garfunkel, the list goes on and on and on!

Listen to "Whole Lotta Love" on headphones. Whoa! Trippy! I know it's just cheap studio left channel-right channel trickery, but it blew me away in 1969!

I have the album that song appears on (and several other BTO albums). A very atypical BTO tune. Almost "jazzy!" I do like it, even though it's very different than anything else they did.

Oh man, how right you are. The Beatles alone... those guys were freakin' geniuses. They (along with their behind-the-scenes maestro George Martin) were doing stuff in the studio that hadn't even been invented yet! It's so sad that half of them are already gone.

Van der Rohe was right. Less is more.

I do like some of today's "country" music, which is really more pop/rock than old-school country. For example, I like Little Big Town, Lady Antebellum, stuff like that. Not a huge fan, but it's pleasant enough. And I love the crazy hair on the blonde chick in Little Big Town!

The Monkees started out as a "manufactured" band... the "prefab" four... because they answered ads for auditions for a TV show about a band. So in that sense, yes, they were a "fake" band made up for the show... but as time went on they began to complain about being a "fake" band and they wanted to play their own music (not the songs that Boyce and Hart wrote for them). So eventually they did turn into a "real" band.

Ray Manzarek of the Doors died today of cancer. Another '60s-era name gone... You all would recognize his work immediately on songs like "L.A.Woman, "Riders on the Storm," "Light My Fire," etc. Another '60s-era name gone...

I think you accidentally touched a live wire and then you jumped back!

If that's supposed to improve on the original... swing and a miss. The recent E-Type concept/update we talked about here recently, that was a very nicely done update of the original. This one reminds me of seeing your old high school girlfriend for the first time in years at your reunion, and she hasn't exactly improved over the way you remembered her!

I heard it was between F4 and F5. That's pretty bad...

You can't put those two in the same basket. Taylor Swift (while not exactly my type of music) actually writes her own material, and from interviews I've seen seems like a very serious, mature young woman with a good head on her shoulders, while Bieber is just a piece of fluff. I'd be proud to have a daughter like Taylor Swift... I'd be embarrassed to have a son like Bieber.

It's true that the stuff you hear on Top 40 charts today is mostly "excrement." These days the record and music companies literally take people and "make" them stars through promotion, music videos, etc. Talent not necessary... don't worry, we have auto-tune! They in reality MAKE people famous rather than the "old fashioned" way of a musical act putting out material and actually catching on with the public and gradually becoming more widely known and more popular via a natural progression of events. But having said that, it's human nature to identify with the music that you grew up with. Music has the most effect on a person when they're young... so odds are the music that was on the radio when you were young (whatever era that may be) is the music that you personally identify with and consider "good." It's not possible to be completely unbiased, but IMO the best music was made roughly between the early '60s through the mid '70s. It's hard to imagine that we'll ever see an era again with as much sheer talent as the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, the Byrds, Motown, etc.

Speaking of the earth being flat... didja ever wonder how the people back then who were convinced it really was flat pictured "the ends of the Earth?" Was there a big wall around the edges that kept the oceans from spilling over? There had to be something holding back the water. Who built the wall? How did they hold back the oceans while the walls were being built? What was holding back the oceans before the walls were built? What was on the underside of the Earth? How did all the stuff on that side keep from falling off? Yep, I would have been a real PITA back then! (and I can already hear many of you thinking "PITA then??? He's a real PITA now!")

Wait. What? The earth isn't flat?!!!