Re -Train Your Brain To Happiness

February 04, 2015

Dwight Yoakam: New Album 'Second Hand Heart'

Still going strong!

I chose "Things Change" because it is an old favourite of mine and I am very much looking forward to this album. I also love "Man of Constant Sorrow" and I am sure Dwight will do a great version of this.It is his 15th album!

Dwight Yoakam's career is coming full circle, both in the business and melodic senses. Second Hand Heart, the country star's new album, out April 14th, marks his return to Reprise Records, the Warner Bros. imprint that released his first album, Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc. Etc., nearly 30 years ago.

Yoakam, who will perform on the Grammy Awards this Sunday with double nominee Brandy Clark, played the new album for the Reprise staff at the Warner Brothers' headquarters last week, also reminiscing about his early days spent at the Burbank, California, landmark.

His vibrant new set harks back to those nascent days of cowpunk — the Los Angeles music scene from the mid-Eighties that Yoakam helped usher in alongside acts such as Lone Justice, Rank and File, and the Knitters — while also paying homage to such musical heroes as the Byrds, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. (picture via Twitter).

The album's retro-billy title track rings with infectious jangly guitars, a swaggering beat and Yoakam's instantly recognizable twang. The musician tells Rolling Stone Country he wrote the opening verse a couple of years ago with the expectation that it would be on 2012's acclaimed Three Pears. "I never finished it. It wasn't meant to be a part of that record and now I know why," he says. "It's its own statement, and it led this collection of songs in a way." (Listen to the world premiere of "Second Hand Heart" at this link.)

The lyrics roll out as an exchange between two weary warriors, whose bruised hearts have made them reluctant to enter love's battlefield again. "It's borne of a fictional conversation with somebody," says Yoakam, adding that the first line, "She said, 'When I trusted in love, I dreamed in color too,'" came to him out of the blue. "I remember [being] in my house, singing it out loud and I thought, 'Who is this and why did she say that?'. . . and staring off into space and thinking, 'Who's the poor guy who's obviously smitten with the idea of the two of them?'"

Yoakam leaves the pair cautiously willing to try once more. "There's a lot of that in the album, without it being by design, about surviving to relive hopefulness," he says.

Yoakam, who produced Second Hand Heart alongside Chris Lord-Alge, wrote eight of the album's 10 tracks. One of the only two outside songs is a rollicking new arrangement for "Man of Constant Sorrow," the traditional folk tune introduced to a new generation by the 2000 movie O Brother, Where Art Thou.

Check out Bob Dylan's version from 1963.

Track listing for Dwight Yoakam's Second Hand Heart:
"In Another World"
"She"
"Dreams of Clay"
"Second Hand Heart"
"Off Your Mind"
"Believe"
"Man of Constant Sorrow"
"Liar" - below
"The Big Time"
"V's of Birds"

By Melinda Newman

With thanks to Rolling Stone

You can pre-order it here and here.

You will also be able to download the song immediately when you place your order.
Below: Clip for "Second Hand Heart" and "Liar".

Thanks to Annie for sending me this.
Pictures below with thanks to Dwight's Twitter Account.

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February 03, 2015

Michelangelo Bronzes Discovered

Two handsome, virile naked men riding triumphantly on ferocious panthers will on Monday be unveiled as, probably, the only surviving bronze sculptures by the Renaissance giant Michelangelo.

In art history terms, the attribution is sensational. Academics in Cambridge will suggest that a pair of mysterious metre-high sculptures known as the Rothschild Bronzes are by the master himself, made just after he completed David and as he was about to embark on the Sistine Chapel ceiling.

If correct, they are the only surviving Michelangelo bronzes in the world.

The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, has unearthed two original works that show the great Renaissance artist inventing the art of the bizarre, says Jonathan Jones.

They will go on public display at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge from Tuesday. Victoria Avery, keeper of applied arts at the museum, said the attribution project, involving an international team of experts from different fields, had been like “a Renaissance whodunnit”. She said: “It has been a huge privilege to be involved, very exciting and great fun.”

Crucial to the attribution of the bronzes, which belong to a private British owner, has been a tiny detail from a drawing by an apprentice of Michelangelo, now in the Musée Fabre in Montpellier, France. The drawing shows in one corner a muscular youth riding a panther in a similar pose.

Last autumn, Paul Joannides, professor of art history at Cambridge University, connected the sculptures to the drawing.

Further research included a neutron scan at a research institute in Switzerland, which placed the bronzes in the first decade of the 16th century. Investigations by clinical anatomist Professor Peter Abrahams, from the University of Warwick, suggested every detail in the bronzes was textbook perfect Michelangelo – from the six packs to the belly buttons, which are as artist portrayed them on his marble statue of David.
“Even a peroneal tendon is visible, as is the transverse arch of the foot,” Abrahams writes in the book that accompanies the discovery.

Avery said: “Whoever made them clearly had a profound interest in the male body … the anatomy is perfect.”

The pictorial evidence is also compelling, with Michelangelo’s nudes on the Sistine Chapel being clearly similar to the Rothschild Bronzes.

The bronzes were initially attributed to Michelangelo, but the link was discredited in the late 19th century. Since then they have been ascribed to various great sculptors and their circles, including Tiziano Aspetti, Jacopo Sansovino and Benvenuto Cellini – all of them great artists.

“They are clearly masterpieces,” said Avery. “The modelling is superb, they are so powerful and so compelling, so whoever made them had to be superb.”
She said they had deliberately proceeded with caution during the attribution project.
“You have to be pretty brave to even contemplate that they could be work by an artist of the magnificence and fame and importance of Michelangelo. We decided to be rather cautious, to be very careful and methodical … nobody wants to be shot down and to look like an idiot.

They are now as convinced as they can be that the bronzes were made by Michelangelo between 1506 and 1508, when he was in his early 30s, hungry for success. The history of the sculptures is as fascinating as they are beautiful. They are named after their first recorded owner, Baron Adolphe de Rothschild, a grandson of Mayer Amschel Rothschild, who founded the banking dynasty. It is possible that Rothschild bought them from one of the Bourbon kings of Naples and if so they may have come from the Villa Reale at Caserta where the Bourbon art treasures were displayed. After Rothschild’s death in 1900 the bronzes were inherited by Maurice de Rothschild. When he died in 1957 they went into a private French collection and were effectively forgotten about until they came to auction in 2002 and were bought by the current unnamed British owner.

They were sold at Sotheby’s where experts loosely associated them with the Florentine sculptor Cellini.

They began to interest academics once more and featured in an exhibition on Willem van Tetrode at the Frick Collection and then at the Royal Academy’s big Bronze show in 2012, where they were attributed to the circle of Michelangelo and dated towards the middle of the 16th century. Experts who saw them at the RA recognised them as Michelangelesque but were reluctant to assign them directly to the man himself.

The attribution is particular exciting because no other Michelangelo bronzes survive. A two-thirds size bronze David, known to have been made for a French grandee’s chateau, was lost during the French Revolution and a spectacular statue of Pope Julius II was melted down for artillery by rebellious Bolognese.

The bronzes will be on display at the Fitzwilliam from 3 February to 9 August, with a book of the discovery, and more findings and research will be presented at an international conference on 6 July.

Avery said she was keen for as many people as possible to see them and join the debate which she hoped would not just be for academics. “I really hope people will engage with this, that they will read the arguments – maybe sit down in a cafe for half an hour with the book – and then come and look at the bronzes and make their own mind up.”

With thanks to The Guardian

Fingal’s Cave, Island of Staffa - Scotland

Fingal’s Cave is a beautiful sea cave on the Scottish island of Staffa. The cave’s unique formation, structure, and history have made it an international attraction.

The cave is believed to have been formed 60 million years ago amidst a volcanic eruption. The eruption caused lava flow that formed hexagonally-jointed basalt columns similar to the Giant’s Causeway in Ireland.

In fact, scientist believe both the Giant’s Causeway and Fingal’s cave were formed from the same lava flow.

Today, Fingal’s Cave is a sight that people travel from around the world to see.
The cave has a history of mythological tales and was a major inspiration for famous German composer Felix Mendelssohn, as well as countless other artists.

With thanks to Higher Learning

From You Tube:

Fingal's Cave is a sea cave on the island of Staffa in the Inner Hebrides. It is formed from hexagonally-jointed basalt columns similar to the Giant's Causeway in Ireland.

The Giant's Causeway and Fingal's Cave were both formed by the same lava flow 60 million years ago. In Gaelic mythology Fionn mac Cumhaill, a giant, constructed a causeway from Ireland to Scotland out basalt colums.

Fionn built it to allow a Scottish giant, Benandonner, come and fight him.

After deceiving Benandonner and bighting off his finger of power Fionn chased him back to Scotland but Benandonner ran so hard the causewasy collapsed behind him.

Fionn took a sod of earth, forming Lough Neagh, and threw it after Benandonner but it fell in the Irish sea to form the Isle of Man.

Check out this vid of a canoe trip to Staffa for a view of Staffa from canoe.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPLk4t...

Wild Scotland: Stunning Drone Footage

February 02, 2015

Tom Petty Calls Sam Smith Song "A Musical Accident"

This kind of things has happened before and it will happen again.
Unlike the author of this article I think the similarity is unmistakable.

Tom Petty has issued a statement to say similarity between Sam Smith’s ‘Stay With Me’ and his own ‘I Won’t Back Down’ is just a “musical accident”.

However, Petty was not content to walk away from the “accident” instead deciding to fill his own bank account on the way from Smith’s earnings.

Petty and Smith settled out of court with Petty (and I Won’t Back Down co-writer Jeff Lynne) now credited on the Smith song with what is believed to be 12.5% cut of proceeds from the song. That could be worth millions over time.

In a statement, Petty said, “About the Sam Smith thing. Let me say I have never had any hard feelings toward Sam. All my years of songwriting have shown me these things can happen. Most times you catch it before it gets out the studio door but in this case it got by. Sam’s people were very understanding of our predicament and we easily came to an agreement. The word lawsuit was never even said and was never my intention. And no more was to be said about it. How it got out to the press is beyond Sam or myself. Sam did the right thing and I have thought no more about this. A musical accident no more no less. In these times we live in this is hardly news. I wish Sam all the best for his ongoing career. Peace and love to all.”

Similarities between ‘Stay With Me’ and ‘I Won’t Back Down’ are near impossible to detect but Petty’s legal eagles with the superhearing of Superman have managed to do so. You need to speed up the Smith song and slow down the Petty song before they even start to overlap.
This is not the first time a Tom Petty song has been featured in a plagiarism case but the last time Tom was the one being accused.

In 2002, the Tom Petty hit ‘The Last DJ’ came under fire from unknown Californian singer songwriter Jim Wagner who had earlier written and then sent a demo of his song ‘The Last Great DJ’ to KLOS radio announcer Jim Ladd.

Ladd liked the song so much that he wanted to use it as his theme. Ladd was also a mate of Petty’s who also happened to be a regular visitor to the studios for interviews with Ladd.
Not long after Wagner sent his demo to Ladd, Petty released his song ‘The Last DJ’, also about Jim Ladd.

Reality check: The law is not about right or wrong, it is about the man with the deepest pockets. The wealthy Petty soon drained the financial resources of the unknown Wagner of any hope of continuing his pursuit of justice. In the end, Wagner withdrew his legal claim because he could not afford to continue.

To recap, the score in the current season of LA Law is Petty 2, Smith 0, Wagner 0.

By Paul Cashmere

With thanks to Noise 11

More from the Australian 17th April by Markus Berkmann:

Songwriting credits are, as we know, not always to be trusted. Since the dawn of music publishing, there has always been a manager or an agent or a well-connected representative of organised crime willing to take a small cut of a song’s royalties, in return for services rendered or threats not carried out. (true!)

Who actually wrote any song? Well, we know that Bob Dylan wrote Subterranean Homesick Blues, but after that it gets a little murky. Lennon-McCartney songs, after the first couple of albums, were written by John Lennon or Paul McCartney but rarely by Lennon-McCartney.

The Verve’s Bitter Sweet Symphony, notoriously, sampled more of Andrew Loog Oldham’s orchestral version of The Rolling Stones’ The Last Time than it probably should have, and thus the song carries the credit ‘‘Jagger-Richards-Ashcroft’’, with the two Stones getting 100 per cent of the money and Verve’s Richard Ashcroft having to make do with a slightly disappointing 0 per cent. Allen Klein, that legendary enforcer, insisted on the full whack or the record would have to be withdrawn from the shops. Remember records? Remember shops?

Every song, of course, sounds a little like another song, except possibly for Wuthering Heights. (I disagree with this. It is possible that younger, newer stars are simply not familiar with the older songs.)

It’s only when similarities become uncanny that the lawyers are called in.

Most recently, chubby young awards magnet Sam Smith settled out of court with Tom Petty and Jeff Lynne after someone noticed that Smith’s Stay With Me bore a striking resemblance in the tune department to Petty’s I Won’t Back Down. ‘‘All my years of songwriting have shown me these things can happen,’’ said Petty, unpettily. ‘‘Most times you catch it before it gets out of the studio door but in this case it got by. Sam’s people were very understanding of our predicament and we easily came to an agreement.’’ In other words, make cheques payable to T. Petty Esq.

The errant Smith and his co-writers said they were ‘‘not previously familiar’’ with the Petty track, which I suppose is just about possible. Stay With Me won Grammys for record of the year and song of the year — because obviously those are two very different things — but Petty and Lynne’s contribution was not acknowledged by the Recording Academy, as they were deemed to have done ‘‘no new work’’ in writing the song. As opposed to the very hard work the others had put in, writing the same song again purely by coincidence.

Who are these co-writers, anyway? Names, just names. Professional songwriters are everywhere, credited in ever-lengthening lists on every new song you hear. Singers can no longer be just singers, valued for their pipes and their infallible dress sense; they must also be songwriters, whether or not they can write songs. So they note down a few useless, illiterate lyrics and the ‘‘music guys’’ come in and build a song around them.

It’s remarkable how many professional songwriters are people who had a go at being performers and didn’t sell as many records as their talents might have merited. I see that Dan Wilson, once of power poppers Semisonic, has been working with the Dixie Chicks, Taylor Swift and John Legend, and co-wrote Adele’s Someone Like You. And one of my favourite songwriters, Gary Clark, who wrote and sang Mary’s Prayer for Danny Wilson and many other songs that should have been hits, now lives in the US and shapes whole albums for the likes of Natalie Imbruglia and Delta Goodrem. As they say, it’s a living.

In such a world it can be hard for real singer-songwriters to stand out. Both my children are unfeasibly obsessed with Ed Sheeran’s albums, so I have heard rather more of them than I may have wished. But I have to admit he’s not bad. There isn’t much of a voice — its limitations are painfully exposed — but he writes a nifty lyric, works with proper people (Pharrell Williams, Rick Rubin) and writes songs with tunes that don’t all sound like each other.

These are old-fashioned pop values, but somehow the public ignored all this and made Sheeran’s x Britain’s bestselling album last year. Then last month silly old ginger Ed with his try-hard tattoos picked up one or two of the Brit Awards that Smith didn’t win. Lucky boy, although if he isn’t co-writing the hits of someone much younger and prettier in 15 years, and saying he much prefers being ‘‘out of the limelight’’, he will have done well.

Related:
Did Led Zeppelin Steal The ‘Stairway to Heaven’ Riff?
The Traveling Wilburys: Their History
Sam Smith Wins Grammy
Robin Thicke And Pharell Williams Lose The ‘Blurred Lines’ - Marvyn Gaye Lawsuit
Kris Kristofferson Sings for New Mini series: "Texas Rising"
Traveling Wilburys To Travel Into New Territory - Streaming