Musicals

Those of you who know me know that in addition to the many manly qualities I posess (and there are tons of them, tons) I love a musical. Phantom of the Opera, Wicked, Jersey Boys, The Sound of Music, etc.

One that I enjoy a lot, but have significant plot issues with is Les Miserables. Below is a phenomenal video, and despite the very interesting filming style and several quality issues, this is a version of Les Mis that I have no trouble following the plot on:




Nice work Browns fans. I love self-deprecating humor and I think the fine people of Cleveland have perfected it.

For those of you coming here for actual "Musical" content, here's one of my favorite things ever. The incomparable Doyle Dykes playing "Music of the Night" from Phantom on a guitar:

The Most Interesting Thing I Learned This Week: Meet Chip Taylor

I'm willing to bet only a few of you have ever heard of Chip Taylor. But I'm also willing to bet that every one of you has heard at least one song written by Chip Taylor. Chip Taylor has written and performed many songs, and I've had the pleasure of watching him play live at The Granada Theater in Dallas, Texas. But the one song of his that I'm certain you know is "Wild Thing."

That's right. Wild Thing. Da da. Da da da. You make my heart sing. You make everything...groovy.

He also wrote "Angel of the Morning" made famous by several artists, most recently a version of it by Shaggy.

Chip Taylor - The Wild Thing himself

Something I came across this week that I wasn't aware of before is that Chip Taylor is just a stage name. His real name is James Wesley Voight, and he is the brother of Jon Voight - the actor not the previous owner of George Costanza's car.


By being Jon Voight's brother that also makes him Angelina Jolie's uncle.

Jon Voight with his daughter and Chip Taylor's neice

I'm sure my brother has been aware of all of this for years. He always seems to know these crazy little connections, but I just learned of it this week and thought I'd share it with you fine people.


Food, science, technology - now celebrities and music. You folks are going to be deep, well-rounded wells of completely random information before I'm done with you.

iTunes, Sometimes I Feel Like You Don't Know Me at All

The last three days of work have been so busy. And tomorrow and Friday aren't looking any better. Oh well. Such is life sometimes.

But since I can't get it all done and everyone needs to take a breather at some point, I decided to spend some time on iTunes looking for some new music. I hadn't checked out the "Just for You" section in a while, so I thought perusing that might bring up something worthwhile. Who knows right?




I'm not sure if you can see that too well; you may have to click on it. But did you notice the gray highlighted song that iTunes recommended for me.

That's right. The University of Iowa Fight Song. Performed by the University of Iowa Hawkeye Marching Band.

What?

What could I have possibly purchased to lead iTunes to believe that not only would I want to listen to a marching band perform a high school style college fight song, but that I would then want to drop 99 cents to own the thing?

Not only that, three of the songs on that list of recommendations I own already. They're in my iTunes library, iTunes.

And then there's the Dave Matthews Band and Brad Paisley recommendations.

I never thought I'd say this, but iTunes, I'm putting you on notice, Colbert style. You think you know me and have stuff "Just for Me"? Time to start proving it or I'm just going to have to search through all your files to find my own stuff. And that could take up a lot of bandwidth.

Yeah, that's a threat.