Tag Archives: music

New bot: @78_sampler, serving up old records

posted on 11 August, 2017 also tagged , , , ,

The Internet Archive hosts an incredible collection of over 25,000 professionally digitized 78rpm records. The great thing about a catalog that large is that, if you know what you want, you’re likely to find it. On the other hand, if you just want to browse it can be overwhelming and even intimidating. Each item could […]

Taylor Swift and Garth Brooks each took on their generation’s music bogeyman

posted on 31 July, 2015 also tagged , , ,

The music business tends to repeat itself. Conversations that seem completely intertwined with new technologies mirror those over earlier developments. Read Adrian John’s Piracy, for example, and see how closely the file-sharing debate followed the one about sheet music a century earlier. Even with that background, the parallels between Taylor Swift’s widely discussed comments about […]

Valerie Simpson on sampling and creativity

posted on 10 July, 2014 also tagged , ,

I tuned in to an older episode of the public radio show “Song Travels” on a drive the other featuring performances and a discussion with Valerie Simpson. Simpson is a musician and with her husband made up the legendary married Ashford & Simpson songwriting duo, behind “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” and a million other […]

A closer look at the “Girl on Fire” copyright lawsuit

posted on 20 December, 2012 also tagged , , , ,

Last week Earl Shuman, a songwriter behind several hits in the 50s and 60s, sued Alicia Keys for copyright infringement in her recent single “Girl on Fire.” He alleges that the song infringes a tune he wrote in 1962, which was recorded as “Hey There Lonely Girl” by Eddie Holman and which peaked at #2 […]

Answering Paul Kelly’s “how many?” questions

posted on 3 September, 2012 also tagged ,

I like this song by Paul Kelly, called “Careless.” It’s embedded below: He asks a few questions in the song, and I’ve got the answers. How many cabs in New York City? There are 13,237 taxis regulated by the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission. How many angels on a pin? I think the […]