Bill's Blog
Periodically, I'll write about music, language, photography, and other topics.
Chasing the Algorithm
At my advanced age, it's hard to keep up with popular music. I was seated next to a metal band at a restaurant and stopped at their table, hoping to have a brief conversation about musical influences, or some other esoteric topic. They looked at me like I was crazy. Fortunately, the Yahoo and Google algorithms don't think I'm a weirdo. They keep feeding me articles about music. From one recent article, I started a Spotify playlist with several Charli xcx songs. The algorithm quickly filled in the playlist, but it felt like a top 40 list with no curating. So, I tried their AI DJ, a cool, urban-sounding dude. He had me figured out, adding older songs and songs I'd never heard of. It was a very pleasing experience, although the AI was a bit patronizing. Recently, however, I shifted to playlists of classic jazz and 1940s music. I haven't dared go back to the DJ. Will he be mad at me for veering from current music? How will the algorithm reconcile "Apple" and "Mairzy Doats?"
Charli xcx:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPWxExGk7PM
Mairzy Doats:
In Search of the Vertical
The world used to be horizontal. Televisions were slightly wider than they were tall, and then they became even wider. Computer screens followed the same pattern. Movie screens had a more convoluted journey, starting out much like a television: slightly wider that they were tall. They got wider and then very wide. Some screens were more than twice as wide as they were tall. With the advent of HDTV, movie screen sizes began to match TV sizes.
Then things changed. The smart phone appeared. Close to two-third of internet traffic is on the phone. This is a vertical format: taller than it is wide. Text remains unchanged. It simply flows like water to conform to screen sizes. But images are a problem. You can certainly turn your phone to get a horizontal image to full screen, but vertical images are ascendant. Optimum Facebook reels are 9:16. So, I guess, life has a lot to do with the vertical these days.
May 1, 2025. I've been compiling a playlist of female singers/groups going back to the 1930s with Gracie Fields and up to current artists like Charli xcx. "Material Girl" by Madonna is on the list. It's often described as a "satire on materialism." I tend to disagree. Despite the opening and closing scenes, I think she means what she says. True love is a bit of a fiction. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6p-lDYPR2P8
I've been listening to 40s music. The US was leaving the Great Depression and entering a world war. The decade would end with world power. Change was afoot, not yet explicit, but telegraphed within much of the music. My favorite song is "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy" by the Andrews Sisters. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8of3uhG1tCI
January 21, 2025 HOW DO YOU PRONOUNCE "HOMAGE"
For most of my life, I pronounced "homage" as "AH Mig" with "H" silent and the accent on the first syllable and a hard "g" as in "gee" at the end. Suddenly, a few years ago, I heard someone pronounce it "OH mag" with more of an equal stress on the syllables. At first, I thought it was a mispronunciation, falling in with grammatical errors like using "lie" when "lay" was correct. I said nothing. You can't go picking fights over these kinds of things, no matter how grating they are. A funny thing happened. I kept hearing the new pronunciation. I finally realized that this was a French pronunciation. The puzzling thing is, why was there a sudden shift? I say this with all seriousness. Did the literati decide to shift? If so, did they send out a memo? Was I not on the list? Or did nothing at all change? Were people always using different pronunciations, and I never heard the French pronunciation, either by chance or by closing my mind to different pronunciations? LISTEN ON YOU TUBE
(January 13, 2025) BIG MOMMA THORNTON.
Elvis Presley's version of "Hound Dog" was released in 1956. It sold ten million copies. However, the song was written for, and first released by, Big Mama Thornton in 1952. It is considered a significant song because it bridged the world of blues and rock-and-roll. It was also one of the first songs in which the guitar was the dominant instrument. It was at the center of controversies and lawsuits over authorship, royalties, and copyright infringement. Big Momma Thornton received little or no money in royalties or residuals. At her peak, she earned only $50 a night for her gigs. Destitute when she died, she was buried in a pauper's grave. There is some effort to erect a marker for her. All that being said, Presley had a remarkable voice. Like bands such as The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, he came along when people wanted to hear white boys sing the blues.