"Major" Label Says Music to make you feel great!

Major Label Says Are your ears happy?

"I've always felt that blues, rock 'n' roll and country are just about a beat apart."
~ Waylon Jennings 1937-2002

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Al Staehely & 10k hrs The CD that you could be holding in your hand is the very first appearance of Al Staehely’s 1982 solo album on compact disc – and it’s about time. The collection of recordings, originally released in Europe on Polydor Records, has been deserving of the compact disc treatment ever since the inception of the CD. But Al’s solo album was originally released on vinyl - just a couple of years before the compact disc era began.

SteadyBoy Records head honcho – Freddie Krc first met Al Staehely in 1976 when both playing at a music festival in Lewisville, Texas, just north of Dallas. Freddie was B.W. Stevenson’s drummer in those days, while Al was holding down the bass guitar duties for Chris Hillman. Thanks to Freddie and the gang at SteadyBoy, this isn’t the only CD debut of Al Staehely solo album. It’s also the recordings first release in the U.S.

Origins of Virgin Records

Quite apart from the innovative characteristics of the music, Tubular Bells has the second claim to rock 'n roll greatness. Being the first record released by Virgin Records, it was also the start of the Richard Branson empire, which has since blossomed into a global conglomerate built on megastores, airlines, railways, telecommunications and much more.

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Ring of Fire

Johnny Cash

Released May 1963 | Columbia

'Ring of Fire' was the single that cemented Cash's reputation as the outsider anti-hero of country music. Like many of his hits of the time, it spent several weeks a top the country chart,j but also reached Number 17 on the U.S. pop chart, making it Cash's biggest mainstream success since 'Ballad of a Teenage Queen' and 'Guess Things Happen That Way,' which both made the Top 20 in 1958. With its jaunty rhythm offset by that memorably ominous vocal delivery, the song has all the hallmarks of classic Cash, even if its toughest critics find the breezy Mariachi trumpet break to be at odds with lyrics about falling "down, down, down."

Unlike many of his other most famous recordings, 'Ring of Fire' was not one of Cash's own compositions. It was written for him by his future wife, June Carter - a big country music star in her won right as part of the second incarnation of The Carter Family - and singer-song wirter Merle Kilgore. Carter and Kilgore most likely had Cash in mind when they writer the song, however; it sounds today as well-suited to the Man in Black as any of his self-penned hits, from 'I Walk the LInek' to 'Folsom Prison Blues.'

Source: Classic Singles Back to Back
Smooth Jazz Riffs

Dwayne Kerr Garners Endorsement from GUO Musical Instruments Co.

on Eve of Touring Again with Erykah Badu

by Cheryl Hughey

Dwayne Kerr, flutist for Erykah Badu, recently announced his endorsement with GUO Musical Instruments Co. As a frequently touring artist, Kerr is a great match for this maker of composite flutes. "I always wanted to own a wood flute, but touring with the additional stress of changing weather and climate can make traveling with a wood flute challenging. The Grenaditte is great. It's made with a polymer composite material...no problems and no more worries," he said.
Kerr is quick to point out that the weight of the flute does not compromise the quality. "It's light weight making it ideal to travel and has a beautiful warm, dark and rich tone. The action is really responsive...I absolutely love my Grenaditte C flute...I believe the Grenaditte is the next innovation in flute technology." Known as the "funky fluteman," Kerr is currently gearing up for another tour with Erykah Badu.

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Cloud Music: How Hard Do Online Streaming Services Rock?

Cloud music services promise to rock the digital world and reinvent the way we discover new artists, songs and albums. By saving your music online, and letting you instantly stream tunes anytime, anywhere over the Internet to PCs or mobile devices, they simultaneously eliminate concerns with storage, synching and piracy.

The field continues to boom for cloud music services, which let you house a single library of tunes or an entire digital music collection online, then access it on-demand from dozens of gadgets (smartphone, tablet PC, portable media player, etc.). But while services like Spotify, Amazon Cloud Player, Mog and Rdio have millions of fans singing a happy tune, record labels and execs fear their growing power to upend the digital music industry. Who can blame them? With even Apple and Google now eyeing the streaming online music space, iTunes may soon be the least of their worries.

In the first episode of our new running video series, Gear Up, we review the best cloud music services to discover whether or not they'll have you singing a happy tune. And, of course, we consider just how likely they are to really represent the future of digital entertainment.

April 15, 8:30 AM ET | By Scott Steinberg
Christian Rock News

Fireflight Celebrates First Career Grammy Nod

12/02/2010 ChristianRock.net

Premiere modern rock band Fireflight receives its first career GRAMMY nomination this week, with its third studio album For Those Who Wait announced in the Best Rock or Rap Gospel Album category last night by The Recording Academy®, as determined by the voting members of The Academy. For the third year, nominations for the annual GRAMMY Awards were announced on primetime television as part of "The GRAMMY® Nominations Concert Live!! — Countdown To Music's Biggest Night®," a one-hour special broadcast live on CBS from Club Nokia at L.A. Live.

The 53rd Annual GRAMMY Awards will be held on "GRAMMY Sunday," Feb. 13, 2011, at STAPLES Center in Los Angeles and once again will be broadcast live in high definition TV and 5.1 surround sound on CBS from 8 – 11:30 p.m. (ET/PT).
Pop Music Scene

Paul McCartney Rocks 'Saturday Night Live' With Beatles, Wings Classics

by M. Tye Comer

Comedian Paul Rudd may have been the show's official host, but it was the other Paul that had made this weekend's "Saturday Night Live" an epic television experience.

Sir Paul McCartney brought his A-game to the SNL set on Dec. 11. Not only did Macca rock 30 Rock with five songs -- including Wings hits "Jet" and "Band on the Run," and Beatles' classics "A Day in the Life" and "Get Back," and John Lennon's anthem "Give Peace a Chance" -- he also flexed his comedic chops by getting silly with Rudd in the opening monologue, impersonating Camilla Parker-Bowles (Prince Charles' wife) during Weekend Update, and playing a tiny harmonica in an amusing digital short.