Famous Musicians' Birthdays Playlists

Recently, we've had a few famous musicians have birthdays, Paul McCartney on June 18th, Ann Wilson of Heart on June 19th and Ringo Starr on July 7th.  To celebrate them, I've made each a playlist in Spotify and I feel like posting these at this time.  I do have others, like Chris Cornell and John Lennon, but I'll get to those somewhere down the line.

Paul McCartney (as presented in Spotify Shuffle 6/18/20):

1.)    Helter Skelter (Live)-The Dead Daisies

2.)    Good Day Sunshine-The Beatles

3.)    Let Me Roll It (Live at Citi Field with Foxy Lady Coda)-Paul McCartney

4.)    Day Tripper-Whitesnake

5.)    I’m Down-The Beatles

6.)    Paperback Writer-The Beatles

7.)    Day Tripper (Live)-Cheap Trick

8.)    Paperback Writer (Live)-Paul McCartney

9.)    Let Me Roll It-Paul McCartney and Wings

10.) Rocky Racoon-The Beatles

11.) Let It Be-Glenn Hughes

12.) Helter Skelter (Live)-Gillan

13.) Oh! Darling-Graham Bonnet

14.) The Long and Winding Road (Live)-Paul McCartney and Wings

15.) The End-The Beatles

16.) Hey Jude-The Beatles

17.) Yesterday-The Beatles

18.) Helter Skelter-The Beatles

19.) She Loves You-The Beatles

20.) Can’t Buy Me Love-The Beatles

21.) Maybe I’m Amazed (Live)-Paul McCartney and Wings

22.) Oh! Darling-The Beatles

23.) Wanderlust (Give My Regards To Broad Street Version)-Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr

24.) Looking For You-Paul McCartney, Jeff Lynne, Ringo Starr

25.) Let It Be-The Beatles

26.) All My Loving-The Beatles

27.) Band on the Run-Paul McCartney and Wings

28.) Lovely Rita-The Beatles

29.) 1985-Paul McCartney and Wings

30.) Get Back-The Beatles

31.) I’ve Got A Feeling-The Beatles

32.) The Night Before-The Beatles

33.) Hey Jude-Elvis Presley

34.) Drive My Car-The Beatles

35.) The Hippy-Hippy Shake-The Beatles

36.) Day Tripper (Live at Citi Field)-Paul McCartney

37.) Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Live)-Jimi Hendrix

38.) Lady Madonna (Live)-Paul McCartney and Wings

39.) I’m Down-Aerosmith

40.) I Saw Her Standing There-The Beatles

41.) Blackbird (Live)-Paul McCartney and Wings

42.) When I’m Sixty-Four-The Beatles

43.) She’s A Woman (Live at the Budokan)-The Beatles

44.) Helter Skelter (Live at Citi Field)-Paul McCartney

45.) Letting Go (Live)-Paul McCartney and Wings

46.) Rocky Racoon (Outtake)-The Beatles

47.) Day Tripper-The Beatles

48.) Back in the USSR-Lemmy, John 5, Eric Singer

49.) The Long and Winding Road (Naked Version)-The Beatles

50.) Live and Let Die-Guns N Roses

51.) Birthday-The Beatles

52.) I Want To Hold Your Hand-The Beatles

53.) And I Love Her-Matthew Grant

54.) What You’re Doing-The Beatles

55.) Day Tripper/We Can Work It Out-Fever Tree

56.) Let Me Roll It (Live)-Paul McCartney and Wings

57.) Something (Live at Citi Field)-Paul McCartney

58.) I’ve Just Seen A Face-The Beatles

59.) Cut Me Some Slack-Paul McCartney, Dave Grohl, Krist Novoselic, Pat Smear

60.) Here Today-Paul McCartney

61.) Helter Skelter-Roger Daltrey

62.) I’m Down (Live at Citi Field)-Paul McCartney

63.) Beautiful Night-Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr

64.) Blackbird-Billy Preston

65.) Lovely Rita-The Flaming Lips, Tegan and Sara

66.) Can’t Buy Me Love-Monalisa Twins

Ann Wilson (as presented in Spotify Shuffle 7/10/20)

1.)    I Jump-Heart

2.)    Alone (Live)-Heart with Carrie Underwood

3.)    Even It Up-Heart

4.)    Rockin’ Heaven Down-Heart

5.)    Barracuda (Live at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 2012 or 2013)-Heart with Jerry Cantrell, Mike McCready and Chris Cornell

6.)    Fallen Ones-Heart

7.)    Rock and Roll (Live)-Heart

8.)    No Quarter (Live)-Heart

9.)    Stairway to Heaven (Live with Seattle’s Total Experience Gospel Choir)-Heart

10.) Magazine-Heart

11.) Beautiful Broken-Heart

12.) Bebe Le Strange (Live)-Heart

13.) Magic Man-Heart

14.) Crazy On You-Heart

15.) What About Love?-Heart

16.) If Looks Could Kill-Heart

17.) Santa’s Going South-Sammy Hagar and Heart

18.) I am the Highway-Ann Wilson

19.) Manic Depression (Live)-Ann Wilson

20.) Crazy On You (Live)-Heart

21.) Love Alive-Heart

22.) Misty Mountain Hop (Live)-Heart

23.) Battle of Evermore (Live)-Heart

24.) Love Alive (Live)-Heart

25.) Straight On-Heart

26.) These Dreams (Live)-Heart

27.) Isolation (Live)-Ann Wilson

28.) Black Dog (Live)-Heart

29.) Heartless-Heart

30.) I’m Down/Long Tall Sally (Live)-Heart

31.) Never-Heart

32.) Silver Wheels (Live)-Heart

33.) Kick It Out-Heart

34.) Life In The Fast Lane-Ann Wilson

Ringo Starr:

1.)    Yellow Submarine-The Beatles

2.)    Octopus’s Garden-The Beatles

3.)    What Goes On-The Beatles

4.)    Act Naturally-The Beatles

5.)    Honey Don’t-The Beatles

6.)    I Wanna Be Your Man-The Beatles

7.)    Boys-The Beatles

8.)    Octopus’s Garden (Love Version)-The Beatles

9.)    Matchbox-The Beatles

10.) Boys (Live)-The Beatles

11.) Octopus’s Garden (Anthology 3)-The Beatles

12.) Octopus’s Garden (Take 9)-The Beatles

13.) Don’t Pass Me By-The Beatles

14.) Yellow Submarine-Piano Project

15.) Photograph-Ringo Starr

16.) It Don’t Come Easy-Ringo Starr

17.) I’m The Greatest-Ringo Starr

18.) It’s All Down To Goodnight Vienna-Ringo Starr

19.) Snookeroo-Ringo Starr

20.) Early 1970-Ringo Starr

21.) Never Without You-Ringo Starr

22.) Six O’clock (Extended Version)-Ringo Starr

23.) One-Ringo Starr

24.) What in the…World-Ringo Starr

25.) Love Me Do-Ringo Starr

26.) Drift Away-Ringo Starr, Tom Petty, Alanis Morrissette

27.) I’ll Be Fine Anywhere-Ringo Starr

28.) I’m Yours-Ringo Starr

29.) Walk With You-Ringo Starr

30.) What’s My Name-Ringo Starr

31.) Grow Old With Me-Ringo Starr

32.) Send Love Spread Peace-Ringo Starr

33.) Thank God For Music-Ringo Starr

34.) Money-Ringo Starr

35.) Hey Baby-Ringo Starr

36.) Back Off Boogaloo-Ringo Starr

37.) With A Little Help From My Friends-Eric Gales, Beth Hart

38.) With A Little Help From My Friends-Santana

39.) With A Little Help From My Friends-Ringo Starr

40.) It Don’t Come Easy (Live at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 2015)-Ringo Starr, Joe Walsh

Music Releases of Note This Week

After an off-week last week (especially because I figured no one knew who Trapt is), I'm ready to give this another go.  Last night, I heard a couple good singles from the last two weeks, too, Eric Church's "Stick That In Your Country Song," a commentary about how commercialized music can get and how it tends to turn the misery of the masses into profit for people who often aren't voting for the right party to cause the necessary change.  It's the boldest Country Song not by Billy Ray Cyrus I've heard in a while, ranking up there with BRC's 1994 song "Enough is Enough," which I've played quite a bit in the last month and a half.

David Gilmour of Pink Floyd fame also released a nice single that reminds me of his days with the band and it's always nice to hear classic rockers still contribute to today's music.

Here are some releases I've had my eye on for this week:

Cristina Vee-Songs I Sing (When I'm Alone In My Car): A cover album of Broadway songs and a few movie songs, such as "Show Yourself" from Frozen II.  It was actually released last night, so I'm listening to it right now on Spotify and Cristina Vee has a good voice.  Her big experience has been a Voice Actress, she dubbed the female lead in the first two films of the Godzilla anime trilogy (I actually didn't like those films, the first was so boring and full of anime clichés I almost shut it off before it was over and after reading the second didn't improve things, I decided not to even give the next two a chance)  but she also was the dub voice of Sailor Mars in the DVD re-releases of the Sailor Moon series.  This also featured Stephanie Sheh (Hinata from Naruto and Tharja from Fire Emblem; Awakening) as Sailor Moon, which I felt was good casting (however, I've just watched it subtitled because that's how I found the show on YouTube in 2005-2006).

Enuff Z'nuff-Brainwashed Generation: I've seen this hair metal band reminiscent of Cheap Trick twice in my life, and they had two hits the year I was born, "Fly High Michelle" and "The New Thing."  The first time I saw them, the mixing wasn't good enough to identify the music, but they did announce it was the guitarist's 60th birthday (6/12/2015, for reference sake), between shows, he had been replaced by two other guitarists.  The second time, in February 2017, Chip Z'nuff (bassist and now lead singer) declared Seattle "home of the greatest coffee and marijuana in North America" and the band played those two songs, plus a cover of "The Jean Genie" in memory of David Bowie, who died the previous year.  Chip also got back on stage during Ace Frehley's encore to contribute backing vocals to "Detroit Rock City," which was nice to see.

Billy Preston-The Classic Collection: A compilation of songs by the African-American keyboardist who collaborated with The Beatles and John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr in their solo careers.  Included is a cover of "Eight Days A Week," and there are a few other covers, like "My Girl," "Slippin' and Slidin'" and "Stop in the Name of Love."  I covered Billy Preston in a mini-bio during my Pride Month celebration last month, he's in the second post, if you need more details about his life, but I suppose I can just say, he has one of the happiest smiles I've ever seen.

The HU-The Gereg (Deluxe Edition): The HU is a Mongolian Heavy Metal-type band that performs using what look like traditional Mongolian Folk Instruments.  Their guttural voices, heavy percussion and well-placed instrumentation make them a heck of a live act, I should know, they opened for BabyMetal last October.  Around this time, they started teasing collaborations with American Heavy Metal artists, with singers like Jacoby Shaddix of Papa Roach singing English translations of their lyrics.  In Late Winter/Early Spring or so, they released one with Lzzy Hale of Halestorm, which revealed these were add-ons for a Deluxe Edition of their debut album.  I highly recommend "Shoog Shoog," "Yuve Yuve Yu" and "The Great Chinggis Khan" from the basic version of the album.

Some Optimism

It's been five days since my last post and I've been on a bit of a whirlwind since then.  I don't regret giving these issues the gravity they deserve, but I must also admit, I've been exposed to more than a small amount of evil in my time.  Honestly, the last post may have been influenced simply by the fact that Stryper's releasing another album in September (Spotify notified me the week before that post).  I used to love them for opening the door for Heavy Metal for me, Heavy Metal asked me to have compassion on the different, the strange, the outcast.  Stryper betrayed that by endorsing Trump in 2016 and I don't think they've experienced enough to feel that was the wrong decision.  Seeing Christians commit this kind of blasphemy hurts more than they will ever know.

There were some good singles last Thursday, namely, Tony Harnell and Joel Hoekstra teamed up in a new Rock Project called the Echobats whose first single sounds like 60s Pop.  You can search up a socially-distanced music video of the group performing in their homes with their families on Youtube, just search "Echobats Music Video."  Also, Gary Clark Jr., one of my favorite African-American Musicians, released a probable cover of "A Change Is Gonna Come."  You might be familiar with Gary Clark Jr. even if you don't think you are, he provided the cover of "Come Together" for the Justice League movie.  This song shows off more of his tender, bluesy side and he is the African-American musician I've bought from the most since late May.

I also live in Western Washington and last night, finally got to sit down and watch the Mariners Social Justice video where broadcaster Dave Sims had a video chat with J.P. Crawford, Dee Gordon, Kyle Lewis and Shed Long, Jr.  This was helpful to understand what African-Americans sometimes have to go through, and how difficult it is to be a baseball player of that ethnicity; society expects you to play football or basketball.  The Mariners currently have 10 African-Americans on their 40-man roster, the last time this happened on any Major League Club was the 1971 Pirates.  This was informative to me and I love what Mariners manager Scott Servais said, the best advice to people who want to help African-Americans, the LGBTQ+ community and all others under attack from xenophobia, "Listen and Learn."  I am also proud to hear that Braden Bishop is standing up for his fellow teammates and it makes me wish I could be as active with those who think "status quo is good enough."

Yesterday, speaking of xenophobia, I received the disturbing news that voice actress Laura Bailey (Lucina in Fire Emblem Awakening/Super Smash Bros., Rise Kujikawa in Persona 4) is receiving death threats over playing a transsexual named Abby in the game The Last of Us Part II.  Laura Bailey has always been one of my favorite voices since I heard her as Rise in a Let's Play of Persona 4 almost a decade ago and she deserves to be commended for playing a character of a group that doesn't get much attention in media.  This reminds me of the hate Barbara Dunkelman and Arryn Zech received over their characters in RWBY when they came out of the closet February 2019, for me, seeing Bumbleby become canon was the gift of a lifetime, especially since I was seeing the subtle hints since 2014's season 2 where Yang tells Blake she'll "save her a dance" and Blake takes her up on the offer.  And unlike some TV shows (don't get me wrong, I love Korra and Asami), it's not limited to the finale episode.  I'm wondering if the cast of Fire Emblem; Three Houses had to put up with the stupidity of homophobia, since at least in the Black Eagles route, every character seems to be capable of romantic interests of either gender (and if you play as a girl and side with Edelgard, you effectively see the most obvious lesbianism in a Nintendo game, she hugs you, pants your portrait and in the A Support Rank, asks you to call her "El," as her parents and sisters did before they died).  These should be celebrated, commended and declared milestones for the LGBTQ+ community in media, not hated on by some narrow-minded jerks who are too myopic to see they've become fascists.  Hopefully, the creators will continue undeterred, as they have done.  I certainly believe so, and I do believe we can make the world, or at least our communities, better places if we can band together and stand up for each other.

"What you did for the least of these, you did for Me."

Frank thoughts in July

There's nothing too spectacular getting released this week, but I have to vent something.  I frankly think Joe Biden doesn't stand a chance of winning this election.  I wouldn't be surprised if the red and blue map of this country resembles the one from the 1984 election, in all honesty.  Trump supporters live all around and in my apartment, grumpy old men with red hats and stickers saying the racist phrase "All Lives Matter."  Of course, if you were ask them what they think about the LGBTQ+ community, they'd say it needs to be genocided out of existence, which is what will happen in the second term and every member of a reconciling congregation will have to go to the death camps to endure a life of torture with them or lose their place in the hereafter. 

I just spent the last eight years of my life on a deplorable website called DeviantArt, a website full of nothing but peer pressure.  They wouldn't let me do anything I wanted without punishment or unbearable consequences.  Only a few of my posts were liked at all, what they wanted was for me to be a request slave.  I at first thought I needed to fill these as a religious person, but they were spoiled brats who demanded an endless list of stupid junk I don't feel like elaborating on. 

Then 2016 hit.

Racism and homophobia went from being a puny minority on the website into an army of NeoNazi Trump fanatics, giving me death threats for being an LGBTQ+ rights supporter, denying my any praise for my stories about lesbians aside from a small few praises from actual lesbians, which wasn't enough to undo the damage they wrought with their sheer hatred.  The only time they'd let me have more praise was if the story descended into pornography, mind you, the sex was only between married couples, but pornography means "public fornication," so it's still wrong to let that on any website.  One suggested story for art trades, only it became clear he wasn't planning on fulfilling his end of the bargain after a few times, effectively cheating free stories, requests, out of me.  I tried writing stories about LGBTQ+ people with them not being seen as strange, fantastic beings or demons, just the ordinary people they are, and the majority of users rejected me, I would get no praise or comments, save some hate comments.  They also told me what I should like and dislike.

For the first time in my eight years, people were telling me what to do with my life outside of the website.  They told me to restart Fire Emblem; Three Houses on a different route, purely because they despised Edelgard.  The Black Eagles Support Ranks, plus the units I've recruited (Leonie, Lysithea, Shamir and Manuela) make the force seem less like a military group or political group and more like a family.  I felt like I was part of a compassionate family that cared about my right to decide for myself, no pressure to do something I didn't want to do.  So I chose freedom, but this experience, to me, shows what is at the heart of this country; selfishness, stupidity, racism and homophobia.  And that's not going away, it's only been rewarded by the devil and his puppets in this administration.  So these people will ignore the warnings of COVID, ignore the chance to be compassionate to their brothers and sisters and neighbors and re-elect the monster currently residing in the White House.  Democracy is doomed and we are going full-speed towards a Nazi Dictatorship that will call itself a theocracy and genocide. 

I ask everyone reading this to vote for Joe Biden.  He is our last chance at preserving liberty in this country, otherwise, there will be no more elections, there will just be fanatical murder in the name of Trump.