However controversial remains Michael Jackson's "involution" throughout last years, no person with a minimum music culture can deny the artistic value of the American singer.

"Dangerous" was released in 1991 having an enormous success, becoming his second best selling album (after Thriller).

The album was initally released in a large box with a picture of Michael Jackson's eyes, which folded open to reveal the normal cover (painted by pop surrealist Mark Ryden), in pop-up card, with the CD and booklet in the bottom. Dangerous was greatly anticipated, as shown by an incident at the Los Angeles International Airport, where a group of armed robbers stole 30,000 copies before its official release.

The album cover itself is really crowded, with several enigmatic elements. It emphasizes, more than the complexity of his music - the complexity of his character and moreover his image he had created. And that was just the beginning.

Many say the album cover contains masonic and satanist symbols.

What is known for sure is that the cover includes elements that he seldom have been using in his entire career, on and off stage: gold colored stuff, animals, children, a discreet image of him as a child in the bottom right corner, statues etc etc. A combination of bad taste, irony, opulence, artistic choreography, power, influence, jungle and urban in the same time, snobbery combined with humility.

This is what defines Michael Jackson's creations. Nothing is simple for him. When he became common, he stopped performing.

Today he turns 50.

"Jam" was the intro for all concerts in "Dangerous" tour. This is from the concert in Bucharest in 1992, one of the best performances in his career and in the history of music.

At a first "view', The Verve's version of "Bittersweet symphony" doesn't seem to be very similar to the 1965 Rolling Stones' hit.

In fact, "Bittersweet symphony" is the cover of the orchestral version of "The last time", composed by the Andrew Oldham Orchestra. This band is a side project fronted by Andrew Loog Oldham, the original manager of the Rolling Stones. Their fourth and last album - "Rolling Stones Songbook" features the orchestrated version of the Mick Jagger and Keith Richards song "The Last Time", which was sampled by The Verve for their track "Bitter Sweet Symphony".

This song did have some clear antecedents in black American music, in particular the 1964 James Brown single "Maybe the Last Time," which was itself based on ideas found in a traditional gospel song that had been recorded, but not written, by the Staple Singers. Some have accused the Stones of literally stealing from their black heroes, but "The Last Time" is clearly different from and more rock-oriented than the tracks recorded by James Brown and the Staple Singers, although there are some similarities in approach and the use of the title lyric.

The Stones recorded this in Los Angeles on a one day tour stopover on their way to Australia. The Stones were on a grueling American tour, but in order to capitalize on their success they wanted to keep cranking out singles, especially in England because they were not there. As a result, they frequently recorded in between American shows.

The opening guitar riff repeats throughout the song. This was an innovative device for a pop song at the time.

This was the first song Mick Jagger and Keith Richards wrote that was an A-side single. The Stones played a lot of covers before they learned to write songs.

The Who recorded this in 1967 as a show of support when The Stones were being held in England on drug charges.

Keith Richards: "When you start writing, the first batch of songs is almost always puerile ballads, for some reason - I think they're easier to write. To write a good rock and roll song is one of the hardest things because it has to be stripped down so simple, to that same basic format shared by rock and roll and rhythm and blues and Irish folk songs from thousands of years ago. It's a very simple form, and yet you have to find a certain element in there that still lives, that isn't just a rehash. It can REMIND you - and probably will - of something else, but it should still add something new, have a freshness and individuality about it. The rules on it are very strict, you see (laughs). I think The Last Time was the first one we actually managed to write with a BEAT, the first non-puerile song. It had a strong Staple Singers influence in that it came out of an old gospel song that we revamped and reworked. And I didn't actually realize until after we'd written it because we'd been listening to this Staple Singers album for 10 months or so. You don't go out of your way to LIFT songs, but what you play is eventually the product of what you've heard before."

Rolling Stones version:




Andrew Oldham Orchestra version:

One hit band...
This was the only hit for The Verve, who never released another album. Their previous albums were A Northern Soul, which was released in 1995 and featured a darker side; A Storm In Heaven, released in 1993 was a psychedelic rocker; and No Come Down is a collection of the B-sides from A Storm in Heaven. After Urban Hymns, their lead singer, Richard Ashcroft, launched a successful solo career.

The video featured Ashcroft bumping into people as he walked down Hoxton Street, a crowded shopping area in London. It was inspired by the video for Massive Attack's 1991 song "Unfinished Sympathy," which was showed the singer walking down a street in a similar manner.

This samples an obscure orchestral version of "The Last Time," a 1965 song by the Rolling Stones. This was recorded before they got permission from the Stones to use the riff, so The Verve had to sign away most of the royalties from this in order to release it.

The publishing rights to this went to Allen Klein, The Rolling Stones' former manager. The Stones signed a very lopsided contract with Klein early in their career, and had to make huge concessions in order to get out of it. Part of the deal gave Klein the publishing rights to all of the Stones' songs through 1969. He made, and continues to make, far more money than anyone else from this song. Nike used this in commercials. Klein got royalties from those.

Upset that he lost the royalties, Ashcroft said this was "The best song Jagger and Richards have written in 20 years."

But what is truly funny is that the song was inspired by a 1955 Gospel song of the same name by The Staples Singers. Many Gospel fans felt The Stones ripped it off, since The Staples Singers never got any royalties from it. Since it is a traditional song (meaning no one owns the rights to it), many artists have recorded it, but The Stones were a very high-profile band that had success reworking songs by black artists into hits. Many people believe The Stones should have compensated The Staples Singers because it was based on their version of the song.



-to be continued-

Def Leppard, in some ways, was the definitive hard rock band of the '80s. There were many bands that rocked harder, and were more dangerous, than the Sheffield quintet, but few others captured the spirit of the times quite as well.

Emerging in the late '70s as part of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, the group actually owed more to the glam rock and metal of the early '70s -- their sound was equal parts T. Rex, Mott the Hoople, Queen, and Led Zeppelin. By toning down their heavy riffs and emphasizing melody, Def Leppard was poised for crossover success by 1983's Pyromania, but skillfully used the fledgling MTV network to their advantage.

The group was already blessed with photogenic good looks, but they also crafted a series of innovative, exciting videos that made them into stars. They intended to follow Pyromania quickly but were derailed when their drummer lost an arm in a car accident, the first of many problems that plagued the group's career.

Def Leppard managed to pull through such tragedies, and they even expanded their large audience with 1987's blockbuster Hysteria. As the '90s began, mainstream hard rock shifted away from Leppard's signature pop-metal and toward edgier, louder bands, yet the group maintained a sizable audience into the late '90s and were one of only a handful of '80s metal groups to survive the decade more or less intact.

The group was formed in Sheffield, England in 1977; founding members included lead singer Joe Elliot (b. 1 August 1959), bassist Rick Savage (b. 2 December 1960) and guitarist Pete Willis. Drummer Rick Allen (b. 1 November 1963) and guitarist Steve Clark (b. 23 April 1960) joined the band shortly thereafter.

Their discography includes 14 studio albums and several singles and live productions.

"Pour some sugar on me" is part of "Hysteria" album in 1987. It reached number 2 on the U.S. Hot 100. It later became an MTV classic, and is generally regarded as their signature song. The title of the song alludes to the coda of the 1969 bubblegum pop classic "Sugar, Sugar" by The Archies.

Other interesting facts about "American Pie":

The original recorded version has 8:38 min. The single was split in 2 parts because the 45 did not have enough room for the whole song on one side. You had to flip the record in the middle to hear all of it. Disc jockeys usually played the album version at full length, which was to their benefit because it gave them time for a snack, a cigarette or a bathroom break.

In 1971, a singer named Lori Lieberman saw McLean perform this at the Troubadour theater in Los Angeles. She was so moved by the concert that her experience at the concert became the basis for her song "Killing Me Softly With His Song," which was a huge hit for Roberta Flack in 1973., covered by "The Fugees" in the '90.

In 2002, this was featured in a Chevrolet ad. It showed a guy in his Chevy singing along to the end of this song. At the end, he gets out and it is clear that he was not going to leave the car until the song was over. The ad played up the heritage of Chevrolet, which has a history of being mentioned in famous songs (the line in this one is "Drove my Chevy to the levee"). Chevy used the same idea a year earlier when it ran billboards of a red Corvette that said, "They don't write songs about Volvos."

While being interviewed in the 1980s, McLean was asked for probably the 1000th time "What does the song American Pie mean to you?," to which he answered, "It means never having to work again for the rest of my life."

Regarding the line, "The birds (Byrds) flew off from a fallout shelter," a fallout shelter is a '60s term for a drug rehabilitation facility, which one of the band members of The Byrds checked into after being caught with drugs.

The line "Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, Jack Flash sat on a candle stick" is taken from a nursery rhyme that goes "Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, Jack jump over the candlestick." Jumping over the candlestick comes from a game where people would jump over fires. "Jumpin' Jack Flash" is a Rolling Stones song. Another possible reference to The Stones can be found in the line, "Fire is the devils only friend," which could be The Rolling Stones "Sympathy For The Devil," which is on the same Rolling Stones album.

Another interpretation on this line: "Jack Flash sat on a candlestick, 'cause fire is the devil's only friend," this is a reference to the space program, and to the role it played in the Cold War between America and Russia throughout the '60s. It is central to McLean's theme of the blending of the political turmoil and musical protest as they intertwined through our lives during this remarkable point in history. Thus, the reference incorporates Jack Flash (the Rolling Stones), with our first astronaut to orbit the earth, John (common nickname for John is Jack) Glenn, paired with "Flash" an allusion to fire, with another image for a rocket launch, "candlestick," then pulls the whole theme together with "'cause fire is the Devil's (Russia's) only friend".

Don Mclean's song American Pie one of the hit with the best live representations, has a really powerful meaning.

This is about the death of Buddy Holly. "The Day The Music Died" is February 3, 1959, when Holly, Ritchie Valens, and The Big Bopper were killed in a plane crash after a concert. McLean wrote the song from his memories of the event. The Beatles Sgt. Pepper album was a huge influence, and McLean has said in numerous interviews that the song represented the turn from innocence of the '50s to the darker, more volatile times of the '60s - both in music and politics.

McLean was a paperboy when Holly died. He learned about the plane crash when he cut into his stack of papers and saw the lead story.

Contrary to rumors, the plane that crashed was not not named the "American Pie" - Dwyer's Flying Service did not name their planes. McLean made up the name.

Others say that McLean admits this is about Buddy Holly, but has never said what the lyrics are about, preferring to let listeners interpret them on their own.

Some logical interpretations:

• "The Jester" is probably Bob Dylan. It refers to him wearing "A coat he borrowed from James Dean," and being "On the sidelines in a cast." Dylan wore a red jacket similar to James Dean's on the cover of The Freewheeling Bob Dylan, and got in a motorcycle accident in 1966 which put him out of service for most of that year. Dylan also made frequent use of jokers, jesters or clowns in his lyrics. The line, "And a voice that came from you and me" could refer to the Folk style he sings, and the line, "And while the king was looking down the jester stole his thorny crown" could be about how Dylan took Elvis Presley's place as the number one performer.

• The line "Eight miles high and falling fast" is likely a reference to The Byrds' hit "Eight Miles High."

• The section with the line "The flames climbed high into the night" is probably about the Altamont Speedway concert in 1969. While the Rolling Stones were playing, a fan was stabbed to death by a member of The Hell's Angels who was hired for security.

• The line "Sergeants played a marching tune" is likely a reference to The Beatles' album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

• The line "I met a girl who sang the blues and I asked her for some happy news, but she just smiled and turned away" is probably about Janis Joplin. She died of a drug overdose in 1970.

• The lyric "And while Lenin/Lennon read a book on Marx" has been interpreted different ways. Some view it as a reference to Vladimir Lenin, the communist dictator who led the Russian Revolution in 1917 and who built the USSR, which was later ruled by Josef Stalin. The "Marx" referred to here would be the socialist philosopher Karl Marx. Others believe it is about John Lennon, whose songs often reflected a very communistic theology (particularly "Imagine"). Some have even suggested that in the latter case, "Marx" is actually Groucho Marx, another cynical entertainer who was suspected of being a socialist, and whose wordplay was often similar to Lennon's lyrics.

• "Did you write the book of love" is probably a reference to the 1958 hit "Book of Love" by the Monotones. The chorus for that song is "Who wrote the book of love? Tell me, tell me... I wonder, wonder who" etc. One of the lines asks, "Was it someone from above?" Don McLean was a practicing Catholic, and believed in the depravity of '60s music, hence the closing lyric: "The Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost, they caught the last train for the coast, the day the music died." Some, have postulated that in this line, the Trinity represents Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper.

• "And moss grows fat on our rolling stone" - Mick Jagger's appearance at a concert in skin-tight outfits, displaying a roll of fat, unusual for the skinny Stones frontman.
  "The quartet practiced in the park" - The Beatles singing at Shea Stadium.

• "And we sang dirges in the dark, the day the music died" - The 60's peace marches.
  "Helter Skelter in a summer swelter" - The Manson Family's attack on Sharon Tate and others in California.

• "We all got up to dance, Oh, but we never got the chance, 'cause the players tried to take the field, the marching band refused to yield" - The huge numbers of young people who went to Chicago for the 1968 Democratic Party National Convention, and who thought they would be part of the process ('the players tried to take the field'), only to receive a violently rude awakening by the Chicago Police Department nightsticks(the commissions who studied the violence after-the-fact would later term the Chicago PD as 'conducting a full-scale police riot') or as McLean calls the police "the marching band."

"At some point, the album was going to be titled Everest, after the brand of cigarettes I used to smoke", recalls Geoff Emerick (manager). The idea included a cover photo in the Himalayas , but by the time the group was to take the photo, they decided to call it Abbey Road and take the photo outside the studio, on 8 August 1969. The cover designer was Apple Records creative Director Kosh. The cover photograph was taken by photographer Iain Macmillan.

Macmillan was given only ten minutes around 11.30 that morning to take the photo. That cover photograph has since become one of the most famous and most imitated album covers in recording history.

The man standing on the pavement in the background is Paul Cole , an American tourist who was unaware that he was being photographed until he saw the album cover months later. The zebra crossing today remains a popular destination for Beatles fans; see the Abbey Road webcam, although the crossing is no longer in the same location as it was in 1969, having been moved further East in the 1970s. Looking across the street in the direction the Beatles crossed it, the crossing was moved from the left side of the light pole on the destination side of the street (the side John is closest to) to the right side of the pole.

The Volkswagen Beetle parked next to the zebra crossing belonged to one of the people living in the apartment across from the recording studio. After the album came out, the number plate was stolen repeatedly from the car. In 1986, the car was sold at an auction for $23,000 and is currently on display at the Volkswagen museum in Wolfsburg, Germany.

The front cover of Abbey Road has become an icon within popular culture and has been imitated and lampooned repeatedly. The zebra crossing at Abbey Road is also a popular tourist destination, with visitors making their own recreation an extremely common sight.

The Electric Light Orchestra's ambitious yet irresistible fusion of Beatlesque pop, classical arrangements, and futuristic iconography rocketed the group to massive commercial success throughout the 1970s.

Formed in October 1970 by Roy Wood, Jeff Lynne and Bev Bevan (the remaining members of the 1960s rock group The Move), ELO used cellos, violins, horns and woodwinds to give their music a classical sound. This was an idea Roy Wood initially had while with The Move to take rock music in a new direction.

The band released a total of 13 studio albums, 13 compilation albums and 5 live ones.

This version of Strange Magic was performed at PBS (TV station in US), in 2001. It is a classic.

If there is a top five of best music bands in all music history....Deep Purple would be for sure in the rankings.

If there is a top three of best instrumental songs in all music history...Son of Alerik would be on first place...

I struggled myself to find out at least one meaning about alerik...and his son, but with minimum success. All i found out in these 5 years I've listened to the song is about the "sound" of alerik more than the son of...

Inspite of my subjective feelings about this song,anyone must acknowledge the skills and the tremendous talent of Ritchie Blackmore. And the never ending instrumental effort of Paice, Lord, Glover, Gillan, Morse. This is part of the eleventh album of the band, in 1984.

Listening to such piece of art i sometimes wonder how come i find a 24 years old song so brilliant...the answer is probably more complicated than the meaning of this song.

in my soul...it's number one

Few rock groups of the '80s broke down as many musical barriers and were as original as the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Creating an intoxicating new musical style by combining funk and punk rock together (with an explosive stage show, to boot), the Chili Peppers spawned a slew of imitators in their wake, but still managed to be the leaders of the pack by the dawn of the 21st century.

Here's a song with which I woke up this morning in my mind.

The violin played a very important role in the history of music. Not only classic music, but also modern pop-rock and almost any music genre.

This is a sample of how an instrument can be immortal, adapted to every style and music note and modern instrument.

This is about Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, a boxer who spent 19 years in jail for a murder Dylan felt he did not commit. Carter was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of 3 white people who were gunned down at a bar in Paterson, New Jersey on June 17, 1966. Police were looking for 2 black men and pulled over Carter and his friend John Artis. They were sentenced to life in prison.

8 years into his incarceration, Carter sent Dylan a copy of his autobiography. Dylan visited him in prison, and convinced of his innocence, wrote "Hurricane." Lawyers at Columbia Records made Dylan change some of the lyrics to avoid lawsuits. Dylan went of Carter's prison in 1975 as a show of support. The visit brought a lot of attention to Carter's case.

Touring with the Rolling Thunder Revue, which featured Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell and Roberta Flack, Dylan raised over $100,000 for Carter's defense at a Madison Square Garden concert the day after visiting his prison. A month later, they held another charity concert, Hurricane II, in the Astrodome.

Dylan's efforts brought new publicity to Carter's case, getting him a new trial in 1976, where he was again convicted, with prosecutors claiming he killed the men in retaliation for a murder of a black man earlier that night. Carter was not freed until 1984, when his conviction was finally overturned.

Carter was the subject of the 1999 movie Hurricane, staring Denzel Washington as the boxer.

The A-side of single is titled "Hurricane (part 1)." The B-side is "Hurricane (full version)."

The characters mentioned in the song are real people.

The line "He ain't no gentleman Jim" is a reference to "Gentleman" Jim Corbett, a white boxer in the 1800s known for his manners.