My Top 10 Disco Favorites Plus One
Posted by Mitch on Aug 28, 2010
If most of us are products of the era we grew up in during our formulative years, then I’m a product of the disco era. Even though I was quite cognizant of war, civil rights and the like, I came into my own when disco became prominent. I remember loving Rock Your Baby the first time I heard it, and I never looked back. Sure, there was other music I enjoyed, but disco is what made me move, made me feel really good.
Later on there were a lot of people who said they hated disco, but I was always of the opinion that they said they hated it because it seemed to be in vogue. After all, I was in college during some of those years, and they’d have parties on the floor. What I noticed during one party, in which I refused to participate because I didn’t drink beer and I hated smoking and rock music at the time, is that people stood around and talked and did nothing else. One night on my own floor I decided I didn’t want to hear all that noise anymore, so I put on my disco records and turned it up loud. Within 10 minutes someone was knocking on my door, and when I opened it they asked if I could keep my door open because they wanted to hear what I was playing. And shortly afterwards, everyone was dancing and the rock music was gone. One thing guys never understood back then, and I’m not sure they understand now, is that girls love to dance.
With that said I decided to put one of my compilation posts together and highlight my 10 favorite songs of the era, with one added song that wasn’t of the era, but is about the era. This was hard because I could have selected 50 songs. But these 10 were the ones that got me up every time, and even now when I hear them in the car I jack the base up and my wife knows why. And she loves them as well; both children of the same era. Some of these I have stories for, others I just loved the song. Any for many of you too young to know some of these songs, I’m betting you’ve heard them in your favorite commercials.
If You Could Read My Mind – Stars On 54; this wasn’t a real group, and it wasn’t from the disco era. But it was from the movie 54, about the famous club in NYC back in the disco era, and I’ve loved this song from the first time I heard it. Of course it’s a remake of a Gordon Lightfoot song that I also liked a lot.
Boogie Oogie Oogie – A Taste of Honey, and my first introduction into the reality that there were women who played instruments and got down with the best of them. Who could resist that bass line; not me!
Staying Alive – Bee Gees; by the time this song came out we were ready for a revolution. John Travolta was already big on Welcome Back Kotter, and this showed him and the music in a different light. What disco didn’t have a multi-colored dance floor once this movie came out?
Turn The Beat Around – Vicki Sue Robinson; I don’t have a tale for this one, and I have no idea why I love it so much.
Play That Funky Music – Wild Cherry; are there too many more distinctive opening riffs than the one for this song? I have to admit that it wasn’t for at least 10 years that I learned these guys weren’t black; shows how I never paid attention to the lyrics of a song that I actually knew all the lyrics to.
Car Wash – Rose Royce; I heard this song around the time the movie came out, and the combination of the two cemented it in my mind. Of course, the movie was fairly stupid, but it had some big name performers in it, including Richard Pryor.
I Love The Nightlife – Alicia Bridges; here’s another song where I’m not really sure why it meant so much to me, except that I love how she says “disco round”.
Ain’t No Stopping Us Now – McFadden & Whitehead; the first time I heard this song I knew it was something different, something inspirational, and I pull it out from time when I feel I need a mental boost.
Shake Your Body Down To The Ground – Jacksons; come on, Michael Jackson and his brothers after all! I actually saw them in concert a month after this song hit #1, but my friend and I, being stupid, left a little early to try to beat the traffic home and missed them performing this song, a mistake I didn’t make a second time when I saw them in Buffalo 4 years later.
We Are Family – Sister Sledge; I loved this song a lot already, but then it was the theme song for the 1979 baseball champion Pittsburgh Pirates, when I was a big fan, and thus it worked its way deeper into my heart as my second favorite disco song.
Last Dance – Donna Summer; I loved Donna Summer, and I love Donna Summer now. This song almost seems to have been the last song of the disco era as well, but my mind is probably romanticizing that. It came from the movie Thank God It’s Friday, so technically it’s not a Donna Summer song, but no one else could have pulled it off and made it such a great song from a mediocre movie.
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Mitch Mitchell
SMM Countdown – Audio And Visual Options
Posted by Mitch on Jul 21, 2010
Tomorrow I’ll be doing my workshop on social media marketing locally with my friend Renée Scherer of Presentations Plus. Once again, instead of talking about it, I’m going to link to yesterday’s post on LinkedIn, which will link to the previous day’s post, and I’m also going to link to my post from last week talking about the third phase of my social media marketing methods for this workshop, since something that’s there is something I’m going to talk about here.
 by Morgan Howarth |
Something that’s generally easier to do today is to create a social media marketing strategy using audio and visual media options to help get your message across. Just six years ago visual media didn’t really exist for the masses, and even when it went live in February 2005, I doubt anyone expected that YouTube could be used for the types of things it’s used for now. Back in 2004 we could create MP3 files as sound files that we could then somehow get to other people, but they were large files and we didn’t have the download speeds we do today, so it took awhile before people could listen to your media.
These days, getting a video online takes creating an account on YouTube or Vimeo or one of the other sites, uploading the video from your computer or flash drive, which will only take a few minutes depending on the speed of your connection, and not only are you set with your video being online but it creates both a link to the video and code for your video that can be embedded into yours or anyone else’s site that takes a liking to it. That’s what I did last week with the above link to Phase III, where I posted a video of Renée talking about both our event and the place it was being held. It literally took her a couple of hours to film the video (multiple takes), get it to someone who cleaned it up in a couple of hours, then get it to me and have me take about 20 minutes to create the account and get the video uploaded. Then the next day it took me a minute to embed the video into the post; just amazing stuff.
With audio, there are many options, free and paid. Free options include popping an MP3 file online, which I’ve done with the numerous times I’ve been interviewed on both this blog and my business blog. Because download speeds are faster now and MP3 files are more compressed, this isn’t as bad a deal as it was in the past. There are also ways to create podcasts, such as hooking up with a site like Blog Talk Radio or a podcasting service that lets you record a file and convert it to something where people can listen to it easily enough without worrying about the time or having to deal with large files. A great example of that is my friend Tim Dodge’s site where he uploads podcasts of books he’s written one chapter at a time, since he’s also reading them. You should check out one of his books, Acts of Desperation, which I actually got to read and critique before he recorded it. If you look at the page, you’ll see multiple ways you can listen to it. Start at the bottom then move up, then go to the first page to listen to the rest of it.
No matter which way you go, it’s good to know that there are these social media marketing options, whether you decide to create them yourself or have someone else do it for you. One of these days, I’m going to finally purchase a camera, and then watch me go!
 |
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Mitch Mitchell
Pink – Three Videos
Posted by Mitch on Apr 16, 2010
Something a little different for this Friday. I have to admit that I’ve never given Pink all that much attention. I wasn’t crazy about her initially, and even when she put out this song that everyone else, including my wife, went crazy over, I’m Coming Out, I still wasn’t a fan because I didn’t like that song.
Over the past couple of years, though, I’ve had to reevaluate my thoughts, as it seems her music has, well, progressed. Not only that, but it seems her entire act has progressed, to the point where I now have to say that I’m more impressed both with her music and her professionalism. Here are three videos that have helped to change my mind. The first one is called Please Don’t Leave Me:
The second is called So What:
The third, I’m betting Sire’s really going to like, is called Glitter in the Air, and was a live performance at this year’s Grammy’s:
Ladies and gentlemen, Pink! 
Video Highlights And A New Page
Posted by Mitch on Mar 9, 2010
I have a lot of videos on this blog. Sometimes they’re easy to find because they match up with the content. Other times they’re kind of hidden gems, something I used to add something different to the post.
Overall the videos are all over the place, so I decided it was time to consolidate them, as well as highlight a few of them here. I did this before with my post showing my early videos up to June 2008. Below are 9 others I’d like to highlight, mainly because today is the 9th of March. For all other videos on this blog, though, go to the link above that says Videos, or of course you can click on the link I just created.
This video of Tunak Tunak Tun by Daler Mehndi just thrilled my wife and I when I discovered it last year. It’s infectious and fun.
This was the video of the year in 2009, a funny wedding entrance video.
We’ve talked a lot on this blog about commenting; this was Chris Pirillo’s take on it.
I had someone recently tell me about Google 411 service; told him I’d written about it in 2008, including the video.
I had finally written about the movie The Secret, and this was the 20 minute video clip from The Secret, which is enough to get you going.
This video caused a lot of consternation for a lot of people, mainly me, on my business blog for about 2 years before I decided to move it over here instead; it’s a motivational video of a boy with Down’s Syndrome.
A very recent video showing that stupidity and racism is still alive in America, courtesy of this Rachel Maddow clip with Pat Buchanan being stupid.
Talk about people with a passion that I’m not sure I could ever find again, this one highlights something known as Free Running.
Finally, we’re coming up on St. Patrick’s Day, and even though I’m not Irish and I’m not Catholic and I don’t drink beer (let alone green beer), I figured I’d get into the spirit of things this one time by presenting the Muppets singing Danny Boy.
And there you go, 9 videos I wanted to bring some life back to. I hope you check these out, and if you’re ever looking for some entertainment, remember to check out my Video page above.
Muppet Monday
Posted by Mitch on Feb 16, 2010
I’ve been on kind of a serious kick and decided it was time to cheer things up for a little bit. As you know, I’ve talked about my love affair for the Muppets often enough around here. I have a bunch of Muppets videos all over the blog; one day I’m going to create a page where I’ve got all my videos, including the Muppets. In the meantime, I want to share these six with you, which I love.
Julie Andrews, Lonely Goatherd (Okay, I love Sound of Music also)
Raquel Welch; she still looks great!
Linda Ronstadt singing one of my favorite songs ever, and supposedly she said she never sung the song better than for this show.
Pearl Bailey, bad jousting scene from Camelot. Pearl was actually a U.S. Ambassador when she decided to do this particular show, and in the movie Carmen Jones, was the only actor in the movie who actually sang her own part.
Rita Moreno, the first person to ever win an Oscar, Emmy, Tony and Grammy.
Opening song from the movie Muppets From Space, as they perform Brick House
And that’s that; back to other topics next time.
Videos On This Blog, 2007 – June 2008
Posted by Mitch on Jan 17, 2010
You know, when I started out on this quest to link to posts of mine that have videos on them, it never even entered my mind that I might have gone to the video vault as often as I seem to have gone. Once I got through February 2008, I realized that I was going to have to break this up somehow, otherwise this post could have been a major mess. Therefore, I decided to go only through June 2008, and since this blog began December 2007, that’s included as well.
It’s funny, but early on my posts were relatively short, so sometimes I only had one paragraph and then a video. I think I’ve come a long way. Still, I wanted to have a link to videos because every once in awhile I’m looking for something, and, well, I think some videos are just entertaining as anything. And who knows, you might find something in here you like and want to check out. So, here are the links to the videos, with a brief take on what the post was about:
I Still Believe – I love Mariah Carey and I love the song in this music video, even when Brenda K Starr did it.
Stout Hearted Men – If you ever watched Wonder Years, you probably died laughing when this scene played surrounding the boys glee club.
Martin Luther King Jr – The Finale – this was Dr. King’s final speech before he was assassinated the next day; timely since tomorrow is the King Holiday.
Turn The World Around – Harry Belafonte & the Muppets did this as the last song when he was on the Muppet Show. Turns out to also be the song performed by Belafonte at Henson’s funeral.
Lizards dancing to Thriller – This was my favorite commercial during the 2008 Super Bowl, which figures since it used a Michael Jackson song
Blame It On The Boogie – A Jackson’s music video and song I happened to like.
I’m Every Woman – Chaka Khan music video.
Amp – I questioned whether this commercial during the Super Bowl was effective advertising or not.
Web Design Rap – I thought this was a pretty creative educational video about web design.
Pulp Fiction? – the Muppets take on Pulp Fiction; got an idea how much I love the Muppets?
The Oil Crisis – this is a pretty long video by a guy who says he has inside information that oil prices are being falsely manufactured to kill us with high prices.
Push It – I started out talking about human beatboxes, then decided to put in the full Salt ‘n Pepa video that the Amp commercial bit a chunk off.
A Video Parody – if anyone remembers when that goofy kid got on video and cried while telling the world to leave Britney Spears alone, they you’ll like this video, which was a parody of that one telling people to leave PCs alone during the Vista disaster & Mac commercial period
2 Legit 2 Quit – MC Hammer’s video, my favorite video & song of his.
I Want You Back – my favorite song of all time by my favorite group of all time with my favorite entertainer of all time; ’nuff said.
Never Saw It Coming – a funny video involving pandas.
I Love Natalie!
Posted by Mitch on Jan 15, 2010
I don’t know how I found this young lady, but I can’t get enough of her videos. Her name is Natalie, and she either lives in Australia or New Zealand as far as I know. I know what got me to watch the first video; she’s just the cutest thing. But she’s funny as sin. She has a great take on a lot of things, and most of them are things that I believe we think of all the time and either just let them go or wonder the same thing she does.
If you decide to look it any of the three video below, you’ll find that she’s very creative as well. She’s figured out how to put multiple copies of herself into the video, and she loves to dress up as well. Sometimes she even has her mother in a video, and I don’t know who the guy is, or whether it’s multiple guys, but she’s not always alone. Near the end of each video, she will also show pictures of people she’s run into who want to have their picture taken with her, and then she does a brief rundown of some of the comments are videos of received.
You want to think about how powerful YouTube can be? According to her statistics, there’ve been more than 26 million views of her videos. Someone’s got to put this young lady on TV!
Anyway, I’m sharing three videos that I thought were particularly funny. Warning, some of them might have a bad word here and there, so view it first before you decide to share with the kids. I don’t know if you will find are as funny as I think she is, but I’m betting Sire’s gonna say she’s cute enough to at least watch. Oh yeah; she also makes more than $100,000 a year with her YouTube page, so that might encourage some of you wannabe internet stars. lol
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Mitch Mitchell
I'm Just Sharing is where I share my thoughts on internet marketing, writing, blogging and many other things. You never know what I'll be posting on. So keep coming back, read, enjoy, and buy! ;)
