Saturday, October 20, 2012
Creed - Faceless Man - HD (Lyrics)
I spent a day by the river
It was quiet and the wind stood still
I spent some time with nature
To remind me of all that's real
It's funny how silence speaks sometimes when you're alone
And remember that you feel
Again I stand against the Faceless Man
Now I saw a face on the water
It looked humble but willing to fight
I saw the will of a warrior
His yoke is easy and His burden is light
He looked me right in the eyes
Direct and concise to remind me
To always do what's right
Again I stand against the Faceless Man
'Cause if the face inside can't see the light
I know I'll have to walk alone
And if I walk alone to the other side
I know I might not make it home
Again I stand against the Faceless Man
Next time I see this face
I'll say I choose to live for always
So won't you come inside And never go away
Friday, October 19, 2012
Duran Duran - Come Undone - HD
"Come Undone" is the title of a song by British band Duran Duran. It was released in March 1993 as the second single from the album Duran Duran (The Wedding Album), and is their twenty-fourth single overall.
With their commercial and critical success reestablished by the previous single "Ordinary World", "Come Undone" continued to showcase more of the band's entry into the Adult Contemporary genre. The single proved to be the group's second consecutive US top ten hit from The Wedding Album. It was also popular in the UK and other international markets.
The group's guitarist at the time, Warren Cuccurullo, is credited with developing the instrumentation for "Come Undone", most importantly its guitar hook, which he developed while trying to do a re-interpretation of "First Impression" from their 1990 album Liberty. In 2005, Cuccurullo revealed to author Steve Malins that he and Nick Rhodes had originally planned on using the song for a project outside of Duran Duran with Gavin Rossdale, but had changed plans when singer Simon Le Bon took a liking to the music and began to come up with lyrics on the spot The song was included as a last minute addition to their self-titled album in 1993, with the lyrics being written by Le Bon as a gift for his wife, Yasmin.
The group's bassist, John Taylor, did not actually play bass on this track, although he does in the music video. Nick Rhodes and John Jones both contributed synth bass on the track during his absence. Tessa Niles was credited with backing vocals. The song also contains a sample from The Soul Searchers' song "Ashley's Roachclip".
According to John Jones, "at the time we had completed and mastered the Wedding Album and had started the cover album "Thank You". One day we took the drum loop and bass groove from a demo of mine called "Face to Face" and added the ultra cool guitar riff that Warren had come up with for a new "cover" version of "First Impression". After a couple of hours of tweaking we played the track over the phone to Capitol in Los Angeles and they loved it and said they wanted it on the Wedding album! When Nick arrived that afternoon the intro was carved into a song that we played to Simon that night. He was back the next day with the lyrics and the melody and I think we finished the vocals the day after that. On the fourth day we finished the track detail and sent it to David Richards in Switzerland to be mixed."
Jason Mraz - I'm Yours - HD
"I'm Yours" is the first single released by Jason Mraz from his third studio album We Sing. We Dance. We Steal Things. The song was originally released on a limited edition EP called Extra Credit as a demo in 2005 to promote his second studio album Mr. A--Z. It was performed in his 2004 and 2005 gigs and already became a crowd favorite before its release. "I'm Yours" was nominated for Grammy Award for Song of the Year and Best Male Pop Vocal Performance at the 51st Grammy Awards. It was also used for the Australian Seven Network's promotion of the season premiere of Packed to the Rafters.
"I'm Yours" was immensely successful in the U.S. on the Billboard charts. At 76 weeks on the Hot 100, it holds the record for most weeks spent on the chart, breaking the previous record of 69 weeks set by LeAnn Rimes' song "How Do I Live" in 1998. It is as of January 2012 the eighth best selling digital song of all time in the U.S., selling over 6 million downloads and 9.5 million worldwide. It remains Mraz's biggest hit single in the USA. Mraz sang a version of the song on Sesame Street, instead of "I'm Yours" the song was titled, "Outdoors." Mraz also made a remixed version featuring Lil Wayne and Jah Cure, which also gained success.
The album was made available through digital stores on February 12, 2008. Throughout 2008, "I'm Yours" would slowly increase in airplay and digital sales to become Mraz's biggest hit, charting higher than his previous pop hit, 2003's "The Remedy (I Won't Worry)". It has become his first top ten single in the U.S., peaking at number six on the Billboard Hot 100 and number five on the Pop 100. On the Billboard Hot Adult Top 40 Tracks chart the song was number one for a total of nine weeks. The single later received Mainstream Top 40 airplay, eventually topping that chart as well. Due to its gradually building crossover appeal, the song has had extremely unusual longevity, not reaching number one on the Mainstream Top 40 until December 2008, ten months after its release and seven months after it debuted on the VH1 Top 20 Video Countdown. In fact, VH1 had already retired the song in early October, 2008 after a 20-week run. The song returned to the top ten of the Hot 100 for the third time in its 38th week on the chart.
"I'm Yours" would go on to chart for a total of 76 weeks, making this the longest chart run in Billboard Music magazine history.
A year into its release, it topped another chart for the first time, when it hit number one on the Billboard Hot Adult Contemporary Tracks during the week of February 5, 2009. This marked 11 months since the song had topped its first chart in the U.S., when it reached number one on the Triple A chart in March, 2008. I'm Yours spent 16 weeks at number one on the Adult Contemporary chart. In addition, after topping the Adult Contemporary chart, "I'm Yours" became the first song to top the Triple A, Adult Top 40, Mainstream Top 40, and Adult Contemporary charts. Despite weak initial download sales, it has gone onto sell 6 million paid digital downloads by February 2012 in the U.S., becoming the eighth best selling digital song in the United States.
It is Mraz's most successful global single to date, reaching number one in Sweden and Norway, and the top ten in Canada, United States, Austria, Australia, Germany, Switzerland, Spain and Italy. It was also able to reach number one on the Top 40 Digital Track Chart in Australia. In Hawaii, radio stations do play the original version, along with a Hawaiian remix of the song. "I'm Yours" has also been a huge hit in New Zealand where it peaked at number one, knocking off "Poker Face" which spent ten consecutive weeks at number one. It was certified Gold after nine weeks selling over 7,500 copies and then certified Platinum after 14 weeks selling over 15,000 copies.
"I'm Yours" made its debut on the British singles chart on December 12, 2008, at number 78 and then slowly climbed up the chart until it peaked at number 11. It spent the whole of 2009 on the chart apart from the final two weeks of the year, then re-entered in January 2010 and again in August, and has now clocked up 56 weeks on the official UK Top 75, making it currently the 15th longest runner of all time and the longest never to make the Top 10, and 84 weeks on the Top 100.
Tuesday, October 16, 2012
John Huling - Trail of Memories (Native American Historical Photos)
In 1493, when Columbus returned to the Hispaniola, he quickly implemented policies of slavery and mass extermination of the Taino population of the Caribbean. Within three years, five million were dead. Las Casas, the primary historian of the Columbian era, writes of many accounts of the horrors that the Spanish colonists inflicted upon the indigenous population: hanging them en mass, hacking their children into pieces to be used as dog feed, and other horrid cruelties. The works of Las Casas are often omitted from popular American history books and courses because Columbus is considered a hero by many, even today.
Mass killing did not cease, however, after Columbus departed. Expansion of the European colonies led to similar genocides. "Indian Removal" policy was put into action to clear the land for white settlers. Methods for the removal included slaughter of villages by the military and also biological warfare. High death rates resulted from forced marches to relocate the Indians.
The Removal Act of 1830 set into motion a series of events which led to the "Trail of Tears" in 1838, a forced march of the Cherokees, resulting in the destruction of most of the Cherokee population." The concentration of American Indians in small geographic areas, and the scattering of them from their homelands, caused increased death, primarily because of associated military actions, disease, starvation, extremely harsh conditions during the moves, and the resulting destruction of ways of life.
During American expansion into the western frontier, one primary effort to destroy the Indian way of life was the attempts of the U.S. government to make farmers and cattle ranchers of the Indians. In addition, one of the most substantial methods was the premeditated destructions of flora and fauna which the American Indians used for food and a variety of other purposes. We now also know that the Indians were intentionally exposed to smallpox by Europeans. The discovery of gold in California, early in 1848, prompted American migration and expansion into the west. The greed of Americans for money and land was rejuvenated with the Homestead Act of 1862. In California and Texas there was blatant genocide of Indians by non-Indians during certain historic periods. In California, the decrease from about a quarter of a million to less than 20,000 is primarily due to the cruelties and wholesale massacres perpetrated by the miners and early settlers. Indian education began with forts erected by Jesuits, in which indigenous youths were incarcerated, indoctrinated with non-indigenous Christian values, and forced into manual labor. These children were forcibly removed from their parents by soldiers and many times never saw their families until later in their adulthood. This was after their value systems and knowledge had been supplanted with colonial thinking. One of the foundations of the U.S. imperialist strategy was to replace traditional leadership of the various indigenous nations with indoctrinated "graduates" of white "schools," in order to expedite compliance with U.S. goals and expansion.
Probably one of the most ruinous acts to the Indians was the disappearance of the buffalo. For the Indians who lived on the Plains, life depended on the buffalo. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, there were an estimated forty million buffalo, but between 1830 and 1888 there was a rapid, systematic extermination culminating in the sudden slaughter of the only two remaining Plain herds. By around 1895, the formerly vast buffalo populations were practically extinct. The slaughter occurred because of the economic value of buffalo hides to Americans and because the animals were in the way of the rapidly westward expanding population. The end result was widescale starvation and the social and cultural disintegration of many Plains tribes.
Genocide entered international law for the first time in 1948; the international community took notice when Europeans (Jews, Poles, and other victims of Nazi Germany) faced cultural extinction. The "Holocaust" of World War II came to be the model of genocide. We, as the human race, must realize, however, that other genocides have occurred. Genocide against many particular groups is still widely happening today. The discrimination of the Native American population is only one example of this ruthless destruction.
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