Notorious R.O.B.

We interrupt the regularly scheduled program of heavy-duty, two-thousand word discussions about the real estate industry to bring you this light-hearted fun segment on music!

A couple of weeks ago, I asked realestistas about their choice for the “Best American Band of the Past 20 Years”.  I got four submissions, and since I also wanted to test polling on WP.com… here are your choices.

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[polldaddy poll=1363775]

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You’ll want to check out this thread and the replies to see the arguments for one band over another.  Then just vote!

Thanks for participating, and helping me test the polling software while having some fun!

-rsh

As some of you know, I’ve been getting more and more into Blip (www.blip.fm) — a really cool social-media music community play.  I’m NotoriousROB on Blip, in case you’re interested.

And walking to the office this morning, I thought, wouldn’t it be fun to do a poll/contest type of thing on the topic of “Best American Band of the Last Twenty Years”.

So here’s how I propose it work.

Nominate the band. Explain briefly why you think they are the best American band of the past 20 years.

Put in a link to a blip or YouTube or some other place where readers can go check out the works by that band.

You can do this either in comments to this post, or on your blog, and put the link in the comments.

I will collect all of the submissions and post it up in a poll.

We vote.  Simple, eh?

Some rules:

- Band must be American.  Doesn’t mean that every member must be an American citizen or any such thing.  It does mean that the band had to have been started in the U.S., and is actively mostly in the U.S.

- It must be a band: more than a single artist.  So Norah Jones won’t qualify, sorry.

I’ll put my nomination in the comments to this post.

Because while talking about heavy topics in real estate and marketing is fun, sometimes, you do want a break.

-rsh

Recently, I discovered the hilarity that is blip.fm. I’m going to have an actually serious post about that, but this is not that post.

No, this post is about something completely unimportant. Unless you have a soul. In which case, music ought to be very high on your list of priorities. Then this post is critically important.

There are a number of well-known RE.net people who are very active on Blip: Todd Carpenter, Nicole Nicolay, Joe Ferrara, Heather Elias, just to name a few.

So… if the RE.net were to have an official anthem, the way that the Asian American community has an official anthem, what would it be?

My humble recommendations for your consideration:

Winds of Change, The Scorpions (embedding disabled by the morons at Universal, so video above may not work)

Well, the RE.net does represent the first line of the change that is sweeping through the industry, right? And The Scorpions are an underappreciated jewel of the ’80′s.

While it is a somewhat melancholy ballad, this is a song of hope for the future. That strikes me as an accurate description of the real estate industry today.

Video Killed the Radio Star, The Buggles

The very first music video aired on MTV. Of course, it’s unclear whether RE.net will have this kind of impact… but… strikes me as possibly appropriate.

Online, Brad Paisley

Need this selection be explained?

-rsh

I’ve decided I need to do one of these every week. Break up the heavy duty real estate theorizing — it can get a bit much even for me after while….

So… let’s see… hit Play on my Shuffle…

L’Amour Toujours (I’ll Fly With You)

Gigi D’Agostino

I have no idea how this track ended up in my music collection. I have never bought a single dance CD or MP3 in my life. Plus, I don’t know who Gigi D’Agostino is. Nor this song.  So how did it end up not only in my music collection, but on my iPod?

I must have heard it at some point and dragged it over into the playlist…

But how did it end up in my possession in the first place?  I suspect that everyone has songs or CD’s like this, where you hear it and go… “When did I get that?”  Was it an ex-girlfriend who gave me a mix that I ripped back when I was digitizing my CD collection?  Did I buy it and totally forget about it?  Did the music fairy stop by my computer?

The upside is that I like it alot.

I love trance; I like dance music in general.  Always have.  In high school, I remember going to a friend’s house, sitting in the basement and listening to various Euro-disco tapes that she had brought back from her trips abroad.  Songs with German lyrics and pumping basslines, with nary a stringed instrument in sight, like “Du bist mein ganzes herz” or something like that.  All of it was catchy, sugary pop, unserious, and eminently danceable.

This song… what’s not to like?  Nice beat, thumping bassline, a pretty vocal melody laid on top of it all.  Close your eyes and you can almost imagine yourself at some dark nightclub with laser lights, beautiful young people blitzed out of their minds, the tang of sweat, sex, and animal attraction wafting through the humid air….

Turns out, according to Wikipedia, Gigi D’Agostino is some sort of a grandmaster of DJ’s:

As a DJ, D’Agostino is known as one of the “pioneers of Mediterranean Progressive Dance”^[2] consisting of minimalistic sounds and catchy, Latin melodies and especially Mediterranean melodies. As a producer, Gigi D’Agostino’s strength – or “Gigi Dag”, the pseudonym he uses for himself in club productions – lies in transforming a piece, originally destined only for the discos, into a success for the main-stream public.

Until this moment, I did not know that there was such a thing as “Mediterranean Progressive Dance” of which Gigi D’Agostino is a pioneer.  Is this a good thing?  Can we slice musical genres by geography now?  Maybe I can be the pioneer of the “Suburban New Jersey Progressive Hardcore” — if I had any musical talent whatsoever, at least.

Something I’m still trying to figure out… what makes a DJ great?  I mean, what sets Gigi apart from the guy that played at my wedding?  Is it their ability to know what moves the crowd?  The European dance DJ’s don’t do any scratching or turntable skillz like the hip hop DJ’s do.  So what makes them great?

In any case, that’s what’s playing.  I’m going to go reminisce about days gone by.  Dark cavernous rooms.  Endless energy.  When the world was all possibilities and crossroads.  The soundtrack of those days would surely be techno and trance music.

-rsh

Angel by Lionel Richie.

I guess you could argue that part of Cluetrain means speaking with a human voice. And humans are deeply flawed, imperfect creatures. So I interrupt the real estate, marketing, and web 2.0 blogging to just expose really horrible personal habits to the whole world. Which in my case includes a soft spot for Lionel Richie.

I remember once arguing with a friend that Lionel Richie needs to be respected as a great musical pioneer of the 80′s, on par with The Gloved One, and Madonna. The man was a member of the Commodores, and had thirteen consecutive Top Ten singles, five of which were #1 U.S. singles as a solo artist. He’s been nominated for the Grammy’s 18 times and won four. He’s got a dozen American Music Awards, and five People’s Choice Awards for Best Song.

Plus, did you know he was a great tennis player and majored in economics from Tuskegee? I didn’t. Well, now I do, and so do you.

Lionel’s the man. Let’s have some respect for the curly-haired one!

Granted… he is largely responsible for Nicole Richie… but she’s still young. She may still turn out to be a great scientist who discovers the cure for cancer. Or perhaps a great world leader who solves the whole Palestinian issue once and for all. It could happen.

Plus, there’s this (from Wikipedia):

As ABC News reports:

Grown Iraqi men get misty-eyed by the mere mention of his name. “I love Lionel Richie,” they say. Iraqis who do not understand a word of English can sing an entire Lionel Richie song. He has performed in Morocco, Dubai, Qatar and Libya. There is obviously something up there. The more we talked, the more he theorized as to the reasons his music might be so popular here. He thinks it is because of the simple message in his music: Love. ^[5]

According to Richie, he was told that U.S. soldiers were playing “All Night Long” the night that Baghdad fell.^[5] Said Richie, “I’m huge, huge in the Arab world. The answer as to why is, I don’t have the slightest idea.”

Neither do we, Lionel. Neither do we.

But you just keep on keeping on’

-rsh