Free Republic

Who wants to participate in a music play-off bracket-type poll for best songs of the '70s? 3 years ago I ran a "tournament" to pick the best songs of the '80s, based first on Billboard rankings, so only the best of the best are included! You can view how this played out here: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/3249477/posts That's what I want to do for the '70s. (Wouldn't mind doing it for other decades, either!)

What's in "Blackstar" (To make it easier to follow the song/video description below, I've given numbers to different areas of the song/video. ) 1. The video begins by showing close-ups of an unmoving human being apparently in an astronaut suit, which is patched up here and there with duct tape. Then from a greater distance, the astronaut is shown, lying motionless against a rock. He is in a world which resembles an alien planet or a moon. It's very rocky, barren and cold looking, and a large "black sun" or "blackstar" is in an equally black, star-filled sky. Just as...

These eight bands may not have the Christian Rock label but biblical themes and their Christian faith are at the root of much of their music. 1. Lenny Kravitz American rock singer-songwriter, Lenny Kravitz is a devout Christian and his spirituality transcends not only in the spiritual themes of his music but also in his personal life – he committed to remain celibate for years and has a cross tattoo on his back as a reminder of his faith. Did you know Kravitz’s song “Are You Gonna Go My Way?” is about Jesus? 2. U2 From the Bono led Irish...

ROUND 7 - THE FINAL - OF THE '80S TOURNAMENT OF CHART-TOPPERS COMMENCES! Votes due: Sunday, March 15 @ 6:00 pm Eastern. The Final Pair! Vote for your favorite! No reply, no vote. A tie will be broken with a run-off which will end (hopefully) the following Monday.

ROUND 6 OF THE '80S TOURNAMENT OF CHART-TOPPERS COMMENCES! Votes due: Sunday, March 8 @ 6:00 pm Eastern. The Final 4 in just 2 pairs of songs! Vote for your favorite of each pair shown. No reply, no vote. (You may abstain from any pairs.) Any ties will be broken with a run-off which will end (hopefully) the following Monday.

ROUND 5 OF THE '80S TOURNAMENT OF CHART-TOPPERS COMMENCES! Votes due: Sunday, March 1 @ 6:00 pm Eastern. The Great 8 in just 4 pairs of songs! Vote for your favorite of each pair shown. No reply, no vote. (You may abstain from any pairs.) Any ties will be broken with a run-off which will end (hopefully) the following Monday. Format: Yearly rank/seed - year - song title - act

ROUND 4 OF THE '80S TOURNAMENT OF CHART-TOPPERS COMMENCES! Votes due: Sunday, Feb 22 @ 6:00 pm Eastern. Sweet 16 in 8 pairs of songs! Vote for your favorite of each pair shown. No reply, no vote. (You may abstain from any pairs.) Any ties will be broken with a run-off which will end the following Monday. Format: Yearly rank/seed - year - song title - act

We have a TIE from Round 3 to BREAK! (What is it with 1983? No one seems to be able to separate the songs!) #4 1983 "Down Under” Men at Work versus #1 1983 "Every Breath You Take" Police

ROUND 3 OF THE '80S TOURNAMENT OF CHART-TOPPERS COMMENCES! Votes due: Sunday, Feb 15 @ 6:00 pm Eastern. Sweet 16 pairs of songs! Vote for your favorite in each pair shown. No reply, no vote. (You may abstain from any pairs.) Any ties will be broken with a run-off which will end the following Monday. Format: Yearly rank/seed - year - song title - act

We have a TIE from Round 2 to BREAK! #3 1983 "Flashdance... What a Feeling" Irene Cara versus#5 1983 "Beat It" Michael Jackson

ROUND 2 of the greatest hits of the '80s begins! Due date: Sunday, Feb 8 @6:00 pm (Eastern) Had to cut short the Round 1, as the response wasn't enough. Will try weekly rounds from now on. This Round takes the top 6 songs of each year of the '80s, and pairs them in brackets along with the best #7s as voted in Round 1.

OK, FREEPERS, LET'S START THIS CONTEST FOR THE GREATEST SONG OF THE '80S. The baseline for the contest is the top 7 hits of each year of the '80s, as compiled by BILLBOARD. This is not based on personal preferences, biases, prejudices, or counter-culture reactivity. The rules in general will be to vote for everything shown. No equivocating, ties, or omissions. Votes will only be counted if the "ballot" is complete. ROUND 1 We begin by using the #7 songs of each year and paring them from 10 songs to 4 (to set up brackets for the rest of the...

Tributes to two of the most famous American entertainers of the 20th century serve as a reminder of how fame flees. The entertainers are Bing Crosby and Bob Hope; the reminders are the documentary “American Masters: Bing Crosby Rediscovered,” which had its premiere last week (and will run again on Dec. 26 ) on PBS, and “Hope: Entertainer of the Century,” a new biography by Richard Zoglin. Neither Crosby nor Hope have much cachet with contemporary consumers of art and culture, but the accounts of their careers make convincing cases that their contributions still influence their respective fields, even if...

"The fact that he's dead is unfortunate but looking back on his life it's a very pleasant thought."The father of late The Doors singer Jim Morrison has branded the death of his estranged son "unfortunate," despite the rocker often singing about his family's imagined demise. George Morrison, a retired Navy admiral, insists memories of his rocker son are "pleasant" - even though he once joked his parents were dead and used Oedipal rant "The End" to imagine killing his dad and sleeping with his mother. However, in a new memoir of the band, George remains positive about his child. Contributing...

http://www.townhall.com/phillysoc/bartlettpaper.htm Conservative Pop Music-- The Top 40 of the Top 40 Bruce Bartlett Full Text of Speech to be given at The Philadelphia Society Regional Meeting in Cleveland, Ohio, September 21, 2002. Pop music is probably one of the last places a conservative would normally look for reinforcement of his worldview. Rock and roll, which has dominated pop music since the 1950s, is inexorably associated with liberalism in the minds of many conservatives. But in fact, there have been a significant number of songs on the pop charts during the rock era that are explicitly conservative. I have compiled a...

Is it simple selling or selling out? We report on a band at odds over ad revenue THE drummer of the Doors has infuriated his former bandmates by turning down nearly $20 million to use their music to sell computers and cars. John Densmore has a legal right to veto the use of the band’s music for advertising. And that is exactly what he is doing. He says that he is holding out to honour the memory of the band’s lead singer, Jim Morrison, who died in Paris from a suspected heroin overdose in 1971, aged 27. “People lost their...

Ground-breaking work in understanding of time Mechanics, Zeno and Hawking undergo revision A bold paper which has highly impressed some of the world's top physicists and been published in the August issue of Foundations of Physics Letters, seems set to change the way we think about the nature of time and its relationship to motion and classical and quantum mechanics. Much to the science world's astonishment, the work also appears to provide solutions to Zeno of Elea's famous motion paradoxes, almost 2500 years after they were originally conceived by the ancient Greek philosopher. In doing so, its unlikely author, who...

"You believe in a dice-playing God and I in perfect laws in the world of things existing as real objects." Albert Einstein Chapter 1 Introduction 1.1 Proem If in the development of a scientific theory an error is made, further errors will necessarily follow. Each new identification generally assumes the correctness of the theory developed up to that point. If the partial theory is incorrect, any extension will operate to perpetuate its errors, and in the process will generate additional and more extensive errors. Unless the initial error is corrected, the consequence is an endless series of errors piled...

NASA-funded research at Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., that literally stops light in its tracks, may someday lead to breakneck-speed computers that shelter enormous amounts of data from hackers. The research, conducted by a team led by Dr. Lene Hau, a Harvard physics professor, is one of 12 research projects featured in a special edition of Scientific American entitled "The Edge of Physics," available through May 31. In their laboratory, Hau and her colleagues have been able to slow a pulse of light, and even stop it, for several-thousandths of a second. They've also created a roadblock for light, where they...

rare in the abstract of a reputable scientific paper. But the latest report by photonics crystal pioneer John Joannopoulos and his group at MIT, soon to be published in Physical Review Letters, does not disappoint. The researchers document the ultimate control over light: a way to shift the frequency of light beams to any desired colour, with near 100 per cent efficiency. "The degree of control over light really is quite shocking," comments photonics expert Eli Yablonovitch at the University of California, Los Angeles. If the effect can be harnessed, it will revolutionise a range of fields turning heat into...