Crabb thoughts on Prince, Cubs No Hitter, etc.

Two days later after the passing of Prince Rogers, the tributes keep coming in.  Whatever Prince could do, he could do it better than anybody else.  In terms of theory, Prince will go down as perhaps the best one man recording band making records his way from the beginning.  While the masses will lay praise on Purple Rain and 1999,  his first four albums of DIY rock and soul will be the ones that I will remember.  For at that time, Prince was one of us, home recording musicians making music in route to be famous, just like I did.  Only Prince got more and more famous and I never did leave the garage myself.   People talk of the way Prince would remain shy and aloof, he never did try to use the media to promote everything he did or done and go into reality shows or have a porn star wife (see Kanye West) what I like about Prince was he kept true to himself and let his music and his skills do the talking.  He fought tooth and nail with Warner Brothers throughout his music career and refused to cave in to their demands.  He didn't move out west or to New York but stayed close to home in Minneapolis.  He promoted the music scene in Minneapolis as much as he could.  Even close to death, Prince still supported buying records and cds, even buying the new Santana album and classics from The Chambers Brothers, Stevie Wonder and Joni Mitchell to name a few.  He kept busy going after You Tube and getting his music off that channel, which may have made a few folks mad.  With his passing, there's more You Tube Prince stuff going up.  Prince may have been a one man army on that. http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/northjersey/obituary.aspx?n=prince-rogers-nelson&pid=179702429&

While he was private with his life, perhaps the reason why he asked people not to take photos of him going around town might be that Prince looked at himself as one of us and not the rock god that he perceived to be.   And wanted to come and go his own way and not be hounded.  Fair enough.  In the end Prince, through his social media was really one of us who enjoyed music in any form and would go out his way to promote those artists that he enjoyed hearing.  Up to his passing, Prince gave it his all until his body just gave out.  But he had a nice 37 year run at it.

The Chicago Cubs are 13-4 so far in April and have turned the tables playing in April.  They went to St. Louis and took 2 out of 3, and then Thursday Jake Arrieta pitched his second no hitter as the Cubs blew out Cincinnati 16-0, in a game that The Cubs hit 5 home runs, two from Kris Bryant, one from Ben Zobrist, Phil Rizzo and Dan Ross, who caught the no hit game.  Brandon Finnegan, who almost no hit the Cubs in Chicago last week, got blasted early and often.  You have to feel for the guy who ended up getting whiplash after seeing ball after ball go out into the stands and seeing if any would fall into the river nearby.  Arrieta has been on fire, having his 24th straight quality start and the Cubs winning 17 straight Arrieta decisions of late.  Last time the Cubs was setting April on fire was 1969. Hopefully history will not repeat itself, the hated New York Mets ended up playing .750 ball in route to scorch pass the Cubs, the Atlanta Braves and Baltimore Orioles to win it all.  Barring injuries to key players (Kyle Schwarber lost for the season due to a freak collision) The Cubs should make the playoffs.  Of course the nay sayers will chime in, as they always will that Chicago will falter when June and July come up and Arrieta can't continue his dominance (a slight observation: Jake did have a subpar game in the playoffs against St. Louis to which Cardinals fans will point out time and time again, right Ron?, but for now Arrieta has been unbeatable in the regular season.  But for now I'm enjoying the hot start and it's better being 13-4 than the other way.  The other way you're already writing off the season.

And Friday Night The Cubs won again 8-1, scoring 4 runs in the 9th inning.  If they can keep delivering in the 9th inning it will be a fun season.  But it's a long season, and last weekend Colorado did that 2 out of 3 games.  Be careful.

I heard this all before, but the recent new MTV head Sean Atkins wants to put the M in MTV back into music but lets face it what he is proposing isn't much different from the past.  Unless you count Mark Burnett looking for the next hip hop artist as "music".  Which I call bullshit and the new MTV shows are more reality garbage.  Let's face it, we're not going back to 1981 when music videos did kill the radio star and everybody had wet dreams about Martha Quinn and (at that time) Nina Blackwood, we wanted to be friends with J J Jackson and Mark Goodman and wanted to punch Alan Hunter, and we used to have the rock and roll movie sunday nights shows and later 120 Minutes and Headbanger's Ball.  The M still stands for Moron TV, VH1 is more worse and I have no idea about MTV2 or VH1 Classic is about anymore.  The guess is that Atkins is going back to 1990s MTV.  Nice try to get to past glories Sean but let me know when you do get more serious about real music.  I think it's too late anyway judging by the shit we hear on new music radio. http://variety.com/2016/tv/news/mtv-music-wonderland-unplugged-sean-atkins-2016-upfront-tv-1201758027/

While people continue to speak glowingly about the legacy of Slick Willie Bill Clinton, it also marked the 20th anniversary of the infamous and music/radio/tv/paper killer Telecommunications Act of 1996, to which corporations begin to buy up all sorts of media, from paper to radio and TV Stations.  A bright idea by GOP hypocrite Newt Numbnuts Gingrich and John "dingleberry" Dingell of Michigan who thanked God and the lobbyists around for this bill.  This bill started the era of Clear Channel I Heart Media who now owns over 1000 radio station across the country.   Six Corporations: Viacom, News Corp, Comcast, CBS, Time Warner and Disney own over 90 percent.  There is no such thing as "fair and balanced" and may God have mercy on you, if you're working for Gannett and have to deal with layoffs every year.  The fact of the matter remains that BIG MEDIA is spending big bucks to both parties (BTW) in an attempt to take over the internet.  Cable and satellite spent 1.8 million dollars on lobbying alone.  And they continue to raise rates due to "programming" issues.  To which the the consumer returns are getting less and less, including our shit hole cable company that dropped five channels and raised the rates five dollars.  Not very cost effective mind you. And a reminder:  Hillary Clinton is running for POTUS, and BIG MEDIA is really contributing a lot of dollars to her campaign.  Which may be a big red flag but given who the GOP is throwing out, they're even worse.  Bill Clinton signed this act into law and every Republican voted for this, 15 Democrats and Bernie Sanders as an independent voted against it.  And now the damage is done, we're stuck with shit reality crap shows, Pravda news from the likes of FOX and CNN and I Heart playing the same fucking songs over and over and cable/dish networks continue to raise rates citing "cost of programming". Actually Andy Griffith and Lucy reruns have never been that expensive but the lobbyist game of owning your own congressman or woman is going up in cost.  So to celebrate 2 decades of the era of I Heart Control, let's aim a light a fart in the faces of Slick Bill, Newt and Dingleberry Dingell of the end of radio as we used to know it and the beginning of less choices and higher rates from the likes of Viacom, New Corp and the four others in the destruction of free speech and press: http://billmoyers.com/story/twenty-years-of-media-consolidation-has-not-been-good-for-our-democracy/ 

Another Prince story: http://www.prosoundnetwork.com/business/remembering-prince-engineer-cubby-colby/46040