Glen Meadmore is a Canadian musician, actor and performance artist currently residing in Los Angeles. He has been described as "...the world's greatest exponent of the genre known as gay Christian punk".
He is sometimes referred to as "Cowpunk".
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=580642398
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As the Christmas party season gets under way the most popular karaoke songs attempted by Britons can be revealed for the first time.
The top 5
Waterloo, performed by Abba
Bohemian Rhapsody, Queen
My Way, Frank Sinatra, Claude Francois & Jacques Revaux
I Will Survive, Gloria Gaynor
Dancing Queen, Abba
By January, you won't want to hear another cadence, chord or chorus from any of them: they are the top 25 karaoke songs that Britons love to sing.
For those whose only experience of karaoke is the office Christmas party, the release of the first “official chart” could help in deciding which song to opt for – a choice which can make the difference between humiliation and the maintenance of some dignity.
At the top of the list is Waterloo, the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest winner by Abba, the Swedish pop group. The band also provides the fifth most attempted number, Dancing Queen.
The only other artists with two entries in the top 25 is the band Queen, with Bohemian Rhapsody, at number two, and Don’t Stop Me Now, at number 16.
The index has been compiled by PRS for Music, formerly the Performing Right Society, a licensing organisation which monitors music use in order to collect royalties for songwriters.
For the first time, it has collated a list of the 25 most popular from an analysis of its data going back to the early 1990s, when the karaoke craze started to take off in the UK.
Karaoke aficionados say the top 10 are all popular songs with well-known tunes and lyrics and are mostly up-tempo. With one exception, they are also relatively easy to perform and are comparatively forgiving on those without an abundance of natural singing ability.
But Bohemian Rhapsody, the second most popular, is notoriously difficult to sing, featuring several changes in harmony and rhythm, as well as complex lyrics. It is also long.
The results suggest that karaoke is more popular among older age groups. Nine of the top 25 are from the 1970s, with seven each from the 1960s and 1980s. Not one has been released since 2000 and only two – Angels, by Robbie Williams, and Livin’ La Vida Loca, by Ricky Martin – are from the 1990s.
The Beatles have only one song in the top 25 – Hey Jude, at number 15 – and there are no songs by Elvis Presley.
There is a relatively even split of songs for men and women, and three of the top 25 are traditionally sung as duets.
Nick Thistleton, from Lucky Voice, a chain of karaoke bars co-founded by Martha Lane Fox, said: “People always seem to gravitate towards the same 20 or so songs. The choices are possibly made to disguise a lack of ability, but whether you can sing well or not is not really relevant to karaoke.
Eugene Landy, who has died aged 71, earned notoriety in Hollywood as the "Shrink to the Stars", and was the psychologist responsible for treating Brian Wilson, leader of the Beach Boys.
Wilson weighed 22 stone, and was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic and manic depressive when he was first placed in the care of Landy during the 1970s. Under Landy's "milieu therapy" programme, he was kept under 24-hour surveillance and subjected to a punishing regime of diet, exercise and mood-altering drugs. Hulking assistants, whom Wilson's friends called "the Surf Nazis", supervised his every waking moment, while Landy coached Wilson in daily social skills, holding up signs with the words "Smile" and "Positive" in bright red ink whenever he appeared in public.
Photographs of the pair from this period show Landy as a small man with a bouffant hair-style, suspiciously white teeth, and the flamboyant suiting of a nightclub magician. Wilson stares into the camera with a fixed grin, as if being manipulated by strings.
Eugene E Landy was born on November 26 1934 at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the only child of a physician and a psychologist. Leaving school at 16 he made an early excursion into showbusiness, producing a nationally syndicated teenage radio show and discovering a 10-year-old guitar-playing shoeshine boy named George Benson, who would become a celebrated jazz guitarist.
In his early thirties, Landy resumed his studies, earning a master's and doctorate from the University of Oklahoma. He moved to Los Angeles, and became a clinical psychologist and lecturer at the University of Southern California. In 1971 he published The Underground Dictionary, a lexicon of the hippie jargon that Landy had picked up in his work at a community health centre for young people, much of it drug- and sex-related. Definitions included "Groovy: great, fantastic, joyful, happy'; "Grip: masturbate" and "Flower: the philosophy of the flower comes from the fact that the flower is among the most natural of all things in nature; it is free, needing nothing more than the earth, air and sunshine to live. It is peaceful and lives its beauty freely." Landy described the book as "a much needed communications bridge between the Establishment and underground culture", and dedicated it, in the parlance of the day, to "my people".
At the same time, he began ministering to the psychological needs of Hollywood's showbusiness community. His clients included Rod Steiger, Alice Cooper, Richard Harris and the actor Gig Young, who in 1978 died in an apparent suicide pact with his young German wife; both were found shot dead in their New York City apartment.
In 1975, he was appointed by Marilyn Wilson to treat her husband, the Beach Boy Brian, who was in the grip of acute depression and chronic drug abuse. Wilson seemed to improve under Landy's treatment, but a year later Landy was fired after doubling his fee from $10,000 to $20,000. Wilson went rapidly downhill, and in 1983, after overdosing on a combination of alcohol, cocaine and psychoactive pills, he returned to Landy for treatment.
Landy maintained that the success of his treatment depended on his "therapautic team" being given complete dominion over his patient's life, controlling "every aspect of their physical, personal, social and sexual environments."
Between 1983 and 1986, Landy and his assistants lived with Wilson around the clock, charging a fee of some $430,000 annually. When Landy requested more money, Wilson's brother Carl Wilson was obliged to give away 25 per cent of Brian's publishing royalties to cover costs.
Landy also assumed the role of Wilson's manager and was credited as co-writer and "executive producer" on the singer's "comeback" album, released in 1988. In interviews at the time Wilson spoke of his belief that Landy was "a mental telepathist" who could "plant musical ideas in my brain". The psychologist also took a third of the $250,000 advance for Wilson's ghost-written autobiography, Wouldn't It Be Nice (1991), which served primarily as an exculpation of Landy's methods.
In 1989, Wilson's family finally took action, lodging charges of gross negligence against Landy. But Wilson refused to be separated from him. The following year, the family brought another suit, alleging that Landy had attempted to persuade Wilson to change his will, making Landy himself the chief beneficiary, collecting 70 per cent, with the remainder split between Landy's girlfriend and Wilson's two daughters. The case was settled out of court, but a conservator was appointed to take over Wilson's affairs, and in 1991 the courts issued a separation order, forcing Landy out of Wilson's life for good. At the same time, the State of California revoked Landy's licence on the grounds that he had illegally prescribed drugs to Wilson. He was also charged with conflict of interest for acting not only as Wilson's therapist but also his business manager.
Following the Wilson debacle, Landy moved to Honolulu, where he practised clinical psychology until his death on March 22. In 2005 he contributed to an investigation into the high expectations that single people have of holidays. "It doesn't end happily in real life," Landy said. "It ends differently."
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The Beach Boy and the Surf Nazi:
Brian Wilson Finally Comes Dirty on
Dr. Eugene Landy
and
24-Hour No-Party People
At the peak of his success with the Beach Boys, Brian Wilson suffered a mental breakdown - and he still wakes up hearing voices. but he can hear music, too. As he prepares to 'bring the summer' to Britain, he talks to Alison Powell
Brian Wilson (24-Hour Doctor-Twofer Mrjyn Dailymotion Videos) Dr. Eugene Landy - Surf Nazi(whatgetsmehot.blogspot.com)
It is morning in Southern California and Los Angeles wakes up to wash in the basin of another sun-soaked day. High atop Mulholland Drive, perched on the crest between the Pacific Ocean to the west and the San Bernardino Mountains to the east, one man yawns and stretches much like any of the other seven million residents. He's successful, but he's not the richest man in town. His face is well known, but there are others more readily recognisable.
As many handsome, well-groomed local burghers do, he gets into his Mercedes to cruise down to the local deli for breakfast. While driving, our guy turns on the radio to catch the weather and traffic and a few nice tunes for the road. Like every other southern Californian with a taste for oldies (and there are a lot of them - it is always 1968 or 1976 somewhere in California) he sets the dial to K-EARTH 101 and hears the DJ boom, 'The sound of the Southland!' But this is not just anyone. The 'sound' and the Southland itself owe their souls to the driver of this sleek sedan.
That song curling out of the speakers is California Girls and the driver of the car came up with the chords in less than a half an hour - after taking LSD. He is Brian Wilson, arguably the most important composer in American pop history. Self-taught, deaf in one ear and plagued by voices that tell him he is about to die, he produced one stunning hit single after another.
Being Brian Wilson has to be one of the world's hardest jobs: adored, revered and unable to run free from the things you did when you were young. Yet when I arrive at his house on a quiet Thursday morning his chaotic back story is nowhere on display. The one-time permanent resident of his own room has, for years, started his day with bracing exercise - once it was running, but now it is a walk through his serene, bougainvillea-filled neighbourhood. It is early and Wilson, his walk and trip to the deli completed, descends the sweeping staircase of his Spanish-style Beverly Hills home, where he has lived for the past eight years. He is trim and crisply groomed, with his hair swept back from his face in a careful alignment that would make The Sopranos' Paulie Walnuts jealous. Phones are ringing, most of his 16 dogs are barking, and on the foyer table sit two new paintings created just for him - on coconut husks. It is a busy but normal day. Right now they are all busy days as Wilson rushes to mix his forthcoming album, 'That Lucky Old Sun', in advance of a summer tour to Britain.The life of Brian Wilson is complicated - and then some. His history is so vast and ornate that it is often necessary to arrange it into the key set pieces. Not that you'd know it by listening to his music, which conjures up images of surfboards, panelled cars, drive-in movies, sand, sun and cresting waves.
