http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KYkGVZM5w4

Thomas Dolby, I Love You Goodbye 

Everyone has seen his brilliant (and now overplayed) She Blinded Me with Science but I Love You Goodbye is great song with a groove and great mix of fiddle, banjo, electronic piano, accordian and a funky beat, plus a brilliant lyric "The hardest words I know - I love you, goodbye"

Note: Turn up the volume so you can hear everything.

You can't charge people AND have intrusive ads. I agree. This doean't happen to me with my browser but if it did I'd be supremely annoyed.

Advertising is rapidly becoming an out-dated business model, which is WHY a site or a television network/radio network can charge a subscription rate, and WHY people are willing to pay. 

Many podcasters and others are discovering the model of simply providing something so good that people WANT to contribute, people feel a part of something, which is why you bought swag and gave a subscription away. When you hector people with ads, you diminish (or kill) that impulse. 

You must always have respect for your audience to start out with, not just notice when they complain and then say something to placate them, which is generally what happens here. The whole idea of "membership" is great, except those people will then feel attacked when you try to use their attention for more revenue.

for the most part, guitars are limited by their configuration- that is precisely why you see so many alternate tunings (e.g., double-drop D); unless we are talking Segovia's clean picking, they tend to be limited to the open string keys and 4/4 time; different keys and 3/4 time don't work.

The Piano is limited by the well-tempered tuning.  You can't easily re-tune a piano to conform to a given key. The piano's tuning is a compromise so that it can play in all keys but is always slightly out of tune. Whereas a stringed instrument can easily adjust the tuning to play in various keys. Another limitation of the piano - you can't play in-between notes, you can't slide or "bend" notes. Dynamics are limited too - once a note is played on a piano, it will only decay or stop.  You can't make it louder or stronger. Technically the piano is a percussion instrument, with those limitations.

The ability to re-tune an instrument is a feature, not a bug.

3/4,  6/8 time don't work? Flat out wrong. 

Duane's words in italics:

But, if you read the above, there was no assertion that the comparison was between rock and pop.

You made this strawman comparison : instead of Deeply Meaningful Comments About Poverty And mother Gaia I don't know what gernre that refers to, other than amature singer-songwriter stuff, which nearly everyone hates.

but later, you said this:

I said that ABBA' songs have more musical (melodic) content than most rock offerings

very few rock groups have vocalists who can actually sing, and you can't build a musically excellent group around guitars for a variety of reasons)

Define musically excellent - on second thought, please don't.

Clapton sings better than most rock singers

Most people would disagree with you on this, including Clapton himself. There are a lot of good singers in rock, Clapton, of all people, isn't one of them)

But then you also say this:

You are quite correct that I don't keep a "rock catalogue"

That makes sense when considering your general statements about rock. 

AMEN!

More grandstanding.

As far as I'm concerned McCain's Senate career has long ago cancelled-out his service as a POW and general screw-up as a pilot. My father was a POW in WWII and he didn't run for office or expect everyone to bow down to his heroism for having been captured along with tens of thousands of other unfortunate soldiers and civilians. So I question at this point his "Great American" status as well. Really, I do. He's a passable American. He's a legal American citizen. That, until his immigration bill goes through is still worth something, and he should be grateful for it.

I always thought, I'd be a mom
Sometimes I wish for a mistake
The longer that I wait, the more selfish that I get
You seem like you'd be a good dad

Now all those simple things are simply too complicated for my life
In all I get so faithful to my freedom
A selfish kind of life
When all I ever wanted was the simple things
A simple kind of life

For a long time I was in love
Not only in love, I was obsessed
With a friendship that no one else could touch
It didn't work out, I'm covered in shells

And all I wanted was the simple things
A simple kind of life
And all I needed was a simple man
So I could be the wife

I'm so ashamed, I've been so mean
I don't know how it got to this point
Oh, I always was the one with all love
You came along, I'm hunting you down

Like a sick domestic abuser
Looking for a fight
And all I wanted was the simple things
A simple kind of life

If we met tomorrow for the very first time
Would it start all over again? Would I try to make you mine?

Duane, a little knowledge (about music) is a dangerous thing. You should quit with the analysis. I play guitar and violin and have studied music. I produce music and have played and conversed with musicians much better than I, and some of your statements demonstrate ignorance. 

Like ABBA, that's okay. Explaining they they are more melodic than some other pop and rock groups may be so. But melody is only one element in music, and if you gravitate toward melody that's fine. I like it too, but that doesn't make your taste better.

The piano is not the most versatile instrument. It is a stretch to claim that one instrument is or isn't but the violin can do just about anything - Every instrument has an inherant "flaw" - to use your terminology. 

Any player of any instrument can play different time signatures. 

Songs are usually in one key, so you can plan your instumentation around that key, or, to optimize tone, you can actually use alternate tunings of string instruments for some keys.

Also here is much to apprieciate in simplicity. Most good art is simple.

The Obama administration has enjoyed such freedom to overreach that they have become careless and overconfident. At some point the press has to report, and some things can't be spun. The IRS scandal is a good example, Benghazi, where diplomats were killed and lots of shenanigans and false narratives is another. And because they too were targeted by this obsessively political regime, they become more natural adversaries. The press hates to be lied to, even by their friends.

When the TSA starts screening out registered Democrats for extra searches at airports, then we will have some kind of equivalent in profiling.

This kind of article shows how utterly blinded by partisanship these leftists are. They have no ability to make simple distinctions and conflate different circumstances to their own ends. If the writer is aware, then he/she is deliberately misleading stupid people (you can't mislead smart people like this).

These people are obsessed with finding 'irony' and hypocrisy, and if they have to change reality to make it into some kind of irony, they will do so.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5NrqqK60OI

That's a fun one.

Abba is an easy target to mock, but I'm refraining because their music is basically good. That it is popular means something too, but not that much.

Abba is NOT rock music. It's pop. There are a lot of great rock singers, I don't know how Duane judges singers, but Freddy Mercury, Robert Plant, Paul McCartney, Steve Perry, Steven Tyler, Jon Anderson and many more.....

As to the number of notes/chords, this is no criteria for judging music. If so, then jazz would be considered the best music by far, while other genres, including a lot of classical, would be considered inferior. That's like judging poetry by the number of verbs. 

And the songs chosen for comparison? Puleeze. 

Deeply Meaningful Comments About Poverty And mother Gaia

You must have a really pathetic rock catalogue if that's how you characterize the genre.

If John McCain won in 2008, we would have *Immigration Reform* by now. Say goodbye to the Republican Party and America as we know it because they would never win another election and the USA would be faster becoming a third world left-wing nation.

I wonder what would have happened had Kerry won in 2004? Perhaps we would never have gotten Obama. We might well have a libertarian/conservative or a principled Republican President by now. 

Only looking at the next election, and expecting all the conservatives (and libertarians) to hold their noses and pull for the establishment guy once again because of the big boogeyman - the boogeyman that the tepid moderates will not challenge directly in public (McCain and Romney) and is some kind of "nice guy who means well", doesn't cut it.

The problem is that the GOP employs the lesser-of-evils strategy to get the most moderate GOP establishment-friendly candidate, and some people are tired of rewarding them for taking this approach. It's a game theory consequence.

I recognize there are crazies and morons of all stripes, but those of us who think the problem lies with the GOP insider/consultant/money class can't vote for their feeble clones year after year because of the big bad wolf. In fact, this dynamic helps the left become iteratively more radical.

Republicans move leftward, vainly trying to capture the murky "middle" and the Dems move further leftward so as to make the middle appear between them and the Republicans. Now the middle has moved leftward. Reset the battlefield for the next election. This alone causes more problems than the results of any single election. 

If the GOP candidate wins, what is won, and for how long? Will progress be made, or will we just drift toward the waterfall instead of paddling? Without firmly addressing the underlying issues, won't a GOP POTUS simply postpone the reckoning while paving the way for a new, more left-wing Democrat next time?

Anything by The Steve Miller Band.