Michael Jackson’s Children (Prince Michael II, Paris Jackson, Prince Michael Jackson)

Sometimes I wonder when Michael Jackson began to realize he wanted a lot of children. In his song Can You Feel It he sings to us: Every breath you take is someone’s death in another place: Every healthy smile is hunger and strife to another child. The lyrics told me of his concern for children. Later, his immense philanthropic … Continue Reading

Michael Jackson

Baby boomers loved Michael Jackson. We couldn’t take our eyes off him. We grew up watching his whole life. Folks digging the pop-culture moment thrived on Michael’s work because it was undeniably leading us forward. His twenties decade was filled with transformation and his music had a way of reflecting our social angst. His too. I’m encouraged to analyze and investigate Michael’s subjectivity for the JustSheetMusic audience because I know you are interested in this artist. My earlier piece on Jackson got lots … Continue Reading

Celebrating Ireland’s Recovery With Its Music

The best Eurozone economic news in a long time is that which has come out of Ireland in recent weeks. Ireland is well into recovery, the statistics all tell us, and the rating agency Fitch has upgraded the outlook on its sovereign bonds from negative to stable.

The website of the U.S. news network CNN ran the above photo of some cheerful Irish folk when it noted this turnaround. They are clearly making music and celebrating, although I don’t know … Continue Reading

Image Source: quadriproject.com

If you’re like me, between work and family, there are never enough hours in the day. Perhaps that is why I value alone time with my guitar the most. Learning an instrument can be a relaxing and beautiful experience.
Regardless of age, education, or amount of time throughout the day, the guitar is a wonderful instrument to start on, and I might be as bold to say that the guitar is the best instrument to begin with. Why? The guitar is simple … Continue Reading

A student at the University of Michigan, Fred LaBour, decided to make something up one day in 1969. The ‘something’ was a story that Paul McCartney, of the Beatles, was dead.

As Peter Ames Carlin, in his recent biography of Paul, tells the tale: LaBour didn’t produce the idea completely out of thin air. He had taken a phone call while working in the newsroom on something else, from someone who had put together a few “clues.”

There is a strange incantation at … Continue Reading

Marilyn Monroe June 1, 1926 – August 5, 1962

August 4, 2012 is the 50th year anniversary of the death of screen legend Marilyn Monroe. Or at least, the best estimates are that she died before midnight that day. She was found dead in her home before dawn on August 5, 1962 with empty pill bottles about. Despite conspiracy theories, the consensus view is that the police who first investigated the scene were right: this was a suicide.

Since this is JustSheetMusic, we naturally … Continue Reading

Healing at the Speed of Sound

Healing at the Speed of Sound

By Don Campbell and Alex Doman

Hudson Street Press, New York City, 2011.

288 pages, $25.95

This is the latest in a recent spate of books treating of the psychological, indeed the neurological and embryological, origins of our appreciation for and our human ability to create music.

Such books have been very popular ever since Don Campbell came out with The Mozart Effect in 1997. That book argued for the beneficial … Continue Reading

Railroad-Themed Tunes

From the days of the steam engine, through diesel and electric models, the railroads have proven a potent source of inspiration for the composers of songs and for their lyricists. In recognition of the recent release of the movie Atlas Shrugged I, a movie that has both a railroad corporation and a missing composer as key plot points, we at justsheetmusic would like to present ten of our favorite of the songs that resulted from the romance of the rails. … Continue Reading

Five big 2011 music-news stories

We at www.justsheetmusic.com would like to bid a fond farewell to the year 2011, as we look with hope to the New Year.

Every year is a mixture of good and bad, of victory and despair, in music as in every other human endeavor. Here are five stories that especially caught our attention. Since they’re listed in no particular order, chronological or otherwise, this will be a “bullet point” list rather than an enumeration…. Continue Reading

Tyrants as Music Critics

Dmitri Shostakovich is one of a considerable group of ‘Soviet’ composers: those who continued and expanded upon the Russian musical tradition through the Soviet period, often at grave personal risk from the authorities, because said authorities were trying to force all art into their preferred propagandistic mode, ‘Socialist Realism.’ Shostakovich is often and deservedly mentioned in this connection in the same breath with Prokofiev and Khachaturian.

In 1934, Shostakovich premiered an opera, Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk … Continue Reading