A CD, please.

After yesterday's post, I spent some time on Youtube and found this wonderful clip of Whitney Houston performing at the 1994 American Music Awards. This is a 10 minute clip in which she performs "I Loves You, Porgy", "And I'm Telling You", and "I Have Nothing". Please sit back and enjoy this classic performance.

You can tell a true vocal talent by their delivery of the classics. She was impeccable!

Now you may think that the topic of today's rant will be about Whitney and her entanglement with Bobby. Nope. You might think that I'm disappointed that said entanglement has bruised her career. Not really. I'm eagerly looking forward to new music from Whitney. I'm sure that she will bounce back from her troubles and bless us with something incredible.

Here's the rant: Can I get this performance on cd?!!!! I would love to have this in my ipod for the days that I'm in the mood for classic live vocal performances. Why is it that it's virtually impossible for me to get any of the live performances from the AMAs, the Grammys, or the Oscars? Thank God for youtube, otherwise many of these performances would be lost to the general public after the initial airing. Has no one looked at compiling these performance and selling them as a money making project? As an attorney, I understand that there are probably many legal hurdles in the making of such a recording, but dang! If anyone were to tackle this project, I would think Dick Clark would be the first. Dick, hire me! I'll straighten out the legal issues and get all of these live recordings on dvd and cd.

Blatant Thievery

Beyonce has a new album coming out called "I Am/Sasha Fierce". It's a two disc release that is supposed to reflect two distinctly different sides of her personality. One of the first releases was "Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)". Here's the video.

Catchy tune, although her use of "oh, oh, oh" is becoming old, and the track on this song is eerily similar to "Get Me Bodied" from her last album.

When you search for the above video on Youtube, a clip of Gwen Verdon pops up. She's doing her husband, Bob Fosse's choreography entitled "Mexican Breakfast".

Notice any similarities? No? Well then, watch this.

Here's the rant: Are you kidding me?!!!! Did she just blatantly lift Fosse's choreography? Right there at the beginning. Yep, she sho' did! Okay then, well I must have missed it in the video when she gave Fosse a shout out. I missed it, right? Must have blinked. Let me play it again. Nope, no shout out. I can't believe she stole choreography!

Okay, there is this video of her on BET's "106 & Park" in which she admits to having seen the Verdon clip on Youtube. Here's that clip (play the second video on the site. It's about 20 seconds in). http://hiphop.popcrunch.com/beyonce-106-park-video-october-14/ She said she thought it was cool that it was done in one shot and that she wanted to do something in one take like that because it's different than what videos today look like. Never once did she say anything like, "Fosse is cool and I wanted to honor his choreography and add my own twist to it". Nope. Nothing that remotely sounded like that. I'm an English major, and in my world, this would be called plagerism.

Note: All videos were found on www.youtube.com.