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Last Updated: 11/30/2009

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Status: Single
City: ATLANTA
State: Georgia
Country: US
Signup Date: 6/23/2008

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Monday, September 07, 2009

R&B Diva Smackdown - Whitney Houston vs. Vanessa Williams
Category: Music

Who in their right mind would have the temerity to compare Whitney Houston and Vanessa Williams? One is a living music legend, influencer of an entire generation of singers from Amy Keyes to Christina Auguilera to Beyonce, an iconic figure. The other a extremely talented singer probably still best known for a fall from grace a quarter century ago. Well lets see the tale of the tape:

Age - Both are 46

Record Sales - Whitney - 230 million+
                       Vanessa - 6 million+

Grammys - Whitney - 8
                  Vanessa - 0 * 15 nominations the Susan Lucci of the Grammys

Studio Releases - Whitney - 6
                           Vanessa - 8

Scandals - Whitney - Bobby Brown, rumored drug addiction
                 Vanessa - Penthouse Magazine

So why the comparative? Well to paraphrase Marlon Brando in Julius Ceaser I come to both bury AND praise someone.

Whitney Houston is done. Stick a fork in her. It pains me to write this as I am maybe the biggest Whitney Houston fan alive. She has one of the five greatest voices in music history - Ella, Aretha, Barbara territory. But she has not been relevant since the Waiting to Exhale soundtrack in 1995. Fifteen years ago. Let me say it again: FIFTEEN YEARS AGO!!! MTV still played music videos. IPODs and Wi had not been invented. Pre-Monica Lewinsky. Hell Barack Obama was still in his community organizer phase. In other words musically its ancient history. Yeah I know Just Whitney was released in 2002 and sold 4 million copies. So what? Do you know anyone that has it? Better yet if you do do you know anyone that still plays it? Michael Jackson sold millions of copies of Dangerous and it just didnt matter. Whitneys Central Park performance may go down in history as her Waterloo. Painful to watch such unadulterated greatness fall so far. The recently released I Look To You should have been retitled I Just Cant Do it Anymore. She is just a shell of her former self and its hard to witness. Painful. Whitney is in danger of turning into Michael Jackson. For those over 30 MJ is a musical genius without parellel. For those under 30 he is a circus freak.

Vanessa is aging like a fine wine. Remarkably she is just getting better. Almost like she is just hitting her stride. Her just released The Real Thing may represent her most complete work yet. A beautiful complilation of songs delivered almost with perfection. An eclectic mix of music that titillates the senses. Due to the times in which we live it will not recieve its full due if it gets any at all. Shameful. Vanessa got up off the mat after that whole Penthouse imbriglio. Took major guts and major talent to do that. Multi-talented in almost a Sammy Davis Jr mold - sing, dance, act. Tonys and Emmys in her bag. She is on her way to having a Gladys Knight type career where you turn around and its 30 years after she started and you are still buying tickets to her concerts. Stunning because noone saw this coming, maybe not even her.

Whitney and Vanessa both came into our conciousness in the mid-80s. Whitney is like Barry Bonds and Vanessa is like Tony Gwynn, one was the standard by which all others were judged and the other just kept gettin hits. Turned around and Tony was in the Hall of Fame, Who saw that coming when he started out? I think of Vanessa in the same way. Whitney is almost out of date. An older woman who should have rethought that mini-skirt. Vanessa might be this generations Nancy Wilson. Tortoise and the Hare. We all know how that turned out.

3:14 AM

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Monday, June 29, 2009

Micheal Jackson and Other Musings
Current mood:

animated

I have'nt done this in a minute to here goes nothing

.

I miss Michael Jackson. Unlike the celebrity sniffing muckrakers I choose to celebrate his talent and what he left behind. Someone was qouted as saying " he had so much more to give". Had'nt he given enough? How greedy are we anyway? The man RULED from 1969-1991. On top. No breaks. No fading from the spotlight and resurrecting herself like Aretha Franklin. Continous success. 750 million records sold. Isnt that more than McDonalds has sold hamburgers? A truly mindboggling achievement. And dont mention todays "superstars" that owe thier entire existence to Michael Jackson. Paging Usher and Justin Timberlake. Micheal Jackson was bigger than ELvis. Bigger than the Beatles, People today are crying from Beijing to Sydney. He intergrated MTV when there were no black artists on the channel. The story with that is that Sony was goin to refuse to give MTV artsits like Springsteen if MTV didnt put Michael Jackson is its rotation. Speaking of which - I wish there still existed a music channel that would seek out and talk to the people he collaborated with on his music. Like Q, Siedah Garrett, Rod Temperton {wrote alot of the songs on Off The Wall} or Lionel Richie. Thats the story I want to read and hear about. How his creative genius flowed. The late Michael Peters talked about the untrained Michael Jackson bein the greatest dancer he had ever worked with. Leave all the salacious details to the TMZ crowd. Its boring and uninteresting. I am 2 years younger than Michael Jackson. I grew up with him and his music changed my life. I will be forever grateful. RIP Michael Jackson.

I got into a debate {read "arguement" with some younger people over the state of todays R&B music. I maintain R&B is dead. Deader than Julius Ceaser. It absolutely kills me to write that, If were to go all Law and Order in here P Diddy {or whatever he is calling himself these days} and Jermaine Dupri would be prime suspects currently out on bail. Is it me or as someone once said about baseball, can anyone sing anymore? Becuase Neyo, Chris Brown, Bobby Valentino et all are not it. What has happened? More importantly why and how did it happen? How did actual talent and singing ability become passe? Moreover, why are we so passive about it? I have long maintained in abscence of water people will drink anything and that is exactly what is happening right now. When the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has inductions in 2025 there wont be anyone from the R&B world to put in there. Nada. Sqaut. Diddly, I will accept bein labeled a "hater' {I will resist the orge to digress on how stupid and lame that phrase really is} all day long if it will change things and allow talent to once again be celebrated.

I finallly finished watching the John Mayer DVD my wife got me for my bday 6 months ago. Stunning. Riveting. Mayer is this generations James Taylor. No greater praise can I offer than that. Additionally, if you are not on the Sarah Bereilles bandwagon yet get on it before all the seats are gone. She is this generations Carole King, Both of these immensely talented artists I believe will be tranformative, Feel free to leave and Google now.

Lastly, when music sales are cratering, falling off the table adults 40+ are the only segment of buyers that actually INCREASED their buying last year. According to the RIAA, buyers 40-44 increased 37%, buyers 45+ increased 36%, combined buyers 40+accounted for 45% of ALL music sold last year, Buyers 45+ bought 1 out of 3 of all music sold in 2008. Wny is the entire music industry geared towards adult 15-29? Record labels, Tv stations, radio all geared towards a group that bought only 29% of music sold in 2008, If these geniused were in a Harvard Business School with a plan like that they would get an F. People that market thier music products towards adults with the money and passion for music will win. Period,

3:04 PM

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Thursday, January 08, 2009

Your Music
Current mood:

cantankerous
Category: Music

Welcome to my new music blog. My name is Charles K. Cunningham and I am the CEO of Chaz Communications LLC and the Executive Producer of the musicheckLive music series {more about that in a bit}. I started writing this blog basically becuase I care about music and the state of music today. At the risk of souding like an out of touch old fogie {im 47 and currently holding}, I am of the considered opinion that music and the music business as a whole is in the sorriest shape I have ever seen. Talent- lacking and damn near dried up. Direction - non existent. Hope - almost none. I mean where is the music for people like me who still care about talent? Noone seems to care. Certainly not former friends like MTV, BET and VH1. Certainly not commercial radio. I love my old standbys like Frank, Luther, Anita and James Taylor. But nothing beats new. New car, new house, new girlfriend. It's fresh and interesting. Full of wonderment and discovery. New talented artists grab you by the throat and compel you to listen. John Legend doesnt do that. Fergie doesnt do that. I hear all the time from people "Give them time and they will grow into greatness". I submit noone grows into greatness. When they hit you radio, IPOD or whatever they are already great. You knew Marvin Gaye was great from the first play. Same with Prince. I knew John Mayer was destined for greatness from the first time i heard My Stupid Mouth. Artists just have it. Rather they used to have it. Who knew then that the 80s represented a musical renaissance never to be seen again. George Michael, Michael Jackson {solo}, all those R&B songstresses like Anita, Regina, Miki. The land was fertile and the top soil ran deep.

Well my friends {sorry John McCain} all is not lost. I know lots of artists with the chops to send you on nostalgic trips to a not so long ago time. This blog will bring them to you in stunning technicolor. Along the way with your indulgence I will rail against the music atrocities that are committed daily. I will dazzle you with the talent right under your noses. If you are over 30 this is your salvation. The moment you have been waiting for. YES! Someone finally gets it. We will focus on what are the most mainstream music genres: rock, soul and jazz. Those are the music genres I know the best.

What makes me qaulified to determine who's good and who is'nt you might ask? Well I have been a music fan since I was a small child. My first music purchase was when I was 7 { a stack of 78s I bought at a yard sale, Brahms, Debussey etc}. I bought 45s when I was 12 {Elton John, Paul McCartney and Wings} that melted in the back window of the car. My mother sang with The Platters, my sister with The Duke Ellington Ochestra. In short I have a terrific ear for music.

As I alluded to earlier I am the Exec Producer of a music series called musicheckLive {mL}. mL is a music and social experience for music lovers 30+ featuring compelling talent and a congenial atsmophere. You can get more information by visting www.musicheck.com. I will be musing on a nightly basis so the updates to this blog shall be, shall we say frequent. I hope you enjoy the content and tell your friends. If you have comments or artists you want to turn me onto you can email me at ckcunningham@musicheck.com. We been music fans for a long time. Lets take our music back. Ciao.