It amazes me how quickly we as a society can become unhinged. Take the latest swine flu hysteria. Regular human influenza each year causes nearly 40,000 deaths in the U.S. alone, but we’re freaking out late in the flu season about…let’s see…zero confirmed deaths in this country?

It’s an old clip from about 10 years ago, but still funny.

From when I first heard the song last summer until just this weekend, I was convinced Lady GaGa was saying “red wine” in the beginning. It kind of makes sense when you listen to the lyrics and see the video.

• When It Was Good – Flipsyde
• Takin’ Back My Love – Enrique Iglesias & Ciara
• American Cowboy – Jada

What’s being said in the beginning of each song is “RedOne” (one of the song’s producers). It’s kind of like a little presentation of who’s song you’re about to hear with a mention of the producers and singers.

And RedOne is suddenly all over the place. So expect to hear this more often over the next few months.

Dust Off That Vinyl, And Make Room For Some New LP’s

Old school record fans will love this posting from the NY POST via All Access Music Group. Sorry I had to post the whole thing here…it’s password protected. If they wanna sue me over free publicity on my blog…go ahead.

NY Post: Best Buy Is Giving Vinyl A Spin

The consumer-electronics giant, the nation’s third-largest music seller behind APPLE’s iTUNES and WAL-MART, is considering devoting eight square feet of merchandising space to vinyl, or enough for just under 200 albums, after testing the idea in 100 of its stores around the country,” writes PETER LAURIA in THE NEW YORK POST.”Vinyl is less than 5% of BEST BUY’s music sales, but the format is growing as CD sales shrink. Vinyl sales grew 15% in 2007 and 89% in ‘08, making the 1.9 million albums purchased last year the most since 1991.And this year is shaping up even better, with 670,000 albums sold by mid-APRIL. By contrast, CD sales have fallen at a roughly 20% clip the last few years. “

To be sure, vinyl’s growth, even combined with digital sales, can’t make up for CDs’ decline. But it shows consumers haven’t abandoned the physical format. “And the fact that a retailer of BEST BUY’s size is willing to expand vinyl offerings is an incremental positive for a beleaguered industry. A typical BEST BUY store features about 16 to 20 square feet of music merchandise and displays 8,000 CDs.

Sid & Marty Krofft were given the Pop Culture Award on the TV Land Awards last night. An award well deserved, even if the Land Of The Lost movie wasn’t coming out in a little over a month.

TV Land paid tribute to some of the Krofft’s many shows with a 9-1/2 minute extravaganza which included Cyndi Lauper, Barry Williams, Clint Black, and a bunch of the Krofft characters.

See the full performance & the Krofft’s acceptance speech on the TV Land website.

Unfortunately, you’ll never see it – the ninjas are way too stealthy for that.

See a report on Modesto, California’s annual Ninja Day Parade here.

Thank you again to Gina for this insane video clip.

Lindsay Lohan For E-Harmony

You can’t say Lindsay Lohan doesn’t have a sense of humor. Check out her bogus and incredibly funny E-Harmony commercial here.

If you’re Canadian, you already know who they are. Most Americans (especially those who don’t live close to the border) are way late on Hedley, just getting introduced to this incredible band.

It probably doesn’t help that Canadian Idol isn’t shown on cable the further from the border you live. Jacob came in 3rd during the second season of the show. And true to the usual pattern of Idol shows, Jacob and Hedley have done better on the charts than the winner of that season (Kalan Porter).

Hedley’s Dave Rosin and Jacob Hoggard stopped by the studio Monday to play a couple songs from their latest CD “Famous Last Words” (Old School and Never Too Late).

See the acoustic performance of Old School on the Star 102.5 website (on the right side of the page in the video box).

Also check out the video for their first big 2005 hit On My Own.

When Susan Boyle’s appearance on Britain’s Got Talent became an internet sensation last week, I figured the 3rd series of the show was over before it barely even begun. But now another star has emerged.

This time, it’s 12-year old Shaheen Jafargholi. Even though the audience loved him right from the start, Simon cut him off quickly and asked him to sing something else. The kid then stunned everyone by switching gears instantly and doing even better than before.

Check it out here (the performance begins at 1:12).

OK, confession time. A long time ago, when I was fooling around in a radio production studio, I recorded a rap song. (Stop laughing at me.)

There was a time, pre-Snoop Dogg, that goofy white guys like me thought we could legitimately do stuff like that. I think I may have even played it for my wife years ago. As I recall, she just looked at me really funny, and implored me to never play it for her again.

The difference between me doing rap and the genius goofy white guys of The Lonely Island Band is vast.

When Incredibad was released back in February, I got an advance copy, and it has been in my car disc player ever since. Anyone familiar with Andy Samberg on SNL has heard a few of these tunes already; “D***k In A Box” and “Lazy Sunday” are two breakthrough videos that have been on YouTube for a couple of years now. What Samberg, and co-writers Jorma Taccone and Akiva Schaffer have done is create an incredibly funny 19 track CD that not only parodies 90s rock, reggae, and hip hop styles, but also serves as an homage to those styles. That’s no easy task. These guys understand and appreciate the music they’re skewering, and the parody is in the writing, which often takes a few listens to fully appreciate.

Take, for instance Ras Trent. Only Andy Samberg could include a lyric about Selassie, and make it funny, and pertinent, in a song about a white Rastafarian college student; or as Samberg puts it, a “rude boy living in the shanty dorms.”

Is every track great? No. Like all great comedy albums, some jokes are funnier than others. But taken as a whole, this is sharp, truly inspired comedy writing, with amazing production values you would not normally expect from a comedy album.

Buy this CD, and I guarantee you’ll find something to laugh uproariously about. (Just don’t play it for the kids – strictly adult listening.)

–Brian

This is so wrong.