October 12, 2011

Ray Stevens: Nostalgia Valley, Part 27...

It's a rainy Wednesday morning...but those Ray Stevens fans in Florida have a lot to cheer about. Three additional concerts have been added to Ray's line-up for early 2012. Previously only the Daytona Beach concert on February 21, 2012 was posted but now there are going to be 3 additional concerts in 2 cities. On February 22 he'll do 2 concerts at the same venue in Lakeland, Florida. As you can imagine it's a day and night performance at the Lakeland Center. The first show is 2:30pm and the second show is 7:30pm. The details are here. On February 23 he'll do a concert at the King Center in Melbourne, Florida. At the moment his web-site indicates the concert is at 1am but that's obviously a typo. This appearance in Melbourne hasn't been added to the venue's web-page yet. I'm often suspicious/skeptical of future concert dates that aren't listed at the venue's page yet but I assume once they go on sale his name will be added to the King Center's web-page. In total this brings his appearances in Florida to 4 concerts during the month of February: 1 in Daytona Beach on February 21 at the Peabody Auditorium; 2 in Lakeland, Florida on February 22; and 1 in Melbourne, Florida on February 23.

Meanwhile...the current music video hit from Ray Stevens, "Mr. President - Mr. President", is continuing to obtain tens of thousands of views each day. In my previous blog I mentioned the video had 177,232 on-line views and that it needed a little over 20,000 additional views to crack the 200,000 mark. The video surpassed that plateau a couple of days ago. When I checked the numbers after my previous blog it was up to 185,843. A further check saw the video with 197,758 views. Still, another check of the numbers the following day saw the video at 208,155. A few minutes ago I looked at the totals and as of now the video's got 218,008 views. As mentioned it's getting tens of thousands of views daily.

On October 11th (yesterday) a new CD from Ray Stevens became available for purchase. The release came from out of nowhere and I was alerted to it by another fan of Ray's. The CD is a collection of songs that are from his past and apparently is designed to introduce a lot of his younger/newer fans to some of the songs that he originally recorded at various points in his career that are no longer in print and are hard to find. Those like myself who have almost everything he's recorded in some format or another (vinyl, cassette, CD, and Mp3) will recognize a lot of the song titles. At Ray's web-store he's posted a note about the CD and he uses the word "re-produce" and so it's a safe bet that the songs are all re-recordings. The original recordings are often owned by whichever label he recorded them for...and a lot of artist's in Ray's generation often have to re-record previous songs just to keep the material in print and available. Since Ray published and produced/arranged just about everything he's recorded he technically owns the actual songs but the recordings are owned by a record company. It gets complex/confusing to a lot of people who don't differentiate between the ownership of the written song and the ownership of the recorded performance of the song. However, there's a slight chance that the CD features the original recordings with new instrumentation.

I plan on purchasing the CD at some point and when I do I'll write a review about it.

This CD is titled Bozo's Back Again. Longtime fans will immediately recognize this song. There is one song on the CD that I've never heard and I believe it's the only new song on the whole CD. It's the song called "Priceless". You can check the CD and it's contents at his web-store located here. As you'll notice, the CD's got 12 songs altogether. Several of the songs date back to his 1982 and 1983 albums. The oldest song on here to get re-recorded is 1977's "Dixie Hummingbird".

1. Bozo's Back Again
2. Priceless
3. Just For The Hell Of It
4. Oh, Leo Lady
5. Game Show Love
6. Another Fine Mess
7. My Dad
8. Me
9. Kings And Queens
10. Dixie Hummingbird
11. Written Down In My Heart
12. Ruby Falls

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