October 23, 2011

Revisiting Ray Stevens, Part 13...

If one takes a look at Amazon's search results for Ray Stevens CD's you'll come across three CD releases that according to the information will be released in January 2012.

Everything Is Beautiful
Turn Your Radio On
Misty

The bizarre thing about these releases is that they feature the same picture of Ray Stevens...two of the CD's contain the exact same picture, color scheme, and lettering while a third CD just features the same picture of Ray. The picture comes from 1970 during a performance on a television program. I'd say it's from his 1970 summer TV show. The CD's are being released by a label known as Pazzazz Records. As of this writing there is no track listing available and so it's pretty difficult to dissect the CD's without knowing what's on them...the second time around. The one titled Everything Is Beautiful features 2 CD's while the other collections feature just 1 CD each.

The ironic thing is these collections were previously available several years ago. The CD titled Misty was originally released in 2006 and it featured 15 songs. I'm assuming that with the resurgence of Ray's mainstream popularity, thanks to 2009's "We The People" music video on You Tube, that Pazzazz is hoping to tap into an even larger audience than before!?

To further explain what I just wrote read the following...

Prior to 2009 it's safe to assume that only the devoted fans, the dedicated fans, and comedy music fans in general were purchasing Ray's products and going to his concerts.

You see this happening much more in country music than in pop music but once an artist gets established and builds a fan base it's pretty much set in stone that no matter what happens in the music industry and whether a singer is on the radio anymore or not it's always been a safe bet that the fans would continue to show support for their favorite artist well after the general public's moved on to someone else. So, not surprisingly, the last thing the general public knew of Ray Stevens prior to 2009 were his early and mid 1990's TV commercials for a string of music video projects and they also recalled his Branson, Missouri theater (which he performed in during 1991 through 1993 and again from 2004-2006). What that means is that the general public knew very little of Ray's contemporary happenings and many assumed he retired years ago or assumed he was not even among the living. A lot of people were far more familiar with his older recordings than they were his recent recordings. Keeping all that in mind...December 2009 rolls around and "We The People" hits You Tube. The song/video became known as 'Obama Care' by many people who discovered the video...even today bloggers refer to the song as 'Obama Care' instead of it's actual title.

Anyway, once the video became an on-line hit, hundreds upon hundreds of people were shocked and they started asking one another "is this the same Ray Stevens who did The Streak?? I thought he died!". As I mentioned several blogs ago many people actually thought Ray died years ago. Since so many people, judging by their on-line comments, hadn't kept up with Ray's career I've since started referring to the period of 1999-2009 as the lost decade. In some of the comments at You Tube several people mentioned that they hadn't heard much about Ray since the days of "The Streak" way back in 1974! Since those comments came in December 2009 it meant that 35 years had passed between the release of that song and "We The People". I found it hard to believe that people hadn't heard much about Ray in more than 30 years but yet that's what a lot of people were saying.

Obviously with the video being political and a protest against what amounts to Government run health care there have been a long list of critics (liberal-progressives) who belittled the song and it's fans and marginalized Ray Stevens and his fans. Since the release of the video Ray's become associated with the Tea Party and often performs at political fundraisers sponsored by Tea Party organizations. The political direction in his career took some people by surprise...a very few early on pulled the familiar "I've been a long time fan but..." routine...yet by and large Ray's fans had no animosity toward his decision to do political comedy. If truth be known, much of Ray's political feelings mirrored his fans' political beliefs, so I've always felt that the ones complaining about the political overtones in his music are either not interested in politics at all or they never were fans to begin with and are just saying they were to create a negative perception that they hoped would be spread around and accepted as reality.

Fast forwarding to 2011...and 20,000,000+ on-line views later...yes, you read that correctly...according to the stats at Ray's You Tube channel his total upload views are 20,408,237. This is the total of the number of on-line views of each of his music videos added together. Five of his videos have gotten at least 1,000,000 views while quite a few others have gotten half a million. The current view totals for the Top-10 Ray Stevens video uploads are as follows...

1. Come to the USA; 2010: 5,609,434 views
2. We The People; 2009: 4,573,905 views
3. Mississippi Squirrel Revival (1992); 2009: 1,521,109 views
4. The Streak (1992); 2009: 1,347,695 views
5. Osama Yo' Mama (2001); 2009: 1,192,006 views
6. Obama Budget Plan; 2011: 828,182 views
7. God Save Arizona; 2010: 819,238 views
8. Throw the Bums Out; 2010: 817,419 views
9. Caribou Barbie; 2010: 455,319 views
10. Thank You (2004); 2010: 411,598 views

...and the current video, at the moment, is ranked #14 among Ray's most-viewed uploads:

***14. Mr. President - Mr. President; 2011: 269,288 views***

Notice the numbers gap between video #9 and video #8. Ray's current video's only been on-line for 3 weeks and we'll see how high it rises in the days and weeks to come. His previous video is ranked #6.

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