Reach Out (I'll Be There) - Music of the Four Tops

This picture of The Four Tops courtesy of wikipedia.org

 

As I write this blog post, I'm listening to songs by the group that this post is all about, The Four Tops.  I know that I'm three months late in saying it, but I was very shocked one weekend when I heard that Levi Stubbs, founder and lead vocalist of The Four Tops died in his sleep on October 17, 2008.  I'm sure all fans of The Four Tops were shocked and sad when they heard the news.  The Four Tops, with Levi Stubbs as lead vocalist, had many great hits for Motown back in the 60's, which include the hits "Bernadette", "Standing In The Shadows Of Love", "Ask The Lonely" and so on.

 

My favourite songs by The Four Tops have to be "Baby I Need Your Loving", "I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch)", "It's The Same Old Song" and "Reach Out (I'll Be There)", but they have so many other great songs.  I've yet to own a Greatest Hits or Best Of compilation, but I will get there eventually.  I've got some of their songs scattered over different CDs, some Motown CDs and some Classic Hits Radio CDs made here in Australia.  For years I have wondered who sang "Baby I Need Your Loving" because for as long as I can remember, I've been listening to a radio station here in Brisbane called 4KQ (I mentioned them in my last post about Elton John), then I eventually found out it was The Four Tops.  I eventually found out they done a lot of other songs I really like (see my list of favourite songs)!

 

I was surprised when I read on a Wikipedia page that Levi Stubbs actually had a baritone voice and that Holland-Dozier-Holland, Motown's songwriting team, wrote The Four Tops' songs so that Levi had to sing in a tenor voice instead of baritone because they wanted him to sound like there is a sense of urgency in the songs.  I thought that was a pretty good idea because that's how we've come to know so many great songs by this great group, and the sad thing is that there is apparently only one surviving member left from the original Four Tops lineup, but I forgot what his name is.  Another great song I really like is the Four Tops and the Supremes duet of "River Deep Mountain High", it is so much different to Ike & Tina Turner's and Celine Dion's versions!

 

In my opinion, The Four Tops' songs are emotionally driven with great music and melodies, fantastic lyrics and amazing vocals and harmonies.  In fact, one of Australia's famous groups, Human Nature, has made 3 albums full of Motown classics, including some of The Four Tops' great music and I do feel they do these songs justice, they are just as good as the originals!  Actually, I've actually been to a Human Nature concert where they have done the whole concert of Motown songs (well...actually, Human Nature did sing some of their own songs, but only acoustically and short versions), which was fantastic, they even got the audience to participate as well, which I thought was great!  I've actually got plans to buy Human Nature's box set containing their 3 Motown covers album and a live concert DVD of the Motown songs in concert!  The box set is called The Motor City Collection!  All I can say here is well done to Human Nature for doing such a great job at covering all those fantastic Motown artists and their songs!

 

It's a shame that many of the members of the Four Tops are no longer with us, but as long as we keep introducing their music to younger generations to come, I don't think their music will ever be forgotten!  Hopefully the music of the 60's, 70's and 80's will be remembered for many years and decades to come, from generation to generation, it's a nice thought to think of!

Blurry Web Font Problem in Internet Explorer 7

This afternoon, I helped Mum out with a problem she was having in Internet Explorer 7.  While Mum was checking over her latest blog post, she noticed all the apostrophes in her posts were looking like they were coloured blue.  I had installed Internet Explorer 7 on Mum's computer on yesterday and she really liked it, but she told me that, apart from the apostrophes being a blue colour, she has also noticed the font on most sites appeared blurry.  Having a visual impairment, I had never noticed it and, being that I'm mainly a Mozilla Firefox user and rarely go into IE 7 apart from when I need to, it's never been a problem for me.

 

After comparing the differences on both of our computers using IE7 (they looked the same, but when you zoom anywhere above 100%, the apostrophes looked like normal black, but when we put it back to 100%, it looked blue.  I figured it was the blurry font Mum was on about, so I did a Google search on "Blurry text in Internet Explorer 7" and it showed me a link to a Microsoft Support page explaining what to do.  I followed the instructions on my own computer and Mum's computer and when I restarted IE 7, Mum didn't have the blue apostrophes any more and web fonts were no longer blurry.  A huge thanks to Google for making it sooooo easy to solve problems!!!!

 

Anyway, in case you're interested, I've noted the fix below.  Apparently, it's all because of ClearType technology.  I don't exactly know what it is, but all I know is that it makes text on LCD screens look much more smoother with no jagged edges (well, it's supposed to do that).

 

In Internet Explorer 7, click on the Tools menu (if the menu bar is hidden, there should be a Tools option with an arrow beside it under the Search box)

 

1. Click on Internet Options,
2. Click on the Advanced tab,
3. Under Multimedia (in the section that allows you to check/uncheck options), uncheck the option marked Always Use ClearType for HTML,
4. Click OK, that won't change anything yet,
5. Close and restart Internet Explorer 7.  You should notice a BIG difference!

 

I do hope you find this information handy, it really helped me and Mum out!  Don't you just hate it when you come across an annoying problem with computers?  I'm sure most people do.

Book Review: Inkheart by Cornelia Funke

This picture is courtesy of Fishpond.com.au

 

Well everyone, last month, I have managed to finish reading a book that my sister, Michelle, and her boyfriend, Alex, got me for my birthday in August!  The book is called Inkheart and written by Cornelia Funke and, I can tell you now, I'm as big a fan of it as I am of The Chronicles Of Narnia and Harry Potter!  In case many of you have never read the book before, I won't spoil it for you because, lets face it, we all hate it when someone tells us the story in the books before we read it......it's a spoiler for me because it takes away the excitement of not knowing.

 

Even though I can't tell you about what the book contains, I'll just tell you enough to get you interested if you have never heard of it.  The story is about a girl named Meggie and her father called Mo.  Both Meggie and Mo love reading books, but Mo has never read aloud to Meggie since her mother disappeared years ago in a mysterious way.  One night, a stranger shows up at their house and gives Mo a warning, which gives Mo no choice but to reveal a secret to Meggie, and it is that secret that will change their lives forever!  Something happens when Mo reads aloud, see if you can guess what it is before Mo tells Meggie, that is, if you do read the story!

 

Inkheart is the first book in the Inkheart Trilogy and I have to say I really enjoyed every bit of the book.  I enjoyed it so much, I rate it 5 stars on a scale from 1 to 5!  The thing I love about my copy of Inkheart is that at the end of the main story, it contains two sneak preview chapters from the next book in the series, which is Inkspell and I can tell you now, after reading those two chapters, I want to get Inkspell very badly, I can't wait to read it!  The third book in the Trilogy, Inkdeath, got released on Monday, October 6!

 

Hey, I almost forgot to mention that Inkheart has been made into a movie!  How great is that?  I can't wait to see it, I reckon it's going to be pretty good, but I don't think it'll be as good as the book.  I think it's being released in January 2009 in the US, but I don't know about the UK or Australian release, I hope it'll be around the same time as the US release.  If you'd like to see the trailer for the movie, head over to the Inkheart movie site and you'll find it there!  You'll find other Inkheart related sites in my links bar at the side!   I strongly recommend Inkheart and you can watch this space for my reviews of Inkspell and Inkdeath, the two remaining books in the series, which I just recently purchased!

The Chronicles of Narnia: Books, Movies and Audiobooks

This picture is courtesy of Fishpond.com.au

 

A few months ago, I had the opportunity to watch the movie, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe when my younger brothers, Reece and Aaron, hired it out from the video shop.  My sister and two brothers used to watch The Chronicles Of Narnia TV series back in the early 90's but I never did because I thought I wouldn't like it.  After watching the later movie, I am now as hooked on The Chronicles Of Narnia series as I am with the Harry Potter series!  My youngest brother, Aaron, is nine years old and he also watched the movie for the very first time.

 

After watching the movie, I instantly went onto the website of the local library to see if I could hire out some of the Narnia books by C. S. Lewis and I was able to get hold of two or three of the Narnia books.  While browsing the the library web site, I also saw some Narnia audiobooks!  Beside the ones I saw, it said "Performed by a full cast", which made me think it was the people who played in the movie doing the audiobooks as well, so I also requested some of those audiobooks!  Being legally blind, I sometimes find it easier to listen to stories rather than reading them!   I started reading The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe, then listened to the audiobook of The Magician's Nephew!  I was surprised to hear that it wasn't a normal audiobook with one or more people reading parts of the book, it was a dramatisation of the book with sound effects and music, which I think is much better than a normal audiobook!  I looked at the box containing the CDs for The Magician's Nephew audiobook and I saw the name Radio Theatre at the top of the front of it, which made me very interested!  I fully enjoyed listening to the dramatised audiobooks and also The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe book!

 

Thanks to my wonderful Mum, I was able to buy my own copies at great prices, when she found a book site online called Fishpond which offered some great deals.   Fishpond doesn't just have books for sale, they have music and movies as well, which I was also very happy about, but books are the main area where all the great deals are!   I managed to find the Radio Theatre audiobooks that I borrowed from the library, but even better, they had the complete Chronicles Of Narnia series box set from Radio Theatre!  I kept searching through those eight or nine 'search result' pages until I came across a box set containing all of The Chronicles Of Narnia books!  Even though there were heaps of box sets of all the Narnia books, they were all pretty expensive.   I then came across The Chronicles Of Narnia book set that has a box tie-in for Prince Caspian, the latest, newest Narnia movie now out by Disney and Walden Media!  Mum ordered the Radio Theatre CD set and that Narnia book box set for me, which I paid for (both sets were originally over $100 (in Australian dollars), but I got them quite cheap, which is pretty good!

 

I impatiently waited for my order as I was going on holiday for a week and was hoping they would come before I left.  My prayers were answered when one set arrived the day before I was to leave and the other set arrived only a few hours before I left for my holiday.   Needless to say, I was stoked to be able to take the Narnia books with me.  If I had a working CD Walkman, I probably would have taken the CDs as well, but that wasn't possible.  I read book one of the Narnia series, The Magician's Nephew, while I was on the holiday and finished the book when I got back home.  I'm now up to book two, The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe.  Even though I read the version I got from the library, I'm happy to read it again and I can't wait to read the rest of the books!  I was able to listen to the Radio Theatre Narnia CDs as soon as I got back from holiday and I really enjoyed listening to them!  I eventually noticed writing at the top of the Radio Theatre name.  Being legally blind, I didn't notice the words Focus on The Family until a few weeks ago, so I think it is actually Focus on The Family Radio Theatre.  One thing I noticed about the CD dramatisations of The Chronicles Of Narnia compared to the ones I got from the library is that Douglas Gresham hosts them and talks about the stories and his memories at the beginning of each story, which is what I enjoy about them.  It's nice to hear a bit of history before the stories start, such as their original names, etc!

 

I also noticed another version of The Chronicles Of Narnia on Fishpond, which I will eventually buy.  It is just another dramatised version, except that the BBC are behind the making of these ones, not Focus on The Family Radio Theatre.  I recently borrowed a few of the BBC dramatised CDs out of the library recently as well and they're done quite differently to the above mentioned ones.  It is hard for me to explain about it, but I do plan to buy the BBC dramatised versions, which is also in a complete box set!  The BBC were actually the ones who made The Chronicles Of Narnia TV series that my brothers and my sister used to watch when we were kids.

 

I have recently finished reading a different book so, stay tuned, as I will be posting a book review on that one in a few days.