Author: Mark Alexander

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Released 38 Years Ago Today

Madonna: True Blue (1986)

From Behind the Grooves:

“True Blue”, the third album by Madonna is released. Produced by Madonna, Patrick Leonard and Stephen Bray, it is recorded at Channel Recording in Los Angeles, CA from December 1985 – April 1986. After the massive whirlwind success of the “Like A Virgin” album and “The Virgin Tour”, the pop superstar does not rest on her laurels, beginning work on the crucial follow up at the end of 1985. Working with long time collaborator Stephen Bray and new producer Patrick Leonard (Michael Jackson, Jody Watley), the album is praised upon its release as her strongest effort to date, and is widely regarded today as one of the best albums of her career. It spins off five top five hits including “Live To Tell” (#1 Pop), “Papa Don’t Preach” (#1 Pop), “Open Your Heart” (#1 Pop) and the title track (#3 Pop). “True Blue” also marks the beginning Madonna’s long association with famed fashion photographer Herb Ritts who shoots the LP’s iconic cover photo. The original LP package also includes a poster of the album cover shot. As a promotion for the album, MTV sponsors the “Make My Video” contest, inviting viewers to submit their own visual interpretations of the title track. The winning entry comes from Angel Gracia and Cliff Guest, whose black & white clip is rotated heavily on the video channel. The pair are awarded a check for $25,000 by the pop superstar herself at MTV’s New York studios. The alternate video directed by James Foley, featuring Madonna with close friends actress Debi Mazur and fashion designer Erika Belle is shown largely outside the US. Madonna also supports the album with the worldwide “Who’s That Girl Tour” beginning in June of 1987. It is remastered and reissued on CD in 2001, with the extended 12″ mixes of “La Isla Bonita” and the title track included as bonus tracks. The vinyl LP is reissued in Europe in 2012, including the original inner sleeve lyric sheet and poster featured in the original release. In October of 2016, a limited edition release of the LP pressed on blue vinyl, is issued as exclusive through the European supermarket chain Sainsbury’s. “True Blue” spends five weeks at number one on the Billboard Top 200, and is certified 7x Platinum in the US by the RIAA.

Of course I have it on CD too!

My unbridled love for this album and the accompanying quest to acquire it on “true blue” vinyl has been well documented on this blog, so I won’t add anything more today and instead will sign off and go listen to it.

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Well, This Explains It

ICYMI or forgot about the Right Wing owner of CNN…

“The leading shareholder in Warner Brothers Discovery is John Malone, a multibillionaire cable magnate.

Malone describes himself as a ‘libertarian’ although he travels in rightwing Republican circles. In 2005, he held 32% of the shares of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation. He is on the board of directors of the Cato Institute. In 2017, he donated $250,000 to Trump’s inauguration.

Malone has said he wants CNN to be more like Fox News because, in his view, Fox News has ‘actual journalism’. Malone also wants the ‘news’ portion of CNN to be ‘more centrist.”

He’s also the largest individual land owner in the country.

IT WAS A SET UP.

For trump.

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Here’s Who Should REALLY Drop Out of the Race

From Palmer Report:

Immediately after the Biden-Trump debate ended, numerous talking heads on MSNBC and CNN either suggested that Biden should drop out of the race, or claimed that discussions were underway for Biden to drop out of the race. Shortly thereafter, the New York Times published an op-ed calling for Biden to drop out. The rationale from all of them was the same: after Biden’s debate performance, he supposedly had no chance of defeating Trump.

But a funny little thing like reality is now coming into play. Some of these same outlets had focus groups that declared Biden the winner of the debate. And in the first major post-debate poll released, Biden has gained a point and is now ahead of Trump.

These are just individual data points, but they fall precisely in line with what one could have reasonably expected. Neither Biden nor Trump came off well in the debate, so it therefore wasn’t going to help or hurt either one of them by any meaningful measure.

So here’s the real question. When the dust settles and we see that the debate didn’t hurt Biden at all, will MSNBC and CNN and the New York Times all agree to drop out of journalism? At the least they should all formally apologize to their audiences for what was at best an incredibly clueless take suggesting that they have no idea how politics even works, and at worst an intentionallyfull of crap take suggesting that they were misleading their audiences on purpose.