I know I’m technically a day late for the recognition of the beginning of Black History Month, but yesterday was a looong work day. That’s my excuse and I’m sticking with it. At least it’s the truth

I came up with this idea to profile a legendary, by my definition, artist every day for the month of February. You will learn a little history, remember or be exposed to a few songs, and be encouraged to rock to some old school music. It’s time to celebrate! It’s Black History month.

Lady Gaga. She opened the show and was a hot mess! I loved Lady Gaga’s music until I saw her perform months ago. She is just too much. She does all of this with her outfits only to be talked about the next day. That’s a good marketing plat. But, she can not perform! If you look at the replay of her performanc, she is super stuff! Then, she pulls Elton John into her performance and he has all kinds of dust, paint and mess on his face with sparkle sunglasses on. #FAIL!

Green Day. A Whoooooole lot of people on stage, but a good performance and great harmonies. The drummer was so into it!

Beyonce.. She made me confused. She didn’t accept her award, which she received right before her performance, but could perform. #FAIL. Her weave looked a mess. Homegirl can sang tho because she tore the stage up! She sang If I were a Boy, but I’m sure I was not the only one expecting something else…like Put A Ring on It. Then, she sang a cover of Alanis Morissette’s You Oughta Know. It was bomb too because I love that song. What was with her rolling around on her knees though? That was a mess! P.S. Jay-Z I think you better take note of Bey’s song selection. She aint singing these hate songs for nothing.

Pink. I remember Pink from way back – when she had Pink hair. I don’t know what it is with her know. Barely no clothes on. When will people realize that sex is not the only way to sell!?! Besides not knowing a single word she said, her performance was awesome. I don’t know if she was actually singing, but even if she was lip synching – having to do all that while twirling from the ceiling and looking graceful is enough! She must be taking some kinda intro into Cirque de Soleil class because that’s the second time she’s done a circus act performance. Get it girl.

Black Eyed Peas. I was so excited to see the Black Eyed Peas perform, but looks like they needed another week of practice. They sang my jam Imma Be, but when they mixed tracks to sing I Got a Feeling, the beat got allllll messed up. It took the band 5 seconds too long to catch the beat! They did get me crunk tho. Can’t hate on the BEP because I love them :/

Lady Antebellum. I never heard of the group, but their song, I Need You Now, was nice. I’ll be downloading their album tomorrow…

Zac Brown Band. Don’t remember too much about their performance. However, they did win Best New Artist, which I don’t understand how. The Ting Tings or MGMT should have taken that award. I guess I can give them props because they are from Georgia. On to the next…

Taylor Swift + Stevie Nicks = Super Fail! Taylor was super flat and sounded a ham! I can’t believe they sang one song together, and then Stevie picks up a tambourine. You give a legend like that a tambourine and you need to get kicked off stage! Stevie should have run that show and had Taylor on as backup.

MJ Tribute. What about Us? Celine Dion, Usher, Carrie Underwood, Jennifer Hudson, Smokie Robinson: The first real performance of the night! 5 great singers. Well rehearsed. In tune. Flawless.

Bon Jovi. NO performance can compare to the MJ tribute. It was hard to focus after the tribute. Jennifer Nettles performed. Bon Jovi performed Living on A Prayer – which was chosen by the fans watching at home during the show.

Mary J. Blige. She sang Bridge Over Troubled Waters with Andrea Bocelli. Mary is always classy and the performance was a great duet. This was grown folks music. Not that immature, childish mess that dominates mainstream media.

Dave Matthews Band. He’s. Still. Hot. He had a stage full of artists, musicians, and singers all up there to perform with him. I don’t know the last time the Dave Matthews Band was nominated for a Grammy, but they will always be welcome to sing at the Grammys in my book. They are a staple of American music culture. I don’t have their latest album, but the performance of You and Me was great. Will be getting tomorrow…

Maxwell. Performing live sounds just like the album version. Whew Lawd! He performed Pretty Wings and I just watched in amazement. Definitely not the best he could have been because his voice was a little hoarse, but he did exceptionally well. The performance ended with a collaboration with Roberta Flack singing Where is the Love? Roberta’s voice is unchanged, sounding exactly the same as she did years ago. I pray for her because her health does not appear to be the same as she was somewhat stiff on stage and did not move. She was amazing to be performing at 72 years old. Please appreciate and recognize this musical legend while she is still with us on Earth.

I think Jeff Beck performed but I missed it. Oopps. Had to warm up a snack.

Lil Wayne, Drake, Eminem, and Travis Barker on the drums. This was one of the hottest performances of the night! I was super crunk when listening. I just needed the sound to be there 100% and it wasn’t. I don’t know if the performance was censored or if there was connection issues, but we didn’t wait all night to have the sound go out. JUST WHACK!

Its 11:45 now…I’m out!

Tonight you need to be at home! Or, I’ll let you slide if you are attending a Haiti fundraiser. Beginning at 8pm EST (7pm CST) MTV’s “Hope for Haiti Now: A Global Benefit for Earthquake Relief” will broadcast across a number of networks, including MTV. There will be over 100 celebrities and influencers broadcasting live all over the globe, from LA to NY to London to Haiti, to help raise money for the reconstruction of Haiti.

Performers include Wyclef Jean, Madonna, Alicia Keys, Kid Rock, Jay-Z, Bruce Springsteen, Rihanna, Christina Aguilera, Dave Matthews, Justin Timberlake and tons more. I’m super excited because this concert will be one of a kind. Some artists will perform songs that have never been heard before, while we we also see collaborations from artists we never thought we would see on the same stage. The telethon will also feature actors, television hosts, athletes, and singers who will be answering the phones. That will be an epic sight to see.

Make sure you tune in. I’m sure out of ALL these channels the telethon will air on, there is one that you can watch – whether you have cable or not: BC, CBS, NBC, Fox, CNN, BET, The CW, HBO, MTV, VH1, CMT, PBS, TNT, Showtime, Comedy Central, Bravo, E! Entertainment, National Geographic Channel, Oxygen, G4, CENTRIC, Current TV, Fuse, MLB Network, EPIX, Palladia, SoapNet, Style, Discovery Health, Planet Green, CNN en Español, HBO Latino and Canadian networks, including CBC Television, CTV, Global Television and MuchMusic.

View this video of George Clooney, the telethon’s organizer, as he discusses ways the youth can get involved as well his hopes for the fundraiser:

I have been away for the last week! I produced an event on Tuesday, attended a conference and produced a series of events from Wednesday thru Friday, went straight to the mountains with my best friends on Friday, and finally made it home on Sunday. With working non-stop and limited access to internet, I have not had the opportunity to write a post to celebrate the life of Teddy Pendergrass. When I found out he passed away – on Twitter of course – my heart skipped a few beats. It’s so sad that so many people, such as Teddy Pendergrass, are not brought into everyday conversation until they pass away. Equally as sad for me is that I knew very little about Teddy beyond his music. I didn’t know that he was a part of the group Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes. I did not know he had a car accident in 1982. Before you go saying I should have known because it was 28 years ago, I wasn’t even born then! Neither did I know that he was diagnosed with colon cancer. Confirming that there are so many unknown stories about the artists we all love justifies the purpose of my blog and ignites a drive within me to share so much more about legendary artists.

I grew up listening to Teddy Pendergrass as my parents would play his albums all the time. Very few male artists have made such an impact on music as Teddy P and definitely none from my generation. I’m sure I could break it down to a percentage of African Americans who were born between 1977-1982 and conclude that the majority were conceived to a track sang by Teddy. Yes – his songs are that serious. Teddy had great success with countless hits and memorable tracks such as Joy, Close the Door, Turn off the Lights, You’re My Latest, My Greatest Inspiration, Love T.K.O., The Whole Town’s Laughing at Me and so many others. Only thing I have to hear is the title of the song and I can sing it from beginning to end. Even now, as I’m listening to his music I get chills thinking that this wonderful being has left us to go to a greater place. My prayers go out to his family and survivors.

I had trouble finding a Teddy Pendergrass-only playlist, so I made my own. Click the arrows on either side of the video player to listen to the next or previous track. Enjoy

When I was searching for Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas video a couple weeks ago, I noticed a Vevo overlay that played on the YouTube video. It looked as though whatever Vevo was had taken over Mariah’s page. I thought nothing of it and kept it moving until I saw the same overlay on Timbaland’s YouTube channel last week. I thought it was weird to see an artist’s username changed from artist to artistVEVO, such as TimbalandVEVO, so I did a little research on Vevo. Vevo is a new platform that will offer video provided by three major labels, EMI, Sony Music Group, and Universal Music Group. Vevo will host 85 percent of the videos while YouTube will host the remaining 15 percent.

I think Vevo will completely change the user experience on YouTube. The platform provides higher quality videos, but it doesn’t come with the cost of advertisements being played prior to a video starting based upon your aggregate usage. For me- that is beyond aggravating. I hate seeing ads where I don’t want them. However, there are some benefits to the platform. When watching on YouTube, you are guaranteed the original version of the video. When you embed the video on an external site, you get the high quality version of the video but the Vevo overlay is not shown.

On each artist’s Vevo YouTube page, Vevo displays links to its website, Vevo.com. On the platform, you can watch an artist’s official video with lyrics, extra behind the scenes footage, and interviews. Plus, you can create a playlist of videos – similar to the way you can with Grooveshark.

People are referencing Vevo as the Hulu for music videos. One negative about Hulu is that it does not include all content. For example, I’ve seen a television series that only included two episodes out of five seasons of video.I hope that Vevo can get the music video library of all of the participating record labels uploaded. I also hope that the platform can upload the music videos as soon as they are produced. So much of ambiguous uploading is caused by labels and artists uploading videos weeks after they are produced. Understanding that people want content quick and in the best quality available will help Vevo be successful. People will embrace the new platform if it honors these two requirements.

About once a week I look at the traffic on my blog site. I would never suggest for someone to look at their web traffic daily. I don’t think it’s healthy because you become more driven by the number of people visiting your site vs. being driven by the love of your content and wanting to share it!

I reviewed my blog traffic this past Saturday and noticed that an increase in traffic was coming from Alltop. Knowing the basis of Alltop and its creation of a location for all the top blogs for hundreds of topics, I figured there was no way Alltop would bring traffic to my little ol blog. Yet – sure enough, there was 6inchvinyl, the 6th blog to be featured on the music section of Alltop! And I’m above the fold. How freaking cool! I also beat out MSN and the New York Times on the list.

I’ve naturally assumed Neenz, who is one of people who attended the Social Media Leaders dinner and definitely one of the most amazing people I met at BlogWorld, worked some magic to get my blog on Alltop. See – Neenz is the Chief Evangelist of leading news aggregation for the site. That’s just my guess but I’m still wondering how I got there. I DO know that I’m not going to wonder too loudly, drawing attention to myself, to get my site pulled down. That would be a no no and #superfail!

When I get a better design, I will have this badge on the side column. But until then, I’ll keep it on this post:

What am I supposed to do now?!? Those were my exact thoughts when I typed in imeem.com and was redirected to myspace.com/imeem. Apparently, this Tuesday, MySpace bought the music sharing and listening site, imeem. I used to be on imeem to listen to all my fave music in user created playlists and a lot of playlists featured full albums. At the moment, none of those playlists are available and it pretty much sucks! Not to mention I hate MySpace and it would be such a compromise to go to MySpace for music. Even the sound of it is completely bizarre!

Now, I’m back at what am I supposed to do without imeem? Very few platforms allow you to listen to *full* albums anytime, anywhere. I asked a few people on Twitter what they used to listen to music and the responses included: Last.fm, Rhapsody, Blip.fm, and Grooveshark. I don’t want another Pandora, such as Last.fm, to put in one song and it creates a radio station. I have Pandora and love it. I don’t want to be required to sign up for platform that only allows me to listen to 20-30 second clips. I just want to listen to as much music I want to – when I want it!

Out of the aforementioned services, Grooveshark appears to be the best. It has user created lists and album lists. You can also create your own listening playlist off of an existing list, add songs, switch up the order, and save for later listening. AND you can do all of that, except the saving of a playlist, without having an account! Grooveshark is where it’s at and that’s where I’ll be!

I’M SO IMPRESSED with Alicia Keys’ live YouTube performance. Her look. Her sound. Her band. All fabulous! It was such a great use of technology to bring the performance and the cause to those not physically attending. #AmexAlicia, the designated hashtag on Twitter, became a trending topic during the show and by the end of the show was at number 3. Alicia performed a melody of hits from her first debut album, Songs in A Minor, to her latest album, Element of Freedom, that will release on December 15. To be honest, I’m glad she switched it up. I’m not really feeling the first two singles from her album. I just found out today that Try Sleeping With a Broken Heart was her second single – which means I totally missed the first single! Out of the songs that she performed, which I included below, I’m most excited about Love is Blind. For 6 years to have passed, I, along with the millions of other A Keys fans, am anxiously awaiting the Element of Freedom. December 15 everybody! Don’t forget!

Songs that Alicia performed:
Love is Blind
Karma
You Don’t Know My Name
Doesn’t Mean Anything
Wreckless Love
Diary
Distance and Time
If I Ain’t Got You
Superwoman
Try Sleeping with a Broken Heart
Like You’ll Never See Me Again
Falling
No One
Empire State of Mind – and there was a surprise appearance by Jay-Z

Simply put – I missed them! I won’t aplogize for being a female that prefers to watch the Ravens/Steelers game over watching the Soul Train Awards. I figured I could watch the rerun today because we all know BET will play the awards out. However, I was shocked to find out that I have to wait until Saturday for a repeat! For all of you who are in the same boat as me and missed the awards, you better catch the encore on December 5 at 8pm. It may be our only chance to watch!

One Night, One Voice, One Life at a Time. This Tuesday December 1, on World AIDS DAY, Alicia Keys will give a live concert on YouTube. The performance will take place at the Nokia Theater in NYC and be open to the public via live global webcast at 8pm EST on Alicia’s YouTube Channel. She’ll be performing tracks from her new album, The Element of Freedom. All proceeds from the event go to Keep a Child Alive.