LEROI MOORE, His Finest Hour: #41 with the Dave Matthews Band from ‘Crush’ and the speed of flirtacious lust

"#41" - Contiguously Calibrated Tempo Graph
tempo graph by meanspeed music. © 2008. use by permission.
logarithmic and 2d degree polynomail trends with live performance line for #41 by the Dave Matthews Band

logarithmic and 2d degree polynomial trends with live performance line for #41 by the Dave Matthews Band

In the music tempo category of 106-113 beats per minute, no song is as heartbreaking as #41.  It is in the key of A minor.  The A minor, though, is mixed with and borrows from D major in a way that is interlaced with a 1970s version of the band Chicago horn ostinato (b -a -a -g-g-a)  melody line played on top of a harmony that sounds “very A minor 9th” despite the C# in the D chord which begins a false cadence that repeats either into an A minor verse or a G major reggae-like bridge.

Songmeanings.net is run by a Generation Y (Generation Spears)  group of very bright people.  They openly break the “obsolete” and “oppressive”  and I say that as a 17 year lawyer, “Intellectual property” law as it exists in copyright.  How?  They simply send lyrics that are the property of, for example, Tracy Chapman, Sheryl Crow or the estate of Kurt Cobain and repeat Billy1973’s submission.   Yet, this same group presents themselves with the mark they earned:  Songmeanings.net®.  I wonder what they do when people steal their pages every day in the same way they steal lyrics?  I always wonder why they think intellectual property law in the form of copyright does not apply to them, yet, by their stern Watch The Heck Out WARNING- if you steal *their* collection of quotes about a song, or their bizarrely stupid “astrological sign” and either delusional or just a stupid joke “color” of a song, you have violated their trademark and they will see you in a settlement room, and yes, they accept checks!  As a lawyer I get to know that too.  Big deal, I know.

The ® is an expensive process whereby a company has to prove itself unique.  Songmeanings has so done, and this takes a minumum of $350 for the filing alone.   The lawyers fill out all details, paralegals research any potential conflicting company name or class: it all add up, as all of you with trademarks and service marks reading know.  In a smooth case a trademark or servicemark holder spends at least $950 in time, legal fees and extended worldwide searches.  before the internet and digitized form, the same service would be double, triple the cost.

Is there a price?  This same Generation Y has given us literally no creative music - unless you count the Jonas Brothers, Miley Cyrus or American Idol’s David Cook.  Mashups, samples and remakes do not count as new music.  Am I wrong?  I think when one is busy stealing lyrics and pirating music, time for practice just isn’t there.  Motivation to write music: not there.

I have nothing against Generation Y (those born after 1980).  By the time any of them could decide that they wanted to be contemporary music artists, “rock [was] dead” according to Gordon Sumner a/k/a Sting.

Can’t disagree with Sting, though when he made the declaration in 1984 rock had a solid 10 years left.  By 1995, almost every harmonic pattern seemed to have been tried with every rock groove.  Then, The Dave Matthews Band went national, and a new sound was born.  Then, on August 29, 2008, horn player LeRoi Moore, after an accident on an off-road vehicle he had had months earlier from which he seemed to be recovering, but in Los Angeles, a few weeks after the crash, he died.  That crash killed LeRoi, and in my opinion ended the era about which Sting opined.

#41, the Dave Matthews Band, 'Crash'

#41, the Dave Matthews Band,

tempo graphics by meanspeed music company. © 2008. use by permission.

/Ian Andrew Schneider/


MACY’S, Television Jingles & Mind Control - “WORLD” - Five For Fighting - WIKIPEDIA calls tempo of WORLD “wistfully upbeat.” Huh?



This holiday season, again I was taken with a song by Five for Fighting. As with their Disney “100 Years” use and my attention thereto on the commercial first, then the recording.

This Christmas season I did not have much money. The MACY’S use of the song world, a song a an absolutely static, as per the slope of the linear trend of the song, as The five fighters played *right on* the invisible click track. At home, I continued to hear the Fighters’ song day after day, and truthfully, I found it a bummer. I thought: this is either a song at 76 beats per minute and it is showing me that I am whining, or this is a whining song at ~80 beats per minute and I was being graceful in analyzing it. I have nothing near ‘perfect tempo’ and I kept this game going - I continued to ask people, “Do you hear this song as miserable or graceful? Is it realistically confident or spaced out and alone?” Turns out to be a song right inside the territory of loneliness, solitude and melancholy, which was a relief to me. I mean, it’s ok if *you* do not have enough money for all the gifts you want as long as that melancholy is confined to you. That is what I think about Ondrasik and Five for Fighting here: they are expressing miserable solitude warning us to “be careful what you wish for” is recorded at the speed making me feel inferior, until I realized that the song was a whining song. The elements of the MACY’S commercial had an effect on me, I learned the speed of the song and now I am mentally back in control. Life is much easier when you learn this truth. I spent no time wasting, “Is it John’s piano playing?/Is it the vocal delivery/Is it the cheesy theme” making me uncomfortable. As soon as I saw 79 beats per minute, it was: IT’S SPEED. DUH.

Wikipedia.org had a hard time classifying the tempo of the MACY’S song of consumerism:
“World” is the second single from the album Two Lights, written by Five for Fighting and released in 2006.

“World” is a wistfully upbeat, piano-driven melody that, like his other singles, paints vivid pictures of human life driven with deep emotion. The song’s lyrics are notably more cryptic than in previous singles, but are driven by the chorus hooks, “What kind of world do you want?” and “Be careful what you wish for, history starts now.”

Music video

The music video for “World” features aspects of the bright side of life including children, marriage and fireworks. There are also references that go with the lyrics including a brief image of a mushroom cloud in a cup of tea, with a newspaper’s headline featuring North Korea’s nuclear program.

A separate music video for the song was made by the U.S. television network CBS to promote their Wednesday night, post-apocalyptic drama Jericho. The video consisted of scenes from the first half of the season edited together.

The song has also been used on The History Channel in a promotional montage for the network. PBS also used the song during the first episode of the documentary series Carrier. Most recently, this song has appeared in a commercial for Sears, featuring rapper LL Cool J, actress/singer Vanessa Hudgens of High School Musical, and Ty Pennington of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.

World has also been used by Autism Speaks, and several other group supporters, as a theme to promote awareness for Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). The song has been featured in the organization’s video’s as well as several fan made video’s promoting the cause.

Meanspeed-Carlton Summary
song title=WORLD
performer=Five for Fighting
composer=John Ondrasick
beats per trial=280
trials calibrated=10
beats measured=2,800
average beat=759 milliseconds
mean speed/average tempo/median velocity=79.0 beats per minute
total time elapsed=2,552.98 seconds
emotional concept according to the meanspeed music conjecture=Solitude
hardware=MacBook
software=Microsoft Excel
file kind=AAC protected audio
Bit Rate=128 kbps
Sample Rate=44.100 kHz
Size=3.8 MB
Volume=-7.8 dB
Profile=Low Complexity
Channels=Stereo
FairPlay Version=2
audio file type=m4p

/Ian Andrew Schneider/
December 26, 2008

There are no legal lyrics given, as is the case 98% of the time. The music sites you see as of this writing, December 26. 2008, who show the words: illegal. The video is legal, the words are not. “Law is an ass” said Justice Oliver Wendall Holmes.

Deterministic Speed of Haunted Suicidal Ideations - Did you let this tempo control you, or did you control this tempo? Sharon Case and 117 2/5 BPM




I’m not going to show off my cut & paste ability. Trust me on this: as many 100s, which seems as thousands of times I have heard during this NFL season “the team must control the tempo of the game,” the only analyst that actually tried to define what same meant was Sterling Sharpe of the NFL channel. He called “controlling the tempo” as ‘Being in synch with your teammates.’

I am saying that I am an NFL addict, but I do not listen to every game, therefore I am sure more have tried to do it - the best out there, that of a Dan Dierdorf, a Phil Simms, Bria n Billick, Brian Baldinger all have taken shots at what controlling the tempo of the game actually means. Anyone out there may feel free to email me at the address listed in my profile, meanspeed@gmail.com, with other examples you may have heard.

Today I walked through the rain to my law office. Everyone was talking about either being unemployed, how to avoid getting fired and how to interview for a job for which you have no background either in the abstract (school) or real (the Federal Withholding tax for the Impoverished, the most shameful tax in the history of the country). Mass confusion. The song that came to mind and that which I spent some time on last night, feeling this panic of a city coming on: Smells Like Teen Spirit by Kurt Cobain and handed to his band Nirvana.

One could easily ask: why isn’t Kurt Tangled Up In Blue? Why? The lyrics, should you visit one of the millions of lyrics site, are actually happier in the song at the speed of panic and foreboding, 117 2/5 beats per minute, according to the meanspeed music conjecture. If you look at the lists on the above screen, you will find that the chance of a song at 117 2/5 bpm being haunted are high: Every Breath You Take, Billie Jean, Land Of Confusion - once you *feel* it you may use it to control your tempo. You may use your knowledge of what happens at that speed to *not* let the tempo control *you.* For example, if you are the kicker for the New York Jets, and before a kick, Buffalo calls a a cheap ‘ice you, little boy’ Time Out, and the crowd is blasted with this song: FEAR NOT. It’s only an attempt to control the tempo, literally and figuratively, using the crowd.

Meanspeed-Carlton Summary
song title=SMELLS LIKE TEEN SPIRIT
performer=Nivana
mean speed/median velocity/average standard tempo=117 2/5 beats per minute
emotional concept as predicted by the meanspeed music conjecture=foreboding
emotional concept as actually heard=suicidally haunted

/Ian Andrew Schneider/
December 11, 2008


Katie Holmes, Jon Lithgow and Diane Wiest in ALL MY SONS on Broadway : Billy Joel’s WHERE’S THE ORCHESTRA forsees the Hauntedly Bittersweet in Tempo



Tonight, benefactors treated 1/2 of the Meanspeed Music staff to see the Broadway show by Arthur Miller called ‘All My Sons.’


Its stars were three movie stars - John Lithgow, Diane Wiest and the wife if Tom Cruise, Katie Holmes.


I personally did not expect but sitting in the orchestra’s house seats I found Holmes’ performance astounding. I couldn’t really describe it, but I most highly recommend anyone who gets a chance to see what all the ‘fuss’ is about to see the show. The Miller dialogue and theses are timeless, the direction and set and lighting were minimal yet somehow exceptionally full. The actors, each of the main draws known as movie stars, were exciting enough to keep me up all night measuring the tempo of the only song that describes these strange New York Broadway scenes: WHERE’S THE ORCHESTRA, by the New Yorker Billy Joel.

It is Joel’s *least* discussed song of any he has written since 1979. Why? People don’t know what to make of it. Put it this way: 15 years ago I saw Dustin Hoffman play Wiley Loman in Death of a Salesman. Dustin is, I am sorry, not cut out for stage acting. I’ve seen Jennifer Jason Leigh in Proof do very well, I’ve seen Sting in Threepenny Opera flounder. Tonight, Lithgow, Wiest and especially Katie Holmes were so good the bittersweetness I hear in this song about movie stars on Broadway - it is still not taped, it is an intimate and intense experience. I kept thinking of the line from Evita: STAR QUALITY. It was sad that the show had to end after 2 hours - but I will never forget it. Joel nails the bittersweetness amazingly, and most likely unconsciously. Billy - if you’ve seen the show, letting me know would be sweet - thanks.

Meanspeed-Carlton Summary
song title=”Where’s The Orchestra”
performer=Billy Joel®
composer=Billy Joel®
album-The Nylon Curtain
mean speed.average standard tempo/median velocity=78.4 beats per minute
average beat=0.765 seconds
emotional concept according to the meanspeed conjecture=bittersweetness, languid reflection

/Ian Andrew Schneider/
December 18, 2008