As retailers coerce manufacturers into getting exclusive versions of products to try and attract buyers without having to actually compete on price. In a way it’s kind of a dirty way to get fans to buy multiple products when exclusives are offered to multiple retailers and to extort the highest prices on the “Limited Edition” versions.

In the case of the latest Star Trek film, here in the US, Paramount Pictures, authorized several exclusives options. One set of retailers, FYE, Coconuts, & Suncoast, (all owned by the same parent company) offered the film in a collectible steelbox shell, Hollywood Video is offering a chance to win an autographed poster with a purchase or rental of the movie, Best Buy is offering a set of four pins to cover the various departmental delta shields seen on the uniforms in the movie. CVS Pharmacies are offering the chance to buy the movie for a discounted rate with the purchase of an iTunes gift card. Allegedly Wal-Mart is or was offering a Blu-Ray set that included the standard DVD as well, but I’ve not been able to confirm that one. And both Amazon and Target are offering Enterprise models as their exclusives. The Amazon one is certainly the higher ticket one, made of solid metal with chrome, textured steel and pewter finishes as well as being limited to only 5,000 pieces but at $100 a pop, a little too pricey in my book, albeit very nice looking.

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Alcazar is one of Sweden’s pop bands that have carved an interesting niche for themselves. They are a European dance music act that over the years since their debut have an interesting career that’s been pretty hard to define. Some of what they’ve done is breathe new life into older songs such as their 1998 cover of the Human League’s “Don’t You Want Me.” In other cases they’ve borrowed old melodies and given them new lyrics such as “Crying At The Discotheque” uses the melody from “Spacer” from Sheila & B. Devotion, and have even taken the lyrics from one song and set them to the melody of another such as “This Is The World We Live In” which sets the lyrics from Genesis’ “Land Of Confusion” to the melody of Diana Ross’ “Upside Down.” And they’ve even had a few songs written especially for them to perform.

Every album released to date has seen a change in the lineup from the previous album, but one of the consistent features of the group has been the lead vocals being performed primarily by Andreas Lundstedt. I was very impressed by his amazing voice since the first time I heard their debut album. In fact, I truly hated the Human League’s “Don’t You Want Me” song because I thought the original had such horrible sounding vocals until Andreas’ much better vocals convinced me the song was a lot better than I gave it credit. Andreas’ voice has been wonderfully supported by Tess Merkel, Annikafiore Kjaergaard, and later joined by Magnus Carlson and then later by Lina Hedlund. And together they’ve produced some really fun pop dance music to keep the first decade of the 21st century interesting.

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Having hit a little bit of music boredom with the more limited selections on my iPod Touch, I decided to bring out the iPod Classic which is loaded with over 11,000 audio files. I let it play on random and one of the things that came up was “Hooked On Classics – Part 1 and 2″ from the original “Hooked On Classics” album by Louis Clark and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

I ended up taking the iPod off random and played the full album. It’s been a very long time since I last listened to it. I don’t remember when exactly I added the Hooked On Classics albums to my iPod as the last crash of my iTunes wiped out the date added for every track I added prior to December 10, 2008. In any case, I was happy I had it on my iPod to enjoy without having to dig out the CD.

I remember having worn out two cassettes of this album back in the early 1980’s. I loved it. To me it was all the good parts of classical music without so much of the really boring stuff. And I suppose a disco-esque drum track didn’t hurt either for helping keep those classics going at an upbeat pace. I remember Hooked On Classics being very popular when it was originally released in Canada. It was released on the K-Tel label which I always had some collections of popular music from them. Probably my favorite of which was “Raiders Of The Pop Charts” which capitalized on the Indiana Jones theme which was current at the time.

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In probably one of the most unique ways to express outrage at poor customer service, David Carroll has posted to YouTube the second music video of the three he promised United Airlines he would make after baggage handlers for the airline damaged his guitar and their poor customer service has done nothing to make amends for it.

As some of my readers will recall, I posted about his first video which garnered Carroll a lot of media attention for his unorthodox method of sharing his complaint with the airline to the world. Click here to read my original blog entry on the matter.

The new video is below. Be sure to watch to the end of it as there’s a really funny bit at the very end after the credits in the video.

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One of my favorite local bands, Roxy Monoxide, announced they were going to have a pre-release party for the CD entitled “Another Day, Another Episode” at San Diego’s Beauty Bar located near the intersection of El Cajon Blvd. and Euclid Ave.

Having never been to the Beauty Bar, I looked them up online and comes to find out they are a chain of locations with Beauty Bar’s in a variety of cities, including Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Austin, and Brooklyn. They seem to have quite the concept. In style reminiscent of a 1950’s or 1960’s style beauty salon, it’s a full service bar. Think “Beauty School Dropout” from Grease crossed with alcohol and you’ll get the idea. Go to the bar and get your martini and sit under an old style salon hair dryer. Let’s just say, the B-52’s would never look out of place here. (Check out the photos of the venue here.)

San Diego’s Beauty Bar consists of a main bar area and a tented performance space in behind the bar that is connected via a roll door. It definitely wasn’t the most modern looking venue, but I liked the them of it. You have to appreciate the double meaning of calling the place the Beauty Bar, as it was certainly a bar in the alcohol sense of the world, and wouldn’t have been out of place with bar as in bar of soap. Personally I’m surprised the venue isn’t in Hillcrest.

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One of the cast albums I’ve most been looking forward to has finally been released – sort of. Last week, the cast album for “9 To 5″ got released digitally, next week it gets released on CD. It seems a little unprecedented to stagger the releases for a Broadway show, but it seems to allow the label to double dip where the gotta-have-it-now crowd can get their instant gratification and those that prefer to have the physical product can wait a couple weeks longer or get both.

In the case of “9 To 5″ I fall into the crowd that will double dip. I saw the stage production last September when it premiered in Los Angeles for it’s Pre-Broadway trial run. The show written by Patricia Resnick, the original screenwriter of the classic film, along with songs written by one of the original film’s stars, Dolly Parton, have come together to bring the classic to life in a new form. One of the disadvantages of seeing the show early is that the cast album wasn’t readily available to purchase following seeing the show, so I’ve had to wait from September until now. So the early digital release version, was a no brainer for me, and because I will want the physical edition, I’ll be getting that too.

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After having attended the last two San Diego Pride Parade’s in the last couple of years and having to work, I decided this year I was going to make sure I saved a few days of time off so that I could take part in the festivities this year. And with the Chantal Kreviazuk concert in Los Angeles last week, I decided to add a few more days to my time off request and as a result I was able to take part in quite a few activities.

On Tuesday night, after I had stopped by Jorge Cruise’s office to say hello and show off the results of my 47 pounds of weight loss using his incredibly awesome Belly Fat Cure program, I treated myself to a late lunch at Which Wich sandwich shop in Hillcrest and then because I was in the area, I saw The Center for San Diego’s LGBT community was hosting a Bear Pride Bingo event that a lot of my local friends were attending, so I quickly sent in an RSVP and headed on over to the event. For $15 for a packet of bingo sheets, $2 for a dabber, and $1 for an optional game, I was set. I didn’t win any of the games but came very close on a few occasions. I did happen to know a couple people who did win, namely Vito Grandolfo and Tim Palmer. I even went with Vito and his friend Earl Shearin over to Brians’ American Eatery for a post-Bingo bite to eat. (Many thanks to Earl who wouldn’t let me pay for my meal.)

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Who knew the Bee Gees song “Stayin’ Alive” really can help people stay alive? Well apparently it can, in a procedure known as “Hands Only CPR” which instead of using a more traditional mouth to mouth recussitation requires pressing hard and fast on the chest of the victim of cardiac arrest (or heart attack). This has been proven to be equally as effective as traditional CPR according to the American Heart Association and can double the vitim’s chances of survival.

The reason “Stayin’ Alive” by the Bee Gees song is effective is because it has over 100 beats per minute and Hands Only CPR is most effective at 100 beats per minute. The American Heart Association still encourages traditional CPR if you’re knowledgeable in how to do it, but the Hands Only CPR method is better than not doing anything at all, which is unfortunately, what happens in a lot of cases because people panic and fearing doing anything might make the situation worse for the victim. Sadly it’s the inaction that ultimately causes more death because people fear you need formal CPR training to help someone having a heart attack.

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I’ve long felt that the music industry has been out of touch with reality with the business model it has been using since the Internet became so popular. My opinion remains unchanged but I wanted to share a recent experience, that had the record industry been set up to capitalize on it, they would have not only gotten a sale from me, for which I was perfectly willing to spend money on, but because of sheer stupidity and region issues, I was forced into downloading for free, what I was perfectly willing to pay for.

I am a subscriber to Sirius Satellite Radio and one of the programs I like to record on my Sirius Radio is a weekly broadcast called “Nordic Rox” which is a three hour program specializing in music from Scandinavia. The witty tagline for the show is that it is home for “Good Looking Music.” The program is hosted by Sven Lindström and is sometimes joined by Per Gessle of my favorite group, Roxette. As I tend to like acts from Sweden, it’s a good opportunity each week to hear some classic and new material from Scandinavian artists. Well on one of the recent shows, I came across a song entitled “Longing For Lullabies” performed by the remix outfit called Kleerup featuring vocals by Titiyo. Titiyo is the younger sister of Neneh Cherry, and half-sister to Eagle-Eye Cherry.

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Like many other Star Trek fans, I am anxiously awaiting the relaunch of Star Trek that is set to happen on May 8th, 2009 with the new film by Director J.J. Abrams. The new filmed version, simply called “Star Trek” with no other subtitle or even a number (it’s the 11th Star Trek film for the record.)

The new film features a band new cast of actors playing younger versions of the Original Series cast. Only Leonard Nimoy from the original cast makes an appearance in the film. My best guess so far is that the story somehow involves some time travel allowing both Leonard Nimoy and Zachary Quinto to play the role of Spock in the same film. Oh course, this is speculation on my part, so please don’t read into it that I have any insider knowledge. For the most part I’ve been avoiding press about it as I really want to enjoy it on the big screen and I may even go see the IMAX version as well.

To get ready for the release of the new film, Paramount in association with IDW Publishing and iVerse Media to create an interactive comic book prequel to the film. The prequel comic sets out to bridge the “Star Trek: The Next Generation” universe we last saw in the film “Star Trek: Nemesis” with the new “Star Trek” film by introducing the character of “Nero” who appears to be the Romulan antagonist of the new movie played by Eric Bana.

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