This is the continuation of The 10 Most Viewed Posts & How They Got There, a look at how these specific ten posts became the Heck Of A Guy entries with the most viewings and the implications these findings hold in the larger contexts of web statistics, political polling, and the presentation of statistical findings in the popular press.
That’s Entertainment – Blog As Venue
Two of the posts on the list, Rare Leonard Cohen Chelsea Hotel #1 Video and The Best Leonard Cohen – Anjani Duet You Have (Probably) Never Heard, are primarily recorded performances. These are not only high quality, interesting songs but they are also enough out of the mainstream that they were not well known or easily available.
While videos of Whither Thou Goest, the song referenced in The Best Leonard Cohen – Anjani Duet, can now be found on YouTube and other places, at the time the Heck Of A Guy post was published and for many weeks afterward, that entry was the only routinely accessible US source of the recording. That Cohen and Anjani fans were alerted to the availality of the song at this site by some of the Cohen-dedicated sites such as LeonardCohenFiles.com, also played a role in popularizing the post,
Rare Leonard Cohen Chelsea Hotel #1 Video was a fortuitous find. I ran across a YouTube video of this early version of the much better known “Chelsea Hotel #2″ when it had been viewed only 124 times.
Consequently, both posts have attracted lots of viewers and listeners since they went online.
It seems legitimate for the author of those sorts of entertainment posts (that would be me) to be accorded a portion of the credit for the number of views it attracts, but that portion is comparable to the credit due the club owner or stadium management group for mounting a Springsteen-Prince-Cohen concert in a clean, safe venue. If the stars don’t show up, even the best venues aren’t going to draw big crowd of patrons paying $240 each to be in the audience.
Heck, I neither created the Chelsea Hotel #1 Video nor uploaded it to YouTube. The only claim I can advance is that I found it before it was went universal. At least the Leonard Cohen-Anjani duet was recorded by my Polish blog brother, Apolinary. The hits are, in part, my reward for having good friends.
Leonard Cohen – Chelsea Hotel #1
Anjani and Leonard Cohen – Whither Thou Goest (from the Warsaw concert)
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News About Leonard Cohen
I suspect most of the views of Leonard Cohen Got His Picture On The Cover Of Rolling Stone derive from Cohen fans who are excited about the prospect of more honors being awarded the singer-songwriter.
Leonard Cohen on cover of German Rolling Stone
I was alerted to the story of Leonard Cohen being chosen for the cover soon after it happened and published the story almost immediately. Further, since the Rolling Stone in question was the German edition of the magazine, many blogs and web sites devoted to music that might have carried a less esoteric Leonard Cohen story opted to forgo this one, decreasing the number of Heck Of A Guy competitors for Cohen news-craving fans.
A Picture Is Worth 1000 Words; 3 Pictures Are Worth 1000 Views Each
Take The Pills Granny – If You Want To See Precious Alive Again is a clever enough take-off on the use of “pill pets” to help the elderly remember to taken their medications on time, but most of its views come from three of the graphics in the piece.
Tamagotchi
National Lampoon: If you don't buy this magazine, we'll kill this dog
Ransom note
That’s right. The views are generated by a picture of a Tamagotchi, a fad that went into eclipse some time ago, an antique National Lampoon cover, and a fake ransom note generated for the post.
Higher Education Finally Pays Off For Me
Hooray, Hurrah, Mizzou, Mizzou celebrates the fabulous reign of the University of Missouri Tigers as #1 in college football (according to one of the two major polls) throughout the entire penultimate week of the 2007 regular season schedule. The big attraction in this post appears to be the Tigers fight song described in this excerpt:
The Victory Song Celebration
Most schools have one or two fight songs. When I was enrolled in The University of Missouri Marcus Welby Tech back in the 1970s, Mizzou seemed to have dozens of fight songs. The count may be in the three figures by now.
Regardless, this quaintly ferocious refrain is The Mizzou Fight Song. Prepare to be moved.
Fight Tigers
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Hit it, Hooray, Hurrah,
Mizzou, Mizzou,
Hooray, Hurrah,
Mizzou, Mizzou,
Hooray, Hurrah,
And a “Bully” for Ol’ Mizzou,
Rah, Rah, Rah, Rah,
Mizzou-rah, Mizzou-rah, Mizzou-rah,
Tigers!
Fight Tigers Factoid #1: This is only nominally a song. It is actually a cadence spliced between “Every True Son” and “Fight Tigers,” two of the many songs officially listed as the Mizzou Fight Song.
Fight Tigers Factoid #2: 97.7% of those who join in signing/chanting “Fight Tigers,” know the words to only the first five lines. Beginning with the words, “And a ‘Bully’ for Ol’ Mizzou,” those folks substitute random nonsense syllables for the actual lyrics. Mizzou tradition holds that this is an acceptable alternative to the version as originally written as long as those nonsense syllables are vocalized at maximum volume.
Audience Participation
OK, play “Fight Tigers” once more and sing along this time. Making it through those first 5 lines after imbibing 3 shots of any liquor costing less than $1.65 per gallon, one or more pitchers of beer, or, at least in the 70s, a six pack of fruit coolers, not only qualifies you as an honorary Missouri Football Tigers fan but also as a medical practitioner licensed to perform surgery and psychotherapy throughout the state of Kansas.
Still to Come
The final two posts on the Most Viewed list, Mother Of The Bride Wedding Toast and The 2008 Leonard Cohen Field Guide, have been saved for the next and final post in this sequence because they share a quality absent in the other 8 items on the list: the textual content original to those posts appears to have played some role in garnering the attention and interest of viewers. So much for pride of authorship.
Credit Due Department: That excellent, seemingly casual shot of the short pencil is the work of Broken Arts.
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