I have to say, I’m tired tired tired of all the MW boring tribute crap…
That said, I love Jay Smooth, and he uses MW’s death as a platform to meditate on camera awareness, brand management and what filmed images will mean to the future…and he does it really well…be sure to stick around for the end to see the woman dancing bit…
Chali 2na’s voice is just so amazing. I’ve got his other solo album, and I guess he’s got a new one coming out, and it’s all just kind of ok, with a handful of tracks veering into really good. But in Jurassic 5 he totally shines, as this voice that’s so powerful but so fun somehow — he brings it to most every track.
This video is pretty good. The guy who sings the chorus isn’t that good (plus, what’s with "watch us bubble"? that ain’t gonna be cool) and Talib Kweli shows up and doesn’t really do anything special (which is rare?), but Chali 2na is still awesome, and the video has some fun touches. The text is cool.
Also this is the first time I’ve been able to see the face behind that voice, and I have to say he…pretty much looks like I thought he would. The beat is also pretty sci-fi fresh. Dig it.
Hey, did you guys know that one of my sister’s closest friends used to be the Celebrity Assistant for Al Franken? It’s true! One time my sister called me up and said "Guess what I’m doing?" and I’m all like "How the hell would I know?" and she goes "Well…I’m eating Al Franken’s ice cream!"
Which made me go "Wha?!"
It seems that Al was going on some kind of diet and had to get rid of all the ice cream he had in the house. He invited his assistant to eat it, and she, not being able to handle the quantity, called upon my sister to help. Crazy. KT, you correct me if I got that wrong. But I should say that if it is wrong, I’m still going to tell the story like that, ‘cuz it has a nice vibe to it…
I also remember reading a biography about Saturday Night Live and there was one great story about Al & his writing partner trying to come up with a sketch and taking LSD…both of them began imitating Nixon, making "V" signs and pretending they had tremendous jowls, and harrumphing. They did it all night long, two weird Nixons. What a weird image.
Plus don’t even get me (or Al) started on how much coke he’s reported to have done.
And now he’s Mr. Senator. And apparently he’s going to play it straight, but we’ll always know him as the ice-cream loving LSD-Nixon cokehead. And if we ever forget that that’s who he used to be, why we can just go to the videotape…
(the first image that shows up when you search google for "gomorrah")
Every now and then, I’ll load up the ipod with stuff i haven’t heard and go walk in the park. I don’t do it enough, and every time I actually get around to doing it, I try to remind myself that I need to do this more, beause it is amazing, and recharging, and world-re-orienting. The last time I did it, I was working on a mix my friend AD, and auditioning a bunch of Transglobal Underground tracks to see if any would be good enough. I like Transglobal Underground, but their tracks tend to be really hit or miss, so I don’t listen to them that much.
Then I hit this one and my eyes popped open. The song tells a story, so I’d definitely wait to hear it until you can pay close attention, maybe use headphones, maybe go for a walk in the park. It’s a blast…
If you’re going to talk dead celebrities, I have to say I think I was more surprised by Heath Ledger than MJ. Even then, I don’t think I could say "moved" or "effected" by the death, but surprised, and maybe a bit bummed ‘cuz I thought he’d probably do some great stuff at some point.
A while ago, MT and I went to this place in WBurg (Brooklyn) that was funded by Heath Ledger and some of his friends. If you didn’t know, you’d never be able to tell it was a celebri-joint, it was nicely understated, the food was fantastic, and the service was warm. It was a great brunch experience. Also, they were playing 12" records that were really great. Some re-issue of a deep Jamaican dub release, and something by this band called Beirut, which sounded like old stuff, all accordian-y and the cover of the record was great. It looked like this:
Did a bit of reading about them, and discovered they’re a modern band. One of the songs was unbelievable, I’ll have to track it down. But in the meantime, I recently came across this mashup where they took the instrumental from a Beirut song (obscure, weird) and mashed it up with a vocal by Ghostface (dope, fresh). It works well…
Save Me Concubine – Ghostface vs. Beirut
[audio:ghostface_killah_beirut.mp3]
I know, 3 posts in one day might be a bit much, but these are things I’ve been wanting to post for a while and haven’t had time…
I won’t write some big thing about MJ, but it is amazing that because of the new digital world, it’s likely that he’ll always have the top-selling album of all time. Here’s a tribute…DJ this one late in the party when everyone’s on the dance floor and you’ll have a riot on your hands…
[audio:chhupke-kaun-aya.mp3]The music is Mark E Smith and Mouse from Mars, von Sudenfeld. The real video for this song is pretty odd, but this one is a blast. They all look like they’re having so much fun.
This is why I still have Discobelle on my newsreader. For some reason I
love seeing what the underground European club kids are into at the moment. And this one is a blast — it’s full of everything reminding you what it’s like to be young, angry at everything for no reason, in love with life, full of so much energy you’ll almost explode, almost a parody of Youth Kulture. The chorus is kind of a joke, "we came, we saw, we killed the crowd" reflecting some of the antagonism that a performer feels for his audience, as well as being a chant-along anthem for the kids.
Plus, the song is called "Hooligans" for crying out loud!!
"what’re you rebeling against?"
"what’ve you got?"
Part of our Musicwood doc is going to be musicians performing on acoustic guitars. We’ll use this to weave the music through the film, and to remind you exactly what it is these guys are fighting for, you know? So we’ve been approaching pr folks for Sting, Neil Young, Glen Hansard, etc. But Maxine came across this great unsigned artist named Sergius Gregory, and it turns out he’s based in Alaska! So when we flew out there to shoot, we flew him down to where we were and arranged to spend a day filming him in various (fantastic) locations:
in the rainforest, in a Native American Clan House, on a dock…
Here’s a cut of his performance in the forest…we won’t use the whole thing in the film, but we wanted to put it together because there was such an amazing feeling when he played this in the forest…I get chills just thinking of it…
hopefully some of that comes through…
UPDATE – Sergius is about to release a record (or something) so he’s asked me to take this down temporarily…seek his record out! Buy it! Support the music!!!!
I’m such a sucker for this kind of stuff…
I love that they bleeped them, so B&E still seem sort of nice…I love how well the mouth movements are synced up…I love the nods and looks they give each other…it’s great…
The description from the artist:
"There is something growing behind the modern day corporate life, something weird. Break-cutted-mashup-video-core: The videofocuses on the frontlines of modern day life, on work and leisure, art and powerpoint"
The content’s a bit simplistic, right, but the form, wow. Crank it up, it delivers the goods. It’s apparently a mash of 15 different artists on the Cock Rock Disco label (great name for a label). Solid stuff.
everyone – everywhere from landjugend on Vimeo.
like watching a slow car crash…
[via interspectacular on facebook]
Sometimes something is so geeked out fantabulous that you almost can’t even tell what’s going on. Case in point: this is Bohemian Rhapsody done on hardware machines. The machines make noises of different pitches when they do different things (the scanner scanning, disk drive reading disk, etc.) and these have somehow been programmed to make their specific pitched sounds in time to create Bohemian Rhapsody. Whoa. Get past the intro and it really starts to rock.
The name of the song is "Thank You Mario But Our Princess is in Another Castle". It’s a great song, made greater by the concept (sung from the perspective of the character at the end of the Super Mario levels), made even greater by the 8-bit video. I never thought of the characters as real before, or that they could get sad or have wants and needs. Good stuff.
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