chrome "i meet you in the subway"

i solicited the help of a new kid on my radio show. he's going to do traffic and weather. i looked for the groundhog day themesong "i'm your weatherman" but i couldn't find it. however, i did get a helicopter sound to play behind his traffic reports. i have high hopes.

google has a new browser, chrome. i hear it sucks.

update: i'm now using it, but the major claim about it's utility is wrong. it still freezes totally.

superpitcher "happiness"

i am addicted to kompact records. i live usually in an electronica cone of silence, but it was love at first vibration with kompact, notably the field and thomas fehldman. i flipped through the electronic section at sonic boom records here in seattle looking for the characteristic kompact font. i found it first on a record by superpitcher, "kompact's resident softie." his record "here comes love" is gorgeous, especially the song "traume," which features a guest vocalist. i have two acquisitive dreams now in life: to own a polo in every color and to own the entire kompact catalogue.

death sentence panda

a contemporary San Francisco band

Justice and Oil Addiction

from GOOD magazine, via robidog...



Animation & Design: Chris Weller / Directed: Max Joseph / Music: "Genesis" by Justice

Chamillionaire "Industry Groupie"

Chamillionaire gives a funny skit introduction to "Industry Groupie." Whichever fan is filming this song is a little too excited and the sound sucks on the actual song. Here's one of those fake Youtube videos of the studio version.

spank rock bump that wishbone

AD WIZARDS: Wishbone Bountiful @ Yahoo! Video

Lather on some of that wishbone and back that bountiful ass up.

ファミコン風

the colonial friend

by director Rachid Bouchareb, this short film, L'Ami y'a bon, is a companion to his 2006 film Indigènes. In bleak animation and sparse percussion, this short recounts the story of a Senegalese man who volunteers for the French Army in 1939 and then is captured during the French capitulation in June 1940. Sent to a concentration camp in Germany, he survives and is freed in 1944. Returning to Senegal, he and his fellow conscripts demand their wages for the previous five years. The French authority denies their request and massacres them all.

C(hee)SI

via vijay, this is a video comp of dozens of awful caruso one-liners from intros to csi miami. where's dennis franz's butt when you need it?

Kiss

A side-by-side comparison of kisses from "The O.C.," "Veronica Mars," and "Grey's Anatomy" inexplicably using French dubbed versions of the shows. The VM kiss gets my vote a thousand times over, but I am heavily VM biased and suggest that you watch the first season if you want to experience 935 minutes of sustained bliss.

The kiss is itself a spoiler, so I won't describe it and recommend that you abstain from watching this video until you watch the first season.

Mc Donald's Happy Meal Commercial (long cut)

I don't believe I've ever been so taken with a fast food commercial. This boy is awfully charming in spite of the cliche parent-characters and my aversion to race-targeting ad campaigns that this commercial may or may not be part of.

the love connection

per jezebel and many other sites, a disgraced, disbarred doctor turned dating advice sociopath left two messages on s.f. resident olga's cellphone after trying to pick her up off the street on a friday night in s.f.

here are the two messages:



the caller is "dimitri the lover," né james sears, disbarred for sexually assaulting patients.

transcript is here at jezebel: your-friends-were-very-jealous-even-if-they-say-they-werent-they-were-envious-i-approached-you

Radiohead's "Nude" on office equipment

via NYT's The Moment blog... James Houston’s Radiohead remix of "Nude" from In Rainbows, apparently using office equipment as instrumentation:

Fans had the opportunity to download the individual instrument tracks, then create their own song, but Houston went many steps further: he programmed a roomful of outdated hard drives and other office equipment to play the song orchestra-like. (Start around 01:15 for the melody).

reminds me of my younger sister and i recording songs with Fischer Price toys when we were wee big.



compare to original version (fan vid).

Ukulele and Keyboards "Fade to Grey"

My favorite eighties french porn song (sorry "Love on the Beat") redone on ukulele and keyboards by Fin and Geishy. I don't know who these guys are, but their friend Gus does an excellent "Are 'Friends' Electric?"



It's an unfair comparison, but of course it pales (bad word choice perhaps) compared to the classic Visage original.

Scott Walker "Jesse"

Former member of the Walker Brothers and reclusive vocal giant Scott Walker recorded an album two years ago for 4AD, his first new release in ten years. The music is narrative and harrowing. His voice is fabulously expressive.

According to this New York Magazine article:

On “Jesse,” the third track on Walker’s new album, The Drift, Elvis is sitting on the Memphis prairie in the moonlight, talking aloud to his stillborn twin brother, Jesse—as he would often do “in times of loneliness and despair,” according to Walker’s sleeve notes. Elvis is dreaming about the planes smashing into the Towers.

A higher resolution version is available here.

Sebastien Tellier - "La Ritournelle"

this is Sebastien Tellier's 2005 quick-cut narrative of party people growing old, or heteromance turned homogeneity. i don't know. it's kind of sad in a predictable way. fitting, because my special someone is en route to iceland while i'm sitting in an empty house in a dallas suburb.




"La Ritournelle (Mr. Dan's Magic Wand Edit)"
directed by Ace Norton

here's a clever and more recent excerpt from Tellier on politics and sex:

I try to explain to the world the latent concept of sex and that’s the goal of the record. I’m very happy to be in a sexual society. My previous record was called ‘Politics’ and of course it was about politics. At that time, I thought it was the most important rule in the world and now I think that sex is the most important rule, because seduction is at the centre of everything. So for me, sex is more important than politics. That’s why I talk about sex in my record. I always try to find the core subject matter to talk about.... You know it’s so sad when you go to a party, a discotheque or a club, and you have sex with a girl but the day after you feel a bit dirty. I hate that feeling. For me, real sex is when you have the feeling and then the sex, not the sex and then the feeling. After all that, I love nasty sex too but I want something more.

(and here's the original version of the song and the first video, directed by Mr. Oizo.)

"The Church of Oprah Exposed"

An exposé in which conservative Christians speak-out against Oprah's naughty new age specials. Stop the liberals before they create a Department of Peace!

Growing Live

brooklyn band growing released an ep, "lateral," which i'm fond of. their music is guitar crescendos and reverb but is satisfying and orgasmic and such. i like it. four tracks is just long enough. they're on social registry. i'm sure they have a myspace page. they wear hoodies. here's a live video.

R.E.M. - Crush with Eyeliner

to add to the fifteen-year-olds-searching-for-self-behind-a-locked-bedroom-door: i had bad crush when i was 15. it was dumb. the kind of thing where you just talk on the phone at 10pm after finishing your homework. it didn't go anywhere and i ended up shaving my head.

the R.E.M. album Monster was my album of choice. particularly the songs "Bang and Blame" and "What's the Frequency Kenneth." but this video kind of captures the theme a bit better.



directed by Spike Jones, who must've cheated on Sophia Coppola around the time he filmed this video, inspiring Lost in Translation and the utter ruination of my favorite bedroom music for 21-year-olds.

future noir

coincidentally (see 808 State post), last week i caught Blade Runner: The Final Cut at the American Film Institute out here in the D.C. area. it was my first time seeing Blade Runner on the big screen, and the first time to see the pre-Director's Cut version of the film. the latest version restores the image and sound impressively; the Final Cut was released in 5-disc box set in late 2007.

Vangelis composed much of the soundtrack for Blade Runner, and his tracks for the opening and closing credits are two of the most riveting moments in the film. the well-known Blade Runner "theme" does not appear until the film goes black at the very end. it's a stirring way to close the narrative. but until i saw this screening at AFI, i didn't appreciate the opening sequence, and how the soundtrack works as a soundscape, immediately bringing you into the dystopia.



at -2:30, when i saw it in the theater, i was like, "oh damn."


and just for fun - Blade Runner scenes mixed to Royksopp's downtempo hit "What Else Is There."

jawbreaker "fireman"

one of the perfect bands i wish i liked when i was supposed to like them when i was fifteen sitting in my room alone with the door locked listening to music. instead i was listening to lots and lots of david bowie, but jawbreaker is good retro i-think-this-is-how-i-felt music.

Jawbreaker - Fireman
by moouun

love vigilantes

bernard sumner's faint voice often seems to crack and fade live. some of my favorite new order songs are the substance b-sides, no vocals, heavy dance. "love vigilantes," not a single, has lyrics that border on cliche, but the force of sumner's delivery here conveys, through sheer force of will, that he believes them.

it's easy

For a long time, I was a cynic. I thought life was just a long sequence of letdowns and moments of brief happiness interrupted by long spells of pain and sorrow. I was wrong. I believe.

8080808

In the post Max Headroom, Blade Runner late eighties, computer graphics and virtual reality had momentarily an aesthetic of their own. My friend Phillip had a home theatre and one of those cheesy laserdiscs of computer-generated landscapes set to new age music. We sat around one afternoon and watched this sixty minute demo of Jean-Michel Jarre on LSD.

Ironically, my first exposure to computer animation was "Oliver and Company," the Disney movie, which incorporated digital rendering of some scenes. This movie also marked another turning point: the last Disney film before "The Little Mermaid."

The revolutionary late 80s.

808 State made a hi-tech music video for "Pacific State." Their pure techno acid house sound is one of the few retro genres not to be mined by a new generation of collective memory musicians.

.

bo diddley split screen

don't know when the performance was recorded. late sixties? early seventies? unmistakable guitar, so often imitated!

bo diddley quivers as he strikes the first chord on his guitar, and i shudder as though all his tense energy is more invigorating than the most unrestrained guitar shredders.

fuck it we'll do it live

this is just to awesome not to post. meme levels are high.



"FUCK IT, DO IT LIVE"

music: Lucian Paine.
video: Torrey Meeks.

let me be your mighty wings

i've searched for a long time but haven't found a way to make top gun cool. after all these years, it's still lame. even the mash-ups are disappointing. the other i found was soulja boy meets the top gun theme. this one was almost cool. if the creator of this video had used the cheap trick vocals instead of the trashy house vocals, i think it might have been a winner. the video has a couple good moments, and the irony of gay disco on top of a butt-slapping testosterone military movie isn't entirely wasted.

after watching it several times, the mash-up is starting to grow on me, and perhaps the baby d. vocals were a good choice. euro-house is often derided, but this song could work at a discotheque.

the author recut the opening of the movie to work with the music, and the omission of the human interaction and dialogue suggests that top gun can be interpreted as the story of the airplanes. the actors and story are incidental. the thrust of the narrative is the planes: taking off, landing, exploding, recovering.

consider the movie in the inverse. would it be possible to excise all scenes with planes and watch the movie? the answer is a resounding "no." to watch the heartbreaking love story of tom cruise and kelly mcgillis across the death of anthony edwards and suggestive gay fantasies of val kilmer would be torture without the planes.

This post is probably also a good opportunity to mention Iron Man and the Military Industrial Complex.

tu m'entends gosta-berling?

in a sharp piece of satire i had missed until i saw it on you tube, godard twists a dalida song into a tense farce in "week-end"

i was looking for the anarchist cannibal scene, but no one has posted it

falling through the sky

Stephan Bodzin is a minimal techno artist on his own label Herzblut Recordings. this is the "inofficial video" for his piece with Marc Romboy. it looks like a montage of found vids of thrill-seekers doing their sky dives and base jumps. there's even a car falling thru the sky. it's kind of a relaxing video, actually.



Stephan Bodzin vs. Marc Romboy - "Callisto"

should have been there

Lace played the Electrelane version of this Springsteen song a couple weeks ago on her show when I was up choreographing. Along with The Shop Assistants' Peel Sessions version of "Ace of Spades," the Au Pairs' "Repetition," and Raincoats' "Lola," this song is on the short list of best cover versions by an all girl or anti-gender norm post punk band, admittedly a rather narrow category. Grand prize goes to Huggy Bear for its demo version of "Sun Shiny Day."

This video was recorded at the Parish in Austin in June 2007. I was wondering, "Why wasn't I there?" I was just arriving in Lyon for my long sojourn in France, and I'm starting to realize that those two months last summer were probably the last time I will ever do anything so completely irresponsible and exhilarating.

Romain Gavras/ Justice - "Stress"

i know not much about him, but Romain Gavras is causing a stir with this new Justice video. brown kids will take over france!

Justice - Stress



this 2007 vid is a little lighter... and whiter. the message here is more like, struggling white kids will not be forgotten by france! Gavras's compositions share a context (urban youth?) but he used such different, racialized narratives.

Dj Medhi - Signatune

Outfield, BMORE style

there are about 20 remixes of Outfield's 1986(?) hit Your Love. (which is kind of a sleazy song now that i've listened to it for the first time in forever.) but the ny dj Roctakon did a bmore mix and then some nice person made a "video remix" of Outfield's original video. it's a good show!



(vs. original vid)

Tears For Fears "Head Over Heels"

I wasn't going to subject this blog to this video, but the video is so insanely stupid that it just seems to hit me on the head, with a hammer (and the keyboard on the counter: Jeff Bridges meets "Separate Ways"). The end is terrifically sexist, almost as much as the side by side magnet sets I saw at Book People today.

Magnet set on the right: "Great Authors" (all men)
Magnet set on the left: "Women Authors"

Edwyn Collins "You'll Never Know (My Love)"

This is a song by Edwyn Collins, former singer of Postcard band Orange Juice and performer of nineties hit "Never met a girl like you before," of which Coldplay conspicuously lifted the melody for a song on that blue record of theirs. Coldplay provides some useful contrast with Collins, because one could make a rather facile comparison between the two. They both trade in rather syrupy love paeans to generic women, although I can't say for sure whom Collins is in love with. I'd hesitate to put an Orange Juice song on a mix tape for a girl. "L.O.V.E. Love"? Really? Is that it?

However, with all due respect to Coldplay, Collins' love songs convince me. He doesn't sound like an adolescent when he sings about love, even when he was an adolescent singing about love.

Now I've found out from his myspace page, maintained by his son, that he suffered a cerebral hemorrhage in 2005 and is slowly recovering his faculties, enough to write more love songs. Thus, I share with you this, one of his new songs:



Notice the Rick James photo (?).

Here's Orange Juice on Top of the Pops with a magnificent rendition of one of their best songs, from their second record:

pony up

i heard Vitalic's "poney part one" on east village radio a few days ago. the video by Pleix is like Benny Benassi meets Best In Show.



i'd like to think of this as a commentary/critique of slick, sexed-up electronica. but it's probably not, considering the track is from 2001 and slick, sexed-up electronica has only exponentially proliferated since then. also, Vitalic (Pascal Arbez) released the Poney EP on a label called International Deejay Gigolo Records, and he had a side project called Hustler Pornstar. i advise you not to google search that.

but yes, maybe it's all tongue-in-cheek sarcasm that matches the dismal euphoric sound that typifies his music....

NYC and the time of Xymox

i'm heading to New York this afternoon. it is raining and cold.


Clan of Xymox - "Stranger" (1984, 4AD)

Clan of Xymox just released a DVD, but it's already gone out of print once. one day i will get a studio version of this song and do a Blue Monday-Stranger interlude for all the kids with borrowed nostalgia for the unremembered 80s.

G.L.O.W.

This video was forwarded to me by a friend with the subject line reading 'Palestina' and her comment being "oh my god".

It's from the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling (G.L.O.W.) which was a professional wrestling television show launched in 1986 out of the Riviera Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, and co-founded by Jacqueline Stallone (Sylvester Stallone's mother). The show ran syndicated for about four or five years and the wrestlers consisted of "Stallone's Sweethearts" (the good girls) and "Kitty's Killers" (the bad girls), managed by Stallone and Kitty Burke (aka Aunt Kitty), respectively.

Each wrestler had their own rap they performed (pre-recorded), as demonstrated below.

ending of "rock and rule"

when i was young, there was a period during which animators anthropomorphized animals to the logical limit: animals became human in every respect except for a button rodent nose. perhaps the animal features compensated for the characters' highly sexual bodies, but instead of deadening the human-animals' sex appeal, the style imbued the paradoxical creatures with some kind of otherworldly beauty. as a kid, i found myself strangely attracted to these big-breasted chipmunk creatures.

no movie better exemplifies this style than "rock and rule," which features the voices and vocal talents of lou reed, debbie harry, cheap trick, and iggy pop. my friend k gave the movie to me for christmas; evidently it is quite rare. sadly, one night at a party, someone stole the tape from my house.

here's the final scene:

Unwound "Petals Like Bricks"

not in a good mood, and Unwound is always perfect for not in a good mood.

i saw them only once, after "leaves turn inside you," their quiet opus and final work. i miss unwound. i missed all the tours for the "future of what," "new plastic ideas," all the music that encapsulates the prevailing sentiments of my life.

also, sara, their drummer, is one of the best ever noise rock drummers. she captures this perfect conflicting quality of everything falling apart but wrapped up in a tight knot.

dispassionate artistic comments on assassination-themed youtube video (retitled with many apologies by j, fearful of the secret service)

This user's account was banned from YouTube but, fortunately, a lot of people have been reposting the video. It's a young boy talking about how and why he's going to kill the president. It's quite brilliant, really. I'm very curious as to how this video originated... Someone in the comments suggested that he was reading off a cue card but I don't think little kids can read aloud that quickly and smoothly. Maybe a sibling helped him make it. No matter the reason... the kids aren't alright.

"I'm not bullshitting with you, America, right now. I'm goin' through some things."

the boy was a cipher

instead of writing a term paper, i got sucked into TRS-80 (not the old computer) today (via K/V blog). TRS-80 mix up their electronic drums and keyboards with old crap like Coke commercials, network tv crime shows, and, in this case, iconic mormon b-films. here's their mash up of the film Cipher in the Snow and their own track from the album shake hands with danger.




this is pretty stellar editing with great music. but it's kind of illuminating, too, to compare the vid with the plot summary for the original film:

When a teenage boy dies unexpectedly, his math teacher is asked to notify his parents and write his obituary. Although he was the boy's favorite teacher, he hardly knew him. Shy and ostracized, the boy was a cipher, an unknown number in a class roll book. As the teacher unravels the mystery of what led to the boy's death, he commits himself to not letting others suffer the same fate. Now, for the first time on DVD, this classic film will inspire you and your family to reach out to others and care for the one.

Water Balloon Exploding at 2,000 Frames per Second

It's probably against the rules of blogging etiquette to share something that you spotted on your Gmail "webclip" bar, but what the hell. Wired.com recently posted this video of a water balloon explosion captured by a high speed video camera.



My apologies for the cheesy soundtrack.

Title This

Ornette Coleman and Mark Kostabi compete on "Title This," Mark Kostabi's cable-access game show on which celebrities compete to name Kostabi paintings or non-art objects that Kostabi owns and for cash awards.

No kidding.

Love the ambient-noise French conversation before the piece starts. Watching the audience is almost as fun as watching the performance.

Neu! "Hero"

Since Krautrock is always a safe bet and I'm feeling lazy, here's Neu! performing an early version of "Hero" from 1974. Neu! split from an early iteration of Kraftwerk. This video is an excerpt and features ecstatic Germans and bubbles. I first heard a Neu! record in the Fine Arts Library at UT about ten years ago. There was a patron who would come in with a DAT and record all the rare early electronic music we had, and he recommended highly Neu!. Later, I felt exceptionally cool and rock-literate when I heard the Ciccone Youth song "Two cool rock chicks listening to Neu!" featuring Kim Gordon and someone else talking about cool shit while Neu! played in the background. I no longer feel so cool, but the memory of coolness remains.

Bauhaus "Bela Lugosi's Dead"

Nightclubbing Volume 3

File this under videos you've probably seen. From the fast-cut opening sequence to "The Hunger," Bauhaus performs its debut single live in a cage or something. Appropriate for a vampire movie, right? Susan Sarandon still looks hot and unnaturally old in this logical follow-up to the "Rocky Horror Picture Show." Catherine Deneuve is more in "Belle du jour" mode than "Umbrellas of Cherbourg" mode. David Bowie plays David Bowie, first an alien, now a vampire. The guy has range. This video is typical Tony Scott. Compare it to the opening sequence of "Top Gun."

Yello "Bostich"

Quoting directly from this bio: "The ambitious Swiss electronic duo Yello comprised vocalist/conceptualist Dieter Meier — a millionaire industrialist, professional gambler and member of Switzerland's national golf team — and composer/arranger Boris Blank."

Meier directed this video.

Yello bostich
Uploaded by dj-T-goth

Grace Jones "I've Seen that Face Before"

Nightclubbing Volume 2

Off Jones's record, "Nightclubbing." Directed by Jean-Paul Goude, who also did art-direction for Jones after her early disco diva period.

A Roman Scandal "DTs"

I've been dragging my feet on posting because I've been very busy and also someone has been a little slow to get around to watching the Liquid Sky trailer. Since it's hard to top something as bizarre as Liquid Sky, I thought I'd post something more mundane, a low-budget music video Austin resident Michael Connor did for A Roman Scandal's "DTs." A Roman Scandal was in many ways my favorite band to see live. Alex and Tyler from OMD 20/20 played f'ed up 80s beats. Jason from AYWKUBTTOD wore dark aviator shades and sang like Andrew Eldritch on crack. This dude Chuck did food colored amoeba style overhead projector visuals. Sadly, no one from the band appears in this Michel Gondry/Office style video, but the song's pretty cool and the video is clever. For me though, nothing will compare to seeing A Roman Scandal at a "punk rock prom" in Denton many years ago.

Liquid Sky

Nightclubbing Volume 1

Tron remake

and totally inadvertently, i stumbled across this remake of the snake/SNAFU/lightbike game from Tron. some french dudes used miniatures, cardboard, and papier-maché to turn a camp classic scene into, well, pretty much a camp classic scene.

one aspect i hadn't noted when i last watched tron was gee whiz, was this movie a star wars knock off or what? (that star wars video is sure to get taken down fast, so watch it if you want to compare similarities and dig the semi-amusing queen soundtrack)

Tron
Uploaded by freres-hueon

the original:

Cabaret Voltaire

While angry punks morphed into hardcore and angsty post punks made new wave, Cabaret Voltaire still seemed to have a way to merge menace with the avant garde. More than a little self-conscious at times, both CV and Throbbing Gristle might be comparable to a Beatles and Stones of industrial music, always pushing the envelope a little further. Unintended analogy: Does that make Blur and Oasis the Cabaret Voltaire and Throbbing Gristle of Brit-pop?

Excepter - Kill People

This is the video for "Kill People" off Excepter's outstanding new album Debt Dept. This video was just released yesterday and features some very smooth effects and camp galore.

Tom Rubnitz, Ryan Trecartin.

From Wikipedia: "Tom Rubnitz was a video artist most often associated with the New York East Village drag queen scene of the late 1980s. His video tapes were mainly inspired by pop culture and Las Vegas style shows. A number of his works featured RuPaul and members of the B-52's. He also made the 1987 documentary Wigstock: The Movie about the annual drag queen festival."

Below is his video for "Pickle Surprise". Ham!



Ryan Trecartin, whose video piece "I-Be Area" is currently on display at Okay Mountain, displays obvious (and self-proclaimed) influence from Rubnitz. Here's a snippet from "I-Be Area" - you can find more scattered around YouTube in no particular order.

Michel Polnareff

Introduced to Michel Polnareff through Cristina's ironic cover of "La Poupée qui fait non," I'm impressed by his versatility.

The guitar twirl (wait for it):



The Man of la Mancha:



The heartthrob:



And far and away, best of all, ALIEN HIPPIE SAILOR IN THE DESERT:

Jacques Doriot

French fascist gets a little hot under the collar, July 1941. The gist of the speech is that the British are losing, the Jews are conspiring, and Pétain is going to lead France to a new golden age. Somebody hose this man down please! Seriously, he is soaked.

Tavalodet Mobarak!

Special Guest Poster: Amy D. L.
Googoosh is the Queen of Persian Pop, the Daughter of Iran, the most famous Iranian pop star. After the revolution in 1979 she was banned from performing due to the laws of the Islamic Republic and she was also not allowed to leave the country. Eventually, about 20 years later she left and has released a number of albums in a short amount of time.
This video is from before the 1979 revolution and she is singing at Reza Pahlavi's birthday. At the end you hear her singing "Tavalodet Mobarak" (happy birthday).

YouTube Phenomena Lesson 2: Videos of Records

So I started this series of posts calling the subject matter "internet subcultures" but I've realized they are more easily classifiable as YouTube phenomena. The phenomena are sub-cultural, though the videos may not represent a specific subcultural group. Today's lesson is on videos of records.

Sometimes, when searching for a video or performance of a specific song, typically mid-20th century, you'll find a video of a turntable playing the song. It's basically an easy way to share a song. The songs that are played are usually, but not necessarily, out of print or hard to find. For someone without equipment for record digitization, recording a quick video requires very few steps to share a track via the internet. Here is a typical video, "Then He Kissed Me" by the Crystals.



You see a flash of the label at the beginning and then a hand, presumably the video-maker's, reaches in, setting down the record and placing the needle down to play the song. This format is typical of a video maker that does minimal editing of the raw footage. The purpose of videos like these is rudimentary so most of the footage is unedited.

Up next is a recording of "Four on the Floor" by the Super Stocks. This video-maker gets a little more creative, showing off the album artwork and self-consciously zooming in and out on the record player.



In the notes for the above video, the YouTube member mentions that the track is being played on a 1956 Philco E-1762 floor model turntable. This is not really necessary considering the horrendous loss of sound quality on YouTube videos. The poster of "The He Kissed Me" doesn't mention any specifications of the recording other than the dated it was recorded, but does field questions in comments about his record player or reissues of the song.

Up next is a 1928 recording of Harry Bidgood & His Broadcasters. The record is badly damaged, but the video gives YouTube users a chance to hear a recording they wouldn't otherwise. A true record snob, or so I imagine based on the stereotype I learned from Ghost World, might consider digitization to bastardize the recording, much less a low quality YouTube video like this one. This video is particularly psychedelic and even has some video effects for the introduction.



So, this concludes lesson two of the series on YouTube phenomena. Though it's not a particularly unusual or intriguing trend in web video use, I think it's a phenomena that deserves mention. A close cousin to the record player video, the slide show music video will be featured in another lesson.

Rod

Did you know there are videos on YouTube of almost any Faces song you can think of? The first two are the only "awesome" videos of the group, but all have a certain degree of Rod value. I don't know why I like Rod Stewart; I think it started as a running joke but then I decided one day that I really do think the Faces kick butt, and you can't fault me for ironic Rod love. Plus the phallic overtones just add the right degree of sleaziness to everything about Rod. Not to descend into cheap psychoanalysis here, but I'm a little put off by dudes who are too macho to admit appreciation for gay culture or for the iconic pin-ups of middle-aged moms.

"Stay with Me":



Rod & Ronnie singing "Maybe I'm Amazed":



Rod gets fat, gets a perm, and sings "Every Picture Tells a Story":



One of my earlier music video memories is of this song:

Big Star live 1993

When I saw Yo La Tengo at Austin Music Hall last night, I was reminded in part of seeing Big Star at the same place at a different time with a different person, but Yo La Tengo was more beautiful and potent. Everything changes and we change along with it.

YouTube Phenomena Lesson 1: Animated Game Hybrids

My favorite thing about YouTube is that it's like a World's Fair of every internet subculture you've never heard of. Today's lesson is in videos that combine an animated game (such as the Sim's or World of Warcraft) with another element like music, an invented plot-line or some other spin.

First example. Famous dance scenes are paired up with Warcraft characters dancing the same moves:


Second, there is an obscene number of shitty pop music videos that have been remade by what I always assume to be middle schoolers using the Sims' video games. I think the the video below may actually contain the worst song ever.



Here's another Sims video. This one is with Harry Potter. Look at their little digital pantomimes. The premise is: Harry and Ron set the house on fire and try to put it out while "Sweet Dreams" plays and people shout in, what sounds, like Russian.



Now I'm sure there are lots of other virtual type games with corresponding fan videos, so if you know of any please share. Next is a mash-up of "Sexy Back" with shots of Link from Zelda.



Finally, a video of someone's "dream crib" from Sims 2. On the notes it says "Shout out to Mr. H's 6th Period! Sorry if I didn't put everyone in the class." and the final shot in the video is a group of kids, presumably Mr. H's class... suspicion of middle schoolers confirmed! I like the lack of frills with this video; quick, jerky shots and no sound.



Thanks for enduring the length of this post. This entry briefly touches on issues of Harry Potter fan fiction, sexualized animation and meme phenomena. There is a new type of intelligence that is allowed by internet culture. In many ways the access that young people have to technology now is unleashing a new and unusual amount of creativity, though I imagine the negative effects on youth outweigh the positive.

Talk Talk "Living in Another World"

On my way to Houston for the second time this weekend, I listened to Talk Talk's greatest hits from start to finish, and it was perfect. The music made me feel happy/sad, my favorite feeling!

Talk Talk - Living in another world
Uploaded by hakim93200

"hey ho" by the sept nains

arty kid + video camera + la monte young = ?

some kid held his camera sideways on the freeway and set the resulting video to an excerpt of La Monte Young's 'Bb Dorian Blues 28th63', part of an infinite music performance from 1963. You can see the non-pretentious (but still arty!) version of this video here: Chemical Brothers "Star Guitar"... and you know, the latter is directed by Michel Gondry, so it's some stuff white people like.

Slug Sex

Oh boy, my first official video blogging (vlog?) experience. I'd like to start with some required viewing...



This is from Life in the Undergrowth, a BBC documentary with David Attenborough. He's getting so old and there are some hilarous animated scenes on the documentary. The whole thing is great, but this definitely one of the highlights. This slug mating ritual made me cry, it's kind of beautiful and I'm kind of sappy.

"Rebel L"

"I was born to go la la la at the top of my la la lungs!"

Lio "Sage (comme une image)"

Zé records artist Lio continues Belgium's proud tradition of messing with France's delusions of grandeur and affected high culture. Other examples of such Belgian acts include Plastic Bertrand and Poésie Noire. One French girl I spoke to refused categorically to talk about Plastic Bertrand except to groan that such music is an insult to French honor. At age sixteen, Lio was already a pop star. Here's a song from her second record.

Lio-Sage
Uploaded by val6210

Here's a more recent performance of her most famous song, "Amoureux Solitaires":

Lio - Amoureux solitaires 2007
Uploaded by seidrik

RAF "Self Control"

While on the Euro-disco theme (and more to come I'm sure), here's RAF with the original version of "Self Control"



I don't have much to say about this song, except I love it and it kicks ass and I will never get tired of it. Also, I like the Laura Branigan version:

Supermax "Love Machine"

*Warning: this video contains disco*



From time to time, I'll scan through old videos I've posted on Facebook because some deserve a second life here on the blog, and I'm lazy besides. This Austrian disco band scraped the charts here in the US, hitting #96 for one week. Once dead and buried, this song returns like a brain-eating zombie. Feelings of despair and/or a strong desire to renounce pop music may result from watching this video.

Brainiac Three Songs

*Warning: This video contains punk rock*



I was briefly obsessed with the performance of the third of these three songs, "The Draag" (easily the highlight), and now two others have been appended before the climactic finale. Timmy Taylor makes sarcastic remarks and spazzes out. Pretty excellent. He later died in a car crash, and his loss is still poignant, as Brainiac seemed in 1998 on the cusp of greatness (a typical abridged rock'n'roll story). Owen from KVRX told me a couple months ago that he was friends with Tim and invited him to move to Austin, but Tim never had the chance. For me, Brainiac has a certain mystique, in part nostalgic I'm sure. This performance is from a bar in Nashville, 1993.

Interview with Colin Newman and Malka Spigel

An October 2007 interview with Malka Spigel and Colin Newman. Spigel was a member of Israeli rock band Minimal Compact; Newman of British post-punk band Wire. Spigel and Newman, wife and husband, have collaborated for over twenty years and have now formed a band Githead, the subject of this interview.

Githead "Drive By"
Minimal Compact "Dedicated"

Bonus: Jarvis Cocker covering Wire's "Outdoor Miner" (!)

AC Marias "One of Our Girls Has Gone Missing"

Frequent Wire collaborator Angela Conway is here represented by her final single under the moniker AC Marias, an allusion to her maiden name. Bruce Gilbert contributes to this song and the entire album, which has drawn favorable comparisons to Young Marble Giants. I first heard this song on Indie Top 20 Vol 9, an excellent NME comp from 1990. According to Wikipedia, Conway left music after this swan song and focuses her efforts on music video direction.

Some of her other music video work can be seen here:

Erasure "Breath of Life"
Chapterhouse "Pearl" (or as I like to call it, "Male Orgasm")
Pale Saints "Time Thief"
The Chills "Heavenly Pop Hit"
Loop "Arc-Lite"
Tangerine "Sunburst"

So very early 90s-ish! Complete Videography

segundo

This song, performed by Gal Costa, was recorded live in 1972. According to AllMusic.com, she was one of the preeminent singers of the Tropicalia movement. One of her songs was included on the iconic "Tropicália: Ou Panis Et Circenses" compilation, perhaps the best introduction to Tropicalia. According to Wikipedia, she, like Caetano Veloso et al., was active in Brazilian politics and resisted Brazil's 1968 ban on dissent in music.

primero

The description the artist included with the video sums it up: "Video I made cutting Audioslave's Doesn't Remind Me music video to "Kites Are Fun" by The Free Design"



more on both artists for those interested: audioslave is a band with the dude from soundgarden, chris cornell. he grumbles out songs. the songs are rather humorless and alt-rocky. the free design was a semi-obscure chamber pop band from NYC in the late 60s. stereolab named an EP after them.