Sword dancing
Dancing skills + sword fighting skills + old lady sitting motionless in a chair skills + huge boom box skills + dog almost gets beheaded skills + it gets magical around 52 seconds =
(via @thanland)
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kottke.org posts about music
Kreayshawn The Game
From Beth Maher, a Flash video game featuring rapper Kreayshawn (Gucci Gucci). And it uses Silkscreen! (via clusterflock)
Michael Winslow gets the Led out
There is a sense amongst my generation that Michael Winslow’s best performing days are behind him. (You’ll remember Winslow as Officer Sound Effects from Police Academy.) After all, we live in the age of the beatboxing flautist. You might change your tune after watching Winslow do Zeppelin’s Whole Lotta Love. The first 28 seconds are like, oh, I’ve heard this before yawn zzzzzzzzzz WHOA, WHERE THE HELL DID THAT GUITAR NOISE COME FROM??!
And then it goes bananas right around 1:30. This is a must-see. (via @beep)
George Harrison: Living in the Material World
Premiering on HBO this week, a Martin Scorsese documentary on George Harrison, everyone’s favorite Beatle who wasn’t John or Paul.
Academy Award-winning director Martin Scorsese traces Harrison’s live from his musical beginnings in Liverpool though his life as a musician, a seeker, a philanthropist and a filmmaker, weaving together interviews with Harrison and his closest friends, performances, home movies and photographs. Much of the material in the film has never been seen or heard before. The result is a rare glimpse into the mind and soul of one of the most talented artists of his generation and a profoundly intimate and affecting work of cinema.
Piano quality and consumer technology regression
A piano technician reports that the best pianos were built around 1900 and we’ll never again see their like…the quality of today’s pianos just doesn’t measure up.
The finest pianos in the world were built about a hundred years ago. Due to evolution in engineering, exhaustion of raw materials, and flagging business standards, we will never see their like again. Some people may build very good pianos; new forms of the instrument may exceed (in narrow ways) the magnificent machines built a few decades either side of the year 1900. But, from a musical perspective, there will never be a “better” piano than the typical concert grand of a century ago.
(via @kdawson)
Rare footage of live Nirvana concert
YouTube has 45 minutes of previously unreleased footage of a Halloween concert Nirvana played in 1991 at the Paramount Theater in Seattle.
The DVD contains the full performance (there’s also a Blu-ray version out in a few months). I think this might be one of my answers to “what would you do if you had a time machine?”… (via devour)
Update: The video seems to be down right now…not sure if it’ll be back or not. Sorry…
Rap Genius
I am reminded this morning of that rarest of birds, the lyrics site that doesn’t suck: Rap Genius. RG breaks down rap songs line-by-line and not only explains all the references but attempts to “critique rap as poetry”. Here’s Gotta Have It from Watch the Throne.
(Ain’t that just like D. Wade? Wait)
Jay may be saying that Kanye and he are like LeBron and D-Wade. 1a and 1b. Great at what they do, hated because they brag about how good they are as a unit (and just because they ARE good). I guess that means Memphis Bleek is Jason Williams
The “wait” part may have been Jay giving pause to the LeBron/Wade reference after their epic fail during the 2011 NBA Finals. Jay is more likely to jab at LeBron now, because he was unhappy with the way his friend mishandled his “Decision” to go to Miami. He left Jay, a minority owner of the New Jersey Nets, in the dark with the rest of the NBA when he chose to take his talents to South Beach.
All of Kanye’s “HUH”s
The other day while listening to Watch the Throne I wondered if someone had made a supercut of all of Kanye’s “HUH”s, “HANH”s, and “UHH”s…and of course someone has.
HENH??!
Koyaanisqatsi live performances in NYC
The New York Philharmonic, joined by Philip Glass himself, will perform the score for Koyaanisqatsi while the film is projected on a screen above the stage.
Lose yourself in Philip Glass’s powerful music for the 1982 Godfrey Reggio film Koyaanisqatsi: A Life Out Of Balance, performed live by the Philharmonic and the Philip Glass Ensemble, as the landmark film is projected on a huge screen above the Avery Fisher Hall stage.
There will be two performances, Nov 2 and Nov 3 at 7:30pm at Avery Fisher Hall. There are still tons of great seats available, but get ‘em while you can. Excited!
Keep cool with a new Hood Internet mix
Loving this new Trillwave 2 mix from The Hood Internet.
If you like that, here’s the first Trillwave mix.
Animated sheet music
Watch the sheet music go by as Miles Davis and his bandmates play So What.
See also Confirmation by Charlie Parker and Giant Steps by John Coltrane.
The best Watch the Throne album review you’ll read
Ghostface Killah from the Wu-Tang Clan reviewed Jay-Z and Kanye’s album, Watch the Throne…and it is hilarious.
2. Lift Off (ft. Beyonce) - I almost aint wanna even comment on this shit son…. I dont even kno what to say bout it yo. This shit sounds like the anthem the fairies in Ferngully would use to go to war against evil humans to or some shit b. This shit is like Shia LeBeouf in song form yo. Lissenin to this shit is like havin ya ears penetrated by a million microscopic dicks namsayin. Shit sounds like n***as doin aerobics on a magical cloud of daisies. How many meadows did Kanye cartwheel across before he decided to make this beat? Seriously yo….
Seriously.
Update: The review was not written by Ghostface but it is still hilarious. (thx, all)
Taylor Swift covers Eminem’s Lose Yourself
Not even country music can ruin that song. But as you well know Taylor, Eminem’s version is the best of all time. (via @anildash)
Audiosurf
Audiosurf is a racing game where the courses are determined by the music you play from your own library. There are all sorts of YouTube clips of the gameplay (which is reminiscent of Guitar Hero)…here’s a representative one:
Baseball symphony
Music critic Anthony Tommasini goes to a baseball game at Yankee Stadium and treats the game as a musical piece.
For all the hubbub of constant sound it is amazing how clearly the crack of a bat, the whoosh of a pitch (at least from the powerhouse Sabathia), and the leathery thud of the ball smothered in the catcher’s mitt cut through the textures. And if the hum of chattering provides the unbroken timeline and undulant ripple of this baseball symphony, the voices that break through from all around are like striking, if fleeting, solo instruments.
The most assertive soloists are the vendors. My favorite was a wiry man with nasal snarl of a voice who practically sang the words “Cracker Jack” as a three-note riff: two eighth notes on “Cracker,” followed by a quarter note on “Jack,” always on a falling minor third. (Using solf`ege syllables, think “sol, sol, mi.”) After a while I heard his voice drifting over from another section, and he had transposed his riff down exactly one step.
Free beats
Can rap be charming? Maybe so…Chris Sullivan set up in Union Square and beatboxed so that anyone who wanted to could come up and rap:
(via @dens)
Beastie Boys vs. Sesame Street
Sesame Street characters, including Grover on the flute, perform the Beastie Boys’ Sure Shot.
(via devour)
Rave on, Internet
NPR has an interesting piece on how the internet shaped the American rave scene in the 90s.
At first, the connections were done the old-fashioned way. “By 1994, there was already kind of an established network of party-throwers and partygoers [in Detroit],” says Rob Theakston, a Detroit rave veteran. “At that point, the scene was maybe 200 kids max. Everything was very phone-based. [You’d] call the phone lines the day of to get directions, and even then, a lot of the direction lines would just give the vicinity because you would already know: ‘Oh, Harper and Van Dyke — that’s the old theater. We know where the party’s going to be.’ They wouldn’t give you the exact address for the authorities to find out.”
(via @moth)
Vegan Black Metal Chef
A chef cooks a vegan pad thai dish to a black metal song.
Cut the tofu! Turn the plate! (thx, jay)
Slo-mo cymbal strike
A drumstick hitting a cymbal at 1000 frames/sec. More flex there than I would have assumed.
(via mlkshk)
Rave On Buddy Holly
Rave On Buddy Holly is an album-length compilation of Buddy Holly cover songs sung by the likes of Cee Lo Green, Fiona Apple, Lou Reed, and Paul McCartney. You can listen now on Soundcloud, via the embed below, or pre-order the album on Amazon.
“New” mix by The Hood Internet
This looks to be about a year old, but it’s new to me: 57 minutes and 37 seconds of goodness from The Hood Internet.
It’s a little more chill than their usual stuff — “Trillwave is the soundtrack to the party after the afterparty or maybe to a sun-drenched backyard barbecue the next day” — but I like it a lot so far. (via @djgeekdout)
Lady Gaga’s musical family tree
Do you get that funny feeling that you’ve heard Lady Gaga’s Born This Way somewhere before? Maybe when it was called Express Yourself or Waterfalls or God is a DJ?
A+ for the performance too. Everything is a Remix, folks.
London version of “what song are you listening to?”
You may remember the New York version. This is the same deal — asking people on the street what song they’re listening to on their headphones — except in London.
(via stellar)
I read Playboy.com for the Miles Davis articles
From 1962, Alex Haley interviews Miles Davis for Playboy magazine.
Why is it that people just have to have so much to say about me? It bugs me because I’m not that important. Some critic that didn’t have nothing else to do started this crap about I don’t announce numbers, I don’t look at the audience, I don’t bow or talk to people, I walk off the stage, and all that.
Look, man, all I am is a trumpet player. I only can do one thing — play my horn — and that’s what’s at the bottom of the whole mess. I ain’t no entertainer, and ain’t trying to be one. I am one thing, a musician. Most of what’s said about me is lies in the first place. Everything I do, I got a reason.
The article is SFW but the ads are NSFW…here’s a completely SFW version.
Doctor Who gonna bust a cap in yo ass
Sometimes the simple things in life are best…like a compilation of clips of The Doctor shooting guns with a gansta rap soundtrack.
(via ★interesting)
What song are you listening to?
Tyler Cullen went out on the streets of NYC and asked random passers-by what song they were listening to on their headphones.
Turned out to be more interesting than I expected.
Delia Derbyshire, the first DJ
Lovely short film clip of BBC Radiophonic Workshop’s Delia Derbyshire demonstrating how to make electronic music using tape loops. Look at the beat matching!
It was Derbyshire who gave the original Doctor Who theme its distinctive sound. (via ★danielpunkass)
New Lady Gaga only 99 cents on Amazon
That’s not a typo…Lady Gaga’s Born This Way is only a buck on Amazon.
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