Diablo Swing Orchestra. Yes, another new (to me) music win.
Archive for category music
(video link for those not seeing an embedded video – visit my actual fucking blog already)
I know I’m WAY late to the party, but I recently discovered Dr. Steel and I absolutely love everything about the character – the music, the videos, the concept, the gimmick. Wonderful, wonderful stuff.
Saw this story in Fortune magazine and decided to dig it up online and link to it. I’ve done a few posts with thoughts about the music industry on my blog – usually when some established millionaire gives away a half-baked release and promotes it as “sticking to the system.” (See posts: Your Music Is Worthless – Your Music Is Still Worthless – NIN The Slip)
So anyway this article take a look at the current state of the industry and I think it’s quite interesting – even if it’s only because I feel like it sort of confirms what I’ve said all along.
By the time the band files onto the stage, masks in place, it’s after 9 p.m. Beyond the heavily pierced kids in the front row, the crowd of 19,000 stretches back, boxed in by starlit cornfields….
Few adults over the age of 30 have ever heard of Hollywood Undead, whose fan base consists largely of teenagers enthralled by the band’s dangerous image. Most of these kids discovered the band on the Internet. When Hollywood Undead posted its first song on MySpace four years ago, it was an overnight sensation, garnering tens of thousands of online friends in a few months. An overnight sensation — but not a profitable one until the band signed with a traditional record label.
And indeed, more artists than ever are putting out albums online — there were 106,000 new releases in 2008, compared with 44,000 five years ago, according to Nielsen SoundScan.
Precious few, however, ever break through. Of the 63 new releases that sold more than 250,000 copies last year, 61 were issued by major music companies. Yes, occasionally a singer-songwriter like Ingrid Michaelson, whose self-released hit album, Girls and Boys, has sold 286,000 copies since 2006, makes it big. But as the story of Hollywood Undead suggests, the record labels will continue to play a major role, albeit a new one.
It’s a cool read if such matters interest you.
Cool article. I’ve always been ok with compression and I believe you can push it quite a bit before it gets ugly, but popular techniques have long passed that point.
I actually read this article a while back and after I stumbled across it tonight, I decided to share.
Cover songs have always been about the essential task of salvaging originality from the act of imitation, but Wan Covers seek their originality by conceding authority to the originals, as if surrender somehow substitutes for impudence, and a self-conscious servility were somehow enough. It doesn’t, and it’s not.
What’s harder to tolerate, however, are covers that amount to a kind of special pleading — cringing, abject covers that are the collective song of the first generation of musicians who probably won’t be able to outdo their elders and so don’t want to try.
If only the show on at 8pm was called “Slim Shady”
In a nutshell:
An Italian singer wrote this song with gibberish to sound like English. If you’ve ever wondered what other people think Americans sound like, this is it.
(link)
All I know is the tune fucking destroys and it’ll be stuck in my head forever.
SNL has generally been pretty weak this year, but for some reason I thoroughly enjoy this:
With my wife and daughter out of town, my son and I are playing it lazy on a beautiful late summer day – like laying around on the couch lazy. Laying around on the couch watching “Josie and the Pussycats” on Universal HD lazy. Yeah, the movie from 2001, not the old cartoons.
So one of the commercials that runs grabs my attention for it’s silliness. It’s a Franklin Mint commercial selling the set of all 50 state quarters in uncirculated condition. First thing that struck me about the commercial was the sales angle of having people talk about times in the past when they had thought about purchasing something because they had a weird instinct that it was valuable, but passed and regretted it and then flipping that into a reason to hurry up and buy the quarters set.
On top of that they mention several times that some of these coins have appreciated in value up to 400%! Yes, the math on that says some of these coins are worth up to $1. Woo!
And as a minor note they also mention at one point that less than 1% of all Americans will have a set of all 50 quarters like this. Again, the math on that tells us that around 3,000,000 people will have a set like this.
On top of that, the damn thing was like 4 or 5 minutes long. I looked for it online, but only found a couple of shorter, edited spots. Really, the long version is a gem in it’s suckiness. Do watch if you come across it.
Then a few breaks later a slap chop commercial begins, but suddenly starts stuttering and breaks into an Auto-Tuned, remixed masterpiece of musical infomercial proportions. Turns out the thing has been circulating the internet forever and I’d just managed to escape it’s greatness. It got so hot that the Slap Chop folks realized they could run it and get a better reaction than the original commerical, I suppose.
Here is the version running on TV and here is the original.
The only difference is the extra footage. Apparently they couldn’t clear the clips from Breakin’ for the TV airing so they substitued really generic footage of a people (including someone in a rabbit suit) dancing. Quite frankly, I prefer the generic footage to the Breakin’ footage. If you have seen these, watch them now. I can’t get enough of it.
Now someone just needs to remix the Franklin Mint commercial and my world will be complete.
Not sure why I’m hearing things differently lately, but another homophone popped in my head a few minutes ago – a musical one this time.
I jumped in the car to run some Netflix movies to the post office mail drop so that they’d go out tomorrow (yes at 1am) and the station that the radio was on is doing one of those “80 hours of 80’s” things that radio stations across the country do on holiday weekends. The song on the radio is Heart’s “How Can I Get You Alone” and immediately, “How Can I Get You A Loan?” pops in my head.
It made me chuckle.
Just got an email from YouTube that read in part:
Your video, Ignite The Night (Part 1), may have content that is owned or licensed by UMG.
Hmmm. Turns out part of the music for the show is the Supremes, “Stop In The Name Of Love” (right at 6:06 in the video) and now there is advertising shown in the sidebar on the page for that video as well as links to download the Supremes song and also an overlay ad for downloading the song.
Interesting.
I wanted to do just a one-liner pertaining to this video, but there are so many possible plays that I can’t even begin to narrow it down. I can’t believe this is really for real…and current.
Apparently this old video of Travis Barker doing some rudimental snare drum shit got a lot of positive fanboy/worship responses:
And this kid got annoyed at the rock star adoration for doing what most of the drumline band dorks across the country can do:
After watching both videos, I’m not sure if I want to high five the kid or punch him in the mouth.
The only thing I really want to say is, “It takes more than skills to become a rock star.”
I think in the end it’s kudos to the kid for putting it to the fanboys, but the kid ain’t ever gonna be a rock star and needs to accept the fact that beyond skills – charisma, luck and whatever else go a long way. Barker is a rock star. He could shit on a snare drum and people would think it was awesome. That’s what being a rock star is. That’s the point.
How often does being in the high school drum line get you laid, drugs, special concessions of any kind or make you impervious to plane crashes?
So yeah, nice job band geek, but leave the people have their idol because it goes well beyond being able to pull off a diddled fivelet and flam drags.
If this were any greater, I’d probably shed a tear.
Add this one to the “kids shows that are just too awesome to not watch as an adult” files.
Just discovered Imagination Movers a few weeks ago when I was getting the kids off to school.
(official site – background info on wikipedia)
Here’s how you measure how great a kids show is:
1. Will kids like it?
You have a solid idea.
2. Will the kids parents like it?
Now you’ve got a hit.
3. Will the stoned college kids of the world like it?
Get the wheelbarrow ready for the cash that’s about to roll in.
Imagination Movers is that lightning in a bottle that nails all three if you ask me. This will be the next Wiggles if they figure out a way to merchandise it beyond the CDs and DVDs.
At any rate, I look forward to watching it every time I’m up early enough with the kids. Definitely something to look into if you have kids, are kind of ironic and kitchy or are just stoned at 6am on a weekday (God, I miss those days).
I’m sure they’ll start adding the fact that they got the Lord Gonchar seal of approval to their press material. :)
Britney’s video for “If You Seek Amy”
So where does she go from here? I have to admit I liked it better when I thought there was a chance that we all couldn’t fuck her if we happened to run into her in the street somewhere, but I suppose this is cool too.
It did immediately remind me of an old song from 1982 by April Wine called “If You See Kay” – everything old is new again.