Pure Morning by Placebo has been stuck in my head a lot lately (standard grumble here about not being able to embed the video, and having a good song with an entirely unrelated / eh music video). And it’s occurred to me that it would make a really good, if a bit odd, song for stripping.
In thinking about that, another song in the same genre came to mind – Pets by Porno For Pyros (really ignore that thought if you feel the need to watch the video while listening to it, as it kind of picks up on the vibe, but in a freakish female body builder way):
Any thoughts for other good, though non-standard (ie, no “I Touch Myself” by The Divinyls, or “Pour Some Sugar On Me”, or “Wild Thing”, etc), songs for stripping?
Perhaps it’s just because I’m a big marching band geek, but this video (youtube) is about 8 shades of awesome (though grumble gumble about not being able to embed it).
I’ve decided that posting this around New Year’s is now a tradition as well:
Also, you know what I’m looking forward to about the New Year’s Eve celebrations next year? Seeing how they’re going to make those stupid plastic eye glasses where the frames are in the shape of the year out of a 2011. Maybe everyone will have to ring in the New Year with only one eye open and the whole celebration all around the world will be pirate themed. Happy New Yarrrrrr!
I posted this video last year around Christmas time too, and I think I’m going to make it a tradition. I still really like this song, and love the performance of it. I think it fits the season and time of year well, and it’s just pleasantly calming for me in a time of year that can have a lot of stress. So, here you go, Imogen Heap singing Just For Now:
Also, due to travel, holidays, job stuff, generally taking a break, excessive bowl game watching in one last binge of college football before The Long Painful Months Without College Football, etc, etc, I’m going to be mostly AWOL from posting for the next couple weeks – somewhere between sporadic and non-existent until early to mid January, and then should resume the standard “most every weekday when I remember and can find some spare minutes” posting pattern. Til then, just keep watching the above video in a loop. It’ll make you feel better.
I’ve been resisting posting the Muppets singing Bohemian Rhapsody video, as it’s been posted everywhere, so instead, here’s a link to a post on Kottke with a few other Muppet videos.
And, while we’re on Rhapsodies and silliness, here’s Victor Borge doing Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 on piano
I’m presenting these in the order that I found them, not because it makes more sense that way, but because it makes slightly less, and then you can share in the somewhat befuddled but interested discovery process.
And it’s sufficiently addictive (catchy song, amusingly random, cute girl, probably all of the above) that I watched it a couple of times. I eventually decided (a couple of days later with it still stuck in my head) that I was going to figure out where it came from.
So, I eventually figured out that there’s a game called Plants vs Zombies that you can play the first few levels of online for free. It’s an okay game, a decent time waster, but nothing too spectacular. But once you play it for a while, the song starts making more and more sense (still not lots, but more at least).
So, even more eventually (at least a week, maybe two, since watching the first video, as I played the game on and off 5 minutes at a time in the evenings until I ran out of free levels) I watched the video on youtube, and in the related video section was this, which sort of made it all come together:
A while ago I went to a performance by the Minnesota Orchestra where they showed an old Charlie Chaplin movie, and played the score to the movie as it went. (Side note- the Minnesota Orchestra is doing it again with another Chaplin movie in early January. I’d recommend it. It’s fun.)
It was really cool not only because it was a live performance coupled with a great movie (City Lights is awesome, highly recommended), but because it’s also the way silent movies were originally shown – with a live musician either performing the score along with it (often on just a piano), or completely improving a score for the movie as it played.
I also remember that at some point even longer ago, I saw something on TV about old movies, and I believe one of them was a Charlie Chaplin one as well, where they were saying that it’s a bit hard to restore a definitive version of the movie, because it was originally produced with 4 different scores, any one of which could be played with the film, and each one of which had a very different tone and style, each giving the whole movie a very different feel.
So, here’s my idea for the more cinematic crowd out there. I’d like to see a website called Four Score (intentional pun on Lincoln’s speech) where a film maker produces a modern silent movie, and then releases it to the website. Any user (or possibly a select group of preselected composers, up to you) can then submit a score / sound track for the movie in the form of an mp3 to be played along with the movie. The best four are voted on, and the 4 different versions of the movie are then released on the site. I would tend to imagine this would work best with shorts, maybe in the 5-10 minute range, just so people would be willing to watch the different versions, and so the idea of coming up with a score for them would be at least somewhat within reach of the average user.
Mat Weddle – Hey Ya (originally by Outkast) – That one’s easily the best stand alone song of the bunch, even if you’ve never heard the original version, the cover is great.
Decadence – Bitches Ain’t Shit (originally by Dr Dre) – That one’s actually a cover of a cover. Ben Folds covered the original, and this is an a cappella cover of that version. I’d love to see a version of this done in a Gregorian Chant style.
As a bonus update to this previous post, I found a version of Max Raabe’s cover of Shaggy’s Angel on some Japanese (??) site, here.
In case you’re interested in more about which bands have covered what, Cover Trek has a pretty lengthy database of who has covered what, and lets you find links between different bands, though I would note spelling really counts.
I really like origin stories, and particularly like this one. It’s from the musical / movie Hedwig and the Angry Inch, though I think I originally saw it when they performed it live on some talk show long, long ago when it was a stage show. NSFW.
Side note – Sorry about the above media player, it only seems to work about one out of every five times, if that, and only after you’ve sat through some ad do you find out. Why? Because big corporate media giants are AWESOME and totally on top of that whole interwebs thing-a-mah-bob. As an added bonus, CBS has been so kind as to keep taking down every version of the above song that I try to link to on youtube. But, the internet being the hydra that it is, people keep posting it. So, what I’m really saying here is that if the above doesn’t work, just search on youtube (or any other video sharing site) and you’ll probably find a freshly re-posted copy of it in it’s first couple thousand views before they take it down. Typing in the exact name of this post should work quite well. A few of the one’s I’ve found had annotations, which I’d suggest turning off.
Side side note – Yes, I’ve tried to contact Corporate Bull Shit several time to ask them to fix the video clip, which they even link to from the front page for Letterman’s show, and yet, no response (I’ve even been nice about it. Well, the first couple emails were nice, it’s been over a month now that I’ve been waiting to post this with a working clip.)
Side side side note – The clip really is worth hunting down, especially this particular version, or I wouldn’t bother with all of this. So, go searching and may you be well rewarded for your time.
Side side side side note – Now that I think about it, I was going to make another post about something else CBS related, and offering it in a very positive light, because I quite like it, however, I’ve now decided that I’m holding that post hostage until CBS gets a working clip of this song posted. Submit your kindly complaints (hate mail) here.
Update: I looked around some more, and found this live version. The audio quality is really bad, but it gives an idea of the happy fun-ness love:
Seems like it would be great entrance music for something.
The ‘59 Sound by The Gaslight Anthem:
Has a certain Springsteen-esque-ness to it.
I and Love and You by the Avett Brothers:
Here (the player is off in the upper right hand corner of the page). Very sing-along-able. I especially like the line: “Tell the ones that need to know, we are headed North.”
Androgynous by The Replacements (a local band, who though long defunct, seem to have a continuously spreading influence):
Here is the only version of it I can find online where the audio quality isn’t terrible.
There’s a certain bit of a relationship theme between all of those now that I listen to them all in a row.
Johnny Cash died six years ago today. I actually remember quite distinctly when he died. I was driving down Gilbert St in Iowa City in my old beat up car, listening to Rock 108. If you’re not from Iowa, or not a fan of rock/metal music, Rock 108 is a great rock station that plays absolutely only rock/metal. If it’s borderline on pop or country or rap, they won’t play it. Rock only, almost religiously. Which was why it was particularly odd that when I changed the station to them, a song that was a little bit folk-ish was on. My first thought was actually that the station must have been sold and got a new format, but as it played, I realized it was a cover of a Nine Inch Nails song. And not just a cover, but one of the exceedingly rare occasions where the cover absolutely out does the original. Afterwards the DJ said that the cover was by Johnny Cash, and that he had just died.
As I’ve mentioned before, I hate about 95% of music videos out there, am indifferent to about 4.99%, and only actually like about .01% of them. Most either seem like they’re whatever semi-novel thing that they could come up with to put on screen so the song could get played on MTV-18 (unless that’s become all reality shows as well and we’re on to MTV-19 now). I really, really like this one. It makes the song even better. It may well be my favorite music video. It was the last video Johnny Cash made before he died.
I don’t know what to say, other than I’m jealous I didn’t think of it first:
Anyone know where I can get the sheet music for that? And the flame thrower-esque sousaphone attachment?
As a side note, the cover of Britney Spears’ “Ooops I Did It Again” playing in the background is by Max Raabe. He has his own orchestra (the Palast Orchester), and does lots of 1920’s German dance music style covers of pop songs (among his other work). Other favorites are his cover of Angel (by Shaggy), Super Trouper, Tainted Love, and We Will Rock You. I didn’t have much luck finding YouTube clips of these, but thesetwo Amazon pages for the albums have little clips of them to at least give the flavor of it.