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Janelle Monáe – Video For “Tightrope” From “The ArchAndroid”

[ 1 Comment ]Posted on April 27, 2010 by admin in Music

Tuesday, April 27th, 2010

Janelle Monáe is an utterly mind-blowing talent that is sure to change the face of popular music in 2010. My hyperbole is seriously no match for what she does in the video for “Tightrope”

Imagine if Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, Prince, Shirley Bassey, James Brown, Grace Jones, and Rihanna had a daughter, and Outkast produced her. Scratch that. I don’t think there are really words to describe what Janelle Monáe is up to. Her vocal delivery effortlessly slips between sultry, R&B ballsy, and almost childish in the span of single verse. She moves like there’s no such thing as gravity, and she has a keen sense theatricality. Oh. And she’s gorgeous. I’ll just shut up now. Watch the video. I’ll try to say something useful below.

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Did EMI Say OK And Give OK Go A Pass On This Too Shall Pass?

[ Comments Off ]Posted on March 3, 2010 by admin in Music

Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010

The band OK Go complained about their label blocking the band’s videos on YouTube recently, and now their latest release – This Too Shall Pass – is shareable. But none of the others are. A victory over the label? Or a Rube Goldbergian marketing scheme?

Were the band Ok Go’s recent complaints about EMI’s YouTube sharing policies just part of a sneaky, low-key marketing campaign? Who cares. The band’s new brilliantly Rube Goldbergian video below is way too much fun to quibble about it. More thoughts after the clip.

While taking a look at the RIAA’s peculiar paranoia about Canadian pirates recently, we mentioned how Damian Kulash Jr. of the band OK Go had expressed his frustration about not being able to embed his own band’s YouTube videos because of EMI’s “Embedding disabled by request” deal in a NYT editorial. He sounded like a real rebel, sharing the straight dope about how stupid his own label was being about video sharing as promotion. Well, OK Go’s latest video, This Too Shall Pass is featured above, and is suspiciously embeddable. But none of Read the rest of this entry »

There’s More To Muse Than A Radiohead Cover Band

[ 1 Comment ]Posted on October 6, 2009 by admin in Music

Tuesday, October 6th, 2009

If you’ve dismissed Muse as a Radiohead clone like I did, give them another try. Just don’t bother listening to them as mp3′s on your iPod.

I made the mistake back in 2003 of glossing over the band Muse because of their shameless Radiohead-ness. At the time, listening to Muse when Radiohead existed felt like listening to Coldplay when there’s a U2 around. Except I actually like Radiohead. All of which, in spite of being the perception of the music press in general, is incredibly unfair. In a way I’m glad I glossed over Muse like did, because after finally exhausting all the Radiohead in existence, it’s like there’s a back-catalogue to explore. Except when you finally give Muse a chance, you realize there are layers and layers and layers, and the comparison to Radiohead becomes incredibly inaccurate. My re-Muse-ment began when I saw the video for their new tune Uprising featured here (which seems, alas, to only be available at MTV.com. Apologies in advance for the commercials). In spite of the tune’s over-the-top “anthem for the common man” theme, I found myself nodding along with it, and ended up watching the video for Supermassive Black Hole from their 2006 release Black Holes And Revelations. I was sunk at this point, as I decided to dig back into my music collection. Starting with 2003′s Absolution, I almost wrote them off again. The first track – Apocalypse Please – is so Radiohead-esque that I was sure my resistance was legit. But I slowly realized it was actually just a good way Read the rest of this entry »

New Release From Swiss Band Yello Due October 2, 2009

[ Comments Off ]Posted on August 17, 2009 by admin in Music

Monday, August 17th, 2009

You may know of them because of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off or Twix commercials, but Yello has been around since the late 70′s.

Some of you may only know of the band Yello from the use of their song Oh Yeah (original video below) in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Twix commercials, but the duo has been churning out innovative music since the late 70′s, and have gleefully prostituted themselves more than Moby during that time (see a long list of placements here) You might think you’ll know what to expect when you throw on a recording by a Swiss band comprised of two guys named Dieter and Boris, but the band Yello has always managed to skirt expectation just enough to keep their sample-based sound fresh over nearly three decades. Part of the reason their music holds up is that although they use sampling extensively, they don’t sample other people’s music, they sample their own and edit it into elaborate compositions. They also maintain production values on par with say, Trevor Horn or Quincy Jones, and program with the sophistication of Kraftwerk. I personally can’t wait to hear their new collection “Touch”, slated for release October 2, but I guess I’ll have to; although the track “You Better Hide” will premiere in the Swiss science fiction movie Cargo (see an early look at the movie here if you speak Swiss) on September 24th, there are otherwise no pre-releases or leaks available as of this writing. For more interesting background on Yello, visit their refreshingly functional Flash-driven site or Planet Origo.  A new Yello release? O-o-o-o-h Yeah…. Read the rest of this entry »

80′s One Hit Wonders

[ 5 Comments ]Posted on July 23, 2009 by admin in Music

Thursday, July 23rd, 2009

Was the music & fashion so bad because we did so many drugs, or did we do so many drugs because the music and fashion was so bad?


At last, the “Official” video for
88 Lines About 44 Women.
Rather peculiar, and NGSFW*

I’d completely forgotten about the 80′s song “88 Lines About 44 Women” by The Nails until the other day when the “Official” video (also at left, NGSFW*) appeared on YouTube. I guess it isn’t so odd I’d forget about it; as much as I loved the song back then, I now remember clearly the drug-addled morning that I first heard it. I had just awakened in the San Francisco apartment of some woman I’d met the night before and she thought it really funny to play it under the circumstances. Honestly, I sometimes wonder if there were so many one-hit wonders in the 80′s simply because people were doing so many drugs that they couldn’t remember the bands’ names from release to release. I know that I, for one, remember very little of lasting value from the years 1983-1990, and given our hairstyles, clothing, and musical preferences, probably prefer it this way! But I thought it would be fun to try to recall – without using the Internet or VH-1 as a memory aid – a list of these tunes. By the way, compiling this list made me realize that there’s a previously un-named micro-genre in here somewhere that’s epitomized by tunes like Trio’s Da Da Da, The Flying Lizards’ Money (That’s What I Want), and The Nails’ song featured above. I hereby christen this genre “Clock Rock”. Remember me if that catches on. The list is below, feel free to share your own in the comments…

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