Tag Archives: music

Sunday Funnies, part 4

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Copyright Sony Music Entertainment, Inc.Usually my Sunday Funnies post is all about web comics, but this week is going to branch out. Weird Al Yankovich has released a new album this week, Mandatory Fun. And to promote the album, he has made eight music videos of songs from the album, and is releasing one video a day for the first week the album is available.

As Weird Al himself has explained in several interviews this week, he first became famous during the MTV era, when music videos on that network were the way to promote a new album. Now viral videos on the internet has replaced all that. His thinking is that a video that becomes famous on the internet enough to “go viral” is only really famous for a day or two, so the only way to promote something like an album is to release several videos over the course of several days.

The other thing he explains is that this album finally concludes the deal he signed with Sony 30-some years ago. So now he will be free to produce music the way you need to in the internet era: singles for digital download. “My songs are often topical. By the time I have made enough songs to release an album, most of the songs aren’t topical any more.”

Back in those MTV days, Weird Al’s songs were sometimes hit or miss, but the music videos for even his misses were comedic gems. I bought the album this week, and have listened to it, and I have to say that Weird Al is at the top of his game on this one. There were a few of the songs that I rated less than five stars… and the video for one of those came out after I listened to the song, and I have to say the video is fantastically funny.

So, I definitely recommend the album, and if you need some convincing, here are the videos he’s released thus far this week:

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Tacky

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Word Crimes

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Foil

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Handy

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Sports Song

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First World Problem

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And if you haven’t already, please check out these previously recommended comic strips:

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I’ve long been a fan of: “Mr. Cow,” by Chuck Melville… and not just because the artist is a friend! A clueless cow with Walter Cronkite dreams presides over a barnyard of a newsroom.

dm100x80I’m also a big fan of “Deer Me,” by Sheryl Schopfer. This artist is also a friend. I have previously described this strip as: “Three roommates who couldn’t be more dissimilar while being surprisingly compatible.” Except in a recent story line Thomas has moved out! Eeek!

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And I love this impish girl thief with a tail and her reluctant undead sorcerer/bodyguard: “Unsounded,” by Ashley Cope.

The_Young_Protectors_HALF_BANNER_OUTSIDE_234x601The Young Protectors begins when a young, closeted teen-age superhero who has just snuck into a gay bar for the first time is seen exiting said bar by a not-so-young, very experienced, very powerful, super-villain. Trouble, of course, ensues.

“I don’t know how to love him!”

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Muppet Christ, Superstar is a parody depicting what it might sound like if the Muppets did a version of Jesus Christ, Superstar. Christo Graham sings all the parts. His Kermit is a bit of a stretch, but his Miss Piggy is pretty spot on.

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I nearly died while listening to Miss Piggy Singing “I Don’t Know How to Love Him.”

The songs are available for download from Bandcamp. Or you can listen to them here.

Happy Easter!

Reverend Tutsia

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"La, la, laaaaaaaaaaa!"
“La, la, laaaaaaaaaaa!”
I’ve always been a big fan of music, though throughout my teens and early twenties, I could seldom afford to buy all the music I wanted to own and listen to whenever I wanted. Streaming music didn’t exist back then, so if you didn’t own a particular record, you were dependent on the whims of local radio stations. So we came up with various ways to work around that. We might record a favorite track off the radio. Or we might borrow the album from a friend and “just until I can afford it,” make a tape of it (and we fully expected when a friend borrowed an album from us, they were doing the same thing).

That’s one reason I spent a rather large part of my late 30s buying CDs of old albums from previous decades. I really did want to own a legitimate copy, send a few royalties toward the musicians whose work I had loved so much. That’s also one reason, since going digital, that I regularly scroll through online music stores looking for re-releases of albums recorded 30 or more years ago.

One consequence of those can’t-afford-music years is that I often didn’t know or remember the titles of a lot of songs I listened to. I had a bad habit of not writing down the track names when I made a copy of a tape. My favorite tracks on a particular album I would know the titles, but several of the other songs I would wind up thinking of as “that song right after X” or I might pick a phrase that was repeated that might sound like a title.

And then, of course, there are the misheard lyrics… Continue reading Reverend Tutsia →

Sing w/e/ me joyous

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Kitten listening to ipod.
I can quit any time I want.
It is very nearly that time of year. It is nearly the time when I can start listening to Christmas music. I have been enforcing my rule for many years: I can’t start listening to Christmas music until after Thanksgiving.

Because of a comment by a friend on Twitter, I wound up in a discussion about my Christmas music, and because the person I was talking with is also a friend of my husband, he had to chime in with some comments about the size of my Christmas music collection. Which got more friends involved as we debated the timeless question: is there such a thing as too much Christmas music?

Continue reading Sing w/e/ me joyous →

A Halloween playlist

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Sometimes I don’t know why I try.

So, I saw in iTunes radio a new station called Halloween Party, and I felt like listening to something different, so I clicked it. First song? Stevie Wonder singing “Superstition.” Nothing the slightest bit spooky or Halloween-like about the song. Oh, sure, the word “superstition” could be related to something Halloween-like, the actual lyrics? No.

Almost any time someone posts a so-called Halloween playlist, the songs are chosen because the titles of the song have some tenuous connection to sort of scary-ish concepts, regardless of the content of the song. If you’ve ever done such a thing, I have a news flash for you: the title of a song is not the song. There are some songs whose titles don’t even appear in the lyrics, so when I’m listening to the playlist, if I don’t happen to remember the title, the reason it has been included will be a complete mystery.

Now, you have the right to create a playlist anyway you want. If you want to collect songs together with altogether incorrect criteria and name said playlist a Halloween playlist, of course you can do that.

I happen to believe that a Halloween playlist should consist of tracks where the content of the track has some connection to ideas, moods, et cetera, that people associate with Halloween, trick or treating, monsters, and so forth. So, my 2013 Halloween playlist (yes, I make a new one each year) is:

1. “Theme from the Ghost and Mr. Chicken” – if you aren’t familiar with this comedy send up of various Hitchcock-esque movie tropes starring Don Knotts, you really need to Netflix it or something. And the organ music is suitably spooky and silly, at the same time.
2. “It’s alive!” From the Young Frankenstein soundtrack. This isn’t a song, it’s the dialog for one of the funniest scenes in the movie, when Dr Frahnk-in-steen finds out that he put an abnormal brain in the body of his creation.
3. “The Homecoming Queen’s Got a Gun” by Julie Brown. “Everybody run! The Homecoming Queen’s got a gun!” and “…it’s like the whole school was totally coked or something!”
4. “Over at the Frankenstein Place” from The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
5. “”Scooby Doo, Where Are You?” Yes, the theme song from the original cartoon series.
6. “Body Snatcher” by Billy Idol. With lyrics about demons, creeping shadows, and so forth, this is where the list segues from the strictly comedic.
7. “Double Trouble” from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Spooky.
8. “I Can’t Decide (whether you should live or die)” by Scissor Sisters. Includes lyrics like, ” I could bury you alive but you might crawl back with a knife and kill me” which is definitely creepy!
9. “I Can Make You a Man” from the Rocky Horror Picture Show.
10. “Dark Shadows” the original eerie, spooky, haunting theme song from the ’60s gothic horror soap opera.
11. “Rest in Peace” from Once More, With Feeling, the Buffy the Vampire Slayer musical episode. “Whisper in a dead man’s ear doesn’t make it real.”
12. “Funeral March of a Marionette” an orchestral piece which was used as the theme for the old Alfred Hitchcock show.

This year’s is silly and harkens to horror movies and horror-related TV shows. Last years was a bit different, with songs like “Zombies Ate Her Brain” by The Creepshow and “Zombie Jamboree” by the Kingston trio.

Many years my list includes “Monster Mash” or “Thriller.” Which are obvious choices, but sometimes obvious is good.

Just let me listen to my music

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www.ilounge.com
My first iPod was pink.
I was 19 years old when I got my first Walkman. It played cassettes, which while more compact than vinyl LPs (which was the dominant format for commercially purchased music at the time), they were large enough that carrying around more than a few albums worth of songs could be a bit awkward. So I usually had only one or two tapes with me at any time, and therefore tended to listen to the same album over and over again throughout a day.

Continue reading Just let me listen to my music →

Watching music

music,

The music video is an interesting art form. I have fallen in love with songs because of their video which I might not have listened to twice if I had only heard the song. On the other hand, sometimes when I watch a video of a song I already liked I find myself flabbergasted.

But never nonplussed.

None of these videos fall into the second category.

First, an Australian singer, Kim Smith, evokes an intriguing, cabaret-like atmosphere with his new single, “Jealous”:


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Apparently I’m in an international mood this week, because next we have Brazilian singer, Thiago Pethit’s “Pas de Deux”:


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I have several of Will Young’s songs on my iPod for a while. This video, “Losing Myself,” makes me want to buy more of his music.

All American Music

life,

Here’s an interesting video for this Independence Day:
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Steve Grand, the performer, doesn’t have a label, yet, but you can buy this song here http://stevegrand.bandcamp.com.
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What music post from me would be complete without Kazaky?
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No Independence Day is complete without Ray Charles’ “America the Beautiful”
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And I always have to post a song from the musical 1776 on this day:
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Is it worth the outrage?

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Another corner of the internet is boiling over. Linking to it serves no purpose. I already wasted too much time trying to figure out what everyone is so upset about—because the guess I made when I read the first outraged post seems to be the only one that makes sense.

Resentment is an ugly thing. As the oft-quoted proverb says, “Resentment is like drinking poison and then waiting for the other person to die.” It’s toxic and self-destruction and does no good to anyone.

This goes doubly true when one is an artist of any type who spends any time at all ranting and raging about how shallow, fake, and undeserving another (more well-known) artist is. The only people who don’t see right through your jealousy are other resentful people.

Every minute you spend seething is a minute you aren’t spending on your own art. You’re never going to get any of those minutes back. So stop trying to explain how untalented that person is. Stop pointing to examples of how bad their work is. Stop thinking up clever ways to insult the people who like the other person’s work.

None of that does anyone any good, least of all you.

If you don’t like someone’s work, don’t look at/read/listen to/share it. If you think there’s too much crap in the world, stop griping and make something that isn’t crap.

There are things worth getting outraged over. I do it all the time. It’s okay to be angry about discrimination, or greed, or oppression. Those things cause actual harm to other people. Pointing out the problem may get some help to those who have been hurt. Pointing out the problem may persuade some people to change their minds and reduce the amount of bigotry and hatred and suffering in the world.

No one is harmed by a bad poem. To what little extent bad art can diminish joy or entice people to do bad things (often a very dubious claim), ranting about it just spreads the bad stuff to more people. The exact opposite of making the world a better place.

Let it go.

Go make something better. Go live something better. Go be something better.

Music Friday

music

I want to share some music again.

This first video is quite special to me. The lead singer of the bad, C.D. Woodbury, is a good friend of mine. In fact, a couple hours before I wrote this, he was sitting in my living room telling me about his week. So it’s a good friend and his band. They’re singing an original song they wrote based on a specialty of the house at this venue, which is a place I like to go. And the particular night that they premiered this song at that venue, my husband and I were there. It was the night before our wedding (where C.D. officiated), and we consider this night with good friends, great music, and wonderful food, our bachelor party. So, please enjoy this soon-to-be classic, the SauBall Blues:


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Since I opened with blues, how about a blues/bluegrass/rap fusion? I love the show this is the theme for, and this song’s awesome on its own:


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While we’re on the subject, this piece is quite fun:


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And of course I have to include a classic:


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And now we need some commentary (and more than just commentary) about a song from Stephen Colbert. Watch it all the way to the end, it’s definitely worth it!

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