8 posts tagged “music”

I'm sure you've heard of Wing, she's certainly oldest of old meme, she's even been on South Park. But until today, you probably haven't heard her perform live!

From someone's video at Massey University in New Zealand, March 3, 2007. But wait! There's more from that performance:

Cover of "In The Ghetto"
ABBA's "Mama Mia"
Not even the Beatles are safe, here's "I Want To Hold Your Hand

I wish someone would catch her doing AC/DC's "Highway To Hell" because I hear her album version just isn't as magical as her live version.

At 3,200 years, The Prayer of an Infertile Woman is the world's oldest known song.

Always Tampons have some new online deal where you can wish for a friend to have a happy period. Heh.

British Columbia came up with a unique way of keeping housing for the poor out of the hands of rich developers: It purchased more than a dozen SRO hotels and plans to maintain them as the affordable housing.

From the NFL Pro Bowl, all I can say is ouch. Includes bonus commentary from the Japanese network covering the game.

How to cook up a breakbeat -- literally. Is it wrong that I lust after the orange Kitchen Aid in this video?

Never underestimate the adorability factor of a baby sloth.

Rock Me Gently, from Erasure. This is one of my all-time favorite songs. This version, not so much. The original is about eight or ten minutes long and doesn't have that weird drum/percussion track. The original also features Diamanda Galas and I guess whoever released the video or single figured Dia' might scare the hell out of the mainstream.

This version of Our Lips Are Sealed charted higher than the Go-Go's -- just not in the United States.

I am having quite a bit of fun with Pandora, the Music Genome Project's personalized "radio station" application. Here's how it works: Plug in the names of your favorite artists or songs and a channel is created that includes music from that artist (you name one at first, then you click on the channel to add more) and from other artists with similar styles.

The similar style thing appears to be based on many factors, including the tone and beat of each individual song. Nice touch. Although this means Pandora does a somewhat better job than other customized stations at finding stuff you want to listen to, misfires are inevitable. You can rate individual songs to help the computer figure out your tastes. There's also a bookmarking system that plugs into iTunes and Amazon if you want to buy what you hear, and then some social networking aspect that I'm not going to bother figuring out.

Hi, my name is Dan. I've been a Duranie since 1982.

Mention Duran Duran to most people, and they'll probably think of Hungry Like The Wolf, or The Reflex, or maybe Rio. They might remember "that song they did a couple of years ago, wasn't it a big hit when I was in college?" probably trying to remember Ordinary World. All the stuff that's been played to death and panned to absurd heights by critics armchair and professional alike.

There's a lot more to Duran Duran than the handful of hits they've had over the years, and Deep Cuts: Duran Duran takes a look at some of the songs you've probably never heard, but should. Although I agree with most of David Medsker's article -- especially the omission of everything from Thank You, calling it "one of the worst albums of all time," -- I'm sorry, but I forgot what I was going to disagree with. Oh, anyway, here's an excerpt that made me smile knowingly:

“Read My Lips” – Liberty
Forget what I said about Seven and the Ragged Tiger and So Red the Rose: Liberty is, bar none, the most overproduced album in Duran Duran’s history. The band brought in Chris Kimsey, the renowned producer of the Stones and Marillion, and he repaid the band by smothering them with overdubs. Listen to the snare drum hits in the intro: each drum hit has a different pitch. What’s up with that?! Warren’s guitar solo consists of a different solo in each channel, and they don’t always work in harmony. The bridge has about 20 different keyboard riffs going on at once. The production here is so far over the top that it’s on another planet. And at its core is a song that isn’t too far removed from something like “My Own Way.” I wonder what Colin Thurston would have done with this song…

Via

Everybody Dance Now. But not to Erasure.

The Stranger has the full list of a UK publication's top 50 gay albums. There's Dead or Alive, Diana Ross and Bananarama exactly where you would expect them to be, along with Kate Bush, Donna Summers and (duh) Madonna. But where's the Erasure? The Weather Girls? How the hell can you have a credible gay top 50 without them?

Personally, any queer album list that omits Nina Hagen isn't credible.