Sean Daily is an English major from New Jersey now living in Las Vegas, the Other City of Lights. "I consider 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas' to be comfort reading, I like the al pastor tacos at Tacos Mexico and I count among my literary influences the Chainsaw from 'Doom'. 'RRRRRR! You don't like that, do you, Mr. Undead Marine! RRRRRR!'"
Shanoah Alkire is our Discordian at large. "Born in Santa Cruz, I grew up in Grass Valley and the Bay Area, and now lurk in Las Vegas. My literary influences include Ray Bradbury,
Lewis Carroll, and Douglas Adams. I also program as a hobby,
and currently maintain the Gtk port of Angband. You can find
a rather old bio of me here."
Haven’t posted in a while. I’ll try to keep posting here every so often, but I doubt there’ll be any regularity to it any more. I’d rather keep posting erratically then stop posting all together, though.
So, theme today is stuff I’ve listened to recently. It usually is, actually. I’m just being a little more blatant about it right now.
First, I’ve played Who Knows Where the Time Goes being sung by Kate Wolf here before, and I tend to think of it as a Kate Wolf song, but this is Fairport Convention playing it. And, you know, the lead singer, Sandy Denny, wrote the song, so it’s actually their song.
Just a matter of where I heard it first, really. They both died way too young, and were great folk singers. Though, if you listen to Led Zeppelin’s Battle of Evermore carefully, it’s actually Sandy Denny singing with Robert Plant, which is cool.
I’ve also been listening to Steeleye Span playing The Lowlands of Holland for some reason. It’s a great folk song that’s been covered by everyone and their mother, really. Note that the singer here is not Maddy Prior, but Gay Woods. This was actually off of Steeleye Spans first album, and she left the band before the next album.
This is sort of tangentially related to the last song, in that Steeleye Span was founded by a former member of Fairport Convention.
And when I say this songs been played by everyone, I mean it. Here is Dún an Doras playing it.
And here’s Celia from Salmon’s Leap singing it.
And lets round things off with Fairport Convention and the song The Hiring Fair.
“My trembling fingers touched her arm, and she placed them on her breast.”
Part of me thinks it’s romantic. And part of me is thinking “Damn, he’s getting lucky tonight”. ^_^
You know, I don’t think I’ve played Bobby McFerrin on here before. And he’s innovative enough that I really have to correct that.
Check out this performance of the song Drive by him. It’s frankly amazing. This whole performance is a cappella, using his chest as a drum, and singing and making music with both his mouth and throat. I have no idea how he manages it.
This video of I’ve Got A Feeling, now, is just amusing to watch. I think the woman he gropes during the song is his wife. She’s certainly cracking up during the whole thing. And so was I, watching, of course.
All right, today I thought it was time to play some anime related videos, so I figured I’d start out with an annoying (but catchy) anime AMV.
Take the song Butterfly, which already fits the category of annoying and catchy. Mix sounds from Pokemon into it. Then add video clips of Pokemon to it, and you get this Pokemon Butterfly Remix video. It works well.
For comparison, here’s the really bizarre video to the original song Butterfly (which is by SMiLE.dk). This is very much a WTF type music video. I swear someone involved in it was on drugs.
And here we have more IOSYS. The song seems to have several translations of the title, but I’ll go with Erin’s Clinic (That People Queue Up For). It’s a very catchy song, and I was able to find a version with good video and sound that was untranslated, and a translated version that the audio and video wasn’t as good for. Here are both, untranslated first.
First, here’s a song called Looking For the Woman. This song’s a bit depressing, really, but a good song. And all the songs I picked from them today seem a bit depressing, actually. Not sure how that happened.
And here’s a Letter From God. I always like things like this. And the video enhances the song pretty well, with the notepad writing out the lyrics to the song.
And this is The Magician’s Assistant. This just builds and builds. This is a good example of how well repetition can be used as a lyrical device. Powerful message, too.
I was going to post another IOSYS song, but I found another song that intrigued me. I happened to stumble upon a song by the odd title of Peacebone being covered by JacobRuefer. The music video he posted set to scenes from Pokemon seems oddly appropriate, somehow. Very catchy cover.
Having heard that, I had to hear the original, by a band called Animal Collective. So I did. It’s a strange, oddly discordant song, set to a music video involving a girl dating a monster that looks like it’s off the set of Alien. I have to approve.
That said, I actually think Jacobs cover is cleaner, and catchier, and I actually found I enjoyed it more then the original. Still, here’s Animal Collective’s version, so you can judge for yourself.
Note: It’s growing on me on the second listen, but I still feel like I’m on the verge of a headache listening to the original because of what they did to the music in the background. I might just be somewhat sensitive to it…
None the less, I was going to continue with steampunk, and Abney Park. I found a fan made music video by wyldelf that he says was done with a 1 chip camera and no budget. For all that, I think it’s quite impressive.
But then, I’m partial to sepia. The song is The Wrong Side.
I was going to go to the Las Vegas Ren Faire today, but didn’t really feel like it.
As such, no need for renaissance themes today, so I’ll keep going on my steampunk theme. This song is by the group Abney Park, and is titled Airship Pirate. Overall, thought it was pretty cool.
Continuing the thread of depressing songs, here is Peter, Paul, and Mary, with Hangman.
Poor guy; every time someone he knows comes up to where he’s being hanged, they have no interest in helping him at all. At least his true love seems to be there for him.
Get the feeling his family is in for it after the song ends?
Time to break off from Joni Mitchell for a little while, though. I found a recording of Twa Corbies I hadn’t heard before, and I thought the instrumentation on it was rather unique, so I thought I’d play it here. This song is by a group called the Corries.
I’m sure I’ve played this song here before, but for those who don’t recall, it’s about two Ravens going out for a bite to eat.
Todays is a mashup by Party Ben, mixing Sgt Peppers Lonely Heart Club Band with Paradise City by Guns N’ Roses. And, yeah, the Beatles seem pretty popular for mashups. Not that I mind; they were a good band.
These two songs work pretty well together, probably because all the vocals were stripped out of the Guns N’ Roses song. ^_^
