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.
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…
I’m getting tired of these depressing songs about death. So I picked out a nice happy cheerful song today. About murder.
Well, you know how I like murder ballads. This one is by the band Steeleye Span (yes, I play them a lot), called Little Sir Hugh. You can see the lyrics here, but it’s basically about a little kid who accidentally kicks his ball in a castle everyones afraid of.
The lady of the castle leads him in the castle, stabs him, drains his blood, and throws his body in a well. (Which is probably a good reason to be afraid of the castle, really) Reminds me ofMr. Fox’s Garden, in a way. Which is another murder ballad I really like. Unfortunately, the only video on youtube I’ve seen of it wasn’t good quality…
Edit: Just as a side note, this is based on a historical murder, the death of Little St. Hugh of London.
Well, after that depressing post, back to folk music, I suppose. In this case, thought I’d revisit Steeleye Span.
Check this song. It is called Robbery With Violins, and is one of these fabulous juxtapositions of a traditional tune with modern instruments I occasionally find.
Since that was less then 2 minutes, lets throw in an utterly traditional tune, Si Bheag Si Mohr. You’ve heard it before. Everyone has. It’s played at every remotely Irish festival that ever exists. It’s a good tune, though.
Well, continuing on a very Scottish theme, we have The Corries with The Haughs O’Cromdale.
And no, no particular reason why I’m playing a bunch of Scottish music right now. I just like Scottish music. Sean’s perfectly welcome to post something, and change themes if he wants…
Bah; came down with a nasty cold. Means coherent is not my watchword today.
This is Joni Mitchell’s Chelsea Morning, the song I’ve heard that Chelsea Clinton was in fact named for. This is from the Dick Cavett show, and if you look closely, you might notice Jefferson Airplane in the background.
This is also my dad’s birthday. Unfortunately, being both in Las Vegas rather then New Mexico, and being sick, haven’t really had a chance to do anything to celebrate it.
I was listening to the song River, by Joni Mitchell. It’s a lovely song. Then I looked at the wikipedia page for it, and looked at the list of artists that have covered it. And looking, I couldn’t resist counting them. 50. 50 artists have covered this song. Purely amazing.
Understandable, though. This live version just sends shivers down you.
Well, I was trying to come up with a good post for Labor Day. After rejecting several ideas, I gave up, and decided to post this.
No real tangible relation to my last post. This is a song called For Free, by Joni Mitchell. This song seems to me to be about commercialism, though that might just be where I approach it from. Being an open source advocate, the refrain “He was playing real good, for free” takes a different meaning with me.
Besides which, it’s just this pretty, bittersweet song…
