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."
Yep, freedom of speech is important. (Which is probably why nothing in this post is work safe) Mind, I couldn’t get much into Immortal Techniques song because he kept rapping over the same few seconds of Jona Lewie’s Stop The Cavalry.
As I really like that song, I found it really distracting. I kept expecting Hey, Mr. Churchill comes over here to say we’re doing splendidly to kick in at some point.
Of course, freedom of speech is very important in music (and in other places). I know Frank Zappa would agree with me (12). And we’d never get artists like Wesley Willis singing what the voices in his head dictate, whether it is about how he murdered your family, the way he kicked Spidermans ass, or even about Vampire Bats,otherwise:
Of course, the big stuff about censoring music when Frank Zappa was around largely was talking about songs like Prince’s ‘Darling Nikki’, because it talked about masturbation. And we can’t have that, right?
The Superbowl? Yeah, I wasn’t watching it either. (or the supermarket, for that matter) Partially because I was at work, and partially because I’m not into brutal, violent contact sports. Which could lead me into a song from the Doctor Demento show, but, since I’m crazy, I’ll play a song called Crazy Miranda instead. This is yet another song with vocals from Grace Slick by Jefferson Airplane.
Since the lyrics are important, I’ve reproduced them below.
Crazy Miranda
lives on propaganda she believes anything she reads
it could be one side or the other
Free Press or Time Life covers
she follows newsprint anywhere it leads
but still she can’t seem to read and nobody
knows nobody knows what she needs it could be love
All the pretty ladies textbooks
tell her how to have the “next look”
The Bible tells her stay as plain as you are
she wants all the pretty boys beside her
to write some pretty words to guide her
to tell her than they love her body as well as her mind
she wants some kind of sign–a sign of love
oh never mind–she’s not your kind.
What are you talking about, Sean? I’m not going to object and go off on a tangent. I have no issues with Nuclear Bunnies.
So I’m going to go off on my own tangent without objecting. In this case, I’m going to play what is probably one of my favorite Jefferson Airplane songs. Sung by Grace Slick, this is titled Eat Starch Mom. Many of the opinions raised are opposite of my own views. But it is still completely awesome.
Just as a general reminder that I like Japanese rpg game music, I thought you might enjoy this piece. It’s from Atelier Viorate, and is titled Beneath This Blue Sky. If the game title sounds familiar, it’s the game Gust did right before Atelier Iris 1. Unfortunately, they haven’t localized anything before that point for English, so we don’t get to play it (Except for people who speak Japanese, anyways).
OTOH, that might be for the best, given what happened with Ar tonilico 2. Very good game; lousy localization. Wonder if they’ll get Ar tonilico 3 right? Of course, I’ve already heard that you’ll gain power levels in it by having your (attractive female) characters strip, so I don’t know what that game’ll be like anyways…
Ah, well, if we’re going to do the whole American Irish in New York thing, we’d be remiss to leave out New York Girls. It’s been covered by a lot of groups, including the Kingston Trio and Steeleye Span. The version I chose to play here, though, is being played by Oysterband.
After all, not only is this a good version, the video is entertaining. It was shot in New York in 1989 featuring the New York Ukranian Community Polka Club with Oysterband.
I’m sure this is how some New Yorkers Christmas goes. And what would Christmas be without polka?
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”. ^_^
After all that silliness, I thought I’d show you that IOSYS does some serious pieces as well.
This is a song called Artificial Children. First, for full impact, watch this version, with the video to it. The two match up very well. Of course, if they walk, talk, and look like girls, I’d think of them more as robots then dolls, like here, but then this is supposed to be fantasy, not science fiction.
Now, if you’re like me, you’re curious what the actual words are to the song, and if they live up to the rest of the video. If you watch this full length 5 1/2 minute version, while it doesn’t have the video to the song, it does have complete lyrics. And they are worth it.
They are evil, aren’t they? And there are so many of them, too; the group seems fairly prolific.
For today, first, I’ll play IOSYS‘s Marisa Stole Something Very Important. Hurray for lesbian couples. And Guten Morgan is “Good Morning”, naturally, not the #3, so take the subtitles with a grain of salt.
And this other video I’m throwing in isn’t even by IOSYS. But the style and zanyness remind me of them.This is Kero ⑨ Destiny, by Silver Forest. Knowing that the sound frogs make in Japanese is “Kero”, much like cats going “Nya” helps on this video.
Translation may be iffy in spots, I suspect. Still, “There is n-o o-n-e inside this hat, OK?“. Win.
All right, I’ll admit it. I’m half posting this because of the combination of being addictive and annoyingly kawaii…
All right, since neither of us have posted, think I’ll post something that I know well enough that I could do it in my sleep. (though hopefully not particularly boring.)
I’ve expressed my interest, or perhaps obsession with the song Bedlam Boysbefore, which also goes by a few other titles. It’s a cool song with a million verses, and everyone plays it differently.
The song is about someone in Bedlam, the Bethlehem Hospital for the Insane. In some of its incarnations, it’s about someone from its sister institution, Maudlin, the Hospital of St Mary Madelene, who falls in love with Mad Tom O’ Bedlam.
As it’s supposed to be about someone who is insane, it encourages unusual takes on the song. Here is one such, Mad Toms Song by Bluehorses. They’ve set the song to some wonderfully discordant rock music. I wouldn’t be surprised if half of it was improvised.
And you’ll note that they’ve modified the verse structure, too. Cool performance.
And here’s Old Blind Dogs playing the song in a fairly traditional yet fairly modern arrangement. This video actually has both the studio version and a live version. Live version actually sounds somewhat better to my ears.
And here, of course, is Maddy Prior of Steeleye Span‘s slightly cracked take on the song. Quite different from Steeleye Spans take on it, really, and a lot more lighthearted.
![Lazy Lass [eXPLoReD]](http://static.flickr.com/7083/7272226034_3d95aba441_t.jpg "Lazy Lass [eXPLoReD]")
