Believe it or not, AOL’s Spinner.com actually has quite a great selection of music videos and news and other music bloggery types of content. It’s honestly worth your time to visit the site and have a look around. Tell ‘em I sent you.
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above: Smashing Pumpkins - “99 Floors” -
above: Weezer - “Troublemaker” -
above: Matisyahu - “Redemption Song”
A montage of printed photos displayed in different locales, an overproduced hip hop video and a live video strung together from a year’s worth of concert footage….true, these three may seem like they have nothing at all really to do with each other (as do the artists behind them), EXCEPT for the following:
a) They are new
b) We became aware of their “newness” via MySpace bulletins
c) We like them all, so watch….
“Offend Maggie” by Deerhoof (above)
The Streets - “Heaven for the Weather” (above)
Hey Hey My My - “Your Eyes When We Kiss” (above)
Believe it or not, MTV.com actually has quite a great selection of music videos on their site these days. It’s honestly worth your time to go check it out and peruse their archives - I did, and look at the four recent guilty pleasure vids I found while doing so. “Princesses of trash-pop?” you ask… Hey, what can I say? I was raised on a diet of Cyndi, Madonna, Debbie, and Tiffany. It’s not my fault - MTV made me this way! Anyway, shall we?
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above: “Womanizer” by Britney Spears
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above: “Keeps Gettin’ Better” by Christina Aguilera
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above: “7 Things” by Miley Cyrus
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above: “Hot n Cold” by Katy Perry
MORE from MTV.com: New Music / More Music Videos
Are we the only ones who think the whole concept of “YouTube Celebrity” has gotten a bad rep? Seriously, let’s give praise where it’s due….when you’re able to re-imagine the classic speed-carnival main theme from Super Mario Brothers 2 as a two-part Django Reinhardt-esque breakdown, how is that not worthy of celebrity, or at the very least notoriety? Meet Adrian Holovaty, a Web developer and guitarist who’s combined his classical guitar abilities with pop culture staples and a magic pinch of having too much time on his hands to create a series of unforgettable YouTube guitarnerd clips. More please….
Super Mario Bros. 2 theme meets Django (above)
Back To The Future theme, solo instrumental (above)
Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” fingerstyle arrangement (above)
The Beatle’s “In My Life” fingerstyle arrangement (above)
The latest issue of SPIN has a fascinating - albeit too brief - story about Chris Thrash, an Alabama car salesman who tracked down and purchased an animatronic band of puppet animals that used to perform at his local Showbiz Pizza Place (that’s Chuck E. Cheese’s to us yankees) when he was a kid. He then took this band, The Rock-afire Explosion, and painstakingly reprogrammed them all in order for them to play along to a number of different contemporary songs, creating a YouTube sensation in the process. Now, a full-fledged documentary about the phenomenon, helmed by Houston-based Brett Whitcomb, is even set to make the festival rounds this fall. Watch a series of selections from the Rock-afire Explosion below as well as the trailer for the upcoming film The Rock-afire Explosion (complete with Super Furry Animals soundtrack). Personally, although this is a pretty incredible story I have to admit that these things used to creep the hell out of me, so if robotic puppets aren’t your thing then at the very least this has somewhat of an eerie Halloween timeliness…
Rock-afire Explosion - “Electric Feel” by MGMT (above)
Rock-afire Explosion - “4 Minutes” by Madonna (above)
Rock-afire Explosion - “Me So Horny” by 2 Live Crew (above)
Rock-afire Explosion - “Hips Don’t Lie” by Shakira (above)
Rock-afire Explosion - “Spider Webs” by No Doubt (above)
Rock-afire Explosion - “Love In This Club” by Usher (above)
The Rock-afire Explosion trailer (above)
Indianapolis based music blog My Old Kentucky Blog has just recently launched a brand new video site called The LaundroMatinee. They explain…
Last week MOKB finally launched our new video/in-studio session website LaundroMatinee! We began work back in April with the idea to start filming our MOKB/SIRIUS sessions (that’s why you haven’t really seen any on MOKB since then) and now we’re finally ready to show the past few months of work off in this new site designed by our friends at Small Box Web Design.
You can read all about it or you can just watch the sessions we’re currently featuring…
I don’t know about you, but I think I’ll opt for the latter and check out the sessions with EAR FARM favs The Rosebuds.
The National Post is a Canadian newspaper based within a district of Toronto. Within its pages exists “The Ampersand”, which self-professedly covers “everything between Arts & Life”. Now, within those (online) pages resides “Soundcheck”, a web-based series in which the paper’s editors go backstage and off-stage with some of Canada’s finest musicians. Picture a spin on La Blogotheque’s Take Away shows transported to Canada and you get the idea. Below, watch three recent installments, featuring EF faves Plants and Animals (who are playing at the Bell House tonight) performing “Feedback in the fields” acoustically at the Royal Ontario Museum, Constantines doing their thing in Kensington Market, and Eric’s Trip backstage in Toronto. Read more…
Making the rounds on ye olde interweb today, we couldn’t resist adding to the fracas….so here it is: a pretty great live video taken in Rome this past Saturday evening that finds Dough Martsch and company doing an excellent cover of M.I.A.’s hit “Paper Planes” (of ubiquitous fame from Pineapple Express trailers). Aww yeah:
Just in time to remind us how much we enjoyed one of the brightest spots in the stellar slew of early 2008 releases, the video for “Gardenia” exemplifies all that is great about Real Emotional Trash: it’s a similarly playful, loose, and bright affair that just works. Of course, having a few special guests never hurt either, and this video’s got it in spades. Among the guests, Weezer’s Brian Bell, Girl Talk’s Greg Gillis, Mudhoney’s Steve Turner, and others…. Read more…
……is intricately constructed stop-motion puppet videos! After watching Feist’s amazing new video for “Honey Honey” - directed by Anthony Seck - I couldn’t help but feel the same exact vibe that had first crept up some 14 years ago when Alice in Chains released their video for “I Stay Away” (dir. by Nick Domkin). To which we say, watch both closely and tell us whether you think Seck’s beautiful odyssey was informed by Domkin’s freakshow carnival ride….we certainly think so. And that’s a very very good thing, because both videos are pretty much fantastic. Read more…
Just a reminder to call in sick, get a dogsitter, prepare for a liquid lunch, and set your all-around agenda for Pianos today starting at 1pm for our CMJ Day Party. We’ve got a great lineup, just watch below for a quick primer and brace yourselves for the rock: Read more…
For your Tuesday pleasure, a trio of newish videos that have caught our eyes over the last week or so, from the stark, crackling black and white aesthetic that’s ruled Beck’s Modern Guilt to a hallucinatory cartoon (typical Of Montreal); and of course, how could we resist presenting you with footage of The Walkmen’s Hamilton Leithauser fronting Walkmen cover band The Privates (all staff members of the Nashville record store Grimey’s) for a spirited rendition of “Thinking Of A Dream I Had”? Read more…
In an attempt to one-up Friday’s offering of two video versions of Lykke Li’s “Breaking Up”, we’re starting the week with not one, not two, but three video versions of Islands’ outstanding ode to paranoia and being stabbed in the heart, “Creeper”. Enjoy….
“Creeper” live at the Gibson Showroom
“Creeper” alternate video
Visit Islands on MySpace.
EAR FARM likey Lykke Li!!! In advance of her appearances in NY next week during CMJ, we’ve got two videos of her song “Breaking Up”. Enjoy.
The video might be grainy, the audio a little garbled, the overall vibe decidedly sloppy, but this is two-thirds of an hour of NIRVANA at the precise moment when they were discovering just how unbelievable they really were. We came across this 1991 video bootleg - shot at a small New Haven venue called the Moon - via SPIN.com and just had to pay it forward. Can you even begin to imagine seeing them at a club this size? Watch and dream….
