Video

Sometimes people need to be cheered up. And sometimes nothing cheers you up like a 6’8″ sad clown/performance artist named Puddles nailing “Royals” so hard you can’t hear the real song in your brain anymore. It’s like he did a weird magic trick to me.

AAAAAAH THEY WON’T LET ME EMBED THIS SONG!

Imagine you see an impossibly tall clown in old-fashioned black and white clown makeup, bald head all covered up with white paint, and black lips and eye drops and just a little red paint on his nose, overly expressive, is what it makes him, with white clothes, and three enormous black bobbles in place of buttons on his shirt-front, and black rick-rack at his ruffled white satin sleeves and double neck-ruff, and white gloves on his huge hands, which he uses to mime the driving of imaginary Cadillacs to excellent effect, and a duo of backup singers so composed they look as if they are waiting for the Kronos Quartet to come on, at which point they will contribute 12 bars only and stay at the side for the rest of the time, and a pianist who…is never seen and may well be Satan, don’t ask me but I’ve just got a bad feeling about this guy–and then anyway upright bass, and drums with brushes because it’s MTV-Unplugged time, apparently…right, but Puddles is wearing a crown made of tin painted gold with a P on it and is…is… Man, y’all should watch this video.

I personally, am not afraid of clowns. There’s something humorously American about thinking, “oh, we’re the only one’s afraid of clowns, it’s Stephen King’s fault, etc.” No, fools! Everywhere in the world people wear masks, or face paint, and when they do that, they freak you right out. A tiny Japanese school-girl wearing a fox spirit mask? Scary. Even askew so you can see her real face? SCARY. These guys from Trivandrum in India, when they play the demons [I have been corrected by reader Peter Erwin,who notes that divine heroes also use the blood-red eyes. Having checked, it seems as if this man, with his red lips only, is probably a hero, while if he had similar green makeup with red slashes in it he would be a demon–but an awesome demon], they put a flower petal inside each eye at the bottom, under the lower lid next to the eyeball, to make their eyes blood-red. (I watched them do their make-up one time when I went to see the performance, you could go early.)

Verdict: SCARY. I have a mask from Lombok that’s of the evil Balinese king from a play (all the Balinese kings in all the plays are evil; it’s like having a Grand Vizier; you signed up for evil) and I used to have to go to ridiculous lengths so my kids wouldn’t have to walk past it at night.
[click to continue…]

No, IRL it’s The Clash. Nonetheless, power pop–it’s so wonderful! What’s the best part? The pop? It…sort of better be the pop because I like the Raspberries and, let’s be frank, the amount of “power” involved is limited. If I had to pick one power pop song that was my favorite ever, I would–I would first declare all Big Star songs off limits so they wouldn’t occupy all the top spots, but it would be “Jesus Christ”, and, well, it should oughta be The Flamin’Groovies'”Shake Some Action,” right?

But screw it, and forget the thing I implied .04 seconds ago in writing this post, because it’s really by Zion, Illnois’ finest, Shoes:

Oh but Belle, what is this mysterious power pop of which you speak? Is it a bunch of lame white bands from the late 70s and early 80s? No. It is a bunch of lame completely awesome white bands from the late 70s and early 80s. (There were some black power pop-style musicians I know nothing about, prolly. Tell me about them, edumacated readers.) Yeah, Americans liked the Beatles, but it took them years to get even the most basic grasp on the thing, during which they sounded like Badfinger, and then new wave started happening, which pushed people into a different confused direction. With the result that, amazing things happened, as above. See also:
[click to continue…]

I bought this album by The Reddings for .99. I could tell it was going to be amazing because of the Platonic solids–it’s Back to Basics! Also, that one dude doesn’t have any glass in his glasses=WIN.

The Reddings/Back to Basics

But then I couldn’t listen to it till now. So I didn’t know how awesome. OMG! It’s all the deep cuts I wanted! And two of the dudes are Otis Reddings’ sons. Not to be confused with Shuggie Otis (son of Johnny Otis) and his superlative Information Inspiration. Oh damn I have to play that now in case you don’t know this song. It contains the line “here’s a pencil pad/I’m gonna spread some information.” I don’t know why, but this fills me with a deep, deep feeling of satisficing the criteria of a good life. John totally agrees (N.B. may not actually agree.)

[click to continue…]

Sooooo, the youngs. you may have heard they like Justin Beiber or Rhianna or something. They don’t. They like computer constructs, only one of which is human, and we hear her voice only, and anyway there is some debate about whether she’s canon. Vocaloids! The original technology was invented by Kenmochi Hideki at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, Spain in 2000. Backed by the Yamaha Corporation, it developed the software into the commercial product “Vocaloid.” (ボーカロイド Bōkaroido). (This product exists separately from the Vocaloids I’m talking about and is used to generate back-up vocals and other things like that in ordinary pop songs). The most popular is naturally 01, Hatsune Miku. You can even see her perform live! (You should really watch this–it’s not clear quite how bizarre the scene is till partway through.) Her ‘voice’ is compressed into the upper range of human hearing, and beyond what any human could sing. But it’s not merely a person’s voice sped up; it’s constructed (though some samples were taken from a Japanese actress).
[click to continue…]

I think it’s possible–nay, probable–naw, it is a nigh-certainty that you have not seen one of the best music videos ever made, quite randomly for French electronica duo Justice (they aren’t even, they’re sort of a rock band. But not.) It stars a young Snake Plissken (presumably before he is inserted into, and subsequently [SPOILER ALERT] escapes from, New York, in the movie “Escape From New York.” I strongly encourage everyone to go on and click full screen and listen to the song and everything. Dudes this is so fucking awesome. C’mon. Did they actually program a computer from the 1980s to make some of the “high-definition” graphics?

My best friend from middle school and I once wrote a program like that which, by displaying a series of screens on which we had drawn the lines point to point, created the image of a rotating green wire cube on a black screen on her Apple II c. It took us like four hours or something. More? Her family’s cook made killer shrimp tempura, though, so that was sustaining. And then coffee milkshakes and chocolate cookies for afters. Actually she would ask you egg preferences the night before and bring us breakfast in bed every morning that I ever slept over, which was a billion. With fresh-squeezed OJ. With sugar in the coffee already how she knew you liked it. Mrs. Hong was the shit, but she was prone to get angry and would not let anyone go in the kitchen and make a peanut butter sandwich or anything. Or even a bowl of cereal. Eventually Sacha’s mom had to fire her when Mrs. Hong threw a huge-ass knife at her during an argument over menu planning and it stuck, quivering, embedded a good two inches in the plaster of sloping ceiling of the back stairs. Even then it was a struggle (internally, for her mom). Mrs. Hong claimed it was a “warning shot” and hadn’t gone that close to Sacha’s mom’s head, which was kind of true but kind of not super-relevant. Anyway, A ROTATING CUBE YOU GUYS RLY! We were siced. Just like how siced I am about this video right now.
ETA: sometimes the frame isn’t quite wide enough, so watch on YouTube if not.

Moonshine
All that I have to say, is, to tell you that the
lanthorn is the moon; I, the man in the moon; this
thorn-bush, my thorn-bush; and this dog, my dog.

‘Ah, so it’s come to this, I see! Ms. Waring wishes to share with us her love of Geto Boys. This is a bridge too far. Really, though. These are the Let a Ho be a Ho people here. Is this some sort of feint after which other marginally less implausible opinions will seem more plausible?’ (hint: ish.) Oh look everyone! It’s Unsung, a Behind-The-Music style show about black musicians, with a whole episode about Geto Boys!

What’s that? You say that it is, possible worlds and all, conceivable that I might have found something you were less likely to watch/listen to, but I would have had need to strive hard? Look, you goobers listen to podcasts about Alan Greenspan’s tragic and shamefully-lauded legacy in US monetary policy. Multiple podcasts of such wise. You listen to podcasts with Dan Drezner in them! (Sorry Dan, but you’ve never laid down beats like this.) It would hurt you real bad to hear about a concrete way in which racism in American society is applied to obscenity and threats of violence, would it? And hear some killer tracks? Scroll on, then, one wouldn’t want you to dirty your hands. SIKE! No, motherf%*#kers! Just open a tab and listen; it ain’t like it’s going to kill you. Though you will be missing interesting and humorous visual effects. “But Belle, I hate all rap music!” OK, this is nonetheless rather historically interesting, you may find, about the spasm of violence in the late ’80s and mid ’90s in the US that seemed like it would never end, and the real fear that hip-hop induced in white listeners. This white dude who was covering the hip-hop beat at Source magazine at the time is probably the single whitest person who has ever lived, including Immanuel Kant. His last name is Soren! When he tells you, “people were scared of this music!” you think, “you wet your pants when Paul Anka came on the oldies station!” Nah, but, in fact he’s extraordinarily well-informed etc. “But Belle, I only care about the history of Neolithic Northern Africa!” Oh really! How fascinating! Well, you’re off the hook then, but you should be getting about your business, I must say. This is rather a lot of slacking already. Oh hey five minute version!
[click to continue…]