My band, Ladysugar, made it to the final round of voting for the star 98.7 radio contest! The competition is extremely tight so EVERY vote counts. Voting is quick and easy and would really help us. Just go to http://www.987fm.com/pages/rockstar3/videos.html and find the Ladysugar video. Even if you’ve already voted you can vote again because that was round 1 but now it’s round 2 so voting starts all over! Voting started last Friday at noon and ends this Friday at noon. You can vote once a day from the same email address.
Musician Chris Blake googled the words “biggest regret” and pasted the funny, charming, and interesting results into a new music video.
Yay, it’s my new video for “Someone Else!”
The funny thing is we were actually in the middle of pulling together a video for “Phantom Love” when I started fiddling around with this one. Since I didn’t need to shoot any new footage, it only took a few hours. Total cost: $28!
My biggest regrets revolve around procrastinating, including, not explaining further what I mean specifically right now because I’ll get to it later. Seriously, I’m hopeless.
Andrew Goldenberg (IMDB) has been creating a series of movie theme song music parody homages. After you check out this one from Back to the Future be sure not to miss the Batman one and if it interests you, LA Met Blogs has an interview.
Do you STILL love the Beatles? Then you will love this interview with John Lennon (that you haven’t heard before).
In 1969, a 14-year-old Beatle fanatic named Jerry Levitan, armed with a reel-to-reel tape deck, snuck into John Lennon’s hotel room in Toronto and convinced John to do an interview about peace. 38 years later, Jerry has produced a film about it. Using the original interview recording as the soundtrack, director Josh Raskin has woven a visual narrative which tenderly romances Lennon’s every word in a cascading flood of multipronged animation. Raskin marries the terrifyingly genius pen work of James Braithwaite with masterful digital illustration by Alex Kurina, resulting in a spell-binding vessel for Lennon’s boundless wit, and timeless message.
Play this audio clip again after it finishes and hear it continue to “creep up”.
See Wikipedia’s entry on Shepard Tone for the full scoop.
A Shepard tone, named after Roger Shepard, is a sound consisting of a superposition of sine waves separated by octaves. When played with the base pitch of the tone moving upwards or downwards, it is referred to as the Shepard scale. This creates the auditory illusion of a tone that continually ascends or descends in pitch, yet which ultimately seems to get no higher or lower.
I wasn’t going to go anyway, but Coldplay has cancelled the Winnipeg, Edmonton, and Calgary shows of their Viva La Vida tour. I know it has disappointed a couple of my friends. Sorry Canada, but Coldplay just doesn’t love you enough to make it to the boring middle parts of your country.
In other Coldplay news, the band Creaky Boards has posted a YouTube video accusing the lead singer of Coldplay, Chris Martin, of plagiarizing their song, “The Songs I Didn’t Write” when he wrote “Viva la Vida”.
The idea that a band as big as Coldplay would stoop to copying someone else’s melody seems unrealistic, nevertheless, this video seems pretty damning for Chris Martin. I’d be interested to hear Coldplay’s side of the story.
Update: Creaky Boards frontman Andrew Hoepfner has retracted his allegations of plagiarism.
Well, it appears that Chris was actually recording in London during my October show and Coldplay demoed Viva La Vida in March 2007, before I taught my band “Songs” in June 2007. What’s most likely is that both Chris and I were inspired by The Legend of Zelda’s “Fairy Theme”, causing us to write similiar songs in 2006. What a coincidince! I guess Nintendo’s the big winner. But isn’t it weird how in 2008, an independent artist can make something in their bedroom that receives almost as much attention as EMI’s biggest marketing push of the year?
My conclusion? At first when I read headlines about his retraction, I figured it was a pay-off, but now I think it’s probably just a coincidence.
Theresa Andersson plays all the instruments and does vocal looping on the fly as she sings “Na Na Na” in her kitchen.
Theresa recently recorded her newest album in her kitchen. The record was produced by Swedish singer-songwriter/producer Tobias Froberg (Peter Moren’s upcoming solo album) and mixed by Linus Larsson (Peter Bjorn and John, Mercury Rev.) Theresa played all the instruments on the album except for a duet with legendary New Orleans producer and composer Allen Toussaint (The Meters, Dr. John, The Band, Elvis Costello) and a duet with Norwegian singer Ane Brun.
Mmmmmmm, Weezer’s new memelicious music video Pork and Beans is the best meme inspired creation ever.
Shot May 7-10 in North Hollywood, CA, this video features a cast of, well, many! And what a cast! An amazing group of well known “Youtube celebs” was tracked down and flown in so they could do their thing(s) with the Weezer men. Its pretty much impossible to properly describe what went down, so just have a look!
I particularly liked it when Rivers Cuomo embraces the “Leave Britney Alone” guy. If anyone was ever overdo for a hug, it’s Chris Crocker.
This summer my family is holding their once-every-five-year reunion out near Mountain View, just on the eastern cusp of the Rocky Mountains. One of the things we’ll be doing is rocking out with a music jam. Not everyone in my family plays an instrument, so I suggested that those not playing should bring their air guitars. I figured just about everyone can play the air guitar, but it wasn’t until I saw the documentary, “Air Guitar Nation” did I truly know the depth and potential of the invisible instrument.
AIR GUITAR NATION is the feature documentary about the year that air guitar swept America – from New York to Los Angeles and then all the way to northern Finland. AIR GUITAR NATION chronicles the birth of the US Air Guitar Championships and the personal journeys of those talented contestants who are vying to become the first World Air Guitar Champion from the United States. Every August, the Air Guitar World Championships bring thousands of fans all the way to Oulu, Finland to see the world’s best air guitarists battle it out for 60 seconds of mock stardom. For years, the USA was missing in action. Enter the first official US Air Guitar Championships. What starts as a friendly contest above a New York strip club becomes a battle of naked ambition played out on the national and, ultimately, the world stage.
Here is a short clip from the movie, please enjoy as C. Diddy gives the most amazing air guitar performance you’ve ever seen: