What happens when you play holiday music in a minor key? Evil Christmas Carols:
Hit play or watch Evil Christmas Carols at YouTube.
Happy Holidays everyone!
Bob Dylan in Lethbridge
Thursday night Bob Dylan performed at the Enmax Centre here in Lethbridge. He played a lot of songs that I didn’t particularly recognize and a few that I only JUST barely recognized.
I’m left to assume that after 40 years of the same songs, he tries to mix it up a bit. Personally I would have preferred to hear more of my “favourite” Bob Dylan songs (the ones that come up on my iPod for example) but having said that, it’s a rare and exciting event to see a living legend.
Update: I just read on wikipedia that after Bob Dylan’s 1979 conversion to Christianity, he decided he would no longer play any of his old material.
From the article: “Dylan refused to play any of his older compositions, as well as any secular material. Though Larry Myers had assured Dylan that his old compositions were not sacrilegious, Dylan would say he would not ‘sing any song which hasn’t been given to me by the Lord to sing.’ Fans wishing to hear his older songs openly expressed their disappointment. Hecklers continued to appear at his concerts, only to be answered by lectures from the stage. Dylan was firmly entrenched in his evangelical ways, and it would continue through his next album, whether his audience would follow or not.”
MyHope
MyHope is an original song by sweetafton23. It’s lovely—I wonder what my future kids will think of this site.
[MyHope – YouTube]
Ladysugar
My friend Katy says:
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.
Here is the band in action:
Hit play or watch I Want What I Can’t Have at YouTube.
And here is the voting page.
T.J’s Electrical Music Saw
Musician T.J. Hill hooked a saw up to his amp and now rocks out on the tool. Check out his rendition of Amazing Grace.
Hit play or watch T.J’s Electrical Music Saw at Youtube.
Someone Else Music Video
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!
[Googling Web’s Biggest Regrets – YouTube]
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.
(via)
Back to the Future Theme Song Sung
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.
[Back to the Future Theme Song – YouTube]
(via)
I Met the Walrus
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.
[I Met the Walrus – YouTube]
(Via Waxy)
Amazing Audio Illusion
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.
Coldplay Plagerizes?
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.