Music

Buscarlos Sonidos Magicos de Ecuador

Liking this song exposes me to "you know how I know you're gay?" ridicule, but every time I hear "Ecuador" by Sash I crank the knob up to 11 and reinsert "Escuchame!" back into my vocabulary. ... (read more)

2008/07/02

Music: Scapegoat Wax's 'Perfect Silence'

While experimenting with the social music site Imeem, I found "Perfect Silence" by Scapegoat Wax, one of the bands on the defunct Beastie Boys label Grand Royal Records. I don't know how Imeem has permission to share this, but it's a great song by a band that disappeared after Grand Royal declared bankruptcy in 2001 -- just as the group was getting radio play for the song Aisle 10 (Hello Alison). You can't even find its songs on iTunes today, but singer Marty James performs with One Block ... (read more)

2008/05/02

Tay Zonday Rains on Reporter's Questions

In an interview with MSP Magazine published in January, Tay Zonday, the deep-voiced singer whose "Chocolate Rain" became a YouTube sensation, challenges every premise of the reporter questioning him. Q: Let's talk about the art. What percentage of your success do you attribute to the William Hung factor? A: I don't really follow William Hung. But the blunt question is, "Do I suck, and do people laugh at me because of it?" I don't know. How does any artist know that? Why would any artist worry ... (read more)

2008/03/24

Si Se Puede, Kumar Patel

Andres Useche has released Si Se Puede, a Spanish response to Will.i.am's "Yes We Can" music video for Barack Obama. If you're in the camp that's inspired by Obama's campaign, as I.am, you'll probably like this one too. It's a nice though politically barbed call for Latinos to rally behind Obama in the Texas primary March 4. There's an unexpected guest star at the 3:44 mark. That's the actor Kal Penn, an American of Gujarati Indian descent. This is the first time the star of the Harold & Kumar ... (read more)

2008/02/25

Jake Shimabukuro's Ukelele Gently Weeps

When a musician does something great on late-night TV, it tends to show up the next morning as a search spike on Google Trends. Here's last night's discovery, ukelele hero Jake Shimabukuro performing George Harrison's While My Guitar Gently Weeps on Late Night with Conan O'Brien. O'Brien called it "one of my favorite performances on this show ever." I didn't realize how great Harrison's song was until Prince burned the house down playing it in 2004 with Tom Petty, Jeff Lynne and Dhani Harrison ... (read more)

2008/02/20

Google Searches Lead to Nicole Atkins

I've never heard of singer Nicole Atkins, who popped up on Google Trends this morning as a search spike. She performed her song "The Way It Is" on Late Night with David Letterman in October, a lover's lament with a great heartsick Roy Orbison wail. She's scheduled to perform at this year's SXSW in Austin. ... (read more)

2008/01/08

Ripping Music to OGG Files on Windows

I rip music CDs to OGG files, abandoning the MP3 format in favor of an open standard that's encouraged for adoption by the Free Software Foundation. Although OGG works in fewer places than MP3 today, it's completely free for developers to support and gets music listeners away from patent attorneys, which makes it the better long-term choice. After having some trouble finding a ripper that supports OGG, I discovered Audiograbber, a free Windows program that's unpolished but gets the job done. ... (read more)

2007/11/28

Steve Burns Goes From Blues to Rock

Question: Why did you shave your head? are you making a statement? Answer: Yes. the statement is, "we have male pattern baldness." This QNA comes from the web site of Steve Burns, the original Blue's Clues host and star of one of the greatest episodes of Homicide: Life on the Street. After leaving the green-striped shirt, salt and pepper shakers, and floppy-eared blue dog behind in 2002, Burns became an indie rocker who pals around with the Flaming Lips and does They Might Be Giants tribute ... (read more)

2007/11/02

Straight Outta Kentucky: Meet Ronald Jenkees

I bought the CD tonight of Ronald Jenkees, an unsigned hip-hop musician from Murray State University in Kentucky, after finding his videos on "the YouTubes." Go back through his videos and you'll find a bunch of great odd stuff coming from the most unlikely place imaginable (such as String Jams 2, a NFL Countdown remix and his Bill Simmons podcast theme). Jenkins also has filmed some non-musical videos, like one about trying to get his roommates to play Balderdash. By 2022, Jenkees has amassed ... (read more)

2007/09/05

Rob Lowe, Snow White and the Academy Awards

The infamous opening number to the 1989 Academy Awards, which featured Snow White and Rob Lowe and killed the career of show producer Allen Carr, turned up on YouTube: Seeing this for the first time, I thought the opening was campy, hokey and overdone, but that seemed like the point. You don't line up a dozen dancing tables with lampshade heads and a chorus line of male ushers belting out "whenever you're down in the dumps, try putting on Judy's red pumps" without knowing you're completely over ... (read more)

2006/10/24

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