Category: Music

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Music

The Flaming Lips Cover “Bohemian Rhapsody”

It’s going to confirm my old fartdom, but I’ll admit it anyway: I’m old enough to remember the days when Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody came out and got played on Top 40 radio. Hence it warms my heart every time the song goes through a revival, whether via Wayne’s World, or more recently, by way of the Flaming Lips covering it at concerts in spectacular fashion:

Photo montage of the Flaming Lips covering Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody”
Click the picture to see it at a larger size.
Photo courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.

Here’s a video of that performance:

And if you’re too young to have ever seen Queen’s video, here it is (and yes, it’s the original, not the one with the scenes from Wayne’s World hacked in):

I think it’s time I learned the chords for this song and gave it the accordion rock treatment.

Categories
It Happened to Me Music Toronto (a.k.a. Accordion City)

This One Time, at Band Camp…

Last night, I took part in Band Camp, “an evening of ridiculous noisemaking” put together by Kelly Seagram. She sent out a call to a couple of dozen musicians here in Accordion City to join her for a free-form musical jam at Guitar Girl studio. Since I love jamming with other musicians, I couldn’t refuse the invitation.

I’d never been to Guitar Girl studio before, so I expected the typical inexpensive music studio: a dank, dark industrial space with only the most basic of amenities. I was pleasantly surprised when I walked in to find this:

P1030088Click to see the photo on its Flickr page.

Yes, it was converted warehouse space as I expected, but it was nicely converted warehouse space. Bright, well-heated and with nice furniture and paintings on the walls, it was even nicer than a number of warehouse lofts that people call home.

The studio is divided into three large areas, two of which seem to be specifically for performing and recording. We spent most of our time in one of these areas, which is shown in the photo above.

The third area, shown below, seems to be for hanging out.

P1030091Click to see the photo on its Flickr page.

An important part of a music studio is the couch — I’ve never been in a studio that didn’t have one. I was expecting the standard issue ratty fifth-hand Goodwill sofa, but that’s not the case at Guitar Girl:

P1030104Click to see the photo on its Flickr page.

The place had a nice little kitchenette:

P1030092Click to see the photo on its Flickr page.

And there were even a couple of “floater” instruments: a decent electric guitar and bass, each hooked up to a pretty decent amp:

P1030178Click to see the photo on its Flickr page.

P1030177Click to see the photo on its Flickr page.

People started arriving at about 8 p.m.. As one would expect, there was no shortage of guitars:

P1030179Click to see the photo on its Flickr page.

Gavin brought the synthesizer rig. This being the 21st century, “synthesizer” these days means “keyboard hooked up to a laptop computer”:

P1030126Click to see the photo on its Flickr page.

I brought the you-know-what:

P1030175Click to see the photo on its Flickr page.

And people brought other, less typical instruments — there was even a Theremin, which has hooked to an amplifier via an assortment of guitar effects pedals.

P1030122Click to see the photo on its Flickr page.

P1030120Click to see the photo on its Flickr page.

P1030134Click to see the photo on its Flickr page.

P1030115Click to see the photo on its Flickr page.

What jam session is complete without a big inflatable mattress?

P1030109Click to see the photo on its Flickr page.

And then, the jamming began:

P1030136Click to see the photo on its Flickr page.

P1030135Click to see the photo on its Flickr page.

P1030137Click to see the photo on its Flickr page.

P1030139Click to see the photo on its Flickr page.

P1030168Click to see the photo on its Flickr page.

Someone brought a projector and projected Baraka and other films on the wall, which made for some great pictures:

P1030159Click to see the photo on its Flickr page.

P1030158Click to see the photo on its Flickr page.

P1030164Click to see the photo on its Flickr page.

P1030167Click to see the photo on its Flickr page.

There’s always room for poi!

P1030165Click to see the photo on its Flickr page.

P1030166Click to see the photo on its Flickr page.

P1030169Click to see the photo on its Flickr page.

To see all the photos I took, click here to set the Flickr photoset page or click here to see all the photos as a slideshow.

We got a lot of great jamming done, I got to meet new people and everyone appeared to have a very good time. My thanks to Kelly for putting Band Camp together — I’m looking forward to the next one!

Categories
Geek Music

Vintage Ad Against Using Recorded Music for Movies

Back in the 1980s, I was a regular reader of Keyboard magazine. I always rolled my eyes at the two-page ad spread usually near the middle of the magazine that bore the headline “Don’t let them do DAT”, a campaign whose purpose was to keep DAT — that’s digital audio tape — recorders out of consumers’ hands. The worry was that giving consumers access to technology that could produce recordings that could be duplicated perfectly would kill the music industry (you young’uns would laugh at the audio fidelity of compact cassettes). The ad looked like a contest — in exchange for adding your name to their list of musicians who wanted to keep technology out of people’s hands, you’d get a chance to win some nice musical gear. Needless to say, I never participated in that silly campaign, which these days seems as quaint as Ned Ludd and his followers.

That’s not the first time that there’s been tension between musicians and technology. Back in the late 1920s and early 1930s, movies with sound were still new. Most films were “silent films” with the dialogue appearing on screen and music performed by live musicians in the theatre, a la Vern and Johnny, the vaudeville duo from Family Guy:

Vern and Johnny, the vaudeville duo from “Family Guy”

Here’s an ad that talks of the dangers of using recorded music in movies instead of musicans from 1931 titled The Robot at the Helm:

“The Robot at the Helm” ad
Image courtesy of the Paleo-Future blog. Click the picture to see the source article.

Here’s the text of the ad:

Here is a struggle of intense interest to all music lovers. If the Robot of Canned Music wrests the helm from the Muse, passengers aboard the good ship Musical Culture may well echo the offer of Gonzalo to trade “a thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of ground.” Are you content to face a limitless expanse of “sound” without a sign of music?

Monotony of the theatre — corruption of taste — destruction of art. These must inevitably follow substitution of mechanical music for living music.

Millions of Music Defense League Members cordially invite you to join them in putting the Robot in his place. Just sign and mail the coupon.

As neat as having live musicians performing in sync to films would be — and hey, there’s room for that sort of thing — if anything is killing art, I’d say it’s Hollywood’s lack of creativity.

[Image from the Paleo-Future blog. Cross-posted to Global Nerdy.]

Categories
funny It Happened to Me Music Work

It’s the Final Countdown!

It’s my last day here at Tucows, and at the risk of sounding like a film critic, I’m going to have to say that the feeling is bittersweet. Fittingly enough, this song is running through my head:


Can’t see the video? Click here.

And I can’t mention that song without making reference to the most painful cover version ever:


Can’t see the video? Click here.

Categories
funny Music

Nine Inch NOELs!

Trent Reznor in a Santa Hat

Perhaps it’s a bit early for Christmas-related posts, but this can’t wait: it’s Lore Sjoberg’s musical project, Nine Inch Noels, which takes selected Nine Inch Nails lyrics and sets them to a medley of Christmas tunes:

  • Head Like a Hole sung to the tune of Santa Claus is Coming to Town
  • Down in It sung to the tune of Jingle Bell Rock
  • Hurt sung to the tune of Little Drummer Boy
  • Closer sung to the tune of the Jingle Cats/Jingle Dogs version of Jingle Bells
  • March of the Pigs sung to the tune of Hark the Herald Angels Sing
Categories
Music

T.S. Eliot vs. Portishead

Beth Gibbons of Portishead and T.S. Eliot

Here’s an interesting idea: someone took a recording of T.S. Eliot reading The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and added the vamp from Portishead’s Sour Times — which you couldn’t escape back in 1995 — as background music. It’s not bad, but I think it would work better if more variety could’ve been worked into the music (this sounds like a job for Boston-based mash-up wizard Luke “Lenlow” Enlow!).

For those of you with the gear and talent — Karl Mohr, I’m lookin’ at you — here’s a link to Eliot reading Prufrock sans music [3.9 MB MP3 file]. Culture jammers might have some fun subverting the whole thing by mixing in Yakety Sax (the theme to the Benny Hill Show) as the background tune.

(Found via MetaFilter.)

Categories
Accordion, Instrument of the Gods funny Music

When This Computer Fad Blows Over, I’m Joining This Band

Band in shiny outfits with a shiny accordionist
Photo courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.