A recent screen capture from FOX News. Moussaoui looks like he’s enjoying his latte.
FOX News alerts are missing only a couple of things, otherwise they’d be perfect:
Luckily for us, we now have the theme song: FOX News Alert, performed by artists unknown [3.0MB MP3]. Enjoy!
This weekend, I’ll post more about my appearance on MTV Live last night, but in the meantime, here’s a photo of me enjoying the free rock star snacks in the MTV green room…
“Damn, it feels good to be a gangsta,” as the song goes, so I’ll celebrate by sharing the song: here’s the Geto Boys’ Damn It Feels Good to be a Gangsta [7.1 MB MP3], which you may recognize from the Office Space soundtrack. Enjoy!.
Yesterday, I got a phone call from Toni Thomas, Talent Coordinator for MTV Live, the flagship talk show for the newly-launched MTV Canada. She told me that she’d been referred to me by Shelley “Burningbird” Powers and asked if I would like to appear on the show and talk about blogs. Seeing as Tucows pays me to talk about tech and that I rather enjoy the whole appearing-on-TV thing, I said that I’d love to show up at their studios — the old Masonic Temple, a.k.a. “The Concert Hall” for those of you of a certain age like me — and talk about the strange hobby in which I’ve been partaking for the past four and a half years.
This morning, I got email from Toni asking me if I could bring the accordion and what songs I could play so that they could get about the business of clearing the rights. I emailed her back a list of the songs which I can play even when three sheets to the wind. Those of you who know me well have probably already guessed the songs on the list. I wonder which one they’ll pick.
A little talking about blogs, a little playing the ol’ squeezebox, all on a new TV channel that’s getting a fair bit of fanfare. Business, pleasure and shameless self-promotion. What could be better?
My thanks to Shelley Powers for the referral!
The “No Parking” signs in New York City are pretty cool — they certainly convey the attitude for which the city is famous:
Of course, what would be much cooler would be if they had these signs…
As a special bonus, here’s a musical biscuit for you: Nina Hagen’s New York, New York [4.8MB MP3]. This was on fairly heavy rotation on my walkman back in high school.
Put this in your iPod and crank the wheel hard right: here’s DJ Mark Ronson and Alex Greenwald’s funk-tastic cover of Radiohead’s Just [8.5 MB MP3]. Who knew that the song would benefit from funky drums, groovin’ guitar and an awesome horn section?
Want to know more about Mark Ronson? Here’s his MySpace page.
Update: Hey! There’s a video for this cover! Links for high- and low-bandwidth QuickTime and Windows Media can be found at the end of this article on Mark Ronson.
Barely a month after that fateful day when Karl and I decided to take our accordions out onto the street and play them in public for the first time, he phoned me with an interesting offer.
“Hey, Joey! How’d you like to play accordion on the radio?”
“What? How?”
“John Southworth’s going to be doing a live session on CBC radio to promote his new album. I did session work on a couple of numbers on the album, and one of them has an accordion. He thought it would be cool to have two accordions backing him up when he did it live.”
“Count me in!”
Karl brought me a copy of John’s then-new album, Sedona Arizona. He didn’t send me an MP3 file: you have to remember that this was a month before the original Napster was released and that I was considered to have advanced home connectivity, what with my 56K modem.
The song we were to play was called Veto Valvoline, a whimsical laundry list-type song featruing words beginning with the letter “V”. We transcribed a chord chart and practiced it ourselves; a day later, John came to practice it with us. We rehearsed in my condo’s gym as the puzzled-looking cleaning staff looked on.
On the day of the studio session, Karl gave me a call with a wacky idea.
“We should dress up for this big event. Suits, ascots, hats.”
“You realize, Karl,” I said, “that we’re dressing up for radio.”
“Aw, c’mon, it’ll be fun.”
So we did, and John and the hosts of the show were rather amused to see these two guys with accordions walk in, dressed like Fuller Brush salesmen. Here’s a photo of us in action:
Pure funky music geek gold: The Paul’s Boutique Samples and References List site examines every song off this seminal Beastie Boys album, sourcing its samples used in every song and explaining every reference in its lyrics. Shhhhake your rump-ahh!