Last week, I had the embarrassing affliction of not being able to name Kool & the Gang’s “Celebration.” Colin, of course, set me straight immediately, but this failure will remain with me until the end of my days.
Anyway here is “Celebration” by Kool & the Gang.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyYmKa85uUU
I don’t think I’ve talked about it much on here, but I’m a fan of electronic music. Especially stuff that’s a bit out there and weird. So with that in mind, here’s “Automaton” by Lorn.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-BMtPp9HCQ
Divine Fits (made up of members of Spoon and Wolf Parade) cover Frank Ocean’s “Lost”. Highly relevant to my interests and yours too, I hope.
Guided by Voices, man. This is exactly what makes rock music so wonderful.
A band I’ve never heard of before, the Australian jazz fusion group Pyramid, performed at the 1983 Montreux Jazz Festival. This video of them performing “The Odyssey” was introduced to me on IRC in the following way:
< lunar> hey here’s a video that contains moustaches, beards, mullets, aviators and a lot of synth brass
This description is highly accurate.
This is a MIDI written by video game composer Yousuke Yasui in 1999 titled “Que Cela Cela.”
I’m linking this mostly because of the amazing MIDI visualizations. First the PARALLAX SCROLLING OF MIDI CHANNELS happening in the first half because they’re apparently being rendered in 3D space, and then later the endless staircase of keyboards. Astounding.
Japanese Collectors Face a Record Shortage of Obscure Music
Wonderful story about Japanese music collectors in The Wall Street Journal by Neil Shah:
For decades, Japan’s record shops have scoured the globe for records to feed the nation’s collectors. Employees of Japanese retailer Disk Union once spent $20,000 in a day at Nashville’s The Great Escape record store hunting for tunes including ones treasured by Japan’s soft-rock and easy-listening fans. With U.S. record stores closing, this focus on obscure music is making supply difficult to find—and fueling secretive competition.
…
Japan has surpassed the U.S. as the biggest seller of CDs, vinyl and cassette tapes, with 25.4% of global sales, according to the Recording Industry Association of Japan. Tower Records Japan Inc.—which survived its U.S. parent’s closing in 2006—opens its 87th store this month.
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Much of what the Japanese want goes for higher prices. Collectible artists in Japan include female pop singers like Patti Page, whose “(How Much Is) That Doggie in the Window” was a 1950s hit, and 1980s teen idol Debbie Gibson. A “Doggie” record-single goes for $5 in the U.S. and $30 in Japan, while Ms. Gibson’s LPs can fetch $200 on eBay. The Japanese “like sugary sweet pop,” collector Alec Palao says.
Japan is apparently all about the cheap crap that none of us care about any more.
Gangnam Style, Dissected: The Subversive Message Within South Korea’s Music Video Sensation
Max Fisher for The Atlantic:
Gangnam is a tony Seoul neighborhood, and Park’s “Gangnam Style” video lampoons its self-importance and ostentatious wealth, with Psy playing a clownish caricature of a Gangnam man. That alone makes it practically operatic compared to most K-Pop. But I spoke with two regular observers of Korean culture to find out what I was missing, and it turns out that the video is rich with subtle references that, along with the song itself, suggest a subtext with a surprisingly subversive message about class and wealth in contemporary South Korean society. That message would be awfully mild by American standards — this is no “Born in the U.S.A.” — but South Korea is a very different place, and it’s a big deal that even this gentle social satire is breaking records on Korean pop charts long dominated by cotton candy.
My gut reaction to this piece was that perhaps it was a bit of overanalysis of a funny music video.
It’s difficult to imagine that much of this could be apparent to non-Koreans, which [Jea] Kim told me is why she decided to write it up on her blog. “I thought people outside Korea might take it just as another funny music video. So I wanted to explain what’s behind [it] and the song.”
Oh. Well then.
Check the piece.