|
“Fooled By a Smile” played “live,” you bet!
|
|
Songs like “Watermelon Crawl” will make you go out and kill. Enjoy!
|
|
Awww yeah, kids. “Fat Man in the Bathtub” live style.
|
|
All actors should make their directorial debut with a music video. It’s a good place to get your feet wet and learn good timing, among other things. And besides, if it’s good enough for Michael Bay and McG, it’s good enough for anyone else. Actually, McG probably should have stuck with making music videos, but that’s a subject for another column. “Little Lover’s So Polite,” the latest single from the unstoppable Silversun Pickups, has one Joaquin Phoenix behind the camera, and while the video is cute, I have no doubt that the label would have scrapped it had it not been directed by an Oscar nominee. The band plays the song from the back of a pickup truck (bad dum bum) while driving through downtown Los Angeles at night, with a parallel story of a young boy meeting up with a young girl, and running until they fly. The problem is that Phoenix has drummer Christopher Guanlao wildly overacting, pounding his drums to a rather gentle drum track. It is also clear that the band is getting a police escort to shoot the video – when the police aren’t visible in the shot, their flashing lights are – which ruins the illusion. Yes, we know that you need to get permits to shoot videos on public streets. We just don’t like seeing reminders of it in the video itself. Unless, of course, that’s the point of the video, like U2’s “Where the Streets Have No Name.” Not that any of this will stop the song from being a hit. It’s the fourth single from a 2006 album. That’s old school promotion, right there. God, isn’t it sweet. Embedding is disabled, but you can watch the video here. |
|
My only question is why are they all dressed up in Mork from Ork’s spacesuit? Enjoy the wacky sound effects as well!
|
|
Those Black Crowes are a quirky bunch. They refuse to send review copies of the new album Warpaint to the press to prevent the album from leaking (though that didn’t stop Maxim from running an “educated guess preview” review of the album anyway), yet they have an open door policy when it comes to taping shows. Now, with the album safely in stores, the band has granted the use of their latest single, “Goodbye Daughters of the Revolution,” for free download on blogs. They went from “No one can hear it” to “Everyone can have it for free” in 4.8 seconds flat. Huh. I will be the first to admit that I am not the foremost spokesperson for the Black Crowes on staff, so I don’t really know how this fits in with the material from their previous album, Lions. I can tell you this, though: this is as good a Faces impression as you’re likely to find. Pretty damn good, if you ask me. So what if it “didn’t leave the band much room for growth,” as Maxim hilariously presumed. It’s only rock and roll, but I like it. Yes, I do. |
|
Paul Shaffer might play the part of the oft-befuddled but always fawning bandleader to perfection on “The Late Show with David Letterman,” but the guy’s a musical legend. He spent 1975 to 1980 as the musical director of “Saturday Night Live” band, did the same duty for The Blues Brothers, is regularly called upon to provide backing for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremonies, and, of course, played Artie Fufkin in “This is Spinal Tap.” He’s also a songwriter (he co-wrote “It’s Raining Men,” you know) and, on rare occasions, he’s even stepped out and been a recording artist in his own right. In 1990, Shaffer released an all-star collaborative effort entitled Coast to Coast, where he attempted to take listeners on a cross-country musical expedition which blended different musical genres, often within a single song. The album’s first single was a little ditty called “When the Radio Is On,” and when Shaffer premiered the track on “Late Night with David Letterman,” I was watching in awe as the breathtaking harmonies washed over me. The first couple of minutes of this clip are strictly Shaffer introducing his crew for the song, so if you want to skip ahead to the 2:26 mark, I’ll save you the time by providing you with the roll call: Will Smith (then still known solely as The Fresh Prince), Daddy O (Stetsasonic), Jay Siegel (The Tokens), Johnny Maestro (The Crests, The Brooklyn Bridge), songwriter Ellie Greenwich, actress Carol Kane (filling in for Carole King, ho, ho), and the King of the New York Streets himself, Mr. Dion DiMucci. As Shaffer describes it, “It’s doo-wop, it’s hip-hop, it’s a nutty thing.” Me, I’m not saying the song’s perfection, mostly because Shaffer shouts his vocal contributions, but the overall enthusiasm is downright contagious…which, I suspect, is why I still have Coast to Coast in my record collection.
Filed under: Rock and Pop and Hip Hop and Songs and Artists and Videos and Less Talk, More Music Comments: None |
|
Yes, we know that writing about music is like dancing about architecture (even if we’re not convinced that Elvis Costello said it first), but let’s be realistic: if you’re a music fan who likes to read, you can achieve a very special level of bliss when you get the opportunity to dive into a book about music. The Bullz-Eye staff knocked their heads together and came up with a list of 45 books that span several musical genres and include autobiographies and biographies, histories of record companies and music magazines, essay collections, and straight-up reference tomes. It’s not intended to be all-encompassing, nor would we presume to call it a definitive list of the best music books of all time. It’s simply a selection of some of our personal favorites, none of which would be out of place on a music fan’s bookshelf…and you can find it right here. We also got some of the authors in on the fun, as well as some of our favorite musicians, which resulted in enough responses from folks from Kyle Vincent to Henry Rollins to warrant Rock of Pages: Celebrity Edition. But we know: we’ve missed one (or more) of your favorites. We always miss one (or more) of your favorites. So call us out already and leave a comment. We can always use another addition to our Barnes & Noble shopping list… Filed under: Rock and Pop and Alternative and Rap and Hip Hop and Country and Jazz and Music Labels and Songs and News and Artists and Videos and External Music Comments: 4 Comments |
|
“Crybaby” from Oblivion. Up to this point, all of Todd’s and Utopia’s videos were pretty much shot on video. This was the first one on film. Features Ellen Foley as an extra as well as Willie Wilcox’s motorcycle drum kit. The band was definitely going for the futuristic look here, and do manage to pull it off in the shots featuring them in the monitors in the black costumes and head mics, but man do they look dopey in the get ups in the rest of the clip.
|
|
“Popular Creeps” from the great Horseshoes and Hand Grenades album.
|
|
My head tells me that I shouldn’t like Kerli. One listen to her voice tells me that she worships at the altar of Amy Lee – the song is smothered with Evanescence-style melodrama as well – and the lyric is straight from Alanis Morrisette’s notebook (“I know that you think of me when you’re beside her / Inside her”). But I find myself irresistibly drawn to the Estonian beauty. I feel like Oz in “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” when the band fronted by the female wolf comes to Sunnydale and plays the Bronze. He’s dating Alyson Hannigan, Alyson freaking Hannigan, but damned if he could resist the singer’s siren song. I’m Oz, Kerli’s the wolf. The wolf also made an appropriately creepy video for her brooding lead single “Love is Dead.” It starts with her horribly aged, standing in front of a CGI background that shows, well, death. As the video goes on, she gets younger, and everything behind her does, too. We get stuff from 20-year-old girls pitched to us all the time. None of it sounds like this. She’s not reinventing the wheel or anything, but you have to love a young girl with some depth. She covers Bauhaus’ “She’s in Parties,” for crying out loud. Hopefully the full-length album, which drops April 22, will follow up on the promise of this single. Embedding, sadly, is disabled, but I highly recommend checking her out. And in case you still need more convincing, here’s a picture of her.
See what I mean? You’re drawn to her too, aren’t you? Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to lock myself up in my cage, so I don’t accidentally eat anyone when the full moon hits. To view the video, click here. Update: Video link switched from Island’s site to YouTube. Filed under: Pop and Rock Babes and Songs and Artists and Videos and External Music and Seen Your Video Comments: 2 Comments |
|
Or, specifically Little Washu from “Tenchi Muyo!” Here is a fan-made video for “She Blinded Me with Science” Good stuff.
|
|
“Pebble Mill” was a daytime chat show in Great Britain which regularly featured appearances from the current musical artists of the day, as well as a few who weren’t exactly top of the pops anymore, if you take my meaning. In the case of Dionne Warwick, she was and remained a huge worldwide superstar in 1982, a full two decades on from her first big hit, “Walk On By.” This was one of the many compositions from the brothers Gibb that was taken to the upper reaches of the charts by someone other than the Bee Gees themselves, but it’s got their trademark sound all over it.
|
|
“Discolite” from the great Grand Prix.
|
|
Guilty pleasures. We all have them. Actually, I never had any until recently, because I figured that if I didn’t feel any shame about liking a song, then it wasn’t a guilty pleasure. Ah, what a naïve child I once was. I surely should have known that music would turn on me and become something I didn’t like, and then that something I didn’t like would create something I liked (ahem, “I Want It That Way”).
Filed under: Rock and Pop and Alternative and Electronica and Songs and Artists and Playlists and Videos and External Music and Mix Disc Monday Comments: None |
| « newer posts | previous posts » |