Category: Videos (Page 32 of 96)

Seen Your Video: White Rabbits, “Percussion Gun”

May 6, 2009 / David Medsker

Ladies and gentlemen, the line for Single of the Year starts here.

I’m frankly shocked that these guys are from New York. American bands, particularly young ones, don’t write songs like this anymore, and they certainly don’t use arrangements like this. I had these guys pegged for a UK act all the way, with the Adam & the Ants-style percussion, hand claps and old-fashioned piano. Maybe the arrangement was producer Britt Daniel’s idea, who knows. His band Spoon isn’t exactly playing the American game, either. No matter who’s responsible for putting it together, it’s damn good, and had me racing for the band’s MySpace page. How about that, the other tunes are good, too. Time to hit up the publicist for a review copy. (The band’s album, It’s Frightening, comes out May 19.)

So the tune is definitely a keeper. Now about about the video? Tastefully simple, a rarity these days. The camera spins around – and sometimes above – a circular display of white lights that surrounds the band. That’s it. I bet they shot it in an afternoon, then hit the pub, while the director popped a couple Dramamines and went to bed. Nicely done, lads.

Alternative, Artists, Rock, Seen Your Video, Videos

Britt Daniel New York Percussion Gun White Rabbits

Buckingham rules! (And the rest of Fleetwood Mac are pretty good, too.)

April 29, 2009 / Will Harris

If you’re a fan of Fleetwood Mac, then you no doubt got more than a little bit giddy at the tail end of 2008 when the band – still holding strong with the fab foursome of Lindsey Buckingham, Stevie Nicks, Mick Fleetwood, and John McVie – announced that they’d be touring in 2009. Word on the street is that things have been going swimmingly thus far, and the tour will continue to roll on into June; you can check out the current dates rather easily, as they’re right on the homepage of FleetwoodMac.com.

In the meantime, however, if you’re on the fence about whether to go see them or not, take a gander at this clip of Lindsey Buckingham – recorded during a solo performance at Bass Performance Hall, which is available as a CD/DVD combo – as he takes “Big Love” and either makes you wish you could play guitar or makes you never want to pick one up again because you’ll never, ever be able to play it as well as he can.

Artists, Concert CDs, Concert DVDs, Concerts, External Music, News, Videos

Fleetwood Mac John McVie Lindsey Buckingham Live at Bass Performance Hall Mick Fleetwood Stevie Nicks

Seen Your Video: Green Day, “Know Your Enemy”

April 24, 2009 / David Medsker

We proles can’t possibly fathom the kind of pressure that Green Day must have felt when they were putting the finishing touches on 21st Century Breakdown, their first album since the multi-platinum – and game-changing – American Idiot. Perhaps that is why they played around with side projects like the Foxboro Hot Tubs (which was a damn good record, by the way), because it enabled them to get their yeah yeahs out without having to worry about commercial expectations.

Ah, but they could only put the world on hold for so long, and at last, they give us “Know Your Enemy,” the debut single from Breakdown. Does it raise the stakes of American Idiot? No, but that appears to be the point. There was no sense in even trying, so instead, they deliver something more akin to their “unplugged” album Warning, which is one of my favorites of theirs. Big choruses, hand clap-ready snare drums, and a no-nonsense performance video to promote it. It’s as if they’re asking us to forget that American Idiot ever happened, and while that makes sense, it’s just not gonna happen. Still, this definitely has me excited to hear the rest of the album. Only a couple more weeks…

Green Day – New Music – More Music Videos

Alternative, Power Pop, Rock, Seen Your Video, Songs, Videos

21st Century Breakdown Green Day Green Day video Know Your Enemy Know Your Enemy video Seen Your Video

Michel Gondry 2: More Videos Before and After DVD 1

April 23, 2009 / David Medsker

Better than the 2003 collection that bears his name, this michelgondry.com-exclusive set of music videos is simply staggering. The beauty of Gondry’s work is that his methods are surprisingly low-tech (Beck’s “Cellphone’s Dead” being this set’s exception). He uses reflective glass to create the ghosts that haunt Paul McCartney’s house in “Dance Tonight,” and Steriogram’s “Walkie Talkie Man” is a brilliant stop-motion clip, using both real people and their string equivalents. Gondry assembles a couple of clever yet completely unique one-take videos with Michael Andrews and Gary Jules’ cover of “Mad World” and the White Stripes’ “The Denial Twist,” and his videos from the pre-CGI early ’90s, namely Thomas Dolby’s “Close but No Cigar” and Sananda Maitreya’s “She Kissed Me” (otherwise known as Terence Trend D’Arby to your older brothers and sisters), look as good as any video made today. The set comes with a bunch of behind-the-scenes footage, a couple films featuring Gondry solving a Rubik’s Cube with various parts of his body (feet and nose, to be precise), and they also added the parody of Gondry’s video of the White Stripes’ “The Hardest Button to Button” that appeared on a 2006 episode of “The Simpsons.” Genius stuff, across the board. If only he could replicate this consistency in the feature film arena.(ElektroFilm)

Click here to buy “Michel Gondry 2: More Videos Before and After DVD 1

DVD Quicktakes, External Music, Songs, Videos

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Billy Bob Thornton’s uncomfortable interview

April 14, 2009 / John Paulsen

…and “uncomfortable” is an understatement.

By now you may have heard about Thornton’s interview (along with his band, The Boxmasters) with a Canada’s QTV where he takes exception to the host mentioning his acting career in the introduction. If you watch Thornton during the intro, you can see him shake his head a couple of times. For the first six or seven minutes of the interview, Thornton acts like a petulant child, giving short, ambiguous answers to direct questions. Then he goes off on a tangent talking about a monster magazine contest that he entered as a kid. Finally, around the seven-minute mark, he tells the host why he’s acting the way he is.

Thornton keeps asking the host, “Would you ask Tom Petty that?” The thing is — Billy Bob Thornton is no Tom Petty. Thornton is best-known as an actor who sees himself as a musician. Tom Petty is in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

I feel for the host — he simply introduced Thornton and the rest of the band, and has to deal with pissy Billy Bob for the rest of the interview. He didn’t ask him any questions about his acting career and it’s completely understandable why he would mention Thornton’s history as an actor in the intro to give the interview context. It would be really odd if he just started the interview without mentioning it at all.

Thornton later says that Canadian audiences are like “mashed potatoes with no gravy” and canceled their two remaining Canadian shows after being booed in Toronto.

Artists, External Music, News, Radio, Videos

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