What have I gotten myself into? I'm feeling a little overwhelmed, but excited, but tired... it would be nice to just be able to close my eyes, lean back, and just sail away...
Tonight's video is courtesy of Warner Brothers - it's a welcome change to see a media company embracing YouTube instead of fighting them. Nicely done, Yakko, Wakko, and Dot.
Ordinary spell favorites better office Toronto number, order bulb service. Notebook menu betta disasters compendium, unofficial Unix marathon corridor community:
Together exercise pages album? Ready strange recognition.
I'm exhausted - spent most of last night fighting with replication between a couple database servers, gave up and went to bed at 5 this morning, got up at 7:30, fought for another hour, back to bed, up again at 10:30, think I finally won around noon... am I sounding incoherent yet?
And speaking of incoherent, how about some classic Ozzy?
Going back to bed...
Once again, Scandinavia provides tonight's music video mayhem, courtesy of Sweden's Familjen and director Johan Söderberg. The video fits the music well - Familjen's loop-based electronic music is matched with loops of film footage from an early tent revival, cleverly spliced and speed-matched to fit the tempo of the music - and in some cases, it even looks like the preacher is the one singing. Pretty neat stuff:
Hey, this is my 100th post to my blog! Happy... ummm... blog-iversary? I dunno... just seemed worth mentioning.
Some classic Pink Floyd for you tonight, with a twist of contemplation on the side:
I remember singing the chorus when I was a kid, thinking how cool it was, how defiant and rebellious it was to declare that I didn't "need no education". When I was in university, I saw "The Wall" at a midnight showing at the campus movie theater, and thought it was very cool, very interesting, but didn't really have a lasting impact on me. But now, this song holds new meaning for me, after discovering John Taylor Gatto.
Shortly after being named New York State's "Teacher of the Year" in 1991, Gatto quit, saying that he didn't want to "have to hurt kids to make a living", and has now become one of the most outspoken critics of the entire modern institution of education. As the faceless children in "Another Brick In The Wall" shuffle mindlessly into the meat grinder, I remember Gatto's contention that modern schools exist for two purposes - to create "human resources" for the industrial machine, and to create bored, easily influenced consumers to fuel the economy.
Gatto is not without critics, but I think he is right . We're currently homeschooling our son (kindergarten), planning on homeschooling our youngest daughter when she gets old enough, and have told our two oldest daughters that they'll have one year of homeschooling when they get to grade six - and hope that they'll want to continue after that. But it's going to be their decision in the end - yes, as parents, we have a lot of influence on that decision, but it will be their decision.
I can't begin to do justice to Gatto in a blog posting like this, so I encourage you to read his work for yourself - and keep an open mind while you do. As for Pink Floyd - I don't know if Roger Waters' views on education are in complete agreement with Gatto, but I can't imagine that they would be in complete disagreement either. Hey, teacher - leave those kids alone...
The '80s are back with a blast of serious awesomeness in the form of The Timelords (a.k.a. the KLF) with this Gary Glitter influenced musical tribute to Dr. Who:
No matter how hard I try, I just can't seem to EX-TER-MI-NATE the '80s...
And you thought last week's video was incomprehensible? Try some Sigur Rós:
Is it time to bring back the 80's yet?
What could be cheesier than the '80s? How about the '70s? How about a bad "Village People" cover from Finland in the '70s? Be afraid... be very afraid...
The '80s are looking positively classy again in comparison...
I don't quite know what to make of this video. Christopher Walken somehow manages to look awkward, yet graceful, while he cuts loose to Fatboy Slim - and for the life of me, I can't quite decide if he's actually a good dancer or not:
Of course, part of the problem is that even if he is a bad dancer, he still looks like poetry in motion compared to me, so who am I to judge?
Again, definitely not the 80's - from 1967, actually, which makes this pretty groundbreaking stuff, both in terms of the music and the animation. Here's Pierre Henry's "Psyché Rock":
Note the similarities to the Futurama theme:
And, just for fun, here's Fatboy Slim's remix:
Next week - still definitely not the 80's.
And now for something completely different... and definitely not the 80s. The Chemical Brothers are apparently trying to start a new dance trend. Or something. I can't say as I understand it, but it's strangely compelling...
Coming up next week: still definitely not the 80s.
It's time to wrap up the "80's Mix Tape" series here - I think I've just about worked the 80's out of my system, at least for a while. There are a couple other videos that I decided not to inflict on you (in case you're wondering, Aldo Nova and INXS). We're ending the way we began - boys with guitars and big hair, making pretty for the camera. Here's Triumph:
Coming up next week: anything but the 80's. I promise.
We interrupt Music Video Thursday's "80's Mix Tape" series for this late-breaking bulletin: I'm going to see Weird Al tonight at Credit Union Center! w00t! In honour of my getting seriously "white and nerdy" tonight (no bubble wrap please), I'm taking a quick break from the 80's to present the first take of the "White and Nerdy" video shoot, with Weird Al fronting, and Donny Osmond getting freaky as a backup dancer. Avert your eyes, children, it's not polite to stare:
Back to the 80's next week (if I can get Mr. Fusion hooked up properly to the flux capacitor - Great Scott!!!)
And here's one more piece of evidence in the case against my good taste in music in the 80's - Adam Ant:
I'm so ashamed...
A lot of the video's for my mix tape have been cheesy. This is cheese that has gone bad. Ladies and gentlemen, in an unprecedented three-peat appearance on Music Video Thursday, I present to you: Twisted Sister!
And for those of you who may have found this blog by following my "author" link on the Bethlehem Lutheran Church blog - I promise that you won't hear these songs on the Sundays that I'm playing... although you have to admit, "O Come All Ye Faithful" sounds an awful lot like "We're Not Gonna Take It", even if Twisted Sister isn't playing it. :-)
Finding videos for all the songs on my 80's mix tape has proven to be a challenge. Some of the songs have appeared here already (here and here). Some of the songs simply can't be found on YouTube (in particular, anything by Loverboy, aside from crappy cell-cam footage from recent concerts, and Kim Carnes' "Crazy In The Night"). Some are just too... for lack of a better word, "yucky", to post here (Frankie Goes To Hollywood's "Relax" and The Cars "Hello Again" directed by Andy Warhol - search for them on YouTube at your own risk). And, in a most frustrating find, one video that was actually posted to YouTube by the record label... but with embedding disabled, so I can't put it on my blog - a big "boo hiss" to Universal for keeping me from sharing Men Without Hats' "Pop Goes The World" from my vast audience. It's an impediment to true culture, it is.
So, there's just a few more songs that I can give you, and quite frankly, I'm not entirely sure about this next video. I think I can sum up this video from The Cars in five words - Ric Ocasek freaks me out:
On a related note, according to Wikipedia (the Internet's most trusted news source, dontcha know), Ric Ocasek appeared on the Boston Phoenix's "The 100 unsexiest men in the world" list. Not that I'm a particularly good judge of manly sexiness (except my own, of course), but I'm not terribly surprised.
As I've been going through the list of songs on that mix tape, I began to wonder just how bad my taste was in the 80's - cheese, cheese, and more cheese - but then, redemption in the form of Rush. Yes, they've got big hair, they're wearing weird clothes, but they actually look like they're making music, not just prancing in front of the cameras with instruments:
I genuinely like this song - not only is the music complex and interesting, but the lyrics really spoke to me back in high school, and still ring true today. *sigh* I suppose there won't be any other songs like this on the tape, so next week - back to the cheese... I can't wait.
I'm beginning to have second thoughts about doing a whole series of videos based on an old 80's mix tape. I mean, I know that it's cheesy, but I didn't really realize just how cheesy it actually is, and I'm not sure I can handle that much cheese, you know, like a kind of a musical lactose intolerance or something...
But until better judgement overtakes me, we'll keep going on this fantastic voyage de fromage - tonight's "guys with long hair pouting earnestly" is brought to you by Whitesnake!
Ohhh, my stomach...
A few months ago I stumbled across a mix tape I had made back in the 80's while in high school, and I can't stop listening to it. So, I've decided that I'll inflict it on all of you here - misery loves company, right?
The mix tape kicks off with a perfect song for Music Video Thursday - it's from the 80's, it's Scandinavian, the lyrics are wonderfully awful in the way that only non-native English speakers can write them. Here's Europe:
More 80's goodness to come over the next weeks - you bring the wine, I've got all the cheese you need!
Lasse Gjertsen is back, only this time he's staying behind the camera. He's directed a music video for Italian cellist Giovanni Sollima. It's beautiful music, and fascinating video:
Click through each part to YouTube, where Lasse has included some behind-the-scenes notes on the creation of the video, including hand-editing over 4000 frames...
