Monday 22 December 2008

Christmas (This Year)- Brett Domino Trio

My vote for this years best new Christmas single.



Well, it's original anyway.

Sunday 23 November 2008

Devil In Disguise - The Flying Burrito Brothers


A lack-luster TV lip-sync performance, yet still in good form.
Before heroin took the life of Gram Parsons, his band The Flying Burrito Brothers had mild success. As a follow through of the band The Byrds, were Gram's country styled writing took hold and came into its own, The Burritos seemed to be a logical musical path. Young Emmylou Harris and Gram toured together under his banner singing his songs for a while after the Burritos disbanded mainly due to his drug problem. It was Grams association with Keith Richards and his then lifestyle with drugs, that would become fatal for his band and ultimately Parsons. His strong canon of music remains and is covered by many as a tribute to what was and what might have been.

Thursday 20 November 2008

It's a Wonderful Life? - The Basses Go To Bedford Falls

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Tuesday 18 November 2008

Merry Christmas! Here's a JibJab Sendable

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Yikes! Forever-by Pete Drake and his vocoder


This should have one of those 'love to hate' tags. Everything about this is creepy. I don't think those lads are hitting all those high notes either. Watch while trying to avoid an involuntary shudder.

Friday 14 November 2008

Lil' Liza Jane- Thumbs Carllile & Curly Chalker, Also, Cotton-Eyed Joe- Thumbs Carllile'08




I've never seen this kind of technique played so well by a sighted man. There are certainly benefits to chord variations that can be achieved. Amazing!

Monday 10 November 2008

Jan Švankmajer, "Zamilované maso/Meat Love" (1988)


Inspiration for becoming a Vegetarian.

Sunday 2 November 2008

Ernie Kovacs - Nairobi Trio [Original Music]



I remember seeing this as a kid on our old black and white set and laughing at it uncontrollably.
Though dated and well known in the annals of television history, the comic timing is great and this should bookend nicely with Leona Anderson's LP below.

Music To Suffer By [1957] - Leona Anderson


BIO: [From www.spaceagepop.com]

Born Leona Aronson 20 April 1885, St. Louis, Missouri
Died 25 December 1973, Fremont, California

Leona Anderson secured he spot in Space Age Pop history with her aptly-titled 1957 album, Music to Suffer By. Anderson made bad singing a legitimate, if entirely unnecessary, form of entertainment. She reveled in the limitations and deficiencies in her singing voice and her publicity proudly proclaimed her as "the World's Most Horrible Singer." She milked her lack of talent into her own special shtick, and ended up landing spots on The Ernie Kovacs Show and other 50s variety series.

Ironically, Anderson had legitimate showbiz roots. Although born into a midwest Jewish family, her older brother Max became perhaps the world's first cowboy movie star, making one- and two-reelers for the Essanay Studio in Niles, California as early as 1915, billed as "Bronco Billy" Anderson. Leona studied singing, unbelievable though it may seem, and the liner notes of Music to Suffer By claim she had landed a spot in a George M. Cohan show by the time she was 15. Something in that claim is off, since Cohan's first Broadway revue wasn't until 1901, and the only Leona Anderson credited with appearances on Broadway is another lady entirely.

We do know that she wound up in the movies, if only sporadically. Her name shows up in several films made at the Astoria Studios in New York City. She must have moved to California to join her brother, since she shows up again in several films made there in the early 1920s. One was a short satirizing Rudolph Valentino, starring Stan Laurel as "Rhubarb Vaselino," and the other a western directed by her brother.

One assumes she worked in radio and vaudeville after that, for by the early 1950s, she had become known for her awful singing, which was apparently an act she created to mock the pompous style of serious opera singers. "Opera singers just can't kid themselves properly ... they can never let their voices go." Anderson, on the other hand, let hers go anywhere it chose to wander, in a manner rather like a drunk's random walk--up, down, and in between the scale. In comparison with the better-known opera comedienne, Anna Russell, though, Anderson's act wasn't something that could sustain an entire show single-handedly. Unlike Florence Foster Jenkins or Mrs. Miller, to whom she's usually compared, Anderson doesn't appear to have been naive, but rather, dissembling. "I'm not sure whether she knew she was funny--but I have my suspicions," one of her acquaintances, jazz label artist (and comb player) Paul Bacon, has commented.

Somewhere in the mid-1950s, she recorded a single, "Fish," for a small New York City label. Anderson's co-conspirators were two other figures in fringe entertainment: Bill Baird, a pioneering puppeteer best remembered for performing the marionette scene in "The Sound of Music"; and Tony Burrello, who recorded another famous 7" slice of discord, "There's a New Sound (The Sound of Worms Eating Your Brain)," that pops up occasionally on the Dr. Demento radio show. Her catterwauling was accompanied by Baird on tenor tuba and Burrello on calliope, which also makes this perhaps the only known pairing of this instruments.

Inventive television comic Ernie Kovacs heard it and was inspired to build one of his recurring routines around it. Kovacs would stand next to a knight's suit of armour and periodically open the visor. Out would come the discordant tones of Ms. Anderson's singing. Later, Kovacs had her appear live and offer viewers a taste of her act. Kovacs' widow, Edie Adams, later recalled that ""She knew she was camp, but she was very funny, and very sweet." This tidbit of notoriety probably led Unique Records to record and release Music to Suffer By, quite consciously packaged as a joke. It probably also led to her landing a small part in the 1958 Vincent Price horror film, "The House on Haunted Hill."

Her show-biz career appears to have come to a close not longer after that, and she died at the age of 88 in a retirement home not far from where her brother first started making movies.

November Playlist



LINK:
NOV08.zip

HOSTED FREE AT BOXSTR.COM

Tracklist:

01) Set Your Receivers -Meat Beat Manifesto

02) Bubblegum (Hubba Bubba remix feat Marie)- Books on Tape

03) Sexo Perfecto (Feat Ask) -Supabeatz

04) Facing That Void (w/Maroons) -General Elektriks

05) Deaf Mick's Throwdown -Clockwork Voodoo Freaks

06) Because I Got It Like That (Ultimatum Mix) -Jungle Brothers

07) Give Me My Anger Back -Psychedeliasmith

08) Sasafras Seedlings -Borts Minorts

09) Velvet Pants -Propellerheads

10) All I Want -Supabeatz

11) Crosseyed & Painless (Talking Heads cover) -Brazilian Girls

12) Animal -Bitman & Roban - Feat. Anita

13) Ocean Games -Funk 4 Sale

14) Radio Mellotron -Meat Beat Manifesto

15) Cominagetcha -Propellerheads

16) Saturday Night Worldcup Fieber -Mouse On Mars

17) Kalifornia -Fatboy Slim

18) Say Aha -Santogold

19) Flicking Your Switch -Ladytron

20) Peppermint -Plastic Operator

21) Rrrrrrright: germlin remix -Deerhoof

22) 06 60 92 92 -Prototypes

23) Elvis Presley For President -Lou Monte

Friday 31 October 2008

Tiki and then some...[Here]


Scott Scheidly is talented and funny. Visit his site to see a gallery of interesting art inspired by the absurd and a tiny dose of Tiki culture. All done with acrylics. Very inspiring.

http://www.flounderart.com [click title]

Wednesday 1 October 2008

1973 Cheech & Chong's : Basketball Jones






Tyrone Shoelaces has a fantasy...some might call the imagery racist now but in 1973 it rose to #15 in the record charts.
This is the short released to promote the single by Cheech & Chong off their LP Los Cochinos. The Beatles even make an appearance!
If this looks familiar, Peter Sellers watches this as Chance the gardener during a sequence of the 1980 film, Being There. Enjoy!

James Blackshaw plays: The Eye

Hypnotic!



Yes, there's a bit of trickery and repetition, but overall there's still some soul to the music.

Thursday 25 September 2008

Hell Hath No Mercy As A Letterman Snubbed

National hero and senator John McCain, at the last minute, cancelled his appearance on David Letterman's talk show to go to another network down the street, after calling Dave personally to say he had to rush to Washington to help save the economy...

Tuesday 9 September 2008

GIN - The Tiger Lillies



One of the bands on my 'must see' list.

Friday 5 September 2008

Jerry Reed & Chet Atkins - Summertime


Jerry Reed 1937 - 2008

BUTTER 08 - Butter of 69



Butter 08 was a short-lived musical side project whose members consisted of Yuka Honda and Miho Hatori of Cibo Matto, Russell Simins of the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Rick Lee of Skeleton Key and director Mike Mills. The band released just one album, the self-titled "Butter 08" in 1996 on the Beastie Boys' now defunct Grand Royal record label. The album features guest performances by future Cibo Matto members Timo Ellis and Sean Lennon as well as a performance by filmmaker Evan Bernard who directed music videos for several Grand Royal artists as well as for Cibo Matto and the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion.
In addition to their one album, a remix of their song "Degobrah" appears on the soundtrack for "City of Industry", a 1996 film featuring Harvey Keitel.
The band was allegedly formed when the members spent an evening recording the 1995 Cibo Matto single "Know Your Chicken" together. A demo was then sent to Mike D, who immediately signed Butter 08 to Grand Royal Records - taken from Wikipedia

Tuesday 24 June 2008

Weird Sesame Street short...

This is almost creepy...until you notice how influenced it is by Paul Dressen, who helped set the animation style in the Yellow Submarine Film some few years earlier. What's that big 'morphy-type' guy's name anyway?

Friday 13 June 2008

Now that you're nice and mellow...

...here's Ethel Smith and some of her gal pals! Don't ask where they're hiding the brass section. She's playing Tico Tico! Notice how some of them aren't even tapping their feet.


Sunday 1 June 2008

Pogo - Alice



Fantastic!

Wednesday 16 April 2008

R.I.P. Andy Knight



Andy, creator of Ned's Newt and creative force behind Red Rover Studio,Toronto, passed away April 11 of a stroke, age 46. Condolences to his family and friends for their sudden and immeasurable loss. - Mike

Friday 11 April 2008

You Gotta Get Hot To Play Real Cool



The Three Little Bops - Friz Freleng
What makes this great is the attention to detail of all the cycled animation. My favorite bit will always be the dancing crowd. Just iconic 50's style and design with minimal movement...and funny!

Wednesday 9 April 2008

'Thriller' was first...

What To Do With All Your Prison Time...part two



A very impressive feat to undertake at any level, this syncro-dancing of the late Laura Branigan's 80's hit gets the prize.

Saturday 1 March 2008

Everly ever after...



'Bird Dog' and 'Till I Kissed Ya' , both songs represent how strongly rehearsed and polished the brothers were at their peak.
A finely tuned duo. Try to follow Phil's vocal on Bird Dog as he easily slides from main vocal to deep talking 'call and response' style vocal with spit second precision.

Thursday 14 February 2008

A Valentine rose from Mr Henson: Time Piece by Jim Henson [1965]



Dislocation in time, time signatures, time as a philosophical concept, and slavery to time are some of the themes touched upon in this nine-minute, experimental film, which was written, directed, and produced by Jim Henson-and starred Jim Henson! Screened for the first time at the Museum of Modern Art in May of 1965, Time Piece enjoyed an eighteen-month run at one Manhattan movie theater and was nominated for an Academy Award for outstanding short subject.
The rest is history... I like the Kermit voiced "Help!" throughout.

Sunday 10 February 2008

Is There A Dose Of Theremin In The House?



From 1966 Game Show, I've Got A Secret with host Gary Morse.

This "musical Instrument" has a cult following to this day and a growing number of new Theremin players.

Friday 1 February 2008

It's Madison Time!




1964: Anna Karina, Sammy Frey and Claude Brassuer dance the Madison in Jean-Luc Godard's, Bande à part (Band Of Outsiders)



Basic step: step F [forward] on L Q [left, quick], tap R toe behind L foot & clap Q, step B [back] on R Q, tap L toe to R Q, to L Q, to R Q. repeat 6C [count] until caller says "hit it" after calling out a step. Twist arms opposite hips on toe taps.

Wilt Chamberlain: 2 Up 4C while bouncing a ball with R hand, jump ¼L & take hook shot with R arm S, jump ¼R S, 2 Back 4C. Can say "2 points" and hold up 2 fingers on last 4C.

Jackie Gleason: 2 Up 4C while facing R & dropping fists with each step, face F & raise R leg F S, bring R foot B to L of L knee Q, rest Q, charge F onto R Q, rest Q, step B onto L Q, step B onto R Q. Can say "away we go" while charging.

Wednesday 23 January 2008

Pedro And Frankensheep


Love the Welsh accent of the Sheep. Hope The Brothers McLeod can sustain this series in the humour department as well as keeping the design refreshed. Click title to go to their website.

PELÍCANOS & PESCADOS


ALEX DUKAL
PATAGONIA ARGENTINA

I like an artist who is generous with other artists when it comes down passing along tricks of the trade. Especially in photoshop.
Check out Alex's site for his great looking style and helpings of textures and tips for photoshop. A gift for reading Spanish is a plus but there are some screen grabs that may help the intermediate level CS3er's. Very Cool. Click the title or find him in the links>>

The Monks



Way ahead of their time with their trance-like oddness. I came across this by following a link from the new limited release of the movie Harold and Maude's soundtrack on vinyl. Light In the Attic records website laments the passing of Dave Day of the Monks.
http://lightintheattic.net/news/