Taylor Swift covers Eminem’s Lose Yourself
Not even country music can ruin that song. But as you well know Taylor, Eminem’s version is the best of all time. (via @anildash)
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kottke.org posts about music
Audiosurf
Audiosurf is a racing game where the courses are determined by the music you play from your own library. There are all sorts of YouTube clips of the gameplay (which is reminiscent of Guitar Hero)…here’s a representative one:
Baseball symphony
Music critic Anthony Tommasini goes to a baseball game at Yankee Stadium and treats the game as a musical piece.
For all the hubbub of constant sound it is amazing how clearly the crack of a bat, the whoosh of a pitch (at least from the powerhouse Sabathia), and the leathery thud of the ball smothered in the catcher’s mitt cut through the textures. And if the hum of chattering provides the unbroken timeline and undulant ripple of this baseball symphony, the voices that break through from all around are like striking, if fleeting, solo instruments.
The most assertive soloists are the vendors. My favorite was a wiry man with nasal snarl of a voice who practically sang the words “Cracker Jack” as a three-note riff: two eighth notes on “Cracker,” followed by a quarter note on “Jack,” always on a falling minor third. (Using solf`ege syllables, think “sol, sol, mi.”) After a while I heard his voice drifting over from another section, and he had transposed his riff down exactly one step.
Free beats
Can rap be charming? Maybe so…Chris Sullivan set up in Union Square and beatboxed so that anyone who wanted to could come up and rap:
(via @dens)
Beastie Boys vs. Sesame Street
Sesame Street characters, including Grover on the flute, perform the Beastie Boys’ Sure Shot.
(via devour)
Rave on, Internet
NPR has an interesting piece on how the internet shaped the American rave scene in the 90s.
At first, the connections were done the old-fashioned way. “By 1994, there was already kind of an established network of party-throwers and partygoers [in Detroit],” says Rob Theakston, a Detroit rave veteran. “At that point, the scene was maybe 200 kids max. Everything was very phone-based. [You’d] call the phone lines the day of to get directions, and even then, a lot of the direction lines would just give the vicinity because you would already know: ‘Oh, Harper and Van Dyke — that’s the old theater. We know where the party’s going to be.’ They wouldn’t give you the exact address for the authorities to find out.”
(via @moth)
Vegan Black Metal Chef
A chef cooks a vegan pad thai dish to a black metal song.
Cut the tofu! Turn the plate! (thx, jay)
Slo-mo cymbal strike
A drumstick hitting a cymbal at 1000 frames/sec. More flex there than I would have assumed.
(via mlkshk)
Rave On Buddy Holly
Rave On Buddy Holly is an album-length compilation of Buddy Holly cover songs sung by the likes of Cee Lo Green, Fiona Apple, Lou Reed, and Paul McCartney. You can listen now on Soundcloud, via the embed below, or pre-order the album on Amazon.
“New” mix by The Hood Internet
This looks to be about a year old, but it’s new to me: 57 minutes and 37 seconds of goodness from The Hood Internet.
It’s a little more chill than their usual stuff — “Trillwave is the soundtrack to the party after the afterparty or maybe to a sun-drenched backyard barbecue the next day” — but I like it a lot so far. (via @djgeekdout)
Lady Gaga’s musical family tree
Do you get that funny feeling that you’ve heard Lady Gaga’s Born This Way somewhere before? Maybe when it was called Express Yourself or Waterfalls or God is a DJ?
A+ for the performance too. Everything is a Remix, folks.
London version of “what song are you listening to?”
You may remember the New York version. This is the same deal — asking people on the street what song they’re listening to on their headphones — except in London.
(via stellar)
I read Playboy.com for the Miles Davis articles
From 1962, Alex Haley interviews Miles Davis for Playboy magazine.
Why is it that people just have to have so much to say about me? It bugs me because I’m not that important. Some critic that didn’t have nothing else to do started this crap about I don’t announce numbers, I don’t look at the audience, I don’t bow or talk to people, I walk off the stage, and all that.
Look, man, all I am is a trumpet player. I only can do one thing — play my horn — and that’s what’s at the bottom of the whole mess. I ain’t no entertainer, and ain’t trying to be one. I am one thing, a musician. Most of what’s said about me is lies in the first place. Everything I do, I got a reason.
The article is SFW but the ads are NSFW…here’s a completely SFW version.
Doctor Who gonna bust a cap in yo ass
Sometimes the simple things in life are best…like a compilation of clips of The Doctor shooting guns with a gansta rap soundtrack.
(via ★interesting)
What song are you listening to?
Tyler Cullen went out on the streets of NYC and asked random passers-by what song they were listening to on their headphones.
Turned out to be more interesting than I expected.
Delia Derbyshire, the first DJ
Lovely short film clip of BBC Radiophonic Workshop’s Delia Derbyshire demonstrating how to make electronic music using tape loops. Look at the beat matching!
It was Derbyshire who gave the original Doctor Who theme its distinctive sound. (via ★danielpunkass)
New Lady Gaga only 99 cents on Amazon
That’s not a typo…Lady Gaga’s Born This Way is only a buck on Amazon.
Angry Birds theme, covered by Pomplamoose
Angry Birds is still the top paid app in the App Store. And Pomplamoose is still twee and adorable. (via ★glass)
Legal advice from Jay-Z
A gem of a Q&A from Quora: How valid is the implied legal advice in Jay-Z’s “99 Problems”? The lyrics, in part:
“Well do you mind if I look around the car a little bit?”
Well my glove compartment is locked, so is the trunk in the back
And I know my rights, so you gon’ need a warrant for that
And the answer:
Consenting to a voluntary search is never a good idea, especially if you have felony weight on you. The standard to search the glove compartment is actually fairly low in California, since it’s accessible to the driver. I’m not sure how the locked status interferes with it being a glove compartment. The trunk can be opened if the car is impounded, for inventory reasons, which is a common way to get evidence. However, a locked case inside the trunk will not be opened (depends on the state).
(via ★kellan)
The Beastie Boys, Annotated
The Onion A/V Club has put together a short, alphabetical guide to obscure, semi-obscure, and I-forget-that-other-people-might-find-that-obscure references/allusions in the music of The Beastie Boys.
It’s called “‘Electric Like Dick Hyman’: 170 Beastie Boys references explained.” Here’s a representative entry:
Drakoulias, George (“Stop That Train” from “B-Boy Bouillabaisse,” Paul’s Boutique)
Def Jam A&R man George Drakoulias helped discover the Beastie Boys for Rick Rubin, and later became a producer for Rubin’s American Recordings, working on albums by The Black Crowes, The Jayhawks, and Tom Petty. There’s no record of him ever working at an Orange Julius.
I obsessed over this stuff as a kid, especially with Paul’s Boutique: I was nine years old, living in Detroit’s 8 Mile-esque suburbs, not New York, hadn’t seen any cult movies from the 70s not titled Star Wars, and had no internet to consult. I was literally pulling down encyclopedias from the shelf and asking my parents (who generally likewise had no clue) obnoxious questions to try to figure out what the heck they were talking about.
In a post I wrote here last summer, I said that hip-hop’s culture of musical sampling and what Ta-Nehisi Coates called “digging in the crates” for old records helped ensure that a significant chunk of my generation would be into history.
But it was definitely the references, too. Whether silly or serious, you couldn’t listen to The Beastie Boys or Public Enemy or Boogie Down Productions and not try to sort through these casually dropped names, memes, and places and try to reconstruct the worlds where they came from.
An oral history of the Beastie Boys
On the eve of the release of the Beastie Boys’ latest album, New York Magazine has an interesting history of the band as told through interviews of the band and others who were there.
They accidentally knew what they were doing.
Following a leak of the new album, Hot Sauce Committee Part Two, the band is now streaming the full album on their web site. (via stellar)
AC/D2 to play Star Wars music festival
If there was a Star Wars version of Coachella, some of the bands playing at the festival would be called Kessel Run DMC, Guided by Millions of Voices That Suddenly Cried Out in Terror and Were Suddenly Silenced, and C-3PO Speedwagon.
Conway’s game of music
Otomata is a generative sequencer…it play music in a loop determined by the motions of cells like those in Conway’s Game of Life. Fun stuff.
This set of rules produces chaotic results in some settings, therefore you can end up with never repeating, gradually evolving sequences. Go add some cells, change their orientation by clicking on them, and press play, experiment, have fun.
(via stellar)
Record player wedding invite
This wedding invite designed by Kelli Anderson has a 45 RPM record player built right into it.
Here’s more info on how the musical invite was constructed.
The resulting booklet is comprised of a cover, two inner pages, a letterpressed band (with instructions and a tear-off RSVP postcard), and a flexdisc on a screwpost. The recipient bends the second page of the booklet back to create a tented “arm.” With the needle placed, they then carefully spin the flexidisc at 45 RPM (ish) to hear the song. The sewing needle travels the length of the song and produces the sound. Its vibrations are amplified by the thin, snappy paper to which it is adhered. To keep the needle down on the record, we reinforced the back of the “tent” with a spray-mounted half page of heavier cardstock. To reduce friction between the acetate flexidisc and the backing cover, we had the inside of the booklet laminated to be slick and conducive to hand-spinning.
(via stellar)
Jay-Z and Gwyneth interview each other
They each have a personal brand web site — Gwyneth has GOOP and Jay-Z has the recently launched Life + Times — so they recently decided to interview each other about that. Here’s Z Qing G:
SC: Personally I was very surprised at your extensive knowledge of hip-hop songs. Particularly how you can sing ’90s hip-hip songs word for word. I can’t even do that! How does a girl from Spence discover hip-hop?
GP: I first was exposed to hip-hop when I was about 16 (1988) by some boys who went to collegiate. The Beastie Boys were sort of the way in for us preppie kids. We were into Public Enemy, Run-DMC and LL Cool J. But then I went to LA the summer between my junior and senior year of high school and I discovered N.W.A which became my obsession. I was fascinated by lyrics as rythym and how Dre had a such different cadence and perspective from say, Eazy-E, who I thought was one of the most ironic and brilliant voices hip-hop has ever had. It was an accident that I learned every word of Straight Outta Compton and to love something that a.) I had no real understanding of in terms of the culture that it was emanating from and b.) to love something that my parents literally could not grasp. But I was hooked. I can’t remember what I ate for dinner last night but I could sing to you every single word of N.W.A’s “Fuck Tha Police” or [Rob Base & DJ E-Z Rock’s] “It Takes Two.” Go figure.
And here’s G Qing Z:
GP: You are the coolest man on Earth, how the f did you get like that?
SC: I’m around great women, starting with my mom. Women keep men cool. The hotter the chick the cooler the guy … that sounds like a really bad rap line!
What a couple of huge cornballs! And I mean that in the best way possible.
Machine’s waltz
The motions of a Brazilian textile plant set to a classical music soundtrack.
(via stellar)
Tron Legacy soundtrack remixed
If you liked Daft Punk’s Tron Legacy soundtrack, you might like Tron Legacy R3CONF1GUR3D with remixes by Crystal Method, Paul Oakenfold, and M83. It’s just out today and I haven’t listen to it yet, so caveat emptor.
Perhaps the best Reddit question ever
And that’s saying something. But look at this gem of a thread: I like big butts and I cannot lie, but is there some evolutionary reason as to why? Some of the answers:
My homeboys tried to warn me, but that butt you got makes me so confident of your current well-being and future child-rearing potential
So, ladies! (Yeah!) Ladies (Yeah!)
If you wanna roll in my Mercedes (Yeah!)
Then turn around! Stick it out! Even white boys have to make sure that their partner is of high genetic caliber so they can pass on their genes successfully.
My anaconda don’t want none unless you have a high likelihood of producing healthy offspring with a minimal chance of genetic disabilities, hun.
(via @stevenbjohnson)
Country version of Lady Gaga’s Born This Way
Lady Gaga released a country version of her latest single, Born This Way. This isn’t a remix or cover…it’s an official release by Gaga.
I don’t care for country music much, but this really makes me smile. (via ★capndesign)
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