This site is made possible by member support. 💞
Big thanks to Arcustech for hosting the site and offering amazing tech support.
When you buy through links on kottke.org, I may earn an affiliate commission. Thanks for supporting the site!
kottke.org. home of fine hypertext products since 1998.
I’m really enjoying The Hood Internet’s third mixtape. They take pop, indie rock, & rap songs and mash them up. For instance:
Jay-Z (feat. Lil Wayne) vs Xiu Xiu
Flo Rida (feat. T-Pain) vs Hot Chip
T-Pain (feat. Chris Brown) vs TV On The Radio
Lil Kim (feat. Missy Elliott) vs MGMT
Their version of R. Kelly’s I’m a Flirt mashed with Broken Social Scene from their first mixtape was one of my favorite songs of 2007, far superior to the original IMO.
A five-minute rap video that summarizes all five seasons of The Wire.
Police chief, yeah, his rank is proper
‘Cause of the window, he starts a war with Frank Sobotka.
MIA’s Paper Planes is still my favorite Wire-inspired song, but this is pretty sweet. (thx, about 2000 people)
A company called Fandrich & Sons buys cheap grand pianos mass-produced in China, upgrades them so that they sound more like expensive hand-made European pianos, and sells them for a reasonable price.
With his higher-end grands — which the Fandrichs named “HGS” for “Holy Grail Scale” — they start with pianos built in China. He and his workers gut the piano, replacing the hammers, felt and bass strings with German and American parts. They reinforce the underbelly of the piano by installing short ribs — spruce beams between the existing main ribs.
Using a computer program designed in-house, the keys are reweighted across the board to eliminate friction and even out the response. The reweighting gives the Fandrich pianos their signature touch, one that some players have described as buttery, effortless.
In automotive terms, the Fandrichs are “trying to upgrade a Hyundai to run like a Bentley, for the price of a Honda”. (via girlhacker)
[Video removed because I couldn’t figure out how to turn off the annoying autoplay. Go here to watch it.]
It works through a camera that uses recognition software that tracks objects based on their shape and color. The software then links each movement to different instruments that change in pitch and tempo as the fish patrol the tank. Fish that move toward the surface have a higher pitch. The faster they move, the faster the tempo.
The idea is to create audio aquariums for the blind. (via clusterflock)
Dr. Dre’s The Chronic, in Lego. From Format magazine’s list of 20 classic hip-hop album covers recreated in Lego. Good time for a listen.
I Am Sitting in a Room is a piece by composer Alvin Lucier. It consists of an audio recording of Lucier sitting in a room reciting a few lines. That recording is played in the same room and recorded. Then that recording is recorded. And so on.
I am sitting in a room different from the one you are in now. I am recording the sound of my speaking voice and I am going to play it back into the room again and again until the resonant frequencies of the room reinforce themselves so that any semblance of my speech, with perhaps the exception of rhythm, is destroyed. What you will hear, then, are the natural resonant frequencies of the room articulated by speech. I regard this activity not so much as a demonstration of a physical fact, but more as a way to smooth out any irregularities my speech might have.
Here’s a recording of the original performance:
Listening to it, I wonder how much of the distortion at the end is due to the “resonant frequencies of the room” and how much is just artifacts of the rerecording process. (via djacobs)
Upgrade: It’s the Larsen effect in action.
The frequency of the resulting sound is determined by resonant frequencies in the microphone, amplifier, and loudspeaker, the acoustics of the room, the directional pick-up and emission patterns of the microphone and loudspeaker, and the distance between them.
(thx, eric)
Beeker from The Muppets sings Ode to Joy.
Meep meep meep meep meep meep meep meep meep meep meep meep meep, meep meep…
Gonzo, Camilla, and the rest of the chickens sing The Blue Danube Waltz.
Bock bock bock bock, bock bock, bock bock. Bock bock bock bock, bock bock, bock bock…
Somewhat related: Beaker sings Yellow by Coldplay.
I pulled up to the house around seven or eight
And I yield to the cabbie your Halsey Smalley later
Look at my kingdom I was finally there
Consider my thrown as the prince of Bel air.
(thx, greg)
Songs boiled down to their essence…mostly “I want to do it with you”.
Led Zeppelin, “Whole Lotta Love”
I want to do it with you.AC/DC, “You Shook Me All Night Long”
We did it yesterday.Kings of Leon, “Sex on Fire”
I did it with you, and now it hurts when I pee.
If it’s funny, it’s gotta be McSweeney’s.
808s and Heartbreak, Kanye West. Everyone’s saying how good this is and I concur. Someone stomped on Kanye’s heart and out squirted a great album.
In a compilation of 64 videos all shown on the same page, one man recreates Thriller — the beats, the howling, the singing — all by himself. This is pretty awesome, like Christian Marclay on speed. (thx, christopher)
Brian Eno believes that singing is the key to a good life.
Singing aloud leaves you with a sense of levity and contentedness. And then there are what I would call “civilizational benefits.” When you sing with a group of people, you learn how to subsume yourself into a group consciousness because a capella singing is all about the immersion of the self into the community. That’s one of the great feelings — to stop being me for a little while and to become us. That way lies empathy, the great social virtue.
(via subtraction)
Peter Holsapple explains how a pretty good song turns into a flop.
Once upon a time, though, I think I wrote a hit. It was called “Love is for Lovers” and the dB’s recorded it for an album called “Like This” in 1984. It had (and has, I believe) an undeniable hook, the kind you’d find yourself singing in the shower or pounding along to on your steering wheel while driving. The performance, produced by Chris Butler at the old Bearsville Studio in upstate New York, has all the power of the best kind of rock: slamming drums, inventive bass, a solid riff and a fantastic solo.
This song is ripe for a contemporary cover.
When I was a kid, “oldies” music and movies seemed ancient. Even though I’m now in my 30s, the entertainment that I watched and listened to in my youth still feels pretty recent to me. Raiders of the Lost Ark wasn’t all that long ago, right? But comparing my distorted recall of childhood favorites to the oldies of the time jogs my memory in unpleasant ways. For example:
Listening to Michael Jackson’s Thriller today is equivalent to listening to Elvis Presley’s first album (1956) at the time of Thriller’s release in 1982. Elvis singles in 1956 included Blue Suede Shoes, Hound Dog, and Love Me Tender.
If you’re around my age, how old do you feel right now? Here are some other examples of timeline twins:
Watching Star Wars today is like watching It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) in 1977. It’s a Wonderful Life was nominated for an Oscar the following year along with Ethel Barrymore (b. 1879) and Lilian Gish (b. 1893).
Listening to Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit today is equivalent to playing Terry Jack’s Seasons In The Sun (1974) in 1991.
Watching The Godfather today is like watching Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times (1936) in 1972. Modern Times was a silent film (Chaplin’s last).
Listening to the Sex Pistols’ Never Mind the Bollocks (1977) today…well, they didn’t really have rock or pop albums back in 1946. But popular songs on the radio were sung by Frank Sinatra, Perry Como, Nat King Cole, and Dinah Shore, as well as many performers and their orchestras.
Back to the Future (1985) —> To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
Die Hard (1988) —> Bullitt (1968)
Radiohead, OK Computer (1997) —> Bon Jovi, Slippery When Wet (1986)
Hmm, I’ve never heard the nihilist interpretation of Row, Row, Row Your Boat before.
The lyrics have often been used as a metaphor for life’s difficult choices, and many see the boat as referring to one’s self or a group with which one identifies. Rowing is a skillful, if tedious, practice that takes perfection but also directs the vessel. When sung as a group, the act of rowing becomes a unifier, as oars must be in sync in a rowboat. The idea that man travels along a certain stream, suggests boundaries in the path of choices and in free will. The third line recommends that challenges should be greeted in stride while open to joy with a smile. The final line, life is but a dream, is perhaps the most meaningful. With a religious point of view, life and the physical plane may be regarded as having equivalent value as that of a dream, such that troubles are seen in the context of a lesser reality once one has awakened. Conversely, the line can just as equally convey nihilist sentiments on the meaninglessness of man’s actions. The line is also commonly sung as “life is like a dream” rather than “life is but a dream”, possibly to sound happier, less meaningful, and more appropriate for its audience of young children.
Johnny Cash and Louis Armstrong teamed up for a duet of Blue Yodel No. 9 in late 1970.
Let’s give it to ‘em in black and white.
Armstrong died less than a year after this recording. Here’s a lovely recording of What a Wonderful World from two years earlier. What a voice! (via siege)
Update: Armstrong used collage techniques to make covers for his music reels. (thx, sean)
Two covers of Tom Waits’ Way Down in the Hole, the title song for The Wire: Tom Waits and Kronos Quartet and MIA and Blaqstarr. (thx, brandon)
Big Dog is cool and all but this is a video of a robot with 6 legs and a goateed humanoid head wearing sunglasses and a fedora dancing to Lou Bega’s Mambo No. 5. You know, if you’re into that sort of thing.
Last.fm keeps track of all the music you play but they also keep track of the music that people don’t want the world to know they listen to: the Most Unwanted Scrobbles. The Beatles, Radiohead, Britney, and Avril top the uncharts. The Britney and Avril I can understand. The Beatles and Radiohead…perhaps the perception of overratedness leads people to keep those tastes private? (thx, graham)
Update: Ohhh, ok. Radiohead and The Beatles are so high on the list because 1) so many people have those two bands in their playlists that they get deleted so much out of sheer numbers, and 2) those two bands are no good for recommendation engines — you like pop music? I recommend The Beatles — so people exclude them. (thx all)
Love Lockdown + Reckoner. Kanye mashed up with Radiohead, I pretty much gotta post it. (via delicious ghost)
Here’s how to use the RJDJ iPhone app. You install the app, plug your headphones in, launch it, and press “Now Playing”. A song plays, the app starts to sample the sounds in your environment, and those sounds are remixed in real time and played back to you. It might be the coolest thing ever. Check out this video and this other video for a quick look at how RJDJ works. The first video shows some songs that use the iPhone’s accelerometer to modify and scratch the beat. (via waxy)
PS. It might only be the coolest app in theory…it’s also flaky as hell. It was working fine for me and then crapped out…there’s no music now, only sound sampling and it’s really quiet. Maybe you need to use the Apple headphones with the mic?
An appreciation of the postmodern masterpiece that is the music video for Mo’ Money, Mo’ Problems (Puffy, Biggie, Mase, etc.).
So there it is: a weird/powerful truism about social politics delivered in a catchy, post-modern package that uses parody, found video, and cutting-edge video techniques (and let’s not sell Hype Williams short for a second — check out the shots of Puffy and Mase in the yellow suits — I mean, what the hell is that?!), all montaged together with an off-handed mastery (check out how some of the transitions are deliberately not on-beat) to create something that felt so like the future that it could never really be the future. Just like all videos for pop singles, it was dug, and it was forgotten. And so it goes. Somewhere out there there is a list of videos that really truly did something new, and this one belongs on that list.
(via fimoculous)
New two-disc edition of Johnny Cash’s live set at Folsom Prison in mp3 format. (What do you call a two-disc album in mp3 format? A 51-songer? A 100-megabyter?)
In a small but intriguing study from the University of Illinois medical school, doctors and students maintained close to the ideal number of chest compressions doing CPR while listening to the catchy, sung-in-falsetto tune from the 1977 movie “Saturday Night Fever.”
(via clusterflock)
Due to a hand tremor, musician Eddie Adcock was having trouble playing the banjo. During the surgery to fix the problem, the doctors had Adcock play his banjo to isolate the problem in his brain and then they made the repair. Video here. (via delicious ghost)
Seattle mom Jessica Ketola recently got to go up on stage for a soundcheck with Sting and The Police. Sting was so impressed with her voice that he invited her to sing with him during the concert.
The stage manager didn’t help. “Sting never shares a microphone,” he muttered to Ketola as she waited in the wings before the concert. “So don’t [expletive] up.” But in true fairy-tale tradition, a white knight swept in with a bottle of water and a few reassuring words. “He says that to me every night, too,” Sting confided.
Here’s a video of the soundcheck and one of Ketola killing it on Don’t Stand So Close to Me. (via girlhacker)
The literal video version of A Ha’s Take On Me…that is, the words of the song are changed to reflect what actually happens in the video.
Band montage! Pipe wrench fight!
This. Is. Brilliant. (via andre)
Update: Here’s a slight twist on the theme…a meta song with lyrics about the lyrics. I like the built-in laugh track. (thx, elsa)
Update: And here’s the literal version of Tears for Fears’ Head Over Heels.
As anticipated, Muxtape was unable to maintain its original form under assault from the RIAA and slow moving legal negotiations with the labels.
The first red flag came in August. Up until then all the discussion had been about numbers, but as we closed in on an agreement the talk shifted to things like guaranteed placement and “marketing opportunities.” I was denied the possibility of releasing a mobile version of Muxtape. My flexibility was being constricted. I had been worried about Muxtape getting a fair deal, but my biggest concern all along was maintaing the integrity and experience of the site (one of the reasons I wanted to license in the first place). Now it wasn’t so simple; I had agreed to a variety of encroachments into Muxtape’s financials because I wanted to play ball, but giving up any kind of editorial or creative control was something I had a much harder time swallowing.
Instead, the site will become more of a stripped-down MySpace for bands wanting to put their music online. Disappointing because Muxtape, as originally conceived, was obviously what everyone but the “music industry” wanted. Some of that simplistic magic will likely transfer over to the new incarnation but it won’t be as cool as mix tapes for your pals. (thx, mark)
Update: For posterity, I’m pasting Justin’s whole note in here.
I love music. I believe that for people who love music, the desire to share it is innate and crucial for music itself. When we find a song we love, we beckon our friends over to the turntable, we loan them the CD, we turn up the car stereo, we put it on a mixtape. We do this because music makes us feel and we want someone else to feel it, too.
The story of Muxtape began when I had a weekly show at my university’s radio station in Oregon. In addition to keeping the station’s regular log I compiled my playlists into a web page, with each show represented by a simple block that corresponded to a cassette recording for that week. At the time, mixtapes were already well into their twilight, but long after my show ended I couldn’t stop thinking about how the playlist page served a similar purpose, and in many ways served it better. Like a mixtape, each playlist was a curated group that was greater than the sum of its parts. Unlike a mixtape, it wasn’t constrained by any physical boundaries of dissemination, but… it also didn’t contain any actual music. Someone might come across the page and smile knowingly at the songs they knew, but shifting the burden of actually compiling the mix to its intended listener defeated the purpose entirely.
Five years later, internet technology had advanced significantly. I was working on experimental user interfaces for web sites when I started thinking about that playlist page again, and ultimately set out to bring it to life. My desire to share music (in the mixtape sense) hadn’t gone anywhere, but the channels to do so were becoming extinct. Popular blogging services allow you to post audio files in an ephemeral sort of way, but it wasn’t the context I was looking for. A physical cassette tape in your hands has such an insistent aesthetic; just holding one makes you want to find a tape player to fulfill its destiny. My goal with Muxtape’s design was to translate some of that tactility into the digital world, to build a context around the music that gave it a little extra spark of life and made the holder anxious to listen.
The first version was a one-page supplement to my tumblr, and was more or less identical to what it would become later. The feedback was great, and the number one question rapidly became “can you make one for me, too?” At first I started thinking about ways I could package the source code, but the more I thought about it the more it seemed like massively wasted potential. Distributing the source would mean limiting access to the small niche of people who operate their own web server, whereas I wanted to make something that was accessible to anyone who loves music. The natural conclusion was a centralized service, which suddenly unfolded whole other dimensions of possibility for serendipitous music discovery. What seemed before like the hollow shell of a mixtape now seemed like its evolution. I knew I had to try building it. Three weeks of long nights later, I launched Muxtape.
It was successful very quickly. 8,685 users registered in the first 24 hours, 97,748 in the first month with 1.2 million unique visitors and a healthy growth rate. Lots of press. Rampant speculation. Tech rags either lauded it or declared it an instant failure. Everyone was excited. I was thrilled.
There was a popular misconception that Muxtape only survived because it was “flying under the radar,” and the moment the major labels found out about it it’d be shut down. In actuality, the labels and the RIAA read web sites like everyone else, and I heard from them both within a week or so. An RIAA notice arrived in triplicate, via email, registered mail, and FedEx overnight (with print and CD versions). They demanded that I take down six specific muxtapes they felt were infringing, so I did.
Around the same time I got a call from the VP of anti-piracy at one of the majors. After I picked up the phone his first words were, “Justin, I just have one question for you: where do I send the summons and complaint?” The conversation picked up from there. There was no summons, it was an intimidation tactic setting the tone for the business development meeting he was proposing, the true reason for the call. Around the same time another one of the big four’s business developers reached out to me, too.
I spent the next month listening. I talked to a lot of very smart lawyers and other people whose opinions on the matter I respected, trying to gain a consensus for Muxtape’s legality. The only consensus seemed to be that there was no consensus. I had two dozen slightly different opinions that ran the gamut from “Muxtape is 100% legal and you’re on solid ground,” to “Muxtape is a cesspool of piracy and I hope you’re ready for a hundred million dollar lawsuit and a stint at Riker’s.”
In the end, Muxtape’s legality was moot. I didn’t have any money to defend against a lawsuit, just or not, so the major labels had an ax over my head either way. I always told myself I’d remove any artist or label that contacted me and objected, no questions asked. Not a single one ever did. On the contrary, every artist I heard from was a fan of the site and excited about its possibilities. I got calls from the marketing departments of big labels whose corporate parents were supposed to be outraged, wanting to know how they get could their latest acts on the home page. Smaller labels wanted to feature their content in other creative ways. It seemed obvious Muxtape had value for listeners and artists alike.
In May I had my first meeting with a major label, Universal Music Group. I went alone and prepared myself for the worst, having spent the last decade toeing the indie party line that the big labels were hopelessly obstinate luddites with no idea what was good for them. I’m here to tell you now that the labels understand their business a lot better than most people suspect, although they each have their own surprisingly distinct personality when it comes to how they approach the future. The gentlemen I met at Universal were incredibly receptive and tactful; I didn’t have to sell them on why Muxtape was good for them, they knew it was cool and just wanted to get paid. I sympathized with that. I told them I needed some time to get a proposal together and we left things in limbo.
A few weeks later I had a meeting with EMI, the character of which was much different. I walked into a conference room and shook eight or nine hands, sitting down at a conference table with a phonebook-thick file labeled “Muxtape” laying on it. The people I met formed a semi-circle around me like a split brain, legal on one side and business development on the other. The meeting alternated between an intense grilling from the legal side (“you are a willful infringer and we are mere hours from shutting you down”) and an awkward discussion with the business side (“assuming we don’t shut you down, how do you see us working together?”). I asked for two weeks to make a proposal, they gave me two days.
I had to make a decision. As I saw it I had three options. The first was to just shut everything down, which I never really considered. The second was to ban major label content entirely, which might have solved the immediate crisis, but had two strong points against it. The first, most visibly, was that it would prevent people from using the majority of available music in their mixes. The second was that it did nothing to address the deeper questions surrounding ownership and usage for everyone else who wasn’t a major label: mid-size labels and independent artists who have just as fundamental a right to address how their content is used as a large corporation, even if they don’t carry quite as big a stick.
The third option was to approach a fully licensed model, which I had been edging toward since I met with Universal. I knew other licensed services so far had met with mixed success, but I also knew Muxtape was different and that it was at least worth exploring. The question about whether or not the labels saw value in it had been answered, the new question was how much it was going to cost.
It was June. I approached a Fifth Ave law firm about representing me in licensing negotiations with the major labels, and they took me on. Two weeks later I met with all four, flanked by lawyers this time, and started the slow process of working out a deal. The first round of terms were stiff and complex, but not nearly as bad as I’d imagined, and I managed to convince them that allowing Muxtape to continue to operate was in everyone’s best interest. Things were going well. I spent the next two months talking with investors, designing the next phases of the site itself, and supervising the negotiations. A big concern was getting a deal that took into consideration the fact that Muxtape wasn’t a straightforward on-demand service, and should pay accordingly less than a service that was. Another reason I liked the licensing option from the outset was that it seemed like an uncommon win-win; I didn’t want the ability to search and stream any song at any given notice, and they were reluctant to offer it (for the price, anyway). Muxtape’s unusual limitations were its strength in more ways than one.
The first red flag came in August. Up until then all the discussion had been about numbers, but as we closed in on an agreement the talk shifted to things like guaranteed placement and “marketing opportunities.” I was denied the possibility of releasing a mobile version of Muxtape. My flexibility was being constricted. I had been worried about Muxtape getting a fair deal, but my biggest concern all along was maintaing the integrity and experience of the site (one of the reasons I wanted to license in the first place). Now it wasn’t so simple; I had agreed to a variety of encroachments into Muxtape’s financials because I wanted to play ball, but giving up any kind of editorial or creative control was something I had a much harder time swallowing.
I was wrestling with this when, on August 15th, I received notice from Amazon Web Services (the platform that hosts Muxtape’s servers and files) that they had received a complaint from the RIAA. Per Amazon’s terms, I had one business day to remove an incredibly long list of songs or face having my servers shut down and data deleted. This came as a big surprise to me, as I’d been thinking that I hadn’t heard from the RIAA in a long time because I had an understanding with the labels. I had a panicked exchange of emails with Amazon, trying to explain that I was in the middle of a licensing deal, that I suspected it was a clerical error, and that I was doing everything I could to get someone to vouch for me on a summer Friday afternoon. My one business day extended over the weekend, and on Monday when I wasn’t able to produce the documentation Amazon wanted (or even get someone from the RIAA on the phone), the servers were shut down and I was locked out of the account. I moved the domain name to a new server with a short message and the very real expectation that I could get it sorted out. I still thought it was all just a big mistake. I was wrong.
Over the next week I learned a little more, mainly that the RIAA moves quite autonomously from their label parents and that the understanding I had with them didn’t necessarily carry over. I also learned that none of the labels were especially interested in helping me out, and from their perspective it had no bearing on the negotiations. I disagreed. The deals were still weeks or months away (an eternity on the internet) meaning that at best, Muxtape was going to be down until the end of year. There was also still the matter of how to pay for it; getting investment is hard enough in this volatile space even with a wildly successful and growing web site, it became an entirely different proposition with no web site at all.
And so I made one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever faced: I walked away from the licensing deals. They had become too complex for a site founded on simplicity, too restrictive and hostile to continue to innovate the way I wanted to. They’d already taken so much attention away from development that I started to question my own motivations. I didn’t get into this to build a big company as fast as I could no matter what the cost, I got into this to make something simple and beautiful for people who love music, and I plan to continue doing that. As promised, the site is coming back, but not as you’ve known. I’m taking a feature that was in development in the early stages and making it the new central focus.
Muxtape is relaunching as a service exclusively for bands, offering an extremely powerful platform with unheard-of simplicity for artists to thrive on the internet. Musicians in 2008 without access to a full time web developer have few options when it comes to establishing themselves online, but their needs often revolve around a common set of problems. The new Muxtape will allow bands to upload their own music and offer an embeddable player that works anywhere on the web, in addition to the original muxtape format. Bands will be able to assemble an attractive profile with simple modules that enable optional functionality such as a calendar, photos, comments, downloads and sales, or anything else they need. The system has been built from the ground up to be extended infinitely and is wrapped in a template system that will be open to CSS designers. There will be more details soon. The beta is still private at the moment, but that will change in the coming weeks.
I realize this is a somewhat radical shift in functionality, but Muxtape’s core goals haven’t changed. I still want to challenge the way we experience music online, and I still want to work to enable what I think is the most interesting aspect of interconnected music: discovering new stuff.
Thank to you everyone who made Muxtape the incredible place it was in its first phase, it couldn’t have happened without your mixes. The industry will catch up some day, it pretty much has to.
Justin
A rumination by Suzanne Vega on technology and her hit song, Tom’s Diner. The song was used as a reference when Karl-Heinz Brandenberg was working on the mp3 compression method.
So Mr. Brandenberg gets a copy of the song, and puts it through the newly created MP3. But instead of the “warm human voice” there are monstrous distortions, as though the Exorcist has somehow gotten into the system, shadowing every phrase. They spend months refining it, running “Tom’s Diner through the system over and over again with modifications, until it comes through clearly. “He wound up listening to the song thousands of times,” the article, written by Hilmar Schmundt, continued, “and the result was a code that was heard around the world. When an MP3 player compresses music by anyone from Courtney Love to Kenny G, it is replicating the way that Brandenburg heard Suzanne Vega.”
Vega once went to listen to the final mp3 version of her song. She could not agree with Brandenberg that the track sounded “exactly” like the original.
“Actually, to my ears it sounds like there is a little more high end in the MP3 version? The MP3 doesn’t sound as warm as the original, maybe a tiny bit of bottom end is lost?” I suggested.
This is probably my all-time favorite childhood TV moment. I loved watching the smiling workers and relentless machinery turn all that formless wax into something that I USED EVERY DAY. My favorite part is the crayons popping up out of their molds. Still gives me chills, it does! BTW, the YouTube page says the video originated from Sesame Street but it was actually from Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood. (thx, janelle)
Update: I stand corrected…the above clip is from Sesame Street. But Mr. Rogers did show a similar clip on his show (stills here). I know I’ve seen the one on Mr. Rogers but I don’t know about the Sesame Street one. (thx, everyone)
Update: Ok, here’s the clip from Mr. Rogers. Its pace is a lot more leisurely than the Sesame Street clip.
Update: Richard Harvey composed the music for the Sesame Street segment in 1978. In this video, talks about how he put the track together.
(thx, sara)
Stay Connected