Entries associated with the tag "Video":

I wouldn't say the resemblance is uncanny, but the pure non-sequitur value of Ben Kingsley as Minor Threat-era Ian Mackaye is through the roof.

Sir Ben Kingsley STOMPS into the shoes of Minor Threats' Ian MacKaye from Mean Magazine on Vimeo.

I watched this before my first cup of coffee today and for a second I wasn't sure if I was awake or in the middle of some sort of beautiful dream.

(Via Street Carnage)

Have you seen the totally insane video for Radiohead's "House of Cards" that they shot with lasers instead of cameras?

The major difference between this type of 3D-plotting setup and a traditional optical setup is that while a camera basically just absorbs the light coming into it, the lasers digitize a whole bunch of information that can be visually represented in any medium the data will fit. The band's made that data public, and one of their fans--presumably one with a glut of free time and an inhuman level of patience--has undertaken the insane task of converting part of it to Lego.

Between this and issuing the isolated "stem" tracks to "Nude" for a remix concert, Radiohead is leading the pack of bands turning themselves into public open-source projects. If only some other band would take them on, so I can write geeky technical blog posts without the word "Radiohead" in them.

Not too long ago I talked to Justin from Walter Meego for my column, and pretty much every answer he gave to the questions I asked about the band's relocation from Chicago to LA included a reference to the pool they now have in their backyard, how kick-ass it is to have your own pool, and how many pool parties they were planning on having in their own personal pool. I just saw on Bigstereo that WM has a new video for their summerweight disco-pop jam "Forever," and unsurprisingly, poolside partying plays a major part in it. 

I gotta say, it really does look like the pool party is those dudes' natural habitat.

According to the YouTube description this video for Zombie Zombie's "Driving This Road Until Death" is an unofficial production, but it looks super pro and super cool. I imagine it would be hard to come any closer to matching the song's eerie and slightly menacing tone as well as its overall vintage soundtrack-y feel. If you're not a fan of director--and frequent soundtrack composer--John Carpenter, it's an adaptation of his The Thing. If you're not a G.I. Joe or 80s football fan, that G.I. Joe with the tall socks is William "the Refrigerator" Perry.

And if you're curious, here's Carpenter himself in full rock-making mode.

I can't remember the last time I was as excited for an album to come out as I am about Erykah Badu's New Amerykah, due in late February, but I suspect it was sometime in the 90s. I'm actually so pumped it's making me kind of anxious--I'm afraid this record's going to burn me like Alien: Resurrection, which I was convinced would be the best movie ever made but turned out to be, well, not. Winona Ryder as a robo-babe seemed like such a foolproof concept.

Everything from New Amerykah that's made it to the Web, however, has been completely excellent. First there was the Madlib-helmed "The Healer," which is just the latest argument for recognizing J Dilla tributes as their own subgenre, one that will eventually either redeem hip-hop or secede from it entirely and go live on a wilderness compound in the Pacific Northwest. And now there's "Honey," which flips the dark narco-drone of "The Healer" to do a little glowy, synth-spiked late-70s soul-funk. The video is a special shout-out to crate diggers, but the song itself is one of those rare universal jams, the kind of tune whose appeal can reach across any demographic demarcation.

I can't even tell which part I like best. The double-whammy Ohio Players/Okayplayer pun? The shout-out to the Japanese import of Minnie Riperton's Perfect Angel? Or maybe the several-layers-deep incredibleness of the "Hey Ya" video parody that comes from out of nowhere? I figure making hilarious and un-mean jokes about your ex-boyfriend's mega-smash puts you officially on the next level.

I was really, really excited by an e-mail I got about a DVD documentary on thrash metal called Born in the Basement. Municipal Waste and local genre revivalists like Rager have put me on a thrash kick recently, so I was primed for some thrash history. Unfortunately the movie--or at least the 35 minutes I made it through--consists almost entirely of former Overkill drummer Rat Skates sitting in front of a TV (tuned to color bars) and telling you about how thrash happened without any interruptions by anyone else from the scene who might want to contribute a few words. It's sort of like being cornered at a family gathering by your old metalhead uncle who still wears leather biker jackets. Have you ever wondered how the Overkill logo came to be? Curious about how much Rat Skates likes Twisted Sister? The answers to all that and more are contained within. Though I'm just guessing about the "and more" part. 

Someone call the MCA. I have the next major acquisition for their video art collection.

Earlier this week Touch and Go Records posted the first of 31 video clips shot at its 25th anniversary fest in September. For the next 30 weeks there'll be a new one every Monday. The current one is the kind of opening montage that every concert video needs, with bits of interviews, short clips of performances, some shots of guys setting up the stages, and a nice, vaguely epic-feeling piece of footage shot from a car heading down Elston towards the Hideout. From what I can tell, the people that did the shooting knew what they were doing--it looks pretty pro-style. Touch and Go says they have no plans at the moment to put the footage together into a proper release, so for now their site will be the only place to catch it. I can tell you right now the Negative Approach footage will make bookmarking the page and checking up on it every week completely worthwhile.

As sort of a bonus feature, Touch and Go also has a song from the upcoming Ted Leo and the Pharmacists album, Living With the Living, available for your listening pleasure. I just got my copy of the CD the other day, and I still need time to let it sink in before I can come up with a coherent opinion of it. But I will say that after only a couple of listens it makes me want to drink whiskey, buy a Conflict shirt, and write strongly worded emails to my elected officials.

I love those little things that happen sometimes to remind you how rad the Internet is. I don't really care enough about artsy indie-rock music videos to try to seek them out, but someone just put a whole shitload (50 videos = one shitload) of them on one page of their blog. And then, since I'm not going to just poke around Google looking for people who have put tons of indie-rock videos on one Web page, someone goes and puts a post about it up on Metafilter, and I get it right in my RSS feed. With the Internet, you don't even realize you'd ever had a problem before it's already presented you with an efficient solution.

If reading this sentence makes you realize that you need some sort of outrageously psychedelic music that needs a string of probably at least three or four genre modifiers (world-jazz rock? smooth-folk psych?) to accurately describe it, go check out Yeasayer. I know, it didn't sound like a problem I had either, and then Hopper sent me a link and now it's all better.

I've seen a few blogs talking about how former Catherine Wheel front man Rob Dickinson shot an entire video on his cellphone and how this could potentially change the world. But everyone is talking about the tech, not the video itself, which is a shame. (The phone is really nice, although for $700 or so I would kind of expect it to take some bitchin-ass full-motion video, and maybe also have a bottle opener or chiropractor function or something.) I don't know if it was intentional, but the video functions as a greatest-hits collection of bad 90s alt-rock video cliches, including such beloved tropes as:

- The guy in an outfit that looks somewhat humorous when stripped of its usual context.

- The faceless-but-sexy woman/object with a hot ass and the wardrobe of one of the slutty moms in The Ice Storm.

- Those annoying fade-to-white cuts that turn your TV into a malfunctioning-strobe-light emulator.

- The dickhead playing a guitar in the desert.

- The "ugly alternative duckling that turns into a beautiful alternative, um, mermaid" storyline. (This cliche is a direct descendant of hair metal's "all along she was actually hot, but no one knew until she took her hair down from that bun" myth.)

- Just throwing some retro car or something in there. Because, "whatever."

- The ironic and meaningful message at the end . . . or is it? 

I would say the video is totally worthless, except I could imagine that whatever kids grow up to make the Yacht Rock of the year 2020 will find this a valuable resource in extracting the worst soft-alt ideas of the 90s.