Elvis has definitely left the building

"Heartbreak Hotel", featuring John Cale, Shawn Colvin, Richard Thompson and David Sanborn. Eerie, transcendent.

Hard Day's Night of the Living Dead

[via boing boing]

Nighthawk blog post (from Easy Street)

Tom Waits performing "The One That Got Away", animation directed by John Lamb. I'll let the original YouTube page describe it:

An animated film starring Tom Waits.
Performed for us live (at the La Brea stage in Hollywood, 1978), and rotoscoped - a process that traces back the live action frame by frame and turns it into animation. The original live
action was shot with 5 cameras - 2 high, 2 low and one hand held. The music from "The One That Got Away" blared in the background as Tom sang karaoke style different lyrics on each
take. Two strippers, 6 takes and 13 hours of video footage were edited to make a 5 1/2 minute live action short which we turned into animation.

A total of 5500 live action frames were hand traced, caricatured, re-drawn, hand inked and painted onto celluloid acitate cels. Produced by Lyon Lamb, directed by John Lamb, the film bore some cool new technology, talent and was created specifically for a video music market that didn't yet exist . But the buzz was out and we went on to create what arguably may be the first music video created for the new and upcoming MTV market.

[via mefi] [warning: animated nudity]

Ladies and gentlemen, presenting Uncle Duke

The late, great Hunter S. Thompson on Richard Nixon and more:



"He stands for everything I not only have contempt for, but dislike and think should be stomped out--greed, stupidity, cupidity, the power of positive lying..." Hey, sound like any other Republican presidents you can think of?

All Rise for the National Anthem

You know, I never really planned for this place to become all-YouTube, all the time. Smashing Telly, on the other hand, did. Full-length TV programs of excellent quality (content wise) and good-enough quality (bitrate-wise). It's from them that I shamelessly nicked this:

Jimi Hendrix - Live at Woodstock

Hinterland Who's High

This is your spider's brain. This is your spider's brain, on drugs.
[via mefi]

Behold the screaming flamer

They say the new Immolate Me Elmo doll is a little late in protesting the Vietnam War, but I say you can't blame it for trying. (Not safe for toddlers--unless you want to emotionally scar them for life, in which case have at 'er...)

Radiohead (live) the MTV ten spot

Metafilter's gift to me, regifted to you.

Things to do in Saskatchewan when you're sober

...open a can with your teeth:


You know, in Alberta we have this thing we do where we pull the pull-tab forward with our hands so it pops the spout open. True story!
[via MeFi]

The joint is jumpin'

Duke Robillard (ex-Roomful of Blues), live in Paris, October 2006:

Kill the hippie! Kill the hippie!

It's official: The Young Ones is Britain's 31st best sitcom EVAR!



*smashes other 30 shows over head with cricket bat, screams "shut up you bastards!"*

Q: What comes from Munich and sounds like a jet engine?

A: Hans-Joachim Stuck lapping the original 14-mile Nurburgring in a BMW M3.
[via the H.A.M.B.]

Simply amazing

Quebec acoustic guitarist Erik Mongrain combines tapping and slap harmonics to unique, hypnotic effect. The last acoustic player to blow me away like this was probably Kaki King, and I think I'm feeling Mongrain's compositional sense a little more. Might be the next Leo Kottke.

[via WFMU's Beware of the Blog]

UPDATE! There's a good MeFi thread on Erik Mongrain right now, with some links to other fantastic guitarists as well.

Tommy Emmanuel's "Day Tripper/Lady Madonna" lesson


Mark Wilson's "New Horizons"

Filed under:

• guitar
• acoustic
• harmonics
• music
• video
• erik-mongrain

Ye cannae' change the laws o' physics, Captain!

There's a term in German, which translates roughly as earworm (I believe the original term is something like achtungeinzweivolkswagenleibensraumlengthendeustchenwordmitdercreepyfandomdasderdavidhasselhoff)[*] At any rate, it means "unwelcome song stuck in your head", but the word always reminds me of that scene in Star Trek II where Khan sticks that space slug in Chekhov's ear to try to discover the secret of the fine Corinthian leather the Federation used to upholster the luxurious USS Plymouth Reliant. Which kinda makes this video... apropriate, somehow.


[via the artist formerly known as ambush bugPhasor Burn]

[*] This, clearly, is a joke upon the Germans and their habit of forming ridiculously long compound words to describe every single situation, or as they would have it, gesundheitdasistcompletelytruethatanyphraseingermansoundenderscarylikeeinerammsteinlyric. [**]
[**] This, clearly, is an unnecessary footnote to explain a joke that probably wasn't all that funny to begin with, or as the Germans would call it, blinkenlightsistnichtfuhrgerfingerpokenuntnomatterhowmanyfootnotesyouuseyouarestillnotdavidfosterwallacejackassenschnitzelbratwurst.

Filed under:

• funny
• music
• sf
• star-trek
• parody
• video
• youtube
• annoying

LEONARD BERNSTEIN!

Celebrate the early years of the definitive '80s college rock band (R.E.M., naturally) with an all-star jam on "It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)" at Athens, Georgia's 40 Watt club (where the boys had their earliest gigs.) Note that, while it is great, it does not start with birds, snakes or aeroplanes. Lenny Bruce, however, is not afraid.

Filed under:

• music
• '80s
• r.e.m.
• video
• youtube
• all-star-jam