I’ve seen better film editing… But I can’t say I’ve actually seen birds whistling the imperial march from Star Wars (or for that matter, any movie themes). Â I mean, now I can, sort of.
(Although after a quick search, I am more impressed by birds performing the 1812 Overture and the Andy Griffith Show theme.)
(via io9: “The greatest thing you will see on the internet all day”)
(by way of Seed Magazine via Bookslut)
Casper The Friendly Ghost - The Animal Square Dance
(via WFMU’s Beware of the Blog, where there are plenty more songs to listen to)
A music video by Jan Svankmajer, the fellow who brought us people-eating tree stumps and animated skeletons with Santa hats. What’s not to love?
(via MeFi)
…to find a wealth of live music recordings on the Internet Archive. Nonetheless, I’m surprised. Can you see it? The surprise?
(I discover this through the back door, finding a concert of A Silver Mt. Zion via some web page–I’ve long since forgotten which–and then discovering, also, some Handsome Family stuff as well. At time of press not having explored any further.)
The Kleptones bring you a discless two-disc mash-up extravaganza, downloadable in various formats and combinations from their web site.
(via BoingBoing from ages ago)
Decided by a jury of 500-ish musicians and whatnot, via the American Film Institute.
My question is: are there so few recent scores on this list due to a mathematical reason (more movies produced prior to 1980 than after), a quality reason (older scores simply better, on the whole), or an aging reason (a score needs to “age” before its impact can be accurately judged). No answers here.
Not that you necessarily knew it was gone—or in existence, for that matter—but rest assured you won’t believe you could live without the totally & brazenly obscure audio treasures and whatnot that UBUWEB provides.
(via WFMU’s Beware of the Blog blog)
Fake bands and science songs: two databases you pretty much can’t do without. Let’s face it, they’re essential.
The former’s a comprehensive list of fake bands, musical groups which do not exist. The latter’s a list of actual songs about—you guessed it—science. And math, too. Though there probably aren’t as many songs about math. (If you’re feeling particularly, what’s the word, industrious? you can check out an internet radio station devoted to these math and science songs.)
(both via Research Buzz)
Chris Anderson’s “The Long Tail” in Wired Magazine makes for a great read; it takes a stab at explaining a whole host of pop-culture phenomena by linking them together under a seemingly counterintuitive proposition: people’s tastes are not reined in by scarcity.
Put more simply, in a physical world—the one defined by movie theaters, book stores, and music stores, etc.—retailers are constrained by the need to carry material that can earn its keep, i.e., be snapped up in sufficient numbers by a local audience.
Generic Example: Say you’ve got a movie. Say there are 2 million people who want to see that movie. Say the density of this particular demographic is 5 people per square mile. Your movie ain’t gonna fly.
Anderson calls this “the tyranny of physical space,” saying “an audience too thinly spread is the same as no audience at all.”
Now when you start talking online distribution, this tyranny is turned upside-down. Probably the clearest example is Rhapsody, an online music subscription service:
Not only is every one of Rhapsody’s top 100,000 tracks streamed at least once each month, the same is true for its top 200,000, top 300,000, and top 400,000. As fast as Rhapsody adds tracks to its library, those songs find an audience, even if it’s just a few people a month, somewhere in the country.
This is the Long Tail. 1
Anderson’s exploration of the long tail and its implications for, e.g., online music subscription is interesting; but even if you care little or nothing about online music or what-have-you, you may want to stick around long enough to entertain his thoughts on hits vs. sales and the aforementioned tyranny, both of which generate some interesting (if not necessarily surprising) brain-fodder.
Like this, which I’ll leave you with to close:
[A]s egalitarian as Wal-Mart may seem, it is actually extraordinarily elitist. Wal-Mart must sell at least 100,000 copies of a CD to cover its retail overhead and make a sufficient profit; less than 1 percent of CDs do that kind of volume. What about the 60,000 people who would like to buy the latest Fountains of Wayne or Crystal Method album, or any other nonmainstream fare? They have to go somewhere else.
Notes:
1 Though another good example is Amazon, half of which sales are from books outside the top 130,000 titles.
(Wired: “The Long Tail,” by Chris Anderson [October 2004])
“This little website exists to spread some happiness all over the planet by sharing sounds. Most of these sounds are far from the mainstream, so you might just find something your ears have never experienced!”
Ubuweb relaunches (though I have to confess, I missed the initial launching) its 365 Days Project: 365 mp3s of crazy, eccentric, off-the-wall recordings.
Wild and crazy stuff, like Casper The Friendly Ghost singing Motorcycle Policeman (yes, that Casper the Friendly Ghost), and Van Morrison singing songs called Ring Worm, You Say France And I Whistle, and Want A Danish (yes, that Van Morrison), and Barbie and Ken singing Nobody Taught Me (yes—incredibly—that Barbie and Ken). Though of course, being what it is, there are also lots of tunes from groups you’ve never heard of, like Leslie Harris and the House of Fire, and the, er, Badger Theatre Movie Phone, which isn’t quite a “group,” but you get the idea.
Lots of great stuff, browse away. Commentary and pictures for almost all the entries.
(via MeFi [June 24, 2004])
Also: Speaking of Barbie, here’s an interesting news bite:
A Utah artist… won a five-year legal battle with Mattel Inc. over his photographs of Barbie dolls sometimes naked and paired with kitchen appliances on Tuesday…
…
Forsythe incurred Mattel’s wrath with his “Food Chain Barbie” series of 78 photographs featuring the popular plastic doll in kitchen appliances ranging from a martini glass to a fondue pot. Other photos showed the doll stuffed into a tortilla, a fondue pot and a blender.
…
U.S. District judge Ronald Lew… [wrote] “There was little risk of consumer confusion… Defendant’s parodic intent was clear.”
(Reuters: “Artist Hails Court Win Over Barbie Parody” [June 30, 2004])
Ease your way into the weekend with a listen to the madly wonderful tunes of Lederhosen Lucil. Enough good things I cannot say; it’s excellent stuff, virtually guaranteed to hit just the right spot in your ears and nestle in your brain. Absolutely destined to [eventually, hopefully] become a cherished and keystone component of my personal listenin’ music, is the 2¢ of my own I’ll add.
(The web site has other songs to listen to, just in case you’re not convinced by the song I linked to above.)