In the December of 2007, John Updike (who I guess is qualified to speak as a paleontologist) published an article through National Geographic entitled "Extreme Dinosaurs". Does that not pique your curiosity? Extreme Dinosaurs? Sign me up for that, please. But seriously, these real dinosaurs pose some serious questions. Like, for instance, why the hell this would be an evolutionary boon in any way:
Other than just looking cool, obviously. I think they're for courtship rituals. These dudes just turned into peacocks. Also seriously cool is the Styracosaurus. It's the one that looks like a 'roided-up triceratops. Check out the photo gallery for all of them.
Earlier today, whilst whiling away the hours in the normal way - looking up jazz musicians and making fun of their names (dude's name is Bix) - I stumbled onto a lesser known artist who deserves some serious celebration. Rufus Harley is the world's only jazz bagpiper. No joke. While having a comparatively small catalogue of music, he has left an indelible mark on the city of Philadelphia, where he was celebrated as a cultural icon.
If you want more Rufus (and who wouldn't?) you can check out this review page. It has some radio.blog tracks on there.
There are many ways one might describe Crispin Glover. Some would describe him as "Who?" or perhaps "That dude in Willard? I didn't see it, but he's a weird guy, so... it was probably weird." And then there's the tiniest fraction of you who are like, "Hell yeah, Crispin Glover." I am now one of the latter. And you can too. Just enjoy this:
In the event that you did NOT like the above, then I advise you leave this establishment. Because this... this is AWESOME.
The song is "Rubin & Ed," and was, of course, written and performed by Crispin himself.
If YouTube is to be believed, Fred Astaire once called that the greatest example of tap dance ever caught on film. If that were so, on would have to wonder if he ever saw the dance trio Tip, Tap & Toe in the movie Pardon My Sarong:
First things first. If any of you see someone wearing this Sargon Ivy cap, I am telling you that it's alright to hit them as hard as you can. Here's a photo of it.
Just to be clear, that's an ivy cap with an embroidered dagger on it. The dagger is intricate and fancy, and lies broken amongst the lilies. It is meant as a tribute to Sargon, a Mesopotamian king who seems kind of sick and twisted and cruel. I mean, this is a guy who "marched to Kazallu and turned Kazallu into a ruin heap, so that there was not even a perch for a bird left." I get angry at places with stupid gimmicky town names as well, but I don't flip out and torch the place. And if I did, I wouldn't want to be memorialized on a hat whose target demographic would be purchasing them for "irony".
ANYWAY! Kutiman is a DJ, musician, producer, composer, animator, and, what the hell, artist. He's been the recipient of some fairly high praise of late, with the release of "ThruYou", an album composed entirely of remixed YouTube videos. This has garnered some minor nerdy applause, but has also revealed this Israeli musician's oeuvre to US audiences.
That's the first track off of the album, "The Mother Of All Funk Chords". If you liked it (you should have), you can watch the rest on the album's website here. Enjoy.
Being such a huge fan of both the Beatles and the entire genre of jazz, I'm actually a little shocked that I'd not heard of these guys before. BeatleJazz is a band that I have been blissfully unaware of, as they scooped up some major awards and appeared on several "Top Ten Albums Of The Year" lists. Seriously?! Usually, I'm fairly hip in the ways of music, and yet they appeared at first glance to be newcomers. But they've been around for about a decade now. Am I that pathetically oblivious, or does nobody else know these guys?
Irrespective, I found all four of their albums. I love them all, but the newer two are one that have (apparently) received huge praise. These ones were released after BeatleJazz's first two albums, "A Bite Of The Apple" and "Another Bite Of The Apple". I mention them together because they were conceptually on the same level. They were released a year apart, and are often mentioned together. By the way, you'll need a RAR expander for those files. If you don't know what that is, then GOOGLE IS YOUR FRIEND. Remember that, kiddies. Google is your friend. The password is "mbmc", if that's not immediately obvious (it took me two days to crack that nut. No joke). I can't really recommend any particular songs, because I listened to these albums all in a row without checking the track names. I would, however, point you towards "I Am The Walrus". Some excellent piano work on that part that goes, "Selmolina Pilchard climbing up the Eiffel Tower." Awesome.
Their next effort, "With A Little Help From Our Friends", was a big leap in excellence, as you can tell from the sheer number of bytes it's going to take up on your hard drive. Check it:
Shazam. Three parts. That means it's three times as good. And then, you have their newest release, "All You Need". This just has twoparts, but it doesn't get the above fanfare because I haven't finished downloading it yet. Enjoy.
UPDATE: Okay, I'm not the only one not in the know, because Wikipedia doesn't have a page on them, and Wikipedia has a page on EVERYTHING.
With the help of a friend, I have rediscovered the dark cabaret stylings of The Dresden Dolls. That's the actual name of the genre. Dark cabaret. Anyway, they've only released two albums, so I'll make this short.
Among the numerous new artists I find every week or so, there is sometimes the occasional performer that I will keep coming back to. The ones I'll still be listening to in a year. Over the past few weeks, I've learned to love Andrew Bird. I mentioned him in passing twice before; the first time being a link to a zeusaphone playing "A Nervous Tic Motion Of The Head To The Left" (video, sadly, now removed), and the second time being a brief intro to my post on sand art. Well, now I've heard more than one song by the guy. In fact, I've heard almost all of his albums. And you can too.
His 1996 album Music Of Hair is a good deal different from the rest of his oeuvre. In it, he truly shines as a violinist (which is his whole thing). It's a slightly funky mix of bluegrassy, almost-Irish sounding melodies, which is a little off-putting. However, if you're going to put in the effort, I would recommend the tracks "Ambivalence Waltz", "Oh So Insistent", and "Ratitat/Peter's Wolf/Oblivious Reel". Especially "Oh So Insistent". It's divided into an A section and a B section, where the A section reminds me of Firefly and the B section is just awesome. You may also notice that none of the recommended tracks have vocals. That's because his 1996 vocals are weird and creepy.
Next up, his 2003 album Weather Systems. I only link to it out of some sense of continuity, because I honestly don't really like any of the tracks. If I must choose a few, let them be the songs "I" and "Skin", if only to serve as some form of groundwork for his later, better stuff (you'll see).
Unfortunately, his most recent album, 2007's Armchair Apocrypha, really only has one good track, nowhere near the great selection on his last album. That track is "Imitosis" and it really is one of his best. It's a musical sequel to Weather System's "I" and is the only Andrew Bird song to have its own music video. So, that's pretty good.
Other than that, the only things left to talk about are his Fingerlings albums. That's all his live stuff: Fingerlings, Fingerlings 2 and Fingerlings 3. In many cases, the live stuff is better, but in many more cases, they're worse. Try "Gotholympians", "Sweetbreads", "The Water Jet Cilice", and his live redition of "A Nervous Tic Motion Of The Head To The Left". Fingerlings 2 is a Rapidshare link, sorry. From that, I'd really only recommend "Banking On A Myth", but you have to download it all. Enjoy.
To blatantly plagiarize from the site I found it on, "one intrepid fan dares to rank the original songs of The Beatles and give his reasons why in a worst-to-first countdown." All of the original 185 (give or take) Beatles songs are ranked and have had a helpful little paragraph written about them. It's worth checking out for any Beatles fan (or if you're not, which mean you're just not a Beatles fan yet). I'm afraid I must respectfully disagree with the low rankings of "Good Day Sunshine", "You Know My Name (Look Up The Number)", and "Her Majesty" (although he has a good reason). "Cry Baby Cry", "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" and "I'm Only Sleeping" deserved higher rankings, while "Helter Skelter", "Taxman" and "Within You Without You" probably didn't deserve the higher ranking they got (I'm just sayin' is all). On the other hand, I agree with all of the top twenty songs (though I don't know if I would have chosen that order). I'm also glad to see "Dear Prudence", "For No One" and a personal favorite, "Yes It Is" (comparative footnotes in The Beatles' catalogue) given such high praise. Check it out here.
So I happened to catch a glimpse at 20/20 the other day and I can't help but notice this story (Probably Not Safe For Work, but I guess that depends on where you work). Crazy. I think I have life all figured out, then I see something like this and it's essentially back to square one. But that's not the point.
Recently, I've been listening to a lot of Abney Park. I don't really like them, but I feel I should. That's because they're the world's only Steampunk band. Since their goth roots in Seattle in the Nineties, they've decided to specialize somewhat and become exclusively Steampunk. This means that their onstage personas are that of probably the best literary archetype, sky-pirates. Their airship Ophelia has been the subject of at least one song and they dress appropriately. And by appropriately, I mean like this:
Anyway, aside from "Steampunk", their music is best described as industrial dance influenced heavily by world music. This places them firmly outside my personal tastes, which is a shame. But in the event that YOU might like them, I offer their 2001 album "From Dreams Or Angels", their 2005 album "The Death Of Tragedy", and their 2008 album "Lost Horizons". Which, I guess, was released last year. Happy 2009, all.
After one of my favorite regulars left Cracked, I went around looking for more content by that clown prince of crime, Wayne Gladstone. Lo, and I did find a thought-provoking article he did for The Morning News addressing "the question everyone wants to know, but nobody wants to ask: Why are Jews funny?" I must say, it's extremely well written. Anyone who is even mildly interested in the topic of American comedy should probably read this article.
And because you've come to expect more from me, have a parent directory filled with breakup songs. Because hey, you might need them someday.
ALRIGHT! I just finished downloading about two hundred songs from these two directories, which boast over a dozen classical artists, including Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Schubert and my personal new favorite, Hector Berlioz (Or Georg Handel, if I'm feeling whimsical and pretentious). So that's the meat of the post; enjoy. In other news, STOVOKOR!
Stovokor is a death metal band with some righteous riffs. Their lead singer goes by the stage name of "plnluH HoD" (If you know where this is going, you should probably get out more). They sing exclusively in Klingon and refuse to make appearances out of costume. Yeah. If you like that, you may also enjoy the music of Alestorm, who are so awesome I can't even bring myself to write about them.
After a recent Cracked article, I decided to do some independent research and find some of the worst album covers I could. Luckily, the work was already done for me. FidTheKid over at RateYourMusic.com has a handy little collection of album covers that either try a little too hard, breach the understood limits of taste, or are just horrible in every conceivable way. Like, for example; I find the below to just be... bad. Just really, really bad.
And these next ones are confusing, but just ridiculous enough to work.
Way back in 'ought seven, a little periodical known as Guitar World published a definitive piece called "The 100 Greatest Guitar Solos". Anyone with a passing interest in ripping solos from the Eighties will be pleasantly surprised by the selection (all chosen by Guitar World readers, no less), and will no doubt have heard many of the songs before. Here's the kicker: I found them all. Right here, man. Go ahead, drink it in. Well, almost all of them. I'll get to that later. First I'll take you on a tour of what seems to be the most face-melting of riffs; the solo. First thing apparent on a cursory glance at the list is that it contains such classics as Led Zepplin's Stairway To Heaven, Lynyrd Skynyrd's Freebird*, The Eagles' Hotel California, Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody*, Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit*, Guns 'N' Roses' Sweet Child O' Mine, Metallica's Master Of Puppets*, Aerosmith's Walk This Way, Pink Floyd's Comfortably Numb, Jimi Hendrix's Voodoo Child, Chuck Berry's Johnny B. Goode, Eric Clapton's Layla*, Jimi Hendrix's Little Wing*, Dire Strait's Sultans Of Swing, The Beatles' While My Guitar Gently Weeps*, ZZ Top's Sharp Dressed Man, and Jimi Hendrix's redition of The Star Spangled Banner* (anyone wishing to get along in this society must know all of these songs at least by name, and anyone wishing to curry favor with me must know all of the starred ones by heart). So anyway, the list contains not only these beauties, but it introduced me to numerous songs and artists I would have otherwise never heard. Like for instance, the two songs I have been constitutionally incapable of NOT listening to every chance I get for the past three days; Starship Trooper by Yes and Stash by Phish. Seriously. They're awesome. Anyway, you may have noticed that there are two songs labeled #87, both Highway 61 Revisted and Cult Of Personality. In addition, there is no #98, as the one currently holding that spot is Cliffs Of Dover by Eric Johnson. It's a wonderful song, but it also happens to be #17. What actually should be #98 is "Under A Glass Moon" by Dream Theater, a song I've been unable to locate. Tough for you. That also means that one of the two #87 tracks must be a spare. Highway 61 Revisited actually doesn't belong on this list. Just as well, it's not too good. And because I went through the trouble of listening to every single one of these tracks for you, I know that the song currently filling space #99 is not, in fact, "Cause We've Ended As Lovers" by Jeff Beck (a wonderful instrumental that can actually be found here) but insead a singularly abominable track that goes by Stroke You Up by Changing Faces. I dare you to listen to it out loud and not turn down your speakers for fear that someone with musical taste will walk by. It's impossible. All in all, I can only find one flaw with this musical masterstroke, and that's the fact that they didn't include Through The Fire And The Flames by DragonForce.
Hey, y'all. Sorry I've been tardy. Writing papers and whatnot. To tide you over until the next big post (probably by next Monday), take a smattering of Original Soundtracks (I'd recommend the Pirates Of The Caribbean OST) and a picture of a bear riding a horse. That's what you guys like, right?
Well, it's almost here. The end of 2008. In the coming months, we have many things to look forward to, primary among these the inevitable "Best Of 2008" lists from almost every single media facet on Earth. Kicking it off in style was TIME Magazine, with their annual "Best Inventions" list (to be honest, last year's list was, like, a billion times better). I'm here to be your guide to what some editors somewhere determined to be the top breakthroughs of the year. In the number one slot, we have The Retail DNA Test, as deserving an invention as any. The $400 home package presents itself as a saliva test that can apparently determine your predispositions to disease and genetic aberrations to a fairly accurate degree. The inventor of the test (pregnant at time of press) trusts the analysis enough to tell TIME that her unborn son has about a 50% chance of developing Parkinson's Disease. The reason that the test is so controversial is the unexpected avenues that it may open up. If the test becomes common practice, thousands will be unable to secure health insurance, as many companies would be able to instantly determine your predisposition towards costly illnesses. Why would they insure you if they know that they'll end up paying for a tumor to be removed? The article goes into this with a bit more depth, check it out. The remaining 49 inventions on the list range from the innovative to the downright wacky, often times causing me to go "Best invention? More like worst invention." (I was sleepy, cut me some slack). I think they just got lazy after doing so much work on the number one spot. That's the only reason I can come up with to explain the presence of threeelectriccars (four if you include the futuristic MonoTracer), which are apparently not just for gay people anymore. If TIME Magazine is to be believed, they're making a comeback.
A true captain of industry, Josiah Blocker has (among other achievements) successfully circumnavigated the globe using only a (heh) sextant, attained popehood, slept through an entire winter and escaped a Kafkaesque nightmare world in which muffins were outlawed. One of the above is actually true.
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