yeah, it’s a triple–quad whammy of pop loserdom touting luciano pavarotti singing giacomo puccini’s Nessun dorma from Turandot, but sometimes… sometimes ya just gotta not let that get in the way. by god, what majestic life. sit back and give yourself a clear measly 4 minutes to take this in, horrible tech quality and all:
many comedians affect an afterburner-style humor approach, probably stemming from standup and the need to pump laughs quick and GTFO. it often leads to an audience forcing itself to laugh. though he probably used to swim those waters regularly, ron bennington (of the ron and fez show) now generally idles it into cruise mode, then launches out of nowhere an ali shuffle or just a plain knockout. i can count on a straight up surprise belly laugh every 30 minutes or so listening to ron MC his radio show, and that’s pretty damned good. (more…)
excuse the NPR association; this vid (iTunes link, “Video: PJ Harvey And John Parish At SXSW” 8:19 5/15/2009) is worth ignoring the creeps who produced it. PJ harvey the sorceress. don’t tune out if you don’t like the first couple of minutes. FF to the second tune and, while focusing through to the end, marvel at a soul chick in top command of her voice arsenal. it’s funny when listening to the first song and its strained skew-pronunciation to bear in mind that polly jean is english.
last thing i expected to find this morning. never knew that dave roth recorded a version of Eat ‘Em and Smile — the whole album — in spanish (then titled Sonrisa Salvaje). ha! follow the link and hear the samples. funny.
the crazy trend of “let’s play” vids on YouTube has extended to games i worked on. ha!
surprised to see some comments that people like the music, so cheesed up by the technology that i always figured most people would turn it off immediately. instead, one guy went this far:
I first played this game waaaay back, like ‘95 or so.
Then roughly 12 years later (a few months ago) I woke up with Grundy’s theme song in my head, and reinstalled it.
just replaced the power supply filter capacitors for a friend’s ‘68-ish silver-face fender super reverb, and hadn’t found any guts pics online. here are two showing the wiring that’s hidden when assembled. click to zoom.
was running behind and forgot to take pics of the new caps installed — muck cleaned off the black pads, solder shiny and new. looked nice. shown are originals, obviously. (more…)
happened upon ernestine anderson’s website today, and found that tomorrow is her 80th birthday (born 11 november 1928). talk about a woman who’s nowhere near as famous as her talent indicates. no idea how that happened. was thinking of her today because through an amazon search fluke i heard barbra streisand sing “A Sleepin’ Bee”. “wow”, was my immediate thought; “me like BS BS’s voice long time, but ernestine kicked living hell out of her on that song, no question.” (that’s how i talk to myself.) (more…)
time still hasn’t caught the free art of Ally McBeal, its roiling imperfections notwithstanding (e.g., vonda shepard — bleh). 30 Rock hasn’t dusted it. i think even david lynch didn’t, with his stellar and — roy batty style — appropriately short lived On the Air. (more…)
i’ve always dug singers who can nail a note. there’s so much slipping and sliding crap noise around that many listeners don’t notice the difference between the posers and the hitters. when i finally heard a song from madonna that wasn’t obscenely out of tune (“Express Yourself”), i was so shocked that i bought the CD. one of the things about miles davis i savor — he didn’t dress up his notes in cocktail dresses and try to slip them by you. he held those fuckers and let you in. (more…)
no, they sure didn’t. latest album (2005) at amazon. tell me you’ve heard three people near those ages nailing the studio like that, and i’ll know you’re 1) lucky, or 2) a liar.
if you like that song, you might also like the movie Happy, Texas, where it’s featured. here’s the original song version, by betty hutton (distorted all to fuck — the new trend via deaf morons having digital audio tools).
basically living with earphones (ear buds, whatever you want to call them) inserted in my ears, i’ve worn through about 7 pairs in under two years. figuring they’d suck, i bought two pairs of cheapos as a test a while back — one for $2 and JVC “gumy” phones for $10. (more…)