In keeping with today’s music vibe, Jessie sent me a link about how the Dave Matthews Band is totally lame and said, “it’s funny and sort of true (even though I love Dave – or should I call him Mr. Matthews).” As her favorite band is the Dave Matthews Band, I just had to post it.
Via Jessie
My friend and sometimes co-worker Gil knows the drummer in Mindless Self Indulgence and got me on the guest list for last night’s show at Webster Hall which was awesome considering one of my favorite things in the world to say is, “I’m on the list.” The show itself fucking rocked – I really liked their sound, the crowd was crazed (full of amped up angry punk-goth kids thrashing about) and the band played with so much energy they must have lost a few pounds during the performance. I especially liked it how at the end of the show, the guitarist played his axe w/ a sledgehammer and then destroyed it with said sledgehammer. I hope to see them again in the future, even if I’m not on the list. Here is what the Village Voice has to say about them:
“MSI, the greatest punk-goth-industrial-rap-glam-electro-metal band of all time, recently released You’ll Rebel to Anything, 26 minutes of spazzy misanthropic anti-corporate / conservative / misogynist anthems and a Rush cover [Tom Sawyer, which they played]. Buy it for the bitter, confused teenager in your life, especially if that teenager happens to live in your body. Go to the show for the the thrill, the danger, and the gravity-defying hair.”
For the next few weeks, AOL Music has every Live 8 performance available for you to stream to your very own computer. Watch the biggest concert event in history, on-demand, as many times as you want. Some performances are obviously better than others. You decide which is which. Enjoy.
The Foo Fighters have a new double disc titled “In Your Honor” which I am absolutely enjoying – so far I’ve listened to it a few times over the past 36 hours. I haven’t been this pleased by a new disc by an “old” favorite of mine since maybe “Midnight Vultures” by Beck. I’m a huge Foos fan and this album, one disc rock (some metal, some pop, some hard rock) and one disc acoustic, is extremely satisfying.
I was very pleasantly surprised to read in the liner notes that John Paul Jones, 1 of 4 members of my all-time hands down favorite band Led Zeppelin played on 2 tracks. “Miracle” is okay but “Another Round” is very good. The Toronto Sun has an article about what it was like for Dave to play with John.
Some stand out songs me on these discs are “In Your Honor”, “Best of You”, “The Last Song”, “End Over End”, “DOA” (very poppy – will be a huge radio hit), “Cold Day In The Sun” (Dave is on drums in this one) “Another Round” (feat JPJ), “Razor” (which sounds very much like a Phish song) – hell, most of them are stand out songs. Buy the album or click on the Foo Player icon on there web site and tell me I’m wrong.
The $150 PlusDeck2 is a cassette deck the size of an internal CD-ROM drive that pops into any desktop PC’s 5.25-inch drive bay. It turns tapes into MP3’s – or, for true retro music fans, record MP3’s onto blank cassettes. Yes, you read that correctly. Check out the picture below:
It’s best feature? Why, validation for saving all my tapes all these years of course! As the NY Times put it, “pack rats who saved hundreds of tapes, to the annoyance of their significant others, will suddenly seem to be masters of foresight.”
So very true. I just moved apartments a few months back and lugged all my tapes uptown, not even really knowing why, expect for the fact that I just couldn’t throw them away. I must have over 125 great albums on tape that I’m just dying to convert to digital. I have tons mix tapes that I made through the years, like some off of Z-100 full off funny songs like “New Kids Got Run Over By A Reindeer” along with various “High 5 at 9” countdowns from the early 90’s. I have a tape of me, age 4, reading a book and me, age 3, setting up blocks and them knocking them down (I wanted to hear how loud the crash sounded). I have an audio journal from a ski trip that I took with my aunt, uncle and cousins in the early 90’s which to is me is hysterical. Basically, there is a virtual treasure trove of music and audio now sitting at my fingertips and I cannot wait to get this device and convert these babies into mp3s. I need to order this ASAP.
DJ Stratch mixes up the Imperial March and now all I want is to go home and get two turntables though I’m not sure about a microphone. Turn up the sound for this one.
Via Chris
I have not really liked any of the new bands that have entered the musicscape the past few years – I’m not sure if its because I’m getting older, if I’m not listening to the right bands or if its because most of the music today sucks. Its probably a combination of the 3 because recently my friends Jordan and Greg have turned me onto some good new music from the likes of Bloc Party and the Arcade Fire so to paraphrase the Descendents, “everything doesn’t totally suck today.”
One band that has definitely caught my attention however is System of a Down. I have loved their sound, their style and their weirdness since I first heard “Sugar” on the radio in the late 90’s. They recently released their third album “Mezmerize” and it is down right kick ass. I got it and I suggest you do too because its really, really good.
In the most recent Rolling Stone mag, an interview with the band has given me even more reason to love them – they are all full-blown geeks. For instance, their drummer John Dolmayan has storage space in a North Hollywood warehouse to store his collection of comic books, action figures and video games. At the start of the interview he said, “Dude, I like comic books. How cool could I fucking be? Dungeons and Dragons is badass. If I could find a good dungeon master, I’d play a game.” So would I dude, so would I…
Rock fucking on!
“In Your Honor” will be the bands fifth album. Almost exactly a decade from the release of the first Foo Fighters record, it will come out in June. It is a double album, as promised. One CD rock, one CD acoustic.
As Dave Grohl puts it, “just so you know, I have a calendar in front of me that is a year long, fucking packed with tours that will spin us around the globe over and over and over again. It makes me dizzy just looking at it. I can’t fucking wait.”
Neither can I.
New York Metro reports this week that on the WALK/DON’T WALK sign outside CBGB on the Bowery, the orange DON’T WALK hand has had its middle two fingers and thumb obliterated with black tape, turning it into a devil’s horns-the universal hand signal for “Rock!”
The white walking man is now wearing sideburns, a skull-and-bones T-shirt, blue jeans, and a pair of Converse. Across the street, the walking man has become a woman, with spiky hairdo, miniskirt, and high-heeled ankle boots. Nearby, at the intersection of Allen and Rivington, the man wears an Adidas tracksuit and Kangol hat, and carries a boom box. In all three cases, holes have been carefully punched in the pasted-on “clothing” (made from vinyl), so that the LED light still shines through.
Who has been doing this? Read the article to find out…
via Republica
This video has been around for a while now – its a kid lip-syncing and rocking out in front of his web cam. I saw it back in 12/04 when Chris posted it to Blah Blah Blog. Since then, I forgot about it until someone else sent it to me last week when we were looking for the old hit “The Super Bowl Is Gay.”
So, please watch and enjoy. It helps if you make you window smaller as the flash file will shrink/expand based on the window size.
If you are wondering, the song is called “Dragsotea Din Tei” and its by a Romanian group called O-Zone. You can even buy it on iTunes if you want to thoroughly annoy your friends and neighbors. After the jump you can even read the lyrics.
Thanks Chris as the comments to your post provided the extra info
UPDATE (2/26):
Today there is an article in the NY Times about this kid. He’s actually from NJ. After the jump, you can read the entire NY Times article. Also, I found a link to the actual music video as well. There are many other versions floating around as well but I don’t think they are that good.
Translated Lyrics:
Hello [on a cellphone], greetings, it’s me, an outlaw,
I ask you, my love, to accept happiness.
Hello, hello, it’s me, Picasso,
I sent you a beep [cellphone signal], and I’m brave [or strong],
But you should know that I’m not asking for anything from you.
You want to leave but you don’t want don’t want to take me, don’t want don’t want to take me, don’t want don’t want don’t want to take me.
Your face and the love from the linden trees,
And I remember your eyes.
I call you [over the phone], to tell you what I feel right now,
Hello, my love, it’s me, your happiness.
Hello, hello, it’s me again, Picasso,
I sent you a beep [cellphone signal] and I’m brave [or strong],
But you should know that I’m not asking for anything from you.
Internet Fame Is Cruel Mistress for a Dancer of the Numa Numa
By ALAN FEUER and JASON GEORGE
There was a time when embarrassing talents were a purely private matter. If you could sing “The Star Spangled Banner” in the voice of Daffy Duck, no one but your friends and family would ever have to know.
But with the Internet, humiliation – like everything else – has now gone public. Upload a video of yourself playing flute with your nose or dancing in your underwear, and people from Toledo to Turkmenistan can watch.
Here, then, is the cautionary tale of Gary Brolsma, 19, amateur videographer and guy from New Jersey, who made the grave mistake of placing on the Internet a brief clip of himself dancing along to a Romanian pop song. Even in the bathroom mirror, Mr. Brolsma’s performance could only be described as earnest but painful.
His story suggests that the quaint days when cultural trinkets, like celebrity sex tapes, were passed around like novels in Soviet Russia are over. It says a little something of the lightning speed at which fame is made these days.
To begin at the beginning:
Mr. Brolsma, a pudgy guy from Saddle Brook, made a video of himself this fall performing a lip-synced version of “Dragostea Din Tei,” a Romanian pop tune, which roughly translates to “Love From the Linden Trees.” He not only mouthed the words, he bounced along in what he called the “Numa Numa Dance” – an arm-flailing, eyebrow-cocked performance executed without ever once leaving the chair.
In December, the Web site newgrounds.com, a clearinghouse for online videos and animation, placed a link to Mr. Brolsma on its home page and, soon, there was a river of attention. “Good Morning America” came calling and he appeared. CNN and VH1 broadcast the clip. Parodists tried their own Numa Numa dances online. By yesterday, the Brolsma rendition of “Love From the Linden Trees” had attracted nearly two million hits on the original Web site alone.
The video can be seen here.
It was just as Diane Sawyer said on her television program: “Who knows where this will lead?”
Nowhere, apparently. For, in Mr. Brolsma’s case, the river became a flood.
He has now sought refuge from his fame in his family’s small house on a gritty street in Saddle Brook. He has stopped taking phone calls from the news media, including The New York Times. He canceled an appearance on NBC’s “Today.” According to his relatives, he mopes around the house.
What’s worse is that no one seems to understand.
“I said, ‘Gary this is your one chance to be famous – embrace it,’ ” said Corey Dzielinski, who has known Mr. Brolsma since the fifth grade. Gary Brolsma is not the first guy to rocket out of anonymity on a starship of embarrassment. There was William Hung, the Hong Kong-born “American Idol” reject, who sang and danced so poorly he became a household name.
There was Ghyslain Raza, the teenage Quebecois, who taped himself in a mock light-saber duel and is now known as the Star Wars Kid.
In July 2003, Mr. Raza’s parents went so far as to sue four of his classmates, claiming they had placed the clip of him online without permission. “Ghyslain had to endure and still endures today, harassment and derision,” according to the lawsuit, first reported in The Globe and Mail of Toronto.
Mr. Brolsma has no plans to sue, his family said – mainly because he would have to sue himself. In fact, they wish he would bask a little in his celebrity.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with him,” his grandfather, Kalman Telkes, a Hungarian immigrant, said the other day while taking out the trash.
The question remains why two million people would want to watch a doughy guy in glasses wave his arms around online to a Romanian pop song.
“It definitely has to be something different,” said Tom Fulp, president and Webmaster of newgrounds.com.
“It’s really time and place.”
“The Numa Numa dance,” he said, sounding impressed. “You see it and you kind of impulsively have to send it to your friends.”
There is no way to pinpoint the fancy of the Internet, but in an effort to gauge Mr. Brolsma’s allure, the Numa Numa dance was shown to a classroom of eighth graders at Saddle Brook Middle School – the same middle school that he attended, in fact.
The students’ reactions ranged from envious to unimpressed. “That’s stupid,” one of them said. “What else does he do?” a second asked. A third was a bit more generous: “I should make a video and become famous.”
The teacher, Susan Sommer, remembered Mr. Brolsma. He was a quiet kid, she said, with a good sense of humor and a flair for technology.
“Whenever there were computer problems, Gary and Corey would fix them for the school,” she said.
His friends say Mr. Brolsma has always had a creative side. He used to make satirical Prozac commercials on cassette tapes, for instance. He used to publish a newspaper with print so small you couldn’t read it with the naked eye.
“He was always very out there – he’s always been ambitious,” said Frank Gallo, a former classmate. “And he’s a big guy, but he’s never been ashamed.”
Another friend, Randal Reiman, said: “I’ve heard a lot of people say it’s not that impressive – it doesn’t have talent. But I say, Who cares?”
These days, Mr. Brolsma shuttles between the house and his job at Staples, his family said. He is distraught, embarrassed. His grandmother, Margaret Telkes, quoted him as saying, just the other day, “I want this to end.”
And yet the work lives on. Mr. Fulp, the Webmaster, continues to receive online homages to the Numa Numa dance. The most recent showed what seemed to be a class of computer students singing in Romanian and, in unison, waving their hands.
Mr. Reiman figures the larger world has finally caught on to Gary Brolsma.
“He’s been entertaining us for years,” he said, “so it’s kind of like the rest of the world is realizing that Gary can make you smile.”