I became a Sonic Youth fan a few years before “Bull in the Heather” came out on Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star in 1994, but “Bull in the Heather” was probably the first Sonic Youth video to get some major play on Mtv. Hearing it instantly takes me back to my freshmen year of college.
Most artists are flattered to be parodied by Weird Al. I have heard many say they know they made it big when Weird Al writes a parody for one of their songs.
Not Lady Gaga.
Apparently she didn’t approve the the song. Weird Al could go ahead and legally put in on his album anyway under fair use, but he’s a nice guy and only puts them on his album if the artist approves. You can read all about Weird Al’s Gaga Saga here.
**Update** I guess Lady Gaga isn’t as stupid as we thought.
Over the weekend I watched the Foo Fighters documentary, Foo Fighters: Back and Forth. It was pretty awesome. I saw it on the DVR, I think it was on VH1. I’m not sure when it will be on again, but you can probably find in online somewhere if nothing else. It’s really a must see for any Foo Fighter fan.
I have been a Foo Fighters fan from day one. I was positive that I would love the drummer of my favorite band’s new band, and I was right. I have seen them three times in concert. Once was here in Fargo—before I even lived here—at the Civic Center. It was amazing. The other two time were down in the cities at the Target Center and the Xcel Energy Center, both were good, but nothing beats the smaller venue like the Civic Center was.
I hate to admit it, but I didn’t listen to their last couple albums all that much. They were good, but they just weren’t as good as their first few albums. Last Tuesday they released their latest album, Wasting Light, and it’s pretty awesome. I have only had it a week, so I don’t know where to place it, but so far I am loving it. I think “Bridge Burning” is probably the best lead off song of an album that I have ever heard. It’s hard not to crank it to 11 to start off the album.
There are a few recent live Foo Fighters performances online, and I am just going to embed them here. The first one is a full-length concert that is part of CBS’s Live on Letterman series.
The second on can be found at foofighters.tv, and is a live performance of their newest album.
And finally some lucky fan had the Foos perform a mini concert in his garage.
So after one week I totally forgot about my Flashback Fridays. I blame Rebecca Black.
This week it’s one of my all time favorite Pavement songs, “Cut Your Hair”.
Blogging about my love for early 90s, 120 Minutes era MTV music got me feeling a little nostalgic. I am going to start posting some videos I remember from that time period every Friday. Today it’s the one hit wonder Whale.
This video sure brings back some memories. In the early 90s nothing was better than Nirvana and their post concert destruction. Nowadays I still love the music. They are still my all time favorite band, but I don’t know if I care for the destruction as much anymore. I guess I’m getting old. Get off my lawn!
Yesterday I got a surprise package it the mail. It was the new Joey Cape album on CD and vinyl. For those of you who don’t know who Joey Cape is—well—he is a musician who has many bands, most notability, Lagwagon. I have been a Lagwagon fan since the early 90s when I was listening to a lot of Fat Wreck Chords bands.
His latest album was a project he started in January 2010. For the year 2010 he released a song a month digitally, and when the project was done you got the hard copies of the album too. Of course I was going to sign up for this. As I have said many times, I love supporting artists when I know they are actually getting the money. I love it when I can buy their stuff directly from them. It’s a pretty cool CD, and DVD package. The artwork was done buy his daughter who appears on the DC and DVD, and it’s pretty darn cool.
Plus how cool is it to see the man himself packaging up his album to ship out?
I love supporting independent artists who release there stuff online as “pay what you want”. I just bought Wil Wheaton’s new short story Hunter, and Molly Lewis’s new song, “An Open Letter To Stephen Fry”. I love them both, and am more than happy to throw a few bucks at them for their hard work.
I would like to think and hope the “pay what you want” model works. I support it whenever possible, and always throw in a little extra. I would think most fans would chip in, and if they weren’t fans and downloaded it for free—Well, they may become fans and buy future works.
Wil Wheaton said he would probably get $125 for selling his short story to a magazine. With his fan base, I can almost guarantee he will make much for than that selling it online. It would just take 42 people to pay the $3 that I did. The best part is no DRM. I don’t have to crack the DRM like I do when I buy from Amazon, and it also feels good knowing that 100% of the money—after PayPal takes their cut—goes into his pocket.
And if you don’t know who Molly Lewis is, you can watch her on YouTube, and buy her music on BandCamp. I honestly listen to her music all the time, and am always looking for new stuff. Here is her video for her latest song that I just bought:
I love this Ben Folds video, plus it’s one of my favorite songs off his album he made with Nick Hornby.
I’ve been a big fan of Jimmy Eat World since the mid 90s, but I didn’t care much for their last two albums. I haven’t checked out their newest one, but I might have to. I kind of dig the song they played on Conan the other night.
This is such an awesome video for one of my favorite Jonathan Coulton songs. Great job Jarrett Heather.
So last December I posted a video and link to buy Tim Minchin’s amazing Christmas song “White Wine in the Sun”. Once again all money made from the song from November 21st to January 1st is going to charity.
This year in Australia, the amazing Kate Miller-Heidke covered the song for a Christmas CD for charity. Christian groups were outraged that the song was on the CD, despite the fact that proceeds go to a Christian charity. I think it’s a great song that shows Christmas is about more than religion. It’s about spending time with family whatever your religions beliefs are.
I saw Kate Miller-Heidke in concert last year and she has an amazing voice. Here is her version of the song:
And if you want to hear the song performed by Tim Minchin, here is that version:
I forgot to mention that at the Motion City Soundtrack concert Thursday night, they gave us a sneak preview of their video for “A Lifeless Ordinary” while they were setting up. It was pretty sweet watching the video as the whole crowd sang along. Well, today they released the video.
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