I’m happy to say I have never heard a song by LMFAO in my life (one of the advantages of avoiding commercial radio).
This however is fantastic.
Category: Musical Snobbery
Interesting Musical Facts: Number One
Did you know that Nick Cave and Enya collaborated on a cover of Don’t Fear the Reaper?
No?
Well that’s good, because they didn’t, although enough people seem to think that Finnish goth band HIM sound enough like Nick Cave and Enya to misattribute their cover to them on file sharing networks. Here it is anyway…
Nick Cave? I can sort of hear it. Enya? Doesn’t sound anything like her!
Can’t say I’m a huge fan of HIM’s interpretation (not enough cowbell for a start), but each to their own.
(No doubt many HIM fans are now raging with fury that I dare to describe HIM as a “goth band”. No doubt many HIM fans think I actually care :D)
Do as History Teaches
It’s that time again, the time when the Australian swim team goes off to the Olympics and – to the general consternation of the nation – totally fails to dominate. Our swimmers pick up some silvers, some bronzes and maybe a few golds, and the press fills up with questions about where it’s all gone so wrong.
The thing that everyone fails to remember is that this is the Olympic Games, not the Commonwealth Games. In the Commonwealth Games we slaughter everyone, because, frankly, we’re the only people in the Commonwealth who can actually swim. At the Olympics we face the Americans, the Russians, the Chinese and a horde of upstart, wildcard nations that luck out by stumbling over a single brilliant swimmer. Faced with all that competition we actually punch well above our weight, but there’s still hand wringing and gnashing of teeth every time we win a silver (or, the horror! a bronze) rather than a gold.
To those who are upset at our team’s performance in the pool – or elsewhere – I say shut up and listen to some TISM.
Adelaide Hospital Abusing Petzold
On hold with the tech support desk at a hospital in Adelaide, trying to sort out a client’s email problems.
They’re playing eight bars of Petzold’s Minuet in G Major for Broken Doorbell at me on a loop.
In the name of all that’s holy Lord, kill me now!
Merooww!
Create an Album Game
1: Go to Wikipedia and click ‘Random Article’ – That is your band name
2: Go to Wikiquote, click ‘Random Article’ and pick a quote – The last 3 to five words are your album title
3: Go to Flickr’s ‘Last 7 Days’ page – The fifth image is your album art
4: Compile the band name, album art and title in the image editor of your choice.
My design skills are obvious on vacation today…
(The base image is ‘Endless Sunshine’ by Brian 104 – if he objects to this completely unauthorised use of his image I shall of course take it down immediately)
EOFY!
Hey everybody it’s the end of the financial year!!
EOFY! EOFY!
Balance sheets and tax assessment!!
EOFY! Time sure flies!
Do all your shopping!
At WAL-MART!!
On Skrillex
I actually don’t mind a bit of dubstep 🙂
I do not feel required to believe that Skrillex is a human being. My top three theories to explain the existence of such a thing are as follows…
1: Skrillex is the name of a program designed by a post-grad computer engineering student to simulate industrial workplace noise. After a night of heavy drinking said student inadvertently messed up some of the audio filters and induced a series of overlapping sound loops, then realised that the resulting cacophony might go down well at next weekend’s beer and ecstasy mixer.
2: Skrillex is an ancient fax-modem, forgotten about in a storage cupboard but still connected to the net, which has achieved sentience and a recording contract.
3: Skrillex is a member of an unknown, sapient, deep-sea dwelling species that is attempting to communicate with us by modulating its vocalisations for propagation through air rather than water. It’s not very good at it.
Synesthesia
Standards compliant HTML code written in a text editor by someone who knows what they’re doing sounds like this.
HTML code produced by a WYSIWYG editor sounds like this.
HTML code produced by pasting Microsoft Word content into a WYSIWYG editor sounds like this.
Thank you! Come again!
Europhoria
I haven’t been paying much attention to Eurovision this year – work has been a nightmare lately and I’ve mostly been coming home, grabbing something quick to eat, then crawling into bed. But I had dinner over at Rebecca and Dom’s last night and watched some of the second semi-final, so I have some thoughts on that.
What I heard of the Netherlands seemed to be a cheerful little song, even if the Native American head-dress seemed a little culturally insensitive. Sweden’s song was nothing really special, but there was something about Loreen’s voice and performance that… I dunno, it just had something that kind of lifted it above its parts (and is probably responsible for its winning). Georgia seemed to have no idea what they were doing – as Rebecca commented they seemed to have looked at all the winning entries for the last 30 years and tried to incorporate elements from them into their act – with the result being a horrible mess. Slovakia got confused and sent a Whitesnake impersonator, while Lithuania sent Scott Summers. Turkey featured a posse of dancing bat-men who periodically turned into a boat. The song didn’t really grab me, but after re-listening to it I can perceive some of its latent merits.
What I found particularly interesting about this year was the use of video screens to overcome the “only six performers” rule. Several of the acts featured extra – often computer generated – dancers. It’ll be interesting if they allow that next time.
Don’t know if I’ll watch the final tonight. We all know who won and I need to be up early to get into work tomorrow (supposed to be my day off I might add!).
While on the subject of music and dancing, how’s this for a marriage proposal? There’s been a lot of debate over whether it’s a viral marketing campaign or not, but it genuinely seems to be authentic…
