Covers - Followup

Yesterday, I linked to a list of favourite covers by musical connoisseur Le Gammeltoft of Unga Bunga fame.

If you haven't perused through them yourself, let me highlight these two haunting acoustic renditions of soul/pop-hits "Crazy" by Gnarls Barkley and "Hey Ya" by Outkast. I did not know any of these artists before. I most certainly have them on my watch-list now.

By Ray Lamontagne - "Crazy":



And by Mat Weddle from Obadiah Parker - "Hey Ya":

Covers

I just noticed that Le Gammeltoft had posted a list of favourite covers. Mmmmmmh, food for my addiction.

By the way, these days, busily coding, I've got this old little juvel high on my Youtube playlist - Newton Faulkner playing Teardrop by Massive Attack:

Wastedness

Cobra is running on the telly. I am lying flat on the floor just barely able to move my fingers enough to be able to type this, while at the same time trying to pretend that I follow the movie.

I've had better days. My head's pounding, sinuitis having settled in my skull. I've had 12-hour days all week, been on pills and caffeine, fighting the vicious cold that spawned the sinuitis, and tried to be of some kind of help with my kid during the nights, since he also has a hefty cold (he, of course, being the vehicle of the viral transfer from the petri dish they call 'day-care' to our home). In all, I'm feeling fairly sorry for myself. (Why is Brigitte Nielsen wearing a clown's make-up? - reeealy white skin, red lips, big furry hear?)

I may be getting soft. I haven't done these kind of hours work-wise, since I was writing up my dissertation. (Go on. Read it. You know you want to. There's a funny bit on page 104. Promise.) On the other hand, then I didn't have Asbjørn. (He so sad, Sly. Sad, sad eyebrows.)

I'm trying to think of some music for the mood. In looking through my little heap of links that I keep of stuff that I trip over, I find a little gem, which I don't seem to remember having posted about.

In an earlier life, I posted about not being able to find online the incredibly artful rendition of (a snippet of) I Am the Walrus by Swedish actor Peter Stormare in the movie A Million Dollar Hotel. His character, Dixie, claims to be the fifth Beatle, and, in particular, claims the credit for the song.

For some reason, somebody doesn't want this movie to be embeddable, so quickly, before I fall asleep - go click this link.

Whoooooa, I'm alive!

Where were you man?!


Eh... I don't know. I've been busy. Doing ... Like stuff...


Then why didn't you tell us about it?


It was like... boring stuff... Wiping the nose of my kid... And so on. Do you want to hear about that?

No! We want more fun and music. Some more rants, also. And science! Where's the science in this blog? Gofix!


...


Ah. Well. Let me see. I should think this is already weird enough to count as a rant. Science. Ah. I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that, right now. (Did you see what I just did there? Referenced a classical sci-fi flic, while stipulating that I cannot talk about science? This blog may be dropping to new depths of cheap puns to survive...)

Now go listen to Alphabeat's perky cover of the excellent Daft Punk tune, Digital Love.




There's a recorded and polished version as well. As usual I prefer the live version, though.

Just Some Links

Not much time - writing a burst of emails. I might get back to why in a later entry.

Need to listen to something while writing though, and for inspiration and expanding the horizons of the mind, I make sure to check the personal blog of Le Gammeltoft. Le is (co-)DJ on Unga Bunga, the source of a wealth of choice bits of attention-arousing sounds.

Also, a very dear friend recently pointed me to the magnificent Submarine Sessions courtesy of self-styled "Digital Magazine" third ear. Submarine Sessions, you ask? Simple, really. Take one submarine, one artist, one song, and one camera. Then stir.

Stop Press - Grizzly Bear feat. Michael McDonald

I must be doomed to playing musical catch-up.

I just heard While You Wait For The Others by Grizzly Bear, sung by one of my favorite soul-singers, the one-and-only Michael McDonald. You may know him, for instance from, this little tune - What a Fool Believes.



Apparently, the version of While You Wait For The Others was on a B-side of a single released back in September. It is hauntingly beautiful.

Reevalution - Turboweekend

I recently put down Danish synth/electro-rockers Turboweekend as less than surprising, and lacking something. Silas Bjerregaard, the singer is clearly gifted; however the singles, I'd noticed on the radio, and zipped past on my Last.FM-profile, were quite good - but a bit too tidy, too constructed, too pretty for my taste. I may be simple creature, but in both electronic and rock-music I generally look for something unsettling, something unexpected and raw, an instrument, a passage, or a driving beat, that oozes energy. Incidentally, that is, I guess, as close as I can get to a personal definition of rock.

I wasn't particularly happy about putting Turboweekend down, though. They fit pretty much in the sweetspot of my current musical tendencies; and I found myself digging through their back catalogue over the next few days. I'm pleased that that musical journey led me to reevaluate my earlier verdict.

Listening through the material from their two albums, Night Shift (2007) and Ghost Of A Chance (2009), I found myself liking the lighter style and faster beats on their debut-album more. Listen, and take look at, the pleasingly naïve and refreshing Wash Out.



Given my preferences, this contrasts to the more somber tone of Ghost Of A Chance, exemplified here with the single After Hours.



Now, at this point I happened to watch a recording of the excellent show Backstage (on DR2 - by our nice friends, the Danish Broadcasting Corporation) with Turboweekend (and rappers UFO Yepha). The programme seeks to expose the best of current Danish live-music, by setting up a friendly "battle" between two Danish bands, also requiring them to create a novel act together. This had lead to many interesting, amusing, and also splendid moments of art. I'll try to get back to that later. For now, let me focus on Turboweekend. Simply put, live, they add that spark of energy and power, that I so missed in their recordings. Listen to, and in particular, take a look at their rendition of After Hours on the show.



Interestingly - speaking pure audio - the live-version is not radically different, actually. Mostly, the vocals are sung more powerfully and freely; but the energy that their stage-performance exudes makes a great difference for me. The intonation, and visual underlining of the line "From my window - I've got a clear view of the towers." simply drags me in and requires me to feel the beat and vocals much more strongly.

Their other single-performance on Backstage, of Holiday - also from Ghost Of A Chance, displays a similar amount of great energy, that just blasts through the screen. (It really helps also, that the Backstage-audience for this programme is really enthusiastic - something which is sadly not the case, every time.)



Splendid. Turboweekend is on my plus-list now. And incidentally - damn, I look forward to having more time to go see live-music again...