What are you listening to?

[Admiral Yi]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7Og0uj_Lao

So I'm watching this Stones clip as karaoke pep up, and a question comes to mind I'm sure someone here will know the answer to.

When did Keith Richards turn into a lab specimen?  He looks so human in this clip.

[Admiral Yi]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2s4slliAtQU

I got a huge chuckle out of this.  Jardine completely forgot the lyrics for the lip sync. 

[Jacob]

Just showed my 8-year old boy the music video for Twisted Sister's We're Not Gonna Take It. My hope was that he'd see that I'm a much more reasonable dad than the dad in the video, and therefore love and appreciate me more.

I'm not 100% sure that's the lesson he took from it, though....

[The Brain]

Ghost's new album Impera.

[Savonarola]

Melanie - Melanie (1969)

Different than most of her later work; this is confessional singer-songwriter music with elaborate orchestrations.  Sometimes it turns sappy or (like most of her later hits) childish, but she's also capable of sentimental and darkly funny as well.  The biggest fault on this album is she's still trying to find her way as a singer; she sort of sounds like New Yawk's answer to Grace Slick which doesn't work well for ballads.

[Josephus]

Just showed my 8-year old boy the music video for Twisted Sister's We're Not Gonna Take It. My hope was that he'd see that I'm a much more reasonable dad than the dad in the video, and therefore love and appreciate me more.

I'm not 100% sure that's the lesson he took from it, though....

LOL...that whole series of videos from that album were great for their time. "WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO WITH YOUR LIFE?" "i want to rock."

[Jacob]

I've been listening quite a lot to Namewee (aka Huang Mingzhi) after I first listened to his It might Break Your Pinky Heart and posteing about it earlier in the thread. Basically every line and image in that music video is taking the piss out of the Chinese Communist Party, its supporters, and Xi Jinping personally. Naturally, Huang Mingzhi is banned in mainland China. He also went through a stint of being banned in Malaysia for his songs addressing social issues in that country (he's Malaysian Chinese, but lives in Taiwan).

The man is really quite prolific, usually collaborating with a different artist on each track. The music videos typically tell a story and are - conveniently - subtitled in English, Malay, and Chinese. In many of the cases the videos are loaded with symbolism and references, but not always (or maybe I just miss them, that's very possible too ).

One category of Huang's work is what I might call working class ballads.

Stranger in the North - 2016
A song about traveling to Beijing and looking for work dealing with themes of dislocation, alienation, pursuing your dreams but being discouraged, and longing for a home you cannot return to. As much of Namewee's work it effectively juxtaposes the beautiful pop-singing with rapping - in this case reflecting a 1st person view and a narrator respectively.

The song was originally a collaboration with Wang Leehom, a very popular clasically trained Taiwanese - American singer with a strong career since the early 2000s. However, in late 2021 Wang's Japanese-Taiwanese wife came out with allegations of verbal abuse, infidelity, and solicitation of prostitutes which led to Wang putting his career on indefinitely hold.

The video currently has more than 187 million views on youtube:

Stranger in the North has been covered by a number of Chinese pop-stars and internet personalities. One of them is Deng Ziqi (aka G.E.M.) a major pop singer from Hong Kong. Namewee and G.E.M. recorded another version of the song together in 2017.

Visually it's much less interesting than the original MV as it's basically just two people singing in a K-box. But G.E.M.'s voice absolutely lovely IMO. The English subtitles are subtly different in places, but I'm not sure whether that reflects a difference in text or it's merely an artifact of translation.

Currently at a little over 4.8 million views:

[Savonarola]

Sha Na Na - Rock n Roll is Here to Stay (1969)

As a rail engineer I feel obligated to say that a locomotive is a dangerous machine and trains cannot stop quickly; so please do not put yourself into the path of an oncoming train to retrieve a high school ring like the young lady does in Teen Angel.

 

If you've ever seen the Woodstock movie there's a part with Sha Na Na in it near the end and the whole audience is going  .  1969 was the very beginning of the 70s era 50s revival; Elvis had his comeback album, The Flaming Groovies covered an Eddie Cochran song on "Supersnazz" and Al Kooper covers "Blue Moon of Kentucky" on "I Stand Alone."  Those were different than the 50s original: Elvis was going all Country-Soul, The Flaming Groovies look forward to The Ramones as much as it looks back to Rockabilly and Sam Phillips wouldn't have produced any number like Al Kooper.  Sha Na Na is different in that the remakes they're doing are very much in the spirit of the 50s singles they're covering; the problem is that they're never as good as the originals.

Time is a funny thing, it was about 10 years between the day the music died and Woodstock.  The Dell-Vikings to Jimi Hendrix seems like an unbridgeable gap, but today that would be like remaking "Call me maybe" or forming a One Direction cover band (not that I'm advocating doing either one of those things.)

[The Minsky Moment]

It shows the power of desegregation plus technology.  You free white musicians to incorporate (appropriate?) the blues and soul; you free black musicians from the restrictions of the chitlin circuit and open up their engagement with the Euro-American avant garde.  You throw in technical innovation in electronics and electrical amplification in a context of a culture open to change.  Hendrix is an interesting case - after stagnating for a while in the traditional R&B circuit he made his breakthrough after teaming up with an Elvin Jones disciple from Ealing and a grammar school boy on bass.

[Admiral Yi]

It shows the power of desegregation plus technology.  You free white musicians to incorporate (appropriate?) the blues and soul; you free black musicians from the restrictions of the chitlin circuit and open up their engagement with the Euro-American avant garde.  You throw in technical innovation in electronics and electrical amplification in a context of a culture open to change.  Hendrix is an interesting case - after stagnating for a while in the traditional R&B circuit he made his breakthrough after teaming up with an Elvin Jones disciple from Ealing and a grammar school boy on bass.

Sha Na Na shows you all that?

[Josephus]

When I was 12 I bought my first record: the Grease soundtrack. One whole side of this double album (for you kids, a double album contained two 12 inch records), was entirely made up of Sha Na Na songs. That's how I first heard of them. A year later I immigrated here and saw there was a whole TV show dedicated to them. Life was good then.

[mongers]

When I was 12 I bought my first record: the Grease soundtrack. One whole side of this double album (for you kids, a double album contained two 12 inch records), was entirely made up of Sha Na Na songs. That's how I first heard of them. A year later I immigrated here and saw there was a whole TV show dedicated to them. Life was good then.

Most Excellent.

[Savonarola]

Sha Na Na shows you all that?

They're much deeper than you'd think.

The one thing that struck me about Sha Na Na is that they sing both Doo Wop and early Rock and Roll.  In the 50s the musical styles were distinct and, (to the best of my knowledge), there was no crossover; but by the late 60s the two styles had become conflated.

As an example check out Elvis's version of Rogers and Hart's Blue Moon and the much more famous The Marcel's version.

[Josquius]

Apparently the Bundeswehr's Kommando Cyber- und Informationsraum (Cyber and Information Domain Service):



has its own march. The Cyber March. Doesn't sound any like the Hell March from Red Alert, but rather reminds me of lighthearted 60/70s war movies.

[youtuyoutube]

I mean, its nice they have a song and all...but not one synth? Pff.

[Savonarola]

Syd Barrett - The Madcap Laughs (1970)

Recorded over a two year period (interrupted by some stints for psychiatric treatment) and with five different producers this one is all over the map.  Some of the songs feel underdeveloped (mostly those produced by Roger Waters and David Gilmour) especially Dark Globe, which seems to have the making of a great song - if it wasn't done in one take.  Even the more developed ones tend to sound burnt-out.  I had called Alexander "Skip" Spence "San Francisco's answer to Syd Barrett;" and, at least in the sense they both sound burnt out, this album bears a resemblance to Spence's "Oar."

There are a few tracks that I really liked, "Golden Hair" (a James Joyce poem set to music), "Octopus" (the albums sole single) and "Terrapin" are worth a listen; but overall I don't think the album works.