Rediscovering Surfing
A link from the old standby Kottke.org (Congratulations on your new little one, Baby 2.0) led me to a really cool link about cassette tapes molded to skeletal forms, a la the death of analog media. Kottke.org is currently getting an assist from Ainsley Drew, of the Jerkethic.com persuasion, while caring for his newborn.
A somewhat random link buried at the end of one of many darkly comic posts on Jerkethic sent me to a video for The Toaster’s “Don’t let the bastards grind you down“, which was characteristically upbeat and used in the pilot episode of the animated series Mission Hill, according to one of the commenters. This show will always be wed in my brain to one night in college spent on the couch with a cute girl I was pre-dating, staying up till dawn watching whatever was on, including but not limited to Mission Hill (The title soundtrack was an instrumental of Cake’s Italian Leather Sofa), the knife show (when you need the 250 pc. American Heroes Hologram Embossed Knife Collection and bonus authentic barbarian dragonslayer sword at 4 a.m.), and assorted other horrible (except for Mission Hill) late night tv.
Anyways…the Cake connection led me to wikipedia to verify their collaboration, revealing that they’re frequently played on NPR, including their song “stickshifts and safety belts” on The Splendid Table. While scanning NPR earlier today, I heard a piano cover from Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, which sounded like an interesting challenge for my newly revived keyboard. Tracking down piano covers of their songs landed me at vkgoeswild’s page, who plays the meanest (and probably only) piano covers of groups like Metallica, Iron Maiden, and Nine Inch Nails that you will ever hear.
A parallel search for piano covers (and hence, sheet music) let to Ben Folds, who collaborated with Julia Nunes, a talented and creative ukulele player who went from posting videos on youtube to winning the Bushman international ukulele competition to making her own CDs, touring in multiple countries, and playing at this year’s Bonnaroo. She does a lot of self-harmonizing by recording multiple tracks and playing all the “instruments” separately, and then mixing all of the parts together a la the recently departed Les Paul. Interestingly enough, she’s collaborating with another band, Pomplamoose (french for “grapefruit”), which uses the same technique to create multi-layered two-person auditory deliciousness. Check out Beat the Horse, or their indie-licious cover of Beyonce’s Single Ladies. Seems they’ve got some potential.
That’s all for now, it’s 1:30 in the morning, and as old as it makes me sound, I’m going to feel it in the morning. Gute nacht, Leser.