OK, Go ahead and embed

Hadn't intended this to become an OK Go fansite, but oh well. When I got wind of this last week, two days after they'd posted it, there had already been millions of views. And why the hell not?

Now, apart from the fun of the Rube Goldberg mechanism involved, the most significant to note about this video is that it's embedded in this post. As noted in the post about the marching band video for this song, the group's label (EMI) had forbid them from making their videos embeddable (a fun word to say over and over and over). Why? Because YouTube has yet to figure out a way to track embedded videos and EMI wanted to make sure it was squeezing all the sugar they could out of Google (YouTube's parent). The fact that fewer people would see it or write about it or eventually buy it apparently didn't occur to them.

All if took to change EMI's hivemind, apparently, was the screeching of millions fans and an op-ed in the NYTimes by frontman Damian Kulash. Maybe we should turn these kids loose on the healthcare debate.

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Update: OK Go leaves EMI 3/10/2010.

Also: NPR is streaming a pair of tracks from the new album (and has been since January).

2010: This Too Shall Pass

Where does the time go, he asked rhetorically. Belated New Years greeting, TNLD faithful.

We kick off another year of sporadic posting with something new from TNLD favorites OK Go. (Who told you this was a jazz blog?) Like most of their videos, it's a tasty slice of joy.

OK Go - This Too Shall Pass from OK Go on Vimeo.

Recommended reading (before or after viewing, because it's your choice) is this fascinating um, essay by lead singer Damien on why fans can no longer embed the group's YouTube videos.

We’re stuck between two worlds: the world of ten years ago, where music was privately owned in discreet little chunks (CDs), and a new one that seems to be emerging, where music is universally publicly accessible. The thing is, only one of these worlds has a (somewhat) stable system in place for funding music and all of its associated nuts-and-bolts logistics, and, even if it were possible, none of us would willingly return to that world. Aside from the smug assholes who ran labels, who’d want a system where a handful of corporate overlords shove crap down our throats? All the same, if music is going to be more than a hobby, someone, literally, has to pay the piper.

OK, 2010, here we go!

Viddie: September

Earlier this month I realized that I'd let the entire month of September go by without blasting Earth Wind and Fire's "September," which is just wrong (and a sign of how little I listen to commercial radio these days, even in the car). So there was something cosmically satisfying in the fact that a college friend of mine posted the video above on Facebook.

Who is Pamplamoose? Hell if I know. The Bay Area twosome have a dedicated following on the hipsternet and have posted similarly delightful light-handed covers (Single Ladies, Mrs. Robinson, for example) on their YouTube channel, along with songs of their own. On his music blog Pampelmoose, Dave Allen, the bass player for Gang of Four says:

Artists like Pomplamoose who embrace the social web are not a subset of savvy marketers, they are disrupters and re-purposers who break the record companies business models. This is a good thing.

All of which seems a little ponderous to contemplate on a drizzly Friday. One thing I'm sure of is that one mark of good cover is that it reminds you of what was great about the original (like when EWF covered the Beatle's "Got To Get You Into My Life," for example). And adding a dancing granny never hurts.

So enjoy the video. And while you're at it, enjoy the original.

Viddie: Mission Impossible Cumbia

Happy Friday, one and all.

With 80 degree temperatures and sunshine in the Chicago forecast, it will be hard to stay at the desk long today. I hope to get outside and gain a fresh perspective on... something. Does it really matter what?

In that spirit, I pass along the homemade viddie above from Denton's gift to the world, with a reminder that the mission need not be impossible at all.

Bonus points to anyone who can confirm or deny the band's now-legendary show at Kansas City's Grand Emporium in the 1980s, during which they led the audience across Main Street and into the Pink Garter strip club. Were you there? Was your cousin? Spill it.

Extra supreme bonus points to the person who creates a wiki page for the aforementioned venue.

And now, please excuse me while I kiss the sky.

Viddie: Andy Scott's Fishin

Newly minted whimsy by Andy Cahill to accompany the tune "Fishin'" from Andy Scott's "Don't Tempt Fate."

And while we're on the subject, you can read my ambivalent review of the album.

More info here:

andyjazz.com

myspace.com/andyscottjazz

Viddie: Semi-Simple Variations (TBP)

Finally, a notable jazz video less than 40 years old. No doubt it took a lot of arm twisting to get superlative geek jazzers The Bad Plus to play along in this video accompaniment to their recording of modernist composer Milton Babbitt's "Semi-Simple Variations." The track is from TBP's album "For All I Care" out last month on Concord.



Tip: Do the Math, The Bad Plus Blog, which has stills from the shoot and, as if to justify the peripatetic eye-candy, an essay by pianist Ethan Iverson on the blending of jazz and classic forms. (They also express the hope that Babbitt gets a chance to see the video before his 92nd birthday in May. I'm sure Rush would also appreciate a similar treatment for TBP's cover of Tom Sawyer.)

More on Babbitt (TNLD's own justification for the aforementioned leggy goodness, you ask? Uh huh.): AN NPR interview with the "difficult" composer

What it's all about

With so much in such disorder these day, this video from Denton's own Brave Combo helps to keep everything in perspective.

Oh, Bob...

A couple weeks back I downloaded the song "Dreaming of You" from Bob Dylan's webdongle (and for a while yet you can, too). It's an unreleased track from 1997 (and will soon be part of Tell Tale Signs, Volume 8 in Dylan's "bootleg" series). The song is all you could hope for from a genius at what from this angle appears to be the onset of his winter years. And may it be a long, healthy and productive winter.

Now word reaches these parts that Amazon has "an exclusive video" of the song. My advice: stick with the download. Sure, it was put together by the label to pimp the album, but who would have predicted that something that features both Bob Dylan and Harry Dean Stanton could feel like such an obvious tool?

Of course, any Dylan video is going to have trouble clearing the long shadow of this:


Failing that I'd even prefer a baldfaced knockoff:

Viddie: Sugarbaby

More high-minded posts to come this week, but for now something relatively new (two weeks), low down and exuberantly trashy from the kids at Morningwood.



There's also a NSFW version for fans of puppet sex and drug abuse. You know who you are.

I'm OK, They're OK Go

OK Go has taken a second pass at a video Do What You Want. And why not?

The first video for the song was pleasant enough, but the camera trick made me a little nauseous. The Wallpaper Version is clearly a descendant of Peter Gabriel's Sledgehammer video with its happy lunacy.

Is it as good as OK Go on Treadmills? Who cares?