Today's post brought to you by "my company has blocked access to YouTube but, unfortunately for them, have also forgotten to look up what a proxy server is".
Despite the obviously ridiculous assertion that The Waitresses' "I Know What Boys Like" is "terrible" (especially given that the writer in question also uploaded test songs by the pukey likes of Yes and Atreyu)1, this is nonetheless a pretty interesting piece by Scott Smitelli of the Rochester Institute of Technology, about YouTube's new-fangled Content Identification software, which is intended to flag up audio files users have "illegally" used in videos they've uploaded.
The user took the aforementioned Waitresses song and mashed it up in over eighty different ways to see if they could get it past the 'Tube's audio fingerprinters (ending up successful with quite a lot of them.)
This may not be particularly surprising, but there's a positive correlation between your chances of getting one past the software and the amount the track ends up sounding like Merzbow.2
MP3: Merzbow — "Asagaya in Rain" 1And the erroneous description of them as a "one-hit wonder group". So what about "Christmas Wrapping", then, eh? EH? 2This is the second post this month in which i have displayed an animated gif of a shifting waveform, and both of them have also mentioned Merzbow. Hard to say if this is coincidence, and if so, if it's benevolent or sinister. Comment if you've an answer.
Sparks' new single is about how the object of the singer's affections won't look twice at him because, for her, at least, his personal qualities don't hold a candle to those of smarmy indie onanist Morrissey. Rather excellently, they have titled this song "Lighten Up, Morrissey".
Furthermore, it comes with a neat video wherein a troupe of dancers do their "Let Forever Be"/"Come to Daddy"–esque thing with the self-satisfied Salford saddo's visage superimposed over their own.1
i'm sorry, but i have to dwell on that one a bit. The guy doesn't match up to Morrissey? He must be pretty damn useless. But i suppose there are enough dubious-taste-possessing indie girls out there to make it a feasible situation.
Such a Morrissey fixation in a woman wouldn't be as much of a relationship dealbreaker as, say, fundamentalist religious tendencies or enjoying the radio programmes of Chris Moyles, but it can't be far behind. Life Just Bounces' advice would be: sever, then find yourself a hot young Faith No More fan instead!2
1 It's just possible this isn't the real Morrissey's face. 2 It's just possible this isn't the real video for "Something for the Girl with Everything".
My pal Andy from Out From Animals wanted to demonstrate to me the peculiar genius of Oingo Boingo, so he remastered "Little Girls", the opening track from their first album Only A Lad, and to his ears their best song.
Says Andy:
I remastered this myself as the original song didn't have enough kick.
It's Danny Elfman's band and this song is from 1980. He also did the voice for Jack Skeleton and wrote all the songs for A Nightmare Before Christmas. So just imagine Jack Skeleton singing about being a paedophile 80s style!
About being a whatnow? Yes, indeed... quoth Allmusic:
It's probably a good thing that this particular Oingo Boingo collection never reached too high a level of prominence, though, because the lyrical content of Only a Lad could have landed them in serious hot water. Although never vulgar, the album brazenly shuffles through taboos without compunction, writing from a pedophile's point of view in "Little Girls," not-so-clandestinely discussing masturbation in "Nasty Habits," and generally adopting a socially whimsical and irreverent attitude.
(They've also got one called "Capitalism", a kind of Republican swipe at the same collegiate anarchist types targetted on the DKs' "Holiday in Cambodia" (and named one of National Review's 50 greatest conservative rock songs), which includes damningly hilarious lines like "I'm so tired of hearing you whine / about the revolution / bringin' down the rich / When was the last time you dug a ditch, baby!" and "You’re just a middle class, socialist brat / from a suburban family and you never really had to work / and you tell me that we've got to get back / to the struggling masses (whoever they are) / You talk, talk, talk about suffering and pain / Your mouth is bigger than your entire brain", sentiments which in certain cultural sectors are undoubtedly more taboo than either public masturbation or lusting after minors.)
i'd actually been eager to check out Oingo Boingo for a while anyway, and had coincidentally been listening to Only A Lad after my curiosity was finally piqued enough by the discovery on Spodify of last year's compilation oddity Nightmare Revisited, a cover album of the entire Nightmare Before Christmas soundtrack featuring a couple of re-recordings by Mr Elfman himself. Only A Lad's most noticeable parallel for me was the recurring hint of a US slant on what Cardiacs were doing in the late-70s/early-80s.
It certainly makes sense that OB were "a semi-theatrical music/comedy troupe" before they were a band, performing everything from Cab Calloway covers to Russian ballet music to Balinese gamelan instrumentals, sometimes with up to 15 band members handling 30 instruments, some of which were hand-built; and the New Wave and ska leanings have got some parallels to the likes of "In a City Lining" or "The Breakfast Line" off A Little Man and A House and the Whole World Window, especially when you factor in the turn-on-a-sixpence time changes and excursions into modern classical and jazz territories. By way of comparison (as if we really need any excuses to throw up a Cardiacs video on here), here's the stone-cold classic "R.E.S.".
Oh, and speaking (tangentially) of things not having enough kick, does anyone else think The Loudness War would be a great name for a band? Their sound would be somewhere between Black Flag in their sludgy metal phase and Merzbow maybe.
i pretty much wholly forgot how great this band actually were.
Glimmering and everything another skull You said it was dangerous Found out the place where youre going Follow me down the path I take your hopes I promise you this A dying cold world but gold Shimmering gold
Come momma now tell me the story Only laughing About our gilded wasteland Devoured torn into pieces Come now we shine Small things ever calling out your name You hear some other time unchained alive A world undefined
