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".
Logan Walters is an American designer/illustrator, and like most right-thinking people, he loves Wu-Tang and Blue Note Records. But being one of those finickity visual/aesthetic types, he has some issues with Wu-Tang sleeve design. Explains Logan:
A little while ago I put a bunch of Wu-Tang (both group and solo) albums on my computer. 21 of them, in fact. I inherited some mild OCD from my mom, and as anyone who has seen my iTunes can attest to, it manifests itself in weird ways. I need to have decent-quality album art for every album on my computer, which currently equals over 90 gigs. The problem was that almost all of the Wu-Tang album art was horrible (ODB's two albums being the only real exceptions) -- no offense to the original designers, but as iconic as they might be they're looking pretty dated these days.
So what does an enterprising and mildly OCD designer/illustrator do about such a thorny problem? Why, he remakes the covers in question in the style of Blue Note covers, of course!
Not sure i agree entirely with Logan's contention about the original covers looking dated and horrible – the likes of ...36 Chambers still resonate with the weird, outlandish sense of danger you got on first viewing, ...Cuban Linx is an iconic classic, and even the later likes of GZA's Beneath the Surface have their own quiet charm.
But there's no denying the class that those old Reid Miles covers drip with, nor the ace hat-tips Walters deploys in the likes of his Return to the 36 Chambers sleeve (above, and fantastic whether you rate the original cover or not). Some of the more uninspiring Wu covers such as Forever (above) are improvements, and it doesn't seem like it'll be hard for Logan to improve on the frankly pretty rubbish likes of Tical 2000: Judgement Day (incidentally the next one on his hitlist, him being up to Cappa's The Pillage as i write).
Also, for some odd reason the redesign of Ghost's Ironman puts me in mind more than anything of Drowningman's Still Loves You (and therefore the Hydra Head aesthetic) than anything else, but then again, maybe Aaron Turner's a Blue Note fan too.
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.
btw i always glance at that picture of you on your blog and think you are an old lady okay sorry i dont mean this disparagingly but like its just the truth
I can actually kind of see his point, a bit. But i quite like this now.
A little late, but i was in Southern France on a steam-powered mobile when it came out - but some more awesome shenanigans here involving Joe from gay against you/Germlin1/Ben Butler & Mouse Pad. It is under this last alias that this one's going to be released, and with any luck it's coming out on tigerbass (a subsidiary of the redoubtable tigerbeat6) later in the year. Guest vocals are from the excellently-named The Niallist.
For the bonus round, a remix of same by tigerbass dwellers and "acid-electro fiends" Dolby Anol, composed of one member of Danananananananaykroyd (got no idea when to stop with that word) and one louche-yet-ever-so-slightly-sinister synth wunderkind, in the form of Graham Peel, who once played a entire keyboard solo for an old group of ours while standing on one leg, with one of his arms under his leg as if for emphasis, the odd lad.
A track composed by the Desert Island Dicks in memory of their late friend Ingus Lovecharts (“Wingus”), taken from this world in the year of our Lord 2009, upon the day of April 20th, a Monday, for reasons still never disclosed.
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.)
