July 18, 2008
Singing Saturday Came Early
With the web launch of the new project from Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly, Serenity... that guy) -- Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog!!!!
Starring Neil Patrick Harris (our favorite -- and out -- former child-doctor), Felicia Day (she most recently of the awesome web series The Guild, and Nathan Fillion (...dreamy). The series follows the efforts of Dr. Horrible (Harris) to get into the Evil League of Evil and win the love of Penny (Day), while superhero Captain Hammer (Fillion) tries to prevent both. And there's singing.
It is truly awesome. Click on the picture or the text link. Do it now. Watch the first two acts (Act III will be released on Saturday the 19th). But be aware that all three acts will be taken down on the 20th. After that they'll be available through iTunes for a fee per Act.
So watch them now for free, while you can, my cheap cheap friends. I think they're great, and I can't wait to see how the iTunes downloads do, commercially. I expect they'll do very well.
Posted by reparent at 2:31 PM | Comments (0)
March 8, 2008
Singing Saturday -- Spektor Spektakular
For this installment of Singing Saturday I bring you Soviet Moscow-born singer-songwriter Regina Spektor, who now lives in Brooklyn. (Read her biography -- it's fascinating.)
I don't remember who first turned me on to Spektor, but I rushed right over to the iTunes store and downloaded "Ode to Divorce." A few weeks later, another Spektor song, "Fidelity," was the iTunes free song of the week. If you haven't checked her out, do so. Some people will draw an immediate comparison with Tori Amos. I see and hear that, but though I like Amos, I like Spektor better. Not sure why, yet.
Here's my favorite Spektor song so far: "Fidelity":
This is the other song I've had in my playlists for a little while now, "Ode to Divorce":
And she's got a new video out, "Better":
There are two other music videos at Spektor's YouTube page, but the one I recommend the most highly is "Samson," a strangely sweet, slightly bewildering retelling of the old story.
Despite insistences by the music industry (boo, hiss, a plague upon their houses) that making music available online discourages people from buying music, I want to run right out and grab her album. And I wouldn't know about her, to know that I want to buy her album, if the videos weren't out there. And if I couldn't watch them compulsively, as I do. There's a lot of crap out there. Spektor ain't that. She deserves our support. I can't wait to see what she does next.
Posted by reparent at 3:07 PM | Comments (1)
November 17, 2007
Singing Saturday: The Sequel
This week's Singing Saturday comes all the way from the year 1938! The Slacktivist, Fred Clark, spotted a video of Sister Rosetta Tharpe performing "Up Above My Head" and felt the need to pass it on.
After I watched it, I was convinced, too. This is some amazing stuff.
Fred notes the guitar solo -- Sister Rosetta rocked hard, and she rocked hard waaaaaaaaay ahead of her time. Just awesome.
When I saw the video, I was immediately reminded of one of the iTunes free weekly downloads from a month or so ago: The Noisettes' song "Sister Rosetta (Catch the Spirit)." I think it's a lot of fun, even if it is full of very British slang. (You can read the lyrics here.)
Enjoy. And thank you, Sister Rosetta, for helping us all to catch the spirit on this swinging Singing Saturday. (I just wish that the choir behind her would have come in on one of the verses! Think about how incredible that would have been!)
Posted by reparent at 6:05 PM | Comments (0)
November 3, 2007
It's Singing Saturday!
As promised, here's a post. On Saturday! But it's not just any Saturday... it's SINGING SATURDAY!
But first, a few observations.
- A while back, David noted on his blog, Someone In A Tree, that "There is something primal and therapeutic about letting that sound just rumble up through the body and out into the world. No matter how depressed or lonely or negative I'm feeling, if I start to sing it makes me feel better." I used to sing. A lot. I was in choir and the pop vocal group in high school (yes, I was a choir geek), and then I completed almost all of a BFA in Music Education with a vocal concentration. I was a singing fool. But that was a long time ago, and now I really don't sing at all. Not even to myself. I often wonder what it would be like (and what it would sound like if I just cut loose and belted something out. Probably not pretty, at this point. Sigh.
- Big Bear Butt Blogger Karthas (it's a World of Warcraft Druid thing... and you have a filthy mind!) notes that November is NaBloPoMo, or National Blog Posting Month, for the acronymically-challenged. (Yes, it's also NaNoWriMo, but there ain't no way in hell I'm writing a novel this month.) I can, however, try to post a post each day for the rest of November. (The previous November days don't count because I didn't know about NaBloPoMo.) If you're in to that sort of thing, here's my profile on the NaBloPoMo site. I'm not sure I'm going to do anything with it, as I really don't like the social sites (I know, big surprise), but who can tell what the future will bring? Perhaps I will use this site to torment my blogging friends. Yes, Sster, I'm looking at you!
- So here we go!
First up on SINGING SATURDAY is a lovely rendition of the Flame Wreath chant in a light madrigal style. (You don't need to know anything about Flame Wreath to enjoy this, but I'll explain after the clip.) And for those of you who are now considering skipping this because you a) don't know anything about this "flame wreath" thing; or b) are worried that not knowing anything will dampen your enjoyment, I say: Don't be silly! It's Singing Saturday, so watch the clip and enjoy the pretty harmonies!
For those of you who care, here's what's going on in that chant. Flame Wreath is a spell that one of the big monsters in World of Warcraft casts at players when they try to kill him. It creates a wreath of flame around each of the players in range of the monster, and as long as all of the players in the wreath stand perfectly still, it's not much of a problem. However, if anyone moves through the wreath itself (to run to safety or to attack the monster, all of the players in the wreath get some massive hurt put on them. Hence the raid (the group of players raiding the dungeon) blows up. But even not knowing that, it's nice to hear geeky guys doing neat stuff with harmony.
Next up is one of my guilty cinematic and aural pleasures -- Mortal Kombat. Except that it's Singing Saturday, so you know it'll be fun! (Same rule applies -- watch at least the first minute or so of the clip!)
Now, if you're not familiar with the theme from Mortal Kombat, you're in luck. I'm experimenting with embeddable MP3 players on the blog, so here's the original theme for your entertainment and education!
I think what I like best about these two (and yes, I confess that I rarely make it all the way through the DeCadence video (even though their name is quite clever, that's not quite enough to make up for the fact that a'capella songs shine most brightly when they are able to highlight variation, while techno is quite repetitive) is that these are both examples of really surprising examples of the de-technologizing of essentially technological experiences. That is, it takes no mechanical or digital technology at all to sing, but going up against the Shade of Aran's flame wreath in Warcraft's Karazahn Tower is impossible without a whole mess of technology. Same for the Utah Saints' techno tune, which is the theme to a highly special-effects-dependant movie which is itself based on a series of computer video games.
And, of course, even though these are both de-technologized adaptations, they were both captured by digital cameras, encoded for digital playback, and then uploaded to YouTube. That is, you could call both of these clips examples of technology displaying technology capturing de-technologizations depicting technology-based entertainments. Pretty cool for a Singing Saturday, n'est pas?
Posted by reparent at 3:01 PM | Comments (1)