sometimes it’s worth checking out those recommendations on YouTube. that’s how i discovered The Like, my latest favorite band. to say that they pay tribute to the 60s girl groups just doesn’t do them justice. it’s more like they took the concept and amped it up to a hyper level of surreal perfection in every detail.
the hair, the clothes, the whole look — i mean, check out these dresses!
and then the music!! they’ve just nailed the harmonies, not to mention the drums and keyboards… about 20 seconds into “He’s Not A Boy” i knew i was in love with these girls.
i couldn’t find an official video for “Trouble in Paradise”, which is too bad, cuz it was the keyboard break in this song (at about 1:50) that moved my hand to my mouse to buy the whole album Release Me on iTunes. i did find this live version, but you can’t hear the keyboards quite as well as in the studio recording.
still, the live vid shows that they’re real musicians who know how to play their instruments and are not just some studio creation. (plus, i love the Vox amp and Z’s “Z” guitar!)
alas, that video may be as close as i’m ever going to get to seeing them live. a post on their facebook page dated May 23, 2011 says “The Like have cancelled all their upcoming shows, and the band is currently on an indefinite hiatus. There is no further statement from the band at this time.”
i so wish i’d heard them earlier (Release Me came out in 2010). it’s a shame, cuz these girls are great. maybe if we inundate them with messages begging them to return…
join us NOW (1p – ???) at 3160, 3160 North Clark St., Chicago, for a special New Years Eve Obscuria, featuring the “Best of Obscuria 2011″ — or use yer savvy interwebz search skilz to find the songs listed below.
Je m’en vais — The Limiñanas
Dark Stuff — A Lull
Optimist — Zoe Keating
Mutual Friend — Wire
Lost and Found — Katie Herzig
Saturday Night Special — Fad Gadget
Mark Of The Beast — Curtis Evans & Our Friends Electric
Gary Gilmore’s Eyes — Dean Schlabowske
Small Spies — Warm Ones
The Next Messiah — Jenny Lewis w/ Zooey Deschanel
It’s a lie — FLiP
Fall To Pieces — Velcro Lewis Group
Map Ref. 41°N 93°W — Wire
Vegas Moon – Ami Saraiya & The Outcome
Je suis une go-go girl — The Limiñanas
Jesus Came To My Birthday Party — The Middle East
Usual Suspects — Ha Ha Tonka
Barton Hollow — The Civil Wars
The Hangman’s Song — Pine Valley Cosmonauts W/ Puerto Muerto
Middle Cyclone — Neko Case
Learning Too Slow — Rachel Ries
Darling Girl — Michele McGuire
Already in Love — Exene Cervenka
Saline — Dick Prall
Never Thought I Would — Eddie Spaghetti
11-11 — Film School
Down Underground — The Limiñanas
Swallow It — Fad Gadget
Situation — Yaz
The Part You Play — Baby Teeth
This Tornado Loves You — Neko Case
She’s Not There — Neko Case with Nick Cave
I’m Your Man — Nick Cave
Lay Lady Lay — Ministry
Crying Blood — VV Brown
Without You (Piano Demo) — Harry Nilsson
I know you — CROSSRECORD
Oops I Did It Again — Richard Thompson
actually, 2011 was a GREAT year for music. unfortunately, you probably didn’t get to hear most of the really good stuff. that’s what Obscuria is about: turning you on to great music you wouldn’t know about otherwise.
my full “Best of Obscuria 2011″ mix is 38 songs, but for this list i limited myself to a handful of songs that were actually released in 2011. there are more i could have easily included, but hey, you gotta make choices…
A Lull “Dark Stuff”
i discovered this beauty while working on my selections for Chicago Mixtape.
The Civil Wars “Barton Hollow”
since i seem to hear it on the radio all the time now, maybe this one’s not so obscure anymore. but it was when i first heard it on a “filmspotting” podcast.
Ha Ha Tonka “Usual Suspects”
Bloodshot Records is everything you want a record label to be, and frequently offer free downloads. i found this on their Fall 2011 Sampler, a simply amazing collection of excellent music.
The Limiñanas “Down Underground”
of course, i had to include The Limiñanas, but had a tough time choosing which song. eventually, i realized it really had to be this one (even tho i guess it technically came out in 2010…)
Exene Cervenka, “Already In Love”
if you don’t already know who Exene Cervenka is… well, there’s Google. use it. this gem was also on Bloodshot’s Fall Sampler.
The Middle East – “Jesus Came To My Birthday Party”
i can’t even explain why i love this song so much. some songs just hit ya that way…unfortunately, the band broke up a few months ago. this video is one of the two winners of a contest they held; you can see the other winner and finalists at http://genero.tv/themiddleeast/
to hear my full “Best of Obscuria 2011″ mix, join us early this afternoon (12/31) for a special New Years Eve Obscuria at 3160, 3160 North Clark St., Chicago. (yeah, we know you got plans for later tonight. that’s why Obscuria is in the afternoon…)
[UPDATE (long overdue...): i won the contest!! thanks for your help and i hope you're enjoying the great tunes you're getting from Chicago Mixtape. at this point, the plan is that i'll be doing the mixtape for the week of Thanksgiving, which will nicely coincide with the first return show of The Cut-Outs on Saturday, Nov 26 at Live Wire. for more info visit my main blog Perpetual Distraction and/or the band's blog The Return of The Cut-Outs.]
i need your help.
and you’re gonna get a whole bunch of great music for free in return.
in my first post on this blog, i raved about Chicago Mixtape.
i love em. srsly.
every monday i get an email with a link to download a bunch of mp3′s by local Chicago artists. all of it is good, tho some i like better than others, of course.
and some are absolutely amazing and among my favorite songs ever.
so i have and do recommend it already.
but now, they’ve got a little contest going, with prizes for referring people to sign up for the service.
thanks to a bunch of people who’ve already signed up, i’ve won all the prizes i can, except for the Grand Prize, which is to select the bands for an upcoming mixtape, and goes to the person with the most referrals. apparently, i’m only a few sign-ups away from being in the lead, so every additional person definitely makes a difference.
it’s not a big deal, of course, but winning that prize would be kinda cool.
mostly, i’m trying to turn you on to what i think is one of the coolest things on the internet: Chicago Mixtape.
so… help me out, k?
signing up is easy and free.
just click on this link Chicago Mixtape (so i get credit)
then type your email address where it says: “Your Email Goes Here” and click “Go”
that’s it. then just watch your inbox for great free music.
the contest ends at midnight wednesday (7/6/11), so don’t wait.
#8in8′s Nighty Night doesn’t re-define the album;
it UN-defines it.
as artists, we can do absolutely anything we can think of…
maybe we even have a responsibility to do so.
the internet expands those possibilities exponentially.
the internet is about connecting, interacting, collaborating.
the #8in8 project is a delightful, wonderful example of this.
8in8 now has its own website (http://eightineight.com/) primarily as a place to store and to share the art submitted by fans.
it’s turned out to be SO much more than what i expected, and i’m sure that even Amanda had no idea what this would develop and grow into.
this thing just keeps going and going and going…
for those of us fortunate enough to be in on it from the beginning, from the webcast, we’ve been able to watch the unfolding of a glorious and unexpected explosion of interactive creativity.
it started as a lark, an experiment.
4 people locked in a studio, creating an album from scratch, live webcasting the whole process.
the album itself, the 6 songs… it’s good music.
fun, quirky… both deep and frivolous, usually in the same song.
the rough edges show,
but they only enhance the beauty of this truly unique project.
if it had stopped there, it would have been an amazing, wonderful piece of work.
but it didn’t stop there…
fans have been making videos with the songs and posting them on youtube, mostly shared thru twitter with the #8in8 hashtag. (Amanda set a deadline of Sunday, May 1, for the “Fast Videos”, but i suspect we’ll keep on seeing more anyway, as well as other #8in8 related projects…)
some of these videos are just amazing. hilarious.
i’m not going to try to link you to all or even most of them.
if you’re interested, do a twitter search on #8in8: you’ll find them.
but to give you a taste, i’ll share 3 of my favorites. so far…
they’re all for the same song: “The Problem With Saints”.
it’s not my favorite Nighty Night song, but i like it.
wonderful to hear Neil Gaiman “singing”… it actually fits the song quite well.
and the lyrics definitely offer some intriguing and graphic possibilities for videos…
those familiar with Gaiman’s Sandman series will appreciate the appearance of Death in this one…
and then there’s this one, for “Before The Origami”…
about which anything i would say would seem to be hyperbole… but it’s not.
i feel that the #8in8 project is a taste of what we have in store for us in the future, as we discover the internet’s role in Art: artists not only interacting with their audiences, but actually collaborating. interactive involvement.
we will see artforms develop that we haven’t even imagined yet….
will they be like #8in8??
no, of course not.
that was just the way that this one project worked.
the whole point was that they were creating music in a way that no one had done before. and yet it was also created JUST like all music has been since the first drummer banged 2 rocks together…
i’m tempted to suggest that we start using the #8in8 moniker as a term for a new art movement. an #8in8 project would be one that invites the fans to actively collaborate on the work: exactly what that means, and how it would work, will be up to the initiating artists and their audiences.
let’s have more projects like #8in8.
in other words. let’s have more projects that are completely different….
[you may want to read my previous post, written BEFORE the event took place.]
you can hear the results of Amanda Palmer’s ReThink Music project here: Nighty Night by 8 In 8
you can listen for free, or you can download the album for a minimum donation of $1. for the first two weeks, the money is donated to Berklee City Music Boston, a program providing kids with an opportunity to explore their musical potential.
well, they pulled it off. sort of…
it was supposed to be 8 songs in hours (hence the twitter hashtag #8in8),
but ended up being 6 songs in 12 hours.
but honestly… awesome.
epic.
having watched most of the webcast, listened to the album, seen the discussion, i am exploding with ideas, so much i want to say about it…
never gonna get it all down.
i like the whole album. not great songs, i suppose, but good.
“One Tiny Thing” is by far my favorite. just LOVE it.
(there’s really no need for me to do an actual review, is there? you can just go ahead and listen to the thing. for FREE.)
i really didn’t expect to watch the whole 8 hours of the webcast, and i didn’t,
but i did watch a whole lot more than i planned to.
most of it actually. had to tear myself away and force myself to take a break.
watching them in the process of writing and creating and recording was…
well, boring actually. much of the time.
but that is NOT a criticism.
much of creating anything IS boring to anyone not actively involved in the process, and sometimes to the artist as well, quite frankly.
and we got to see that, and it was still as interesting as hell.
as Neil said in the discussion, it helped to demystify the artistic process.
apparently, they’re planning to edit the footage from the webcast and make that available too, so if you missed the webcast, you’ll get to see some of it.
i really hope they don’t cut out ALL of the boring bits.
this project has now thoroughly engaged me for 3 days.
monday, of course, was the webcast.
tuesday, i downloaded the album and listened to it.
and apparently, they performed 4 of the songs at the conference later tuesday and livecast that as well. but i missed that cuz i went to bed early…
today, wednesday, i read Amanda’s blog and watched the panel discussion.
and thru it all, there was twitter… oh my, was there twitter.
during the webcast, #8in8 was the #5 trending topic in the world.
it’s not over yet… they’ve released Nighty Night under a Creative Commons license and so are encouraging fans to create videos, use the songs in stage productions, do covers… whatever they can think of. i’m sure Amanda will be sharing some of these projects with us as time goes on.
the way they have shared so much of this creation with us, including our collective input, is just incredible and would not have been even near possible just a few years ago.
BUT — as Amanda and the others have repeatedly pointed out, this is NOT a recommendation of how music “should” be done, or a suggestion of a model that they expect others to follow. it was simply the way they chose to do THIS project.
but it does open up our minds to the new possibilities and opportunities that we can all explore using our new tools and toys, both in creation and in distribution.
the album? i’ll agree with Damian and give it a B minus.
(except for “One Tiny Thing” — i give that one an A.)
the project itself? i’ll give that an A+++.
or even higher…
awesome. engaging. exciting.
epic.
i’ll end this blog the way i started the previous one:
Amanda Palmer is my hero.
no, wait…
Amanda Fucking Palmer is my fucking hero.
UPDATES:
the first fan video for “Because The Origami”:
Tuesday’s performance of “One Tiny Thing”
(video of the whole show is on Palmer’s blog)
starting at 4pm (ET) tonight, she and 2 other musicians (Ben Folds, Damian Kulash) and a writer (Neil Gaiman, also her husband) are going to lock themselves in a studio for 8 hours to write and record an album’s worth of songs. from scratch.
the music that results may be great, mediocre or abysmal. who knows?
the whole thing could be a massive trainwreck. or it could be brilliant.
but it is something new, using the internet in completely innovative and daring ways to create and distribute art.
and that always intrigues and excites me.
i won’t get home from work early enough to see the beginning of this event, but i definitely plan on watching quite a bit of it.
i have more to say about Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman, and the myriad ways they are exploring, using and playing with this new toy we call the internet, but those ideas will have to wait for another time. for now, i wanted to make sure i told you about this event BEFORE it happened so that we can be a part of it.
