Bless the kind-hearted music geeks over at Pitchfork for compiling this fantastic list of music videos... YouTube, we love you!
Pitchfork Feature: 100 Awesome Music Videos
Don't think I'll get much work done today...
6.7.06
More YouTube Turntablism Goodness
Ok, ok, so I'm a sucker for high-quality turntablism - sue me! Here's C2C at the 2005 DMC team world championship, giving one hell of a performance musically and showmanwise:
So... Anyone want to argue that DJs can't be musicians? No?
So... Anyone want to argue that DJs can't be musicians? No?
Erik Mongrain - tapping virtuoso
Well, well: just when you think you just MIGHT become an adequate guitar-player after all, along comes Mr. Erik Mongrain and crushes whatever confidence one may have established:
Dammit, why can't all you talented people just keep your stupid show-off videos to yourselves? *mumble, mumble*
Hrmf.
Dammit, why can't all you talented people just keep your stupid show-off videos to yourselves? *mumble, mumble*
Hrmf.
5.7.06
Could someone initiate something like this in Oslo?
You've got to admit that the guys in Improv Everywhere stage some truly awesome - and massive - public scenes of "chaos and joy". Their Mp3 Experiment (part III) put a big smile on my face and must have made the day for the 600 participants, too.
Improv Everywhere: The Mp3 Experiment III
Check out the video and music/soundfiles a bit down on the page to get an impression of what this is all about. Big respect to the gang for pulling stuff like this off, considering the amount of work involved.
If someone wants to start an Oslo division, I'm all for it.
Improv Everywhere: The Mp3 Experiment IIICheck out the video and music/soundfiles a bit down on the page to get an impression of what this is all about. Big respect to the gang for pulling stuff like this off, considering the amount of work involved.
If someone wants to start an Oslo division, I'm all for it.
4.7.06
A tale of two Speakers
Disclaimer: This is all a fictional tale of... ehm... fiction. The names have been changed to protect my sanity. This story is in no way representative of my usual working day, and if you think it is you can go boil your head. With some carrots.
Today was another hot day at work and by lunchtime I was getting bored: very few customers had come by - they were probably all at the beach drinking piña coladas - and I felt the need to do something:
Then I remembered the new speakers I'd received that morning: I could go down to the demo-room and hook them up! Now, hooking up speakers is much more complicated and dangerous than people might think, so please remember that I'm a trained professional: don't try this at home! So, to prepare myself for this ordeal, I paid a visit to the Temple:
The Temple supplies us with the Nectar of Life AKA coffee. And it's free for all the employees! The spoils of working in musical instrument retail... So, with the Power of the Temple rushing through my veins, I sprinted down to the basement:
Of course, hooking up new stuff means unwrapping new stuff. Which means opening boxes. Lots of them. While boxes are mostly cool - apart from those little spike things that sometimes hold them together and that cut you when you try to tear them apart - boxes containing big, heavy speakers is a bit of a nuisance: you open the lid, discover that there's ANOTHER slightly smaller box inside, then try to wrestle the speaker out of the box without slipping a disc or getting a hernia. Like I said, leave this to the professionals:
Of course, inside this particularly heavy and hard-to-handle box, was another heavy and hard-to-handle box:
Speakers finally unwrapped, it was time to give them a proper inspection - all speakers are harvested from gigantic speaker-fields somewhere in China, and sometimes grow aggressive or scared during the journey over here. So the first thing I do with new speakers, is to talk to them for a bit - just general smalltalk like telling them where they are, what price tag they will carry and what music they'll be playing, that kind of stuff - before they settle in. This particular batch was very co-operative and friendly, I call them Bob, Joe and Larry:
Suddenly - I don't know if it was because I mentioned playing "Korn" at loud volumes - Joe attacked! He launched at my foot with a mean look on his face:
The pain was unbearable as I barely managed to retract my foot from Joe's vicious attack!
Luckily, I managed to escape mostly unscathed, even if my foot hurt for a long time afterwards.
I gave Joe a reprimand - you've gotta show these speakers who's boss - and even if he sulked for a bit afterwards, he was behaving nicely. After a bit of rest, I went and got the cables I needed. Cables come in two variants, wild and domesticated. The wild ones are mostly found in and around concert areas and are ferocious, unpredictable beasts: they will launch at you for no apparent reason, become tangled if you even look at them the wrong way or simply disappear from where you put them mere minutes earlier. Wild cables are for roadies and other trained specialists - in retail, we mostly work with domesticated cables. While they too can have a mean streak, they'll behave nicely for most of the time if you know how to handle them:
The cables were a little unruly - probably because of the presence of new speakers: speakers and cables are known to have territorial issues - and one of them looked particularly mischievous - it was crawling all over the place, and started trying to entangle me:
I tried talking sternly to it, but it simply wouldn't let me go! In the end, I got a hold of its head and gave it my best animal-like snarl - that seem to tell it to back off:
With the cables under control, it was now time to start connecting them to the speakers and my mixer. Of course, this is another hugely complex operation that I will not bother your tiny little minds with:
Sadly, even the greatest of minds sometimes get baffled by the wonders of modern technology:
The speaker-attack and the cable-wrestling had drained me of precious energy, and I was getting very, very frustrated:
Something had to be done to resolve this, so I retracted to contemplate on this problem for a while:
After much and almost unfathomably complex thinking, I realized what was wrong - I had an epiphany:
All out of coffee! Of course I can't do complex speaker hook-uping without massive amounts of caffeine in my blood. I ran up and got another cup, and treated myself to a proper coffee-break:
Aah, sweet, sweet nectarine! Thou blesseth my tastebuds with thy black beauty!
Re-energized by the Gifts from the Temple, I soon figured out the problem and got everything up and running smoothly. Shortly after, the sweet tones of Massive Attack filled the room: the mission was a success!
Today was another hot day at work and by lunchtime I was getting bored: very few customers had come by - they were probably all at the beach drinking piña coladas - and I felt the need to do something:
Then I remembered the new speakers I'd received that morning: I could go down to the demo-room and hook them up! Now, hooking up speakers is much more complicated and dangerous than people might think, so please remember that I'm a trained professional: don't try this at home! So, to prepare myself for this ordeal, I paid a visit to the Temple:
The Temple supplies us with the Nectar of Life AKA coffee. And it's free for all the employees! The spoils of working in musical instrument retail... So, with the Power of the Temple rushing through my veins, I sprinted down to the basement:
Of course, hooking up new stuff means unwrapping new stuff. Which means opening boxes. Lots of them. While boxes are mostly cool - apart from those little spike things that sometimes hold them together and that cut you when you try to tear them apart - boxes containing big, heavy speakers is a bit of a nuisance: you open the lid, discover that there's ANOTHER slightly smaller box inside, then try to wrestle the speaker out of the box without slipping a disc or getting a hernia. Like I said, leave this to the professionals:
Of course, inside this particularly heavy and hard-to-handle box, was another heavy and hard-to-handle box:
Speakers finally unwrapped, it was time to give them a proper inspection - all speakers are harvested from gigantic speaker-fields somewhere in China, and sometimes grow aggressive or scared during the journey over here. So the first thing I do with new speakers, is to talk to them for a bit - just general smalltalk like telling them where they are, what price tag they will carry and what music they'll be playing, that kind of stuff - before they settle in. This particular batch was very co-operative and friendly, I call them Bob, Joe and Larry:
Suddenly - I don't know if it was because I mentioned playing "Korn" at loud volumes - Joe attacked! He launched at my foot with a mean look on his face:
The pain was unbearable as I barely managed to retract my foot from Joe's vicious attack!
Luckily, I managed to escape mostly unscathed, even if my foot hurt for a long time afterwards.
I gave Joe a reprimand - you've gotta show these speakers who's boss - and even if he sulked for a bit afterwards, he was behaving nicely. After a bit of rest, I went and got the cables I needed. Cables come in two variants, wild and domesticated. The wild ones are mostly found in and around concert areas and are ferocious, unpredictable beasts: they will launch at you for no apparent reason, become tangled if you even look at them the wrong way or simply disappear from where you put them mere minutes earlier. Wild cables are for roadies and other trained specialists - in retail, we mostly work with domesticated cables. While they too can have a mean streak, they'll behave nicely for most of the time if you know how to handle them:
The cables were a little unruly - probably because of the presence of new speakers: speakers and cables are known to have territorial issues - and one of them looked particularly mischievous - it was crawling all over the place, and started trying to entangle me:
I tried talking sternly to it, but it simply wouldn't let me go! In the end, I got a hold of its head and gave it my best animal-like snarl - that seem to tell it to back off:
With the cables under control, it was now time to start connecting them to the speakers and my mixer. Of course, this is another hugely complex operation that I will not bother your tiny little minds with:
Sadly, even the greatest of minds sometimes get baffled by the wonders of modern technology:
The speaker-attack and the cable-wrestling had drained me of precious energy, and I was getting very, very frustrated:
Something had to be done to resolve this, so I retracted to contemplate on this problem for a while:
After much and almost unfathomably complex thinking, I realized what was wrong - I had an epiphany:
All out of coffee! Of course I can't do complex speaker hook-uping without massive amounts of caffeine in my blood. I ran up and got another cup, and treated myself to a proper coffee-break:
Aah, sweet, sweet nectarine! Thou blesseth my tastebuds with thy black beauty!
Re-energized by the Gifts from the Temple, I soon figured out the problem and got everything up and running smoothly. Shortly after, the sweet tones of Massive Attack filled the room: the mission was a success!
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