Check out this awesomeness... Paste magazine is offering "pay what you want*" one-year subscriptions. If you're interested, follow this link A.S.A.P. because I don't know how long this promotion will last.
*Minimum price is $1.00 (and the normal subscription rate is $19.95, so I doubt you'll want to pay more than that) -- have a credit card handy to complete your order.
Also, if by the divine hand of fate you already have a subscription to Paste, the free-ness works for one-year renewals as well.
When I first heard this song on the radio, I couldn't get it outta my brain. I wanted to look them up, find out the name of the song and the band, but kept forgetting - not the lyrics, just looking up the lyrics in hope of reverse engineering the identity of my new guilty pleasure. But, thankfully, Tom saved me the trouble by reading my mind instead, presenting to me the fabulous new album Them vs You vs Me by Finger Eleven, whose infectious first single I present to you via the glory and magic of youtubery!
One of my favorite scenes from The Royal Tenenbaums reenacted by one of my favorite muppets, Kermit the Frog. Watch as, according to BestWeekEver.tv, which clued me in to this precious gem of puppetry, "Kermee stares at his own reflection, eyes never blinking, staring into the emptiness of life’s eternal puppetry."
Of course, this isn't the great green one's first dalliance with depressing lyrics...
Lisa, Kristen, Crystal & Myself caught the THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS concert at Freebird Live this past Friday (3/14/08). The opening band was crap, but the Giants, as always, put on a great show. And after one particular number that would have made the mildest epileptic foam at the mouth and swallow their own tongue, John & John were even kind enough to sympathize with our concert-goers plight... standing on the 2nd floor balcony right next to the disco ball suspended from a light stand turned out to be a really bad piece of real estate ~ I'm still seeing stars*!
* in all actuality these are probably just dying brain cells and not actual stars
Did you guys know that Mah Nà Mah Nà (the lyrics of which contain no actual words, just a lot of nonsensical words resembling scat singing) was written by Piero Umiliani and debuted as part of the soundtrack for the 1968 Italian softcore pornography movie "Svezia Inferno e Paradiso" (Sweden, Heaven and Hell). This pseudo-documentary about wild sexual activity and other behavior in Sweden featured Mah Nà Mah Nà playing in the background of a sauna scene!
The song became more widely known from its renditions by The Muppets. On November 30, 1969, Mahna Mahna was performed on the The Ed Sullivan Show by a Muppet also known as Mahna Mahna (crazy bearded guy in the dark glasses), and his backup singers the Snowths (pink creatures with crazy drag queen eyelashes).
Enjoy the bizarre comparison below: PLEASE BE PATIENT... IT TAKES FOREVER TO LOAD!
Fur & Gold features an extensive use of piano on most of its 12 tracks, but not in an “I am an artiste, bow down before my introspective profundity” Tori-Amos-sorta-way.
In additional to all the tickling ivories, there are a lot of other unique sounds on this album… on THE WIZARD I could swear they’re using a Maxwell house coffee can filled with dried lima beans to get that sound. And the much-lauded track PRESCILLA definitely uses the hand jive and a harpsichord to keep the beat.
Oh, and did I fail to mention Natasha Khan’s incredible voice?
This half-Pakistani, half-English songstress has been pegged as the British response to the U.S. freak-folk movement (comprised of artists like Joanna Newsom, Devendra Banhart, and Cocorosie). But let me reassure you that Bat for Lashes is much more accessible to the general public that the American fringe artists to whom she’s been compared.
The debut album is a hauntingly beautiful, richly orchestrated work that, for all its experimentation, is an album that I think we can all agree is AWESOME.
In this video for WHAT'S A GIRL TO DO, keep an eye out for some masked sweetness at the .39 mark!
