I was in the mood for something mellow, and Golden Garden‘s “Ghostwood” admirably fits the bill, even if the video comes in almost entirely on the cheap side of the “cheap but arty” continuum.
Lead singer Aubrey Rachel Violet Bramble (if in fact that’s a single person’s real name and not a real name + fake name combo) has the most obvious “little girl” voice this side of Alison Shaw of Cranes.
In case you hadn’t heard, Monty Python’s Flying Circus is reuniting for a live show at London’s 02 Arena next July 1st.
Because I like Monty Python, and because I’m not above blatant click-bait, here’s a video of the entire press conference announcing the reunion.
Random Notes:
Don Webb alerted me to this Finnish bread ad which is so depressingly grim that it’s hilarious:
Translation to the only dialog: “Well are you hungry or not?”
On Don’s Facebook page, Marc Laidlaw suggested that the father and son might be the same actors who were in Rare Exports, and I think he might be right.
I worked with a Finn once, and he said Finnish National Health care didn’t bother with such frivolities as Novocaine when they were drilling your teeth when he was growing up. No wonder they kicked the Soviet Union’s ass in the winter war…
For your Sunday dose of Shoegaze, here’s San Francisco’s Slowness (who describe themselves as a “drone pop band”) with “Walls of Blue,” a steady-state song that sounds like an extended riff off the end of Pink Floyd’s “Time.”
Since I’ve reached the age where being “cool” is impossible anyway, I can link things others might find corny, like this version of The Tokens revisiting their big hit “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”:
This, of course, was an adaptation of Solomon Linda’s “Mbube”:
But the Tokens version is better and more interesting, despite the fact that they could be mistaken for 4 Jacks and a Jill. It’s obvious lead singer Jay Siegel still loves singing this song even after four decades.
But my favorite version, which sort of combines the sensibilities of the two, is Ladysmith Black Mombazo and all-girl acapella group The Mint Julips covering it, from a PBS special called Spike and Company Do It Acapella from back in 1990.
For your Sunday doze of shoegaze, here’s New York’s DIIV with the NSFW-ish “Wait.”
Putting this up because I’m sure that John DeNardo will want to know about it for SF Signal, and in no way because it has lots of attractive, scantly clad women in it…
Silly me. I didn’t even know the U.S. had a cosplay expo.
Also: Oh my…
Here, on the Day of the Dead, it’s time to remember those who were once briefly (if inexplicably) popular, but which have now largely passed from our consciousness.
I’m speaking, of course, of dead memes.
Once they roamed wild and free across the Internet, but now these memes are largely dead in popular culture. Consider this a Whitman’s Sampler of the once-popular memes.
This computer-generated dancing baby was one of the first Internet memes, so popular it evidently showed up on an episode of Single Female Lawyer Ally McBeal. (Kids: Ask your parents what an “Ally McBeal” was.)
In the early days of the Internet, people started putting up home pages willy-nilly with only a basic understanding of HTML and little-to-no taste or guiding aesthetics. It was a different era, when Geocities roamed the land.
Into this era stumbled Mahir Cagri, a Turkish man with diverse interests and a shaky grasp of English. “I like music , I have many many musicenstrumans my home I can play. I like sex.”
If you had an email address in 1999, chances are pretty good someone forwarded you Mahir’s page…
Basically rows of animated gifs of cartoon hamsters dancing to a silly, sped-up song. There were many offshoots and parody pages as well. I remember an “Objectivist Dance” page with animated dollar signs…
A website that claims Sesame Street‘s Bert is an agent of historical calumny, and has the photoshops to prove it.
Briefly flared into worldwide consciousness after 9/11 when radical Muslims incorporated an image of Bert with Osama Bin laden into a street sign supporting the terrorist.
Are belong to us.
A Japanese plush mascot chasing a kitten in divine retribution for your Onanistic sins.
A short animation of badgers, mushrooms, and snakes set to self-referential music, in an infinite loop. The surrealist Internet hit of 2003.
Woozy little kid gets filmed after dental surgery. Hilarity ensues.
Teenage girl makes video. 4Chan gets hold of video. Flamewar so epic that 4Chan grinds to halt ensues.
So look on these dead memes, ye mighty lolcats and ponies, and know that one day you too will pass into obscurity…
See also: Charles Mackay’ Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
…if it weren’t $5,100.
Also, this is nicely creepy:
For your Sunday dose of shoegaze, here’s Black Tambourine’s “Throw Aggi Off The Bridge.”