covet-a-Muppet
March 16, 2010 by Bonnie Jean Primbsch
First of all, I was at a Musical Emergency last weekend--in which people answered the urgent call to compose songs to flesh out a double feature of sci fi greats: The Day The Earth Stood Still and Forbidden Planet. (I was the narrator for the former.)
From the event's organizer:
"Do you long for simpler days when communicators were strictly for Federation business instead of killing time in the private turbolift?
Did the ominous days ahead look more inviting at the drive-in from days gone drive-by?
What can we do when the future has arrived and nobody is impressed?
There is an answer! Join us in exploring retro visions of tomorrow to find where the unsexy future went wrong!
Q: What When Where?
A: A SCIENCE FICTION DOUBLE FEATURE MUSICAL EMERGENCY
Write and perform a song, contribute a 60-second video trailer, or just bring food and enjoy the musical journey into the here and now as seen from the there and then."
This was an effective call to action; much inventiveness was on display, as people accompanied themselves with guitar, organ, piano, triangle, and Laurie Andersonesque voice-distorter keyboard thingy. They also employed props, including a handmade cardboard steering wheel with gearshift, gigantic spooky space-beast claws, a retro hair dryer/mind control device, and various versions of robot make up and tiger costumes. By far the most captivating prop was one pair's blue-faced Muppet doppelgangers.
In truth, their human counterparts were too busy giggling and cracking themselves up at merely being in posession of such wonders to very effectively operate their felt friends, but all the tools were there: a hand operated mouth, a stick attached to a hand for gesticulating. I forget what the song was, who the singers were, or which movie they were interpreting: I just wanted to know where they got the Muppets.
Turns out, they made 'em. FAO Shwartz is hosting a make-your-own Muppet Whatnot workshop. A Muppet Whatnot is the kinder, gentler version of the red-shirted extras on Star Trek that were so reliably expendable. In Muppet land, Whatnots are the mix&match Muppet bodies and facial features and costumes that make various one-off characters. And you can select those various components to create your very own Whatnot Muppet that they will assemble and send to you for under $150. So now, though I am coveting one for myself, it's almost more fun to keep selecting different combinations of body and parts to make a myriad of amusing faces. Fanged, bobbed, catseye-glassed furry monster! Stern-faced broadway dancer! Narrow-nosed, vandyke-bearded doctor! Oh it has been fun.
But anyway, then today I ran across this charming exceprt from Sesame Street (see video below), and since it is mildly related to my new obsession, I thought I'd share both with you. Enjoy!
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The inventive OK GO
March 10, 2010 by Bonnie Jean Primbsch
OK Go's new album is out., and they created their own label to do it.
Who, now? Whazza?
OK Go are the lads who coreographed and performed perhaps the very first ever treadmill dance routine, for their song Here It Goes Again. The resulting video was a viral sensation on the internet, and, bless those boys, they just keep coming up with visual delights that people want to forward on to their friends and watch again and again. Blogs like embedding them into their posts. So many people swapped around those free videos, and so many blogs offered them for view to their visitors, that OK Go's former record label, Capitol/EMI, got nervous. They thought blogs might be profiting off of their property, and so forbade blogs from embedding OK Go's videos. Instead, blogs would have to refer visitors to OK Go's YouTube channel. This caused some ire in the blogosphere, and in the band itself. It was pretty awkward for OK Go to apologize for the record label's policy which they themelves weren't into. The band with a bajillion (actual number) ideas for how to put candy in our eyes and their high energy pop in our ears really wanted as many people as possible to enjoy what they created. Solution? Break up with the label. Amicably. As they say: "Being OK Go just got a little bit easier." Hooray! (This is a pro-indie blog, full disclosure. Journalism!)
Of the Blue Colour of the Sky is where you can find the song for which they have created two videos already. The song is "This Too Shall Pass" (true enough), and I'm featuring it this week on the Playlist. Hear it live tonight 3/10 at midnight (so really 3/11), or from KUSP's Music Player starting Friday 3/12 through the following Thursday.
The first video they created is OK Go's version of a dream half-time show, with the Northwestern Marching Band. It is charming. Do not ignore that link. The second documents a two-story Rube Goldberg Machine, synched up with the song, and employing items as small as a marble and as large as an entire car. That one is embedded below, because thank you OK Go for taking matters into your own hands.
Two asides:
1) Of the Blue Colour of the Sky may be one of those albums whose full charm can only be appreciated when one has the whole CD package in one's hands. Thumbing through the booklet, you will find many fetching and obsessive graphs and charts which map out various triviata ( is that a word?) about the songs: frequency of each word to be found in the lyrics, ordered alphabetically; instances of parts of speech employed; a Venn diagram of themes present in the writing, etc.
2) I love me a clever and charming Rube Goldberg machine. Who doesn't? We all enjoyed the opening to Pee Wee's Big Adventure or any Wallace and Grommet cartoon. Modern examples! Once I went on a Youtube jag and found a bunch of cunning Japanese RGMs (that's what Those In The Know call 'em) which were created for a short children's science show over there called Pythagoras Switch. Or Pitagora Suitchi as they pronounce it. Oh here, I'll throw a composite of those in too. Enjoy!
Bonus third aside:
3) Now that OK Go are on their own, how will they finance their voluminous and grand schemes? I couldn't say, but note the State Farm Insurance logo on the toy truck that kicks off the Rube Goldberg action.
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Let's swap playlists
December 30, 2009 by Bonnie Jean Primbsch
In honor of our passing from one decade into the next, I'm taking this misty-eyed opportunity over the next two weeks to look over my music collection and pick out some favorites to share with you. How about you? As you sift through the tunes you have gathered over the last years, what stands out?
My hope for this show is that it becomes a place where we all get together and share musical discoveries and favorites with each other. We're all DJs, we're all listeners. I may be a little early on this, since this blog is still in its development stages and I'm pretty sure I'm the only one who reads it, but: How about recommending some choice nuggets in the comments? When we have a substantial enough hoard of them, I'll whip them up into an edition of the Playlist. Experiments!
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The economical choice: make your own music
December 23, 2009 by Bonnie Jean Primbsch
Times are tough. The poor economy! Which means poor us! Our pockets have moths in them, but we still need to be entertained. While you save up for concert tickets and music, (because you should buy those things, artists have moths in their pockets too) I'm offering a few ways to make your own music and amuse yourself for hours, for just the price of a decent internet connection. And (hopefully you have one already, how are you reading this?) a computer/portable internet device.
1) Be Amon Tobin . The Brazilian DJ has done plenty of sampling. Now (some time ago) he has sampled some of his signature grooves for you to play with at his website. Once you get past all the fancy flash fooferall, scroll your arrow over the little boxes till you see one that indicates "supermodifier v.1.0" and click on that. Letters on your keyboard start and stop clips of sound for you to combine in fun ways. Funtimes!
2) Enter the Tone Matrix. Andre Michelle created this melody loop maker, which I can't stop noodling with. HIghlight squares in the grid and play with meoldy and rythm. Make visual patters and hear the sound patterns they make. Make pictures and see what they sound like. Family friendly; my young niece and nephew understood it right away and had a fine time with it.
3) Play at the Buddha Machine Wall. Music making for the mediative set. A Buddha machine is a real thing. It looks like a transister radio and contains nine contemplative samples for you to play with. I heard about it from music writer Sasha Frere-Jones' article in the New Yorker, and it made my mind explode (then I got better). Turns out you can get an app for your iPhone to turn it into a Buddha Machine--or you could go to the Wall, where there are 21 virtual Buddha machines --3 each of 7 different colored versions of the machine--so you can build up some serious layers of soundtrack to your calm.
Now try opening each of these in a different tab, and using all of them to make some crazy-rich music. Whaaaat OMG.
4) In my mind, there is a place on the Homestar Runner site which acts like Amon Tobin's keyboard sampler, except instead of keys you click on various Homestar Runner characters in a scene to start and stop the sounds. I can't find it. Maybe you can? In the meantime, enjoy Strong Bad's nod to techno music, below.
To quote a certain local morning radio host I am fond of, Happy Appropraite Holiday!
Bonnie Jean
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selfish DJ aks for birthday presents before it's even Christmas, she's just that self-centered
December 17, 2009 by Bonnie Jean Primbsch
It's list-making season, don't judge me. I am just responding to a list I saw, of most-anticipated albums for 2010. Several of them are due to be released on my birfday, and I'd say they look pretty good, so I am just asking, gawd!
The following is compiled from Stereogum's post, linked-to above. There are all kinds of things to click on and listen to at the original post, so go there for the full experience:
THE MAGNETIC FIELDS - REALISM
JANUARY 26 (NONESUCH)
After a year that offered a particularly momentous Merritt milestone in the classic 69 Love Songs' 10th anniversary, Stephin Merritt and his Mag Fields will return with Realism, 13 tracks that stick to the three-minute pop format. That bathroom-door album art pairs well with their last LP cover: Then it was a blurred male latrine indicator for an album called Distortion; here it's a straight-lined girl for an album called Realism. Expect much less Jesus & Mary Chain haze this time around. In fact Stephin says he "thought of the two as a pair," this time "explor[ing] the various genres under the umbrella of folk." According to the album bio, "Merritt's work veers between longing and loneliness, desire and dismissal, romance and revenge, though the melancholic musings of his narrators are cut with sardonic humor. At the end of the disc, Merritt literally leaves his characters shipwrecked." And we're warned not to think of it as autobiographical. Sign us up.
BEACH HOUSE - TEEN DREAM
JANUARY 26 (SUB POP)
We've gone on at length about Beach House's gorgeous third album Teen Dream. You only need to listen to "Norway" and "Used To Be" to know we weren't lying when we said, "At first listen the songs feel like simple lullabies. There isn't a shiny facade, really. It's only after you take your time with it and let the songs sink in that you realize you'll likely never see the bottom." We look forward to listening to it all year.
SPOON - TRANSFERENCE
JANUARY 26 (MERGE)
The Got Nuffin' EP wasn't just a stopgap between what we'll assume to be typically terrific LPs -- its title track also features on the tracklist to Transference, the band's first full-length since 2007's Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga. We've heard a bunch of these new songs live, but since "Written In Reverse" is the album's lead single (in stores 12/1), that's a good place to start.
CHARLOTTE GAINSBOURG & BECK -- IRM
JANUARY 26 (BECAUSE)
Gainsbourg teemed up with Beck who, as she told Jessica in a Progress Report, "tried very different things" for her third studio album, whose name was inspired by the MRI machine (IRM in French) she experienced first hand after having a brain hemorrhage after a skiing accident. It's hard to get a complete feel for the collection after hearing the Kraut rock-lined title track and "Heaven Can Wait," a duet with Hansen, two very different tracks. Then again, looks like we'll just have to wait. As Gainsbourg told us, "[The songs are] all in different styles but one proper album."
FOUR TET - THERE IS LOVE IN YOU
JANUARY 26 (DOMINO)
Kieran Hebden's fifth album, his first proper full-length in over four years, sounds extremely promising after listens to the ghostly dance track "Love Cry" and the crystalline downcast "Plastic People." Looking forward to the closer "She Just Likes To Fight."
LOS CAMPESINOS! - ROMANCE IS BORING
JANUARY 26 (ARTS & CRAFTS)
The Cardiff septet's third album was recorded and mixed in Seattle, Connecticut, and Monmouthsire with John Goodmanson and features guest spots by Jamie Stewart, Parenthetical Girls' Zach Pennington, and Jherek Bischoff of Dead Science. It also features first single "These Are Listed Buildings," which suggests the group is still worthy of that exclamation mark.
etc.
Guess when my birthday is?
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Swell Season=swell
December 17, 2009 by Bonnie Jean Primbsch
Did you see Once? A couple years ago? Sweet slice of life indy film about a meeting of the musical minds between a busker and a budding songwriter? Good for you/get on that. It starred salty real life busker Glen Hansard and wee lassie (who is Czech, so that is totally the wrong word, but I mean that she is much much younger) Market Irglova. Then they teamed up In Real Life and are now on tour with their album together Strict Joy, which I have been featuring lately on The Playlist.
They may or may not still be totally in love, but they are definitely a musical team. Or...? I get a little wierded out that, in interviews, Glen does all the talking. I bet the age difference/power dynamics/communication styles played a part in them rethinking their relationship. But whatever, they still sound good together, and I like the album. All I am is a set of ears, folks, so I'm letting the ears have the last word on this. My ears, and this video from Boing Boing, below. Incidentally, check out the comments from the Boing Boing post for some differnt perspectives on the value of singing passionately. And by passionately, I mean "at the top of your lungs till you are red in the face," which Glen does a bit.
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Tom Waits forevah
December 7, 2009 by Bonnie Jean Primbsch
Tom Waits is great. Right? I've liked him since Frank's Wild Years; all those drunken pianos and loathesome poodles. His gruff voice started out as Louis Armstrongesque schtick, but now it is For Real and he knows how to wield it. I like to imagine him in Marin County kissing Kathleen Brennan at the breakfast table, then heading off across the field to a spooky barn like the ones he warns us away from. In it he has set up a crowded studio of old carpets, chipped stools, accoustic toys and kitchen orchestra, bad mics and a dusty soundboard. Probably his awesome players are already in place, mellow and stonefaced like maybe they live there at their stools. He trots in and considers the scene, turns a knob, adjusts a mic and sits down at the piano. Then, when he purses his lips or tips his hat back, that's the secret signal for the band to burst into a strain of wheezing melody or creaking beat. Then he gives the secret signal to stop, listens back to the recording, dispenses direction in his bandsaw mutter, then off they go again. Probably that is exactly how he spends all of his time.
And he is an inspired collaborator. I went to the Bridge School Benefit in 2007. The concert on the whole was mostly okay (no offense, Youngs and bands), but seeing Tom Waits with the Kronos Quartet was worth the price of admission. That is a fact; truth in journalism! He was footlight-lit, like we were back in Vaudeville; he shook his fist singing about God and the Devil duking it out (or not); and as he stomped to mark the time, a white dusty cloud billowed around him. Tom Waits, emerging from the mists of time into a chamber concert. And, as whistlers go, rather than craft a tune with it like our Andrew Bird, he uses his whistle to get our attention. The Best!
Now he has blown my mind by getting together with Kool Keith as part of the North America South America music project. BoingBoing.net posted a vdeo of their resulting tune, "Spacious Thoughts," visually manifested by Flourescent Hill. I've got my eye on you, N.A.S.A. Project and Flourescent Hill! You can watch the video below. I can't stop watching the video. I am like those little aliens from the pizza place Claw machine in Toy Story, oohing and ahhing before thier new leader.
I missed the Glitter and Doom tour (I hear he only went to cities where people owed him money anyway), but now that Anti Records has released a 2-disc set--one disc of tunes, the other of Waits-style storytellin'-- I can happily lick my wounds. I hear--is it true? Were you there?-- that the low-fi billowing cloud effect was part of the action. NPR's music site hosts a recording of the last stop on his tour, and on The Playlist this week I sample from the first disc--"Trampled Rose."
Never quit, Tom Waits!
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Whistle club
November 19, 2009 by Bonnie Jean Primbsch
I am a whistler. I whistle. In the shower, along to what's on the stereo, during housework. And I am a fan of whistling. Once I crushed on a liguistics professor of mine, because I caught him whistling in the grocery store. Also because of his David Hockney style of personal dress, but this is not that post.
This is a post about whistling. It is a cheery sound, like contented birds. So it was a special pleasure to find out that virtuoso violinist and pop composer Andrew Bird is also an astute whistler. He has said, in an interview on All Things Considered, that he uses whistling to act as a holding spot for whatever instrumentation will carry that particular bit of tune; but that, ultimately, the whistling often wins. Go team whistling!
I think Andrew Bird is one of the best things in pop music right now. Listen to him rule the loop machine to make a one-man show sound like a rich orchestra. Dig how each tune is a totally new take on the songs as heard on his albums. He is like Billie Holiday in the speakeasy, who avoided raids by going from table to table to quietly sing the same tune multiple times--and in multiple ways to keep things interesting.
Another example of that is the tune I featured on this week's Playlist. "I", from the Weather Systems album , may sound familiar to those who know "Imitosis" from his Armchair Apocrypha album. OMG, same song, different take!
Anyway, this is what it's like when he performs in a church. He makes whistling a reverent act.
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Yo La Tengo has me
November 12, 2009 by Bonnie Jean Primbsch
I've been a casual fan of Yo La Tengo for some years now, but lately I've become crazy for them. Regular listeners to The Playlist will have noticed the frequency with which they are in the line up. They recently played at the Rio Theatre, which has become my favorite local venue to see live music, and it was one of the most satisfying concert experiences I'd had in a long time--not since Pink Martini played at the same place.
Why the step-up in enthusiasm for the unassuming trio? Anticipation of the concert may be what did it for me. And getting to hear the album the tour supports--Popular Songs. And hearing Eric Berg's sound-rich review of the album. And watching Georgia Hubley play the drums. At the concert, my friends and I tried to make out the rhythm patterns and tap them out on our laps. I want to be Georgia Hubley, drumming for Yo La Tengo. It might be awkward for her husband Ira Kaplan, eyeballing me from his guitar, but I'd happily eyeball him right back. TMI?
Anyway. This week on the Playlist, I end the first set with a great one from Yo La Tengo's latest: "More Stars Than There Are In Heaven." Pink Martini makes an appearance, too, ending the fifth set with the Sympathique album's starter "Amado Mio." To celebrate, a couple videos.
In the first one, Yo La Tengo demonstrates their appreciation for comedy. Note all the Mr Show regulars and general goofiness. Tee hee. In the second, you get a sense for what Pink Martini is like in concert. Those guys put on a real show, a true entertainment. Enjoy!
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Blog Launch
November 9, 2009 by Bonnie Jean Primbsch
Since the end of July 2009 I've been hosting an indy pop-based musical mix show called The Playlist. It features music just coming into the station, plus some new & old favorites in my own collection. This is the show's blog; welcome to it.
I have a friend who went in for cancer surgery recently, and spent a few days in the hospital recovering. So I bought him a cheap mp3 player and stuffed it with things to listen to. David Sedaris' latest audiobook, the New Yorker Fiction podcast, a month or so of Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, some concert stuff from NPR's music site. I included some favorite albums, editions of The Playlist, and all the soothing, ambient Brian Eno music I had on hand, because something mellow, right? To aid the healing.
I was pleased to find my friend enjoyed the Playlist shows, happy WWDTM provided some of his first post-surgery laughter, and was totally shocked that Brian Eno's weightless, drifting waves of sound did nothing to make him feel better. Rather, the thing that most caught his ear was a raw and raucous set from The Avett Brothers' appearance at the Newport Folk Festival. KUSP had a link to NPR's recording of the Festival on our homepage for awhile. I've been a fan of the Avetts since their last album Emotionalism came to the station, and have been featuring their music on the show.
Listening to some of the Eno and then the Avetts concert, I understood why my friend preferred the latter. I use albums like Music for Airports to help me drift off to sleep. A man who has been spooked by cancer, who contemplates his own death, does not want to drift gently into the light. He wants to hang on and feel vital and shout for dear life. And those Avetts, attacking the banjo and bass and hollering themselves raw, certainly whooped with the vigor of boys feeling openhearted and alive.
Their latest album, I and Love and You, was produced by Rick Rubin (he of the Midas touch). On the whole, the sound is rich and sweet and melodic. And one song hints at the punkish battle cry that perked up my friend's spirits. I'll play it this week on the show. If you don't catch the show live, this Thursday, no problem. The Music Player will have this version available the next day till the 19th. (My friend will be around much longer than that. They managed to scoop out all the nasty bits, and can't find a spot of cancer in him anywhere. I just saw him today--he is well and looks fantastic-- and collected the mp3 layer to load it with more Playlists and WWDTM.)
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