Archive for the ‘Music videos’ Category
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
This album celebrated its 50th anniversary last week.
I’m listening to it right now. Great album! Too bad they don’t make stuff like this anymore.
Ray from Girls and wisdom from Jimmy Soul
It’s good that this video shows the lyrics, because they’re hard to understand from just listening.
Do view, it’s such a fun song, and perfectly safe for work.
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I’ve been thinking about “Cookie Monster’s” comment:
I like Ray ending up with the fat girl. Ray is probably the most (only?) really redeemable character on the show and deserves better than Shosh and certainly Marnie. Fat or not Abigail is the kind of woman who fills gaps with a guy like Ray, and vice versa. I know some awkward guys like Ray who end up with less-attractive-but-more-open girls like Chubs. Sometimes it even works.
Plus she’s not exactly unattractive, at least IMO.
If we look at the photo in this Huffington Post article, I would sadly have to disagree with Cookie Monster that “she’s not exactly unattractive.” Even though I think that skinniness is highly overrated in women, Abigail is simply not a physically attractive woman. Not even in a chubby kind of way.
But at least with Abigail, Ray, who’s not buff and in-shape like Adam and Elijah, doesn’t have to worry that she is going to start criticizing him for having a pot belly and being flabby.
Cookie Monster is right about Marnie. This stanza from the Jimmy Soul song describes Marnie perfectly:
A pretty woman makes her husband look small
And very often causes his downfall
As soon as he married her and then she starts
To do the things that will break his heart
Marnie is the most self-centered and toxic of all the girls on the show, even more so than Hannah. If you like her, it’s only because her looks have blinded you to seeing who she really is.
Now let’s talk about Shoshanna. Most male viewers consider her to be the most likeable of the four girls. Her body isn’t marred with ugly tattoos. She’s nice to Ray.
But let’s be honest about her flaws. She’s not very smart. Yes, she’s the only girl with a corporate career, but that’s a conceit of Lena Dunham and the other script-writers for the show that creative people like themselves are a lot smarter than corporate workers, so they made Shoshanna, the dumb one, a corporate worker. In the context of the show, having a corporate career is not considered a positive trait, even though I suspect that most readers of this blog would disagree and hold the opinion that having a corporate job demonstrates responsibility and groundedness.
Also, Shoshanna is very shallow. For example, in the penultimate episode, she touts her new friends as being better than Marnie, Hannah and Jessa because, among other reasons, they are “pretty” and have “purses.”
Shoshanna will never get, the way Abigail does, Ray’s interest in his late friend’s collection of audio tapes, because it doesn’t help Ray make more money so that his future wife can buy expensive purses.
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Another significant line from the Jimmy Soul song:
Don’t let your friends say you have no taste
Go ahead and marry anyway
A lot of people let society tell them what to do instead of doing what will make them happy.
For example, suppose Ray were a real person, and then he read my post about the episode and read all of the comments disparaging Abigail and saying that Ray could do better. If Ray were an insecure person, he might very well take that stuff to heart and dump Abigail, even though she would make him happy for the rest of his life.
Unfortunately, many of us are like Shoshanna. We can’t help but base our own happiness on what other people think about us and how we stand in the rat race for status, and how our purses and other clothes and accessories compare to our friends (last clause only applies if you’re a woman or a gay man). Even if we have a genuine desire to change, we can’t overcome our nature.
Veruca Salt, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory
That’s a pretty awesome performance by a child actress! And after her possible death, which Willy Wonka played by Gene Wilder doesn’t seem very perturbed by, below we see the Oompa Loompas singing in celebration.
Barry Manilow is gay
Not gay as in his music sucks, but gay as in he puts his penis into orifices in which it was traditionally believed that Mother Nature never intended it to be put. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
I never knew, but I’m clueless about those things.
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Mandy is the most quintessential Manilow, but perhaps his most fun song is Copacabana, and I enjoyed watching this live rendition at YouTube in which he’s wearing an outfit that reminds me of Gene Wilder’s character from Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory.
Barry, part Irish-Catholic and part Jewish, grew up in the same neighborhood in Brooklyn as my mother.
I come from nowhere Brooklyn, New York. Williamsburg, Brooklyn. These days Williamsburg is kind of a hip area, but when I grew up there, the taxi drivers wouldn’t even go over the bridge, it was so dangerous.
When I grew up there it was a dump. All I remember is running home from school so I wouldn’t get beat up.
Laga Gaga halftime show with drones
Wow, the drones were amazing! Everything was amazing! Maybe the greatest halftime show ever!
My only complaint is that the studio versions of her songs are better; but then you have to appreciate that she had the guts to sing live and not lipsynch.
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Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, agrees:
That Super Bowl halftime show will never be topped. You just saw five-dimensional chess from Master Persuader #LadyGaga
— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) February 6, 2017
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And following the halftime show, the biggest comeback in the history of the Superbowl.
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Lady Gaga vs. Katy Perry
So some commenters have voted for Katy Perry’s halftime show from two years ago.
Now I love Katy Perry. She’s gorgeous. And cute. And her songs have such a endearing touch of whimsy. But Lady Gaga has her halftime show beat by a mile. Besides the drones, there was Lady Gaga’s athleticism and the much larger scope of choreography. Plus Lady Gaga’s show wasn’t interrupted by some crappy hip-hop/rap number by Missy Elliott.
Harry Chapin – Taxi (live)
This is a pretty good live rendition by Harry Chapin of his song “Taxi.”
The song has some autobiographical facts from Harry’s life mixed in. His name in the song (as in many of his songs) is his real name, Harry. Chapin did have a girlfriend named Sue at Cornell, and he was also a taxi driver for a few months (back in a time when white Americans still drove taxis).
So Harry is driving his taxi and he picks up a woman who turns out to be his ex-girlfriend, Sue. Sue, initially, either pretends not to recognize him or is too uncaring about a taxi driver to pay attention to him. In either case, it’s a snub.
Their relationship ended because Sue presumably moved to Los Angeles to become an actress (although now she’s in San Francisco) and Harry was going to “learn to fly,” which I presume means he wanted to become a pilot, but that obviously never happened, and now he has a loser job as a taxi driver.
The second snub is when “she said we must get together,” but it’s said in a way that means she’s just being polite and has no interest in seeing a loser who drives a cab for a living.
Sue, although apparently not an actress, has more economic resources than Harry based on various hints dropped in the song [as expounded below and in the comments, probably because she married a rich husband]. At the end, for the $2.50 fare, she gives him a $20 bill and tells him to keep the change. Remember that there has been more than 400% inflation since 1972, so that’s like giving him a hundred dollar bill for a $12.50 fare (which is a typical fare for a ride from one location in Manhattan to another and I assume that “Frisco” has similar rates).
Receiving such a huge tip from your ex-girlfriend is emasculating, and that was especially true in 1972 when social customs were more strongly oriented towards the man being the provider and not the woman. Either she’s saying “look how much more successful I am than you,” or she pities him and wants him to have some extra money, but women aren’t romantically interested in men they pity.
Instead of doing the manly thing and returning the tip, Harry puts the bill in his shirt because he needs the money.
Also, the song tells us that Sue is also not happy with her life. The song does not explain why, but maybe it’s because she left a wonderful relationship with Harry in order to try to become an actress? The modern feminist would see that line of reasoning as being Harry’s male-chauvinistic ego. That’s why I like the songs of the 1970s, because they are less politically correct.
Harry sees that she’s not happy because he’s very intuitive, but Sue refuses to admit it. Thus he’s able to cleverly and ironically observe that they both got what they wanted: he’s “flying” in his taxi, and she’s acting happy. These are the kind of deep lyrics you get when Ivy League caliber people write songs.
Harry Chapin also went to Brooklyn Tech High School, back in the late 1950s when Brooklyn Tech was still academically equivalent to Stuyvesant (it no longer is) and the vast majority of students in attendance were smart working-class and middle-class Jews. Although Harry came from a Protestant family, which was rare in New York City public schools where everyone who was white was either Jewish or Catholic.
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Glengarry writes:
Hm. Failed actress in a new town, careless with money. Would it be unkind to speculate that her secret is, she’s an escort?
Maybe that.
Or maybe she’s married to someone rich, but that didn’t make her happy because she failed in her dream to be an actress, and she married for the wrong reason (money, not love). That would give Harry a reason to feel that she would have been happier with him, whom she would have loved because he was Harry the sensitive singer-song writer, even though he didn’t have any money.
And he drives her to a “handsome home” with a gate and “fine trimmed lawns” which sounds more like a place where you live when you are married rather than a place where a prostitute would live. Although maybe she’s like a Holly Golightly.
Eep Opp Ork Ah-Ah
Consider that this music video within a Jetsons episode was produced in 1962, 19 years before MTV. And that pop music was in its very infancy. It sort of even pre-dates The Beatles: the first real Beatles LP, “Please Please Me” wasn’t released until 1963.
Barenaked Ladies – It’s All Been Done (Video Version)
Talking about music that sounds white, the Barenaked Ladies have a very white sound (even though the video has some black guys with afros dancing).
I don’t particularly care for the fish-eye lens, or that they muffle the sound for twenty seconds to make like you’re inside a fish tank. As a video, I prefer watching Hey Violet.
Hey Violet – This is Why
I like this music video a lot.
Thank you Otis the Sweaty for bringing this girl punk rock group to my attention. Unfortunately, a handful of music videos on YouTube is the extent of their repertoire.
More vinyl!
The alt-weekly The Nashville Scene first reported last week that the United Record Pressing plant, a mainstay of vinyl production since 1949, would be expanding its operations to a new 142,000-square-foot facility in South Nashville. In a later article by Billboard, United said that the new facility, estimated to be the size of “two football fields,” would double the plant’s production capacity, and that the expansion would help the country’s largest vinyl manufacturer keep pace with strong market demand.
That the new facility is the size of two football fields reminds us that vinyl records take up a lot of space. It’s not a practical gimmick for people who live in tiny Manhattan apartments. Even finding a place for a turntable (which needs to be a on flat stable surface that’s easy to get to) can be challenging. And on top of that, new vinyl LPs cost twice as much as the same music legally purchased digitally (and the same music can be easily obtained for free, although of course you shouldn’t do that because it’s illegal).
My theory is that the human brain didn’t evolve to understand intellectual property on an emotional level. We have an evolutionary urge to acquire resources (which used to be useful for helping to make sure your children lived long enough to have children of their own), and our illogical animal brain thinks of a vinyl record as a resource but can’t grasp a digital file as being a resource.
Nevertheless, the re-emergence of vinyl records still seems to me like a temporary fad.
