Finding great new music is always a good thing. It seems like it should happen all the time in this glorious digital age we are living in. I mean, artists can go straight to fans without the intervention of stodgy labels and, because everybody can post their opinion online, the fans can be the ones to say whether they like something or not. That is the utopian ideal there anyway.
When people actually go looking for music today, I think it is actually often more difficult to find what one likes. Somehow modern distribution has made it so that a very few recording artists sell record-breaking amounts of swag and tunes. Many thousands of musicians who would once only have been heard by friends can now get out to hundreds of people who appreciate what they do. But the midlist bands seem to have disappeared. Where are the solid enjoyable bands, in the genres I enjoy, who once could definitely have charted high, but maybe wouldn’t be #1 on the charts?
Without major label support, mid-sized high quality bands can get really lost in a sea of user-generated content on sites like MySpace and YouTube. MySpace, for example, allows fan profiles, so NIN shows up five times on the first page of top industrial bands on MySpace. I enjoy Nine Inch Nails, but what if I am looking for similar bands I am not familiar with yet? More on YouTube in a moment.
Given how popular music magazines once were on the newsstand, why are music websites not more popular online? I know one thing I personally do not like is that most sites devoted to music are owned by one or another record label. While I realize that there are only really six significant media companies in the world and all, …
Asylum comes out on DVD in a few days and this is the red band trailer for the horror movie. I am really squeamish about anything to do with eyeballs. I think I was scarred by seeing Clockwork Orange at a young age.
Sometimes the internet can be very isolating. We sit at home and, in a way, we feel connected to so many people. But not very connected. It is overwhelming and difficult to deeply connect with anyone. Sometimes this causes us to to put in-person human interaction up on a pedestal and forget what it is really like.
Now, admittedly, I went to school in Belgium for a while and none of my classmates were like the angriest Belgian gamer ever, as depicted in this video. Athene says he is the best paladin in the world. I always thought paladins were supposed to rescue virgins and helpless townspeople and such, always on the side of good, but I’m not a big World of Warcraft gamer. Maybe paladins are different in WOW. Athene appears to be sponsored by WOW gold farmers, so he must be doing something right.
Athene is equal opportunity and spices up this gaming clip with a cute shirtless guy on one side and a girl with lots of very lovely cleavage on the other. He swears really a lot. I mean, I looooooooooooove to cuss and Athene cusses way more than I do. I find the non-stop English swearing with a Belgian accent charming. Your mileage may vary.
Most importantly, Athene and friends let you experience via video what it would be like to have your unsavory pals playing video games in the living room. I still sometimes miss living in a punk rock (or other) group house where there is always a party, but I’m not missing it right now. Because I watched this video.
The vid features interviews with designer Rachel Face and model London Lunoux. You will see in the interview with Rachel that she definitely uses the word stripper bunches when talking about this project. (Etiquette note to the boys in the audience: You are still safer in cities which are not Portland, if you go with the word dancer, rather than stripper.) You can spot me shooting the aforementioned photo gallery in the video and see Forrest Black’s back over by our video camera. And, of course, you can see some of the stripping dance routines, as the models show off the clothes.
Yes, I know that Rachel Face is called Rachael Reckless in the video and you all can ask Voltaire yourself why she is called another name. Sometimes strippers will dance under different names at different clubs. Sometimes models will use different names on different sites. Sometimes the punk rock nickname someone is using in 2001 or 2002 might evolve into something else by 2008, as they get new tattoos. This is all normal. Like the bard says, a Briar Rose by any other name will still smell as sweet.
Note to RIAA: I have no idea whether the songs used are licensed and, although Blue Blood did shoot some video that night, this is all Sean Strauss and hosted by YouTube, so all credit goes to him.
So, I think Madonna is pretty awesome in general, but I’m vaguely baffled by her message to YouTube video. In it, she is supposedly vacuuming the set for her 4 Minutes video because apparently other people didn’t take care of it. Then she tells the world of YouTube good job on making tons of videos for her 4 Minutes single. To date, her thanks for making essentially fanfic versions of 4 Minutes video has received 3,175,135 views on YouTube.
The actual official Warner Bros video for Madonna’s 4 Minutes has only received 846,562 views. It opens with a little rap from Timbaland and most of the song is a duet and coordinated dance moves from Madonna and Justin Timberlake. Madonna and Justin Timberlake take off some of each other’s clothes during their choreography and, unlike Janet Jackson, I guarantee Madonna won’t apologize or pretend that her clothing flying off is a wardrobe malfunction.
A search on YouTube for +”4 minutes” +madonna yields 2,860 results, including both the fanfic (or whatever YouTube people call this sort of thing) vids and multiple copies of the official video and various video responses to the go ahead and make videos based on the video video. This sort of viral marketing is all very meta. Will encouraging people to do more of what they were going to do anyway work to Madonna’s benefit? Will it sell more of her music, raise her stock for endorsements, or otherwise make bank?
I don’t know the answer and I’m really interested in hearing what other people think about how this will work as a marketing effort. Do you enjoy fanfic videos? Regardless, you should watch the real official video because it’s fun candy and Madonna and Justin Timberlake dancing is way hotter than most porn.
How do you hack a hangover? Apparently this is one of the most viewed recent YouTube videos in the how-to section. Well, if you don’t count all the ones related to achieving erection, orgasm, or conception. I haven’t watched any of their social relations vids, but, if the advice is as terrible as this hangover advice, I’d recommend steering clear.
Personally, I’ve found that the most effective way to avoid feeling awful in the morning is to sleep late after a night of not drinking to excess. Then start the day with a delicious iced soy latte, a little sunshine, and a well-balanced, high-protein, low-carb, low-glycemic-index breakfast.
Failing that, I never remember to take those RU-21 pills when starting the night, but they are moderately effective. I am a very big fan of alternating beer with sparkling water during the evening and drinking the Function brand Urban Detox beverages before bed.
People always think I am making it up when I tell them that Robert de Niro guested on Sesame Street and taught Elmo how to be an actor. This is a good time of year to take a little acting training to round out your Halloween costume, give it that extra spark. So here is YouTubian proof that I was not hallucinating when I saw de Niro on the Street. And also some nice tips on how to imagine and pretend, if you are dressing as a dog or cabbie on October 31st. Robert de Niro is very convincing as a good source of riboflavin.
The In The Flesh Reading Series is hosted and curated by the fabulous writer and editor Rachel Kramer Bussel. It is a New York event, held the third Thursday of every month and features authors, of work ranging from erotic poetry to “down and dirty smut”, reading their work.
The upcoming event is on October 18th, 2007 at The Happy Ending Lounge. This is going to be Virgin Night and will include first time readers at the series and, hopefully, first time audience members. There will be fifty giveaways of first time reader Colette Gale’s debut novel Unmasqued: An Erotic Novel of the Phantom of the Opera. Gale’s book is, as you can probably surmise from the title, an extra erotic retelling of the story of the Phantom of the Opera.
The giveaways are due to the largess of the New American Library. NAL is a division of Penguin Group which publishes over four hundred books a year. NAL was more of less founded in 1948, spun off from the British parent that year anyway. NAL started off publishing work like D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterly’s Lover, so they are strong in the literary-yet-naughty department.
In addition to NAL author Colette Gale, first time readers for the upcoming In The Flesh night are scheduled to include Jasmine Clemente, Jane Lockwood, Sean Manseau, Robert W. Cabell, and Steven Padnick. The most recently past event included readings from Andrew Boyd (different Andrew Boyd from the one from BLT and Scurvy Dogs, Polly Frost, Marie Lyn Bernard, Todd Levin, Jessica Cutler, and of course the curator herself.
