The Irish Session of the Future!

We have lots of Irish music here at the ARChive (the entire Green Linnet catalog, for example), but I don’t think we’ve got anything like this. Here is a video of someone playing a very convincing set of jigs on a game for the Nintendo DS called “Daigasso! Band Brothers.”

I’m not sure how well it would go over so well at a session (especially the ones I like), but played that well I imagine it’d fare no worse than a poorly-played bohdrán.

There’s lots of music out there on youtube that’s made strange/beautiful because it’s played on an anachronous instrument.  I love this one of someone playing Britney Spears’s “Toxic” on the ukulele. What else in the strange/beautiful category is out there that you like? Report your findings in the comments, please!

Dr.D.

Beat & the Unbeat

Never one to miss an opportunity to hear some Spontaneous Beat Prosody, while grazing at a local purveyor of vinyl slabs I recently laid a paper George Washington head on the checked-out counter and strolled away with this item.

Click here to take a tour of Greenwich Village in the early 1960s. Jean Shepherd does the narrating.

Beat & the Unbeat items at the ARChive of Contemporary Music:
Kenneth Patchen With the Chamber Jazz Sextet Kenneth Patchen Reads His Poetry
Jack Kerouac With Steve Allen Poetry for the Beat Generation
Allen Ginsberg Howl & Other Poems
Irving Fields Trio Pizza and Bongos
and more . . .

Bryan

Never Talking, Just Keeps Walking

Spreading his magic…

What with the imminent release of the newest and last Harry Potter book, this morning’s Marketplace ran a little feature on Wizard Rock. Well, this piqued our interest here at the ARChive because we maintain a database of genres, and Wizard Rock wasn’t in it.

Until today.

So what is it, you ask? Well, according to Wizardrock.org, the self-described “premier” wizard rock site (eat it, Real Wizard Rock!), it is:

…a genre of music inspired by the works of J.K. Rowling, author of the popular Harry Potter book series. [...] Many, like Harry and the Potters, are named for a specific character and sing songs from their point of view. Many also dress up like the character for performances.

If you think that just about covers it, you’re sorely mistaken. By the way, don’t mistake Wizard Rock for filk (science fiction or fantasy based folk music) or for the kind of D&D/LotR thing that Led Zeppelin did, or emo, for God’s sake. Wizard Rock is its its own damn thing. MTV even said so.

Compliments of my sister-in-law Eileen, we have a set of Wizard Rock lyrics she made up:

Oh Dumbledore, oh Dumbledore / Now its time to settle the score / Perry, Ron and Hermione too / Will vanquish the evil, you know who.

Oh Dumbledore, oh Dumbledore / Now its time to settle the score / Perry of the fame / Will vanquish he who must not be named.

Pretty sweet, right? So when all the wizard rockers are dead, where will we bury them, in Harry Potter’s Field?

Ugh, no! In the Deathly Hollows, next to the Shreiking Shack, obviously!

Spoiler alert! In the new book Harry undergoes a sex change operation, and we managed to find this as yet unreleased image of her new look. All hail Henrietta!

UPDATE!

My wife (who reads the Harry Potter books) had a set of lyrics on Friday, but we were out of computer contact through this morning, so it’s taken me until today (Sunday the 22nd) to post them. Here they are:

Keep your eye on the snitch and one hand on the broom.
But keep your head on straight ’cause the bludgers will always loom
Let ‘em fly baby fly
Let ‘em fly baby fly let ‘em fly
To win the cup.

Now that Malfoy’s rich and his daddy buys him every toy
But in the end he’ll always be nuthin’ but a momma’s boy
Let ‘em fly baby fly
Let ‘em fly baby fly
Let ‘em fly
To win the cup
Now the pitch was green and the sky was almost clear
But be if it starts to get cold you’ll know a dementor’s near

I have no idea what they mean, but they sure do sound convincing!

Wanted!

“There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know.” Sure, anyone can quote a clown. But for your consideration, “Notes” the Clown. Musical, whimsical, his life scattered across a flea market table in Connecticut, rumored to be retired somewhere in FLA. Notes, give us a call. Fill us in. We need to know.

b.ARC

The bar has been raised.

Today, Gizmodo blogged a YouTube video of a woman playing Ode to Joy on a panpipe made from tampon applicators.  It’s an amazing idea whose time I am surprised hasn’t yet come (apologies if it has; I am as of yet totally ignorant of it).  As good as the video they posted was, the better one I think is the version of “Twinkle, Twinkle,” which I provide here for your edification:

 

 

I don’t know…I think it’s got a bit more flair, but you be the judge. Anyway, maybe it not an ethnomusicological “best case scenario,” but definitely a diversionary project for the “creative organology” buffs out there.  (Get it!  “Creative orga”…because of where…musical instrument…nothing?  Nothing at all?  Yikes!)

 

In theory, Tamponcrafts’s videos make me think this is something Tan Dun might have come up with at one point, but what it really makes me think of are my days as an undergrad when I spent all my time hanging around with my future wife and her friends in Plimpton Hall at Barnard. I basically lived in that dorm for two years – it was a great place.  Anyway, there was this friend of our who who lived there too – her initials are “EB” – who I think would dig this video.  Not only that, but I think that were she were more musically inclined she would have made sets of pipes for all her friends and posted videos of them playing lite chamber pieces arranged for tampon pipes on the steps of Low Library on YouTube.  It would have been the best.  Hey “E,” welcome back to the City!

 

(By the way, if you liked the panpies, don’t miss the “blow gun” – not to be missed, people!)

 

dtn

An Exotic Sheet Music Cover Collection Online!

While cataloging New York based organizations for the New York Musicians Index and Archive (or the NYMIA, a forthcoming resource for musicians in New York State), I found a really cool link on the New York Sheet Music Society’s web site to the “Hula Pages,” a website whose purpose (according to it’s “introduction” page) “is to document the cover art from vintage Hawaiian, tropical and exotic-themed sheet music.” We likey!

Lots and lots of great stuff over there. We have this one from 1915, which I sort of think is visually suggestive.

Isn’t there an old saying that goes, “exotica is just erotica with an x instead of an r?” If there isn’t, well, then there should be. Check out some of the other great covers:

 

There are literally hundreds of covers over there, so if you’re into old sheet music and exotica, you really, really can’t go wrong. Why, some of these titles there were even recorded on cylinder back in the day! Go have a listen!

AND SPEAKING OF CYLINDERS, be sure to check out the ARChive’s anti-iPhone contest, which I’m now calling the Plastic Cup Challenge! My cup-cutter should arrive this week (I’ve got confirmation that it’s shipped) and you can bet I’ll be blogging about it, so stay tuned!

dtn