5 posts tagged “weird al”

I had a couple of vertebrae fused last October, and so I've been away on a health sabbatical of sorts.  The cold weather is not helping!  I feel so odd saying that I will welcome some warm temperatures again, especially after we got some lovely snow in my home area last weekend.  But when you have metal in your body, or nerve damage, or both, you start feeling the barometric changes more.

I wanted to take a moment to share some other music blogs I have been reading here at VOX.  I promise I will be back with more music, including 2NU's last offering.  (Who is 2NU?  Stay tuned...)  But until then, allow me to share some other blogs of interest, including a side project of mine.

Burl Veneer’s blog was spotlighted at [music is good] recently, with his observations on genre labels as a guide to exploring music, particularly with spiritual jazz.  It's a retrospective look; according to his profile, he is "recapturing the thrill of [his] college radio years, on a smaller scale." It's a very nice sentiment for those who have become rather jaded with corporate/mainstream music as of late, and are still looking back to younger days when one's music experience was more visceral.  I don't mean to say that such leads to an abandoning of new territories in listening opportunities, but for those of us who have outgrown commercial markets and are generally exasperated with what's on the radio airwaves, there is a shift in perspective, is there not?  I remember that for myself, I went back for a time to what I had discovered musically in eight long years of college and university and when I had expressed similar thoughts.

(On a side note, it seems to me that many of the resources I looked at when writing reviews here seem to be very similar to what friends of mine looked at writing for university and college publications, or what they played for college radio.  But I digress...)

Those that have followed my reviews here know that I'm a big fan of mashups and bastard pop.  It's always been a satirical commentary for me, in some part, on how the commercial industry likes to come back to familiar hooks and "radio-friendly" licks-- how else can two or more songs, especially when they seem so radically different, come together?  They can come together, all right, in a rather slick way that can express an entirely new idea that is different from the sum of the mashup's parts.

Mashup Fans is one VOX group devoted to the mashup genre.  For a time it was active, but sadly, due to recent inactivity ( it appears to have succumbed to the splogger disease that has been infecting VOX like a cancer.  If you stick to the Media section, however, you'll find some great mashups and other mixes.  Do me a favor, if you're a mashup fan, won't you?  Go see if you can turn the tide.  Upload some stuff and send Darren a message to see what you can do to revive the group.

Monday Monster Mashup is my side project.  When I started the group, the idea was I would post something every Monday, although clearly, I haven't kept it that regular as of late.  I've included video mashups that accompany mashup tunes whenever possible, although there are some obstacles.  Since Warner Media Group has been throwing its weight around like a 800-lb. gorilla, some of the YouTube videos I've been using have been muted or audio swapped.  I don't think this bothers many mashup artists too terribly much; the savvy ones cover their buttocks by urging listeners to support the original artists.  Even if they don't make such a noble token gesture, most see the genre as transitory-- if the corporate suits kill a work on grounds of copyright infringement, they will have moved on to something new anyways.

BOOTLEGS and MASHUPS is more oriented to bootlegs, according to the description, although, really, I'm not sure what the focus is right now.  If you can follow the rambling posts of late, you're doing better than me.  Anyways, two of the hosts, moien and Ground Countrol To Major Tom, run music-oriented blogs in French, and it turns out there is a sizeable community of French-speaking music bloggers here at VOX.  The following are written in French, unless otherwise specified:

• 

  blog de The Dude
  The Dude’s Blog (Blog de The Dude) has a general focus-- nothing too specific, but that's fairly within the spirit of things at W♥M-- write about what you like.  Obviously, his username is taken from The Big Lebowski, which was referenced by Vu in Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In).  His latest post covers his album picks for 2009.
• Aurelio’s blog is a little more general than even that--"Un cocktail de musique, ciné, bouquins, bonne bouffe et rigolade" (A mix of music, film, books, good food, and comedy).  He hosts Albums 2009, so some of his latest posts have also been about his selections of music in 2009.
• niggytardust writes in English and French, so if you don't speak/read/write French, you have an English option.  More of a rock focus.
• Ground Countrol To Major Tom focuses on new artists and independent music.
• Music Is My Radar is written by moien

There are probably some ones I'm forgetting to mention, but I trust that you may explore their Neighborhoods and discover more.
 
Novelty Records is hosted by W. B. Mook, who wrote reviews for W♥M for a time.  You know what "novelty songs" are, right?  Sure you do!  If you don't, according to Wikipedia, it's a genre of music that was coined in Tin Pan Alley to describe a division in popular music that started in 1910 and continued in the '20s and '30s.  But to put it more simply, the term includes most anything that has been classified as parody or comedy music.  In short, it's just about everything that Dr. Demento has spun on his radio show-- you know, that funny-looking bearded guy with the top hat that helped launch Weird Al Yankovic's music career.  (Look for him-- Dr. Demento, that is-- in his music videos and the movie UHF.  Have a Twinkie weiner sandwich while you do so, okay?  It's good, but not like Yappy's Dog Treats-- I promise!)

So there you have it.  I'm probably just scratching the surface, but most of these bloggers and Vox Groups specifically mentioned (if not all) have contributed to W♥M in some form or another, so have a look around.

 12/15/2009 23:56:22 ♥ jaklumen ( / jaklumen.vox.com)

 08/24/2008 18:55:38  ♥ written by vu ()