Placid - "Sound Lake City"

Very good techno (8/10) Schaut mal vorbei! mit placid versuche ich meine art von musikalischem experimentalismus auszuleben. es handelt sich vorwiegend um melodisch angehauchte elektronische musik, zu der aber auch getanzt werden darf. Mehr kann ich dazu erst mal nicht sagen! Hörs dir an und schreibe deine Meinung! Es handelt sich hier um frühe Werke, die ich mit einem Yamaha CS1X, Cubase, Rebirth und einer Roland TB303 gefertigt habe. Very good techno. Intelligent tunes, professional production. Keep up the good work. SUPPORT INDEPENDENT ARTISTS If you like this album and you can afford it, consider supporting the artist by making a donation on this page - use the button "Donate" in the upper left corner. [mirror @ archive.org] | [Artist's Website]

Royalty-free music for professional licensing

Why so serious: Tenacious D - "Kickapoo"

Some actors are also fans of music. And the success in the movie business allows them to bring their hobby (and sometimes talent) out of the closet. In this episode let me present you a comedy actor Jack Black, who successfully combines both of his talents, because not only does he rock as hell, but at the same time his lyrics and music videos are insanely funny. Further, in the below video you will see guest appearances from two famous rockers: Meat Loaf and Ronnie James Dio.

Tenacious D - "Kickapoo"

Snakehips - "Minnow Johnson, the" [EP]

Bland RnB (5/10)

SNAKEHIPS is the music of Ollie Dickinson from North London. For live or DJ Bookings, Remixes, Collabs, a chat or hate mail: omdickinson@hotmail.com Soundcloud / Facebook / Twitter Rather bland, boring and repetitive minialbum by a British DJ, exploring the abyss of generic RnB and hip hop. It is available as a free download on mediafire.com, but really... just go somewhere else. There's too much good music everywhere to waste time on this. Of course, a truly dedicated fan of these genres may choose this over good music - everyone has a free will, after all.

Kill your popularity or kill yourself, part 2: Nirvana - "Smells Like Teen Spirit"

In the previous articles I showed you videos of two artists struggling with their enormous popularity. Both of them decided at one point to stop showing themselves in music videos, in order to save their sanity. And here is an artist, who chose a different path. This artist is Kurt Cobain, the lead singer, guitarist and primary songwriter of the band Nirvana. After the hell broke loose over the song you are just about to hear (and see) they tried to bring the Nirvana-mania to manageable levels by making the next record rougher and less accessible. But at the same time they kept the big budget videos coming. Of course I don't say that not having stopped making videos was a major factor leading to Cobain's suicide. There were many more things wrong in his life apart from the insane popularity - from heroin addiction to marital problems. But I am sure that fame played some role too and good videos always had great potential for inducing popularity. Nevertheless, the theme of dealing with one's popularity is only a pretext to tie this article to the previous ones. The true reason this music video just had to find its way to this blog is that it is without a question the most important music video created at least from the beginning of the nineties. And maybe even the most important music video ever created. And why is it so? The short answer is: because it single-handedly killed the infamous sound of eighties. Those dark ages in popular music, when this thing was called metal and that thing was dubbed rock. Don't get me wrong - both these songs are great. Great pop songs. The idea that such overproduced keyboard-infested plastic tunes played over inevitable primitive disco beats (what's the difference if played on real drums?) can be called "rock" or "metal" is repulsive on its own. And the fact that the whole generation of teens has been brain fucked by the music industry into thinking this is rock music is the crime for which the responsible motherfuckers should burn in heaven for at least half of the eternity. But one day in late 1991 the world as the kids knew it - ended. They turned on MTV to feed on their daily dose of hair "metal" and synthpop only to find this:

Nirvana - "Smells Like Teen Spirit"

It was fresh. It was infinitely different from the omnipresent pop. But most importantly, it sounded honest. The famous line: I feel stupid and contagious Here we are now, entertain us immediately found its way into these kids' minds, to that day tube-fed with pop. Entertained to death. The fact that Cobain wrote the lyrics for this song right before the recording session, just to fill the space, is quite irrelevant. It's not the first time that the work of art starts a life of its own, regardless of the creator's intentions (or lack of - like in this case). Unintentionally and quite reluctantly Cobain overnight became the voice of the generation. The video is not less impressive than the catchy song itself. It is brilliant in visualizing - or rather predicting - the impact the song would have on the world. In the beginning we see dull and bored teen public, barely listening to the band. But as the song progresses, something strange happens. Those apathetic brainwashed kids gradually start to wake up, open their ears and minds. The video ends in a regular riot. The teens simply cannot control themselves, having felt for the first time in their life the power of rock music. The power so great that even the school janitor starts to dance with his mop. We realize we have just watched the beginning of the musical revolution that within two years would cause the total and so well-deserved extinction of hair "metal", as it would send plastic keyboards and disco beats back where they belong - to the pop genre. The video was directed by Samuel Bayer and it was his first one. Bayer stated he believed he was hired because his test-reel was so poor the band anticipated his production would be "punk" and "not corporate." Inspiration for the video was taken from Jonathan Kaplan's 1979 movie Over the Edge, as well as the Ramones' film Rock 'n' Roll High School. The demolition of the set captured in the video's conclusion was the result of genuine discontent. The extras that filled the bleachers had been forced to stay seated through numerous replays of the song for an entire afternoon of filming. Cobain convinced Bayer to allow the extras to mosh, and the set became a scene of chaos. "Once the kids came out dancing they just said 'fuck you,' because they were so tired of this shit throughout the day," Cobain said. Like the song itself, the music video for "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was well received. In addition to a number one placing in the singles category, "Teen Spirit" also topped the music video category in the Village Voice's 1991 "Pazz & Jop" poll. The video won Nirvana the Best New Artist and Best Alternative Group awards at the 1992 MTV Video Music Awards, and in 2000 the Guinness World Records named "Teen Spirit" the Most Played Video on MTV Europe. In 2001, VH1 ranked the video fourth on its "100 Greatest Videos" list. But enough with figures. What really counts is that the video brought music back into the "music business", showing moronic executives that millions of people want something more than bland plastic pop disguised as rock or metal. And as for Cobain himself... In the previous episode I described the story of a boy, who blew his head off to get revenge on the cruel world only to end up as a short paragraph in a newspaper. Cobain did better. A suicide committed at that particular moment in time granted him immortality. It would not have happened if some day in the past he had not smelled like "Teen Spirit". And if MTV had not decided to show a certain video on some cold October evening. Disclaimer: No Wikipedia articles were hurt in making of this post, but some of them were extensively used.

Kill your popularity or kill yourself, part 1: Pearl Jam - "Jeremy"

Continuing the subject of artists overwhelmed by their popularity, let's stay in the beginning of the '90s, but move from England to Seattle. In 1992 Seattle, the United States and soon the whole world exploded in the revival of classic rock sound in the form of the so-called "grunge", which really was not a genre of its own, but rather a way of saying "we can't call it classic rock, 'cause it's modern, so let's make up a new stupid label". And in the very eye of the storm was a band calling themselves Pearl Jam. At first their debut album Ten had not received too much attention. But then MTV came to the rescue. My younger non-existent readers may not be aware of that, but at that time MTV was able to create a superstar overnight, just by putting a music video on heavy rotation - much like the Internet of today does, when a video goes viral on YouTube. And Pearl Jam went viral as hell. And all of this mainly because of the video you are just about to see. Other singles from Ten had accompanying music videos too, but nowhere near as spectacular as this one. And at that time MTV... wait, I already said that. The breakthrough single was Jeremy. The song and consequently the video are inspired by a story of a 15-year-old boy, who shot himself in front of his classmates. As the vocalist and lyricist Eddie Vedder explained: "It came from a small paragraph in a paper which means you kill yourself and you make a big old sacrifice and try to get your revenge. That all you're gonna end up with is a paragraph in a newspaper." Well, in the next episode I'll tell you a story of a gentleman, who had more success in that department. But now back to Jeremy. Powerful lyrics and passionate delivery of Eddie Vedder, backed up by the emotional video helped catapult Pearl Jam to fame. The song reached the number five spot on both the "Mainstream" and "Modern Rock" Billboard charts, received nominations for Best Rock Song and Best Hard Rock Performance at the 1993 Grammy Awards and the video won four MTV Video Music Awards the same year, including Best Video of the Year, Best Group Video, Best Metal/Hard Rock Video and Best Direction. Vedder's indirect, poetic style of writing climaxing with a chilling line "Jeremy spoke in class today..." was illustrated well by the video, focused more on suggesting events than explicitly showing them. The interesting thing is the director Mark Pellington decided to show the boy putting the barrel of the gun in his mouth, closing his eyes, and pulling the trigger. MTV's censors deleted this scene as too drastic. Ironically, the ambiguous close-up of Jeremy at the end of the edited video, combined with the defensive posture of Jeremy's classmates and the large amount of blood, led many viewers to believe that the video ended with Jeremy shooting his classmates, not himself. The great passion in Vedder's voice is not surprising, because apparently he could easily relate to this story, having had a difficult childhood himself. Many of his songs tell stories of troubled youth and child abuse, including Why Go?, Daughter and the famous Alive. His sudden popularity that had skyrocketed over the period of just months (if not weeks) was too much to bear for him and he did not want to end up like Jeremy. The rest of the band fully agreed on this subject, so they did the most obvious thing to do at that time for someone wanting to lower his popularity. I bet that having read about George Michael, you already guessed. And you guessed correctly. They stopped making music videos. The band did not release another video until 1998's Do The Evolution, which was entirely animated. And their popularity slowly declined, indeed, despite the fact that subsequent albums kept the same top quality and hit potential. Real life has written a sad epilogue to this story. Less than two years later a suicide of a certain musician confirmed that Pearl Jam's choice of shunning popularity in order not to fall insane was a good decision after all. As strange as it could get, the musician - obviously a troubled kid himself not so long before - shot himself in the head, following in Jeremy's footsteps.

Pearl Jam - "Jeremy"

Well, you expected to see the bottom of the page here, but I have another (hopefully) interesting story. The above video was not the only one made to this song. In July 1991, Eddie Vedder became acquainted with photographer Chris Cuffaro. Vedder suggested Cuffaro film a music video for the band. On Vedder's insistence, the record label Epic gave Cuffaro permission to use any song off Ten. He decided on Jeremy, which was not intended to be released as a single at the time. Epic refused to fund the clip, forcing Cuffaro to finance it himself. Cuffaro raised the money by taking out a loan and selling all of his furniture and half his guitar collection. By the time Cuffaro finished his music video, Epic had warmed up to the idea of releasing Jeremy as a single. Music video director Mark Pellington was brought in to handle the project. I don't know if Cuffaro shot himself too, after learning he had just spent all of his personal money and got screwed. Below is the original video. And yes - Pellington's is better.

Pearl Jam - "Jeremy" (original version)

Disclaimer: No Wikipedia articles were hurt in making of this post, but some of them were extensively used.

To eat a cake and have it too: George Michael - "Freedom! '90"

After the uncompromising video for Praying For Time, George Michael continued deconstructing his previous image, by not appearing also in the next music video from the album Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1. However, this video was nowhere near as radical as the previous one. While George does not appear in the video at all, it features several supermodels lip-syncing the song's lyrics. So the video is a pure feast for the eyes, even if not because of George's looks. Beautiful supermodels are not the only reason this video is interesting. It was directed by David Fincher. Yes, this David Fincher. The one, who moved to Hollywood to direct Alien 3 and then the best thriller in history of cinematography: Seven.

George Michael - "Freedom! '90"

They don't exist when you don't see them: George Michael - "Praying For Time"

Not having enough time to write reviews as often as I'd like, and being inspired by the fellow blogger EYE Listen To the Music, I decided to slightly broaden the scope of the blog - to keep it alive. From now on, I will also post my favorite music videos. Like I said, I have been inspired by EYE Listen To the Music blog, which I highly recommend as a source of carefully selected artistic music videos. The author of this blog has an exquisite taste for music video art. You may not like a particular song, but you'll surely appreciate the picture. Of course, it would be pointless to simply copy her blog, so I will use different selection criteria. Her blog is focused on recent videos and I will try to present mainly my favorites from the classical (for music videos) period of '80s and '90s. Further, I will post not only the greatest videos, because the priority for me is music, so occasionally you'll find a mediocre video for a great song. Very rarely I may post the opposite - a great video for a mediocre song - if I decide this was a real milestone for this genre of visual art. Well, enough with this explanation. I forgot I don't have any readers anyhow. Except for myself. So, off we go! The obvious choice would be to start with Video Killed the Radio Star by The Buggles, the first music video shown on the then brand new TV channel MTV (yes, they played music back then - this rumor is actually true). And not because I want to copy MTV, but because of its prophetic lyrics. But being obvious is the last thing on my mind. I always preferred being original, so I chose a different video. Much different. A video of the artist tired of people interested in his image rather than his music. People who did not really listen to what he actually had to say. For this artist, releasing in 1990 - in the middle of the golden era of MTV - the music video you are just about to see, was the act of suicidal bravery. And despite that, the single promoted with this video went on to become the no. 1 in the US and many more countries. He proved that what really matters is the music itself. Well done. Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you Mr. George Michael!

George Michael - "Praying For Time" Apparently, after a legal battle with Fucking Sony Music, George lost rights to use the above video, because now his official YouTube/VEVO webpage features a remake of this video with a different font and a different flow of words / verses. Oh, I just love how the major record labels screw their artists, at the same time pretending they are representing their interests. Fuck you, Sony! I boycott Sony anyhow because of their virus-infecting infamous scandal, but if not for that, this could be another pretty good reason. What? You say the case has been wholly rejected? Oh yes. The judge held that Michael's contracts were reasonable and fair, especially because the terms were comparable to the industry standard. I couldn't agree more... Screwing their artists is their industry standard up to this day and one should be aware of that when deciding to sign that devil's pact. *** And now for something not completely different. If you like music video art, you may be also interested in my other blog, where I present a selection of interesting (in my opinion) short films: http://justmakeitshort.blogspot.com/.