Music
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Best 8-bit cover, ever
“Have you ever wondered what Dark Side of the Moon would sound like if Pink Floyd had written it for NES, instead of for a rock band?” Brad Smith – MOON8 or use this direct link to the torrent file (hosted at btjunkie)
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Stevie on Sunday
…because it’s our day to chill and listen to YouTube music. Max got to see twenty vids, now it’s my turn for one. Actually, there is a version with an actual music video here, but the audio sucks. /// It’s funny, I played this song a few months back when we were setting up a PA, and my coworker Bruce suddenly stood up and announced he hadn’t “heard this since it came out!”
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And now, an urgent message from the RIAA..
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Getting Musical (Thai Ranat Xylophone & Toy Snare)
The Doraemon snare is a $5 cheapie we bought at the bicycle/toy store in Kalasin where we went to buy a baby seat for the nanny’s bicycle a month ago. The wooden xylophone is called a ranat (or more specifically, a ranat ek) which was donated to the Yoshida Instrument Collection by Tanaka-sensei, a close friend who is leaving Sarakham at the end of the month. The ranat is tuned by placing wax lumps along the underside of each wooden slab; all of these have fallen off and we need to find somebody who knows how to tune it. Hopefully there will be someone at Nam’s university since they have…
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Tasty Media Links for 9/1
Ursula K. Le Guin reviews Margaret Atwood’s semi-sequel to Oryx and Crake, The Year of the Flood. Oryx and Crake was just some of the freshest writing I’d seen for quite some time and some scenes were kind of reminiscent of the Earthsea novels now that I think about it. But was it Science Fiction? Aside from Atwood’s protestations, I sure think it was – and it was SF of the best kind: The kind enjoyable by people who don’t read SF. ////////////////////////////// Roxanne Shante, the first really popular female rapper, gets a doctorate and gets Warner Music to pay for it. It’s not hard to see what they were…
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Another music site for Max
Tone Matrix chill chill chill UPDATE 4/15/09: Also, BallDroppings is the dope unko.
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New Snakeskin Head Drum
On the way to my uni’s sports day a couple weeks ago, we stopped off at a famous temple (from the ancient “kao noi ka mae” story) where they sold various trinkets, sticky rice baskets, and musical instruments at a series of stalls on the dusty temple grounds. After testing out this drum and hearing how nice it sounded, my coworker and I debated about who should buy it. He said he had too many drums already, so I bought it. The man who sold it to me didn’t say who made the drum, who killed the snake, or if it tasted delicious, and I didn’t ask. Just having a…
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I Saw the Queen of Morlum (and Molam and Mawlum and Morlam)
Her name is Banyen Rakgan, and here I must quote Wikipedia: “Banyen was the first national mor lam star, whose appearances on television in the 1980s brought the form to an audience beyond its northeastern heartland. She bridges the gap between traditional and modern mor lam, normally appearing in traditional clothing, but using electrified instruments and singing luk thung and dance influenced songs.” The basic story of how I found myself ten feet away from Banyen performing live is simple: It was serendipitous. //////////////////// I work at Rajabhat Mahasarakham University. There are many Rajabhat universities located all over Thailand. A few days ago I went to the Rajabhat in Ubon…
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Fort Minor – Kenji
You might not have heard of Fort Minor, it’s a side project of Mike Shinoda’s (lead man of Linkin Park). In 2005 they released their first (and to date, only) album, The Rising Tied. In my mind this is one of the best hip hop albums released in semi-recent memory (which isn’t saying much, I’ll admit – the golden days of hip hop died with the Walkman). I bring up the subject of Fort Minor because I’ve recently been in contact with former Japanese American internees and their children who wanted more information on posts I’ve written here on internment. Anyway, the subject came up about internment in popular culture…
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MTV redux
So MTV has somewhat atoned for the past decades of sin by finally providing… music videos! I browsed around for an hour and realized it’s literally been 20 years since I’ve really watched music videos… And it’s telling to see the #1 watched video on the site (I swear the kids linking to that vid must think Wang Chung is an Asian porn site). Some of the videos seem to be in fairly high def as well. Go check it out; mtvmusic.com
