I'm not entirely sure where to put this one, but I've got to linkify it or I'll go even more insane than usual.

Posted by: Wonderduck at 09:37 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Everybody has their musical obsessions of the moment, right?  The stuff that you've simply got to hear when you're listening to music, on heavy rotation on your mp3 player, constantly streaming online, whatever, you've got 'em, your friends and co-workers have 'em, and I have 'em.

Posted by: Wonderduck at 02:54 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Ladies and gentlemen, Public Service Broadcasting has released a new EP.

Posted by: Wonderduck at 11:59 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Nope, nothing deep today!  Just a couple of AMVs I've stumbled across in the past few weeks that I want to share with y'all.  C'mon, it's fun!

Posted by: Wonderduck at 10:17 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Today, we lost Aretha Franklin, unarguably a music legend no matter what you like to listen to.

Posted by: Wonderduck at 10:02 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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So I was wandering around the web earlier Saturday, just going where it took me, wound up reading  some of the Fluff for Warhammer 40K again.  I've discovered a WH40K writer/audiobook reader combination that I'm fascinated by of late (Aaron Dembski-Bowden and Jonathan Keeble and the Black Legion series), so I've been spending a lot of time in the 40K universe recently.  Fun to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there... and if I did, I expect it'd be a very short life with a very violent end.  That's just the way things are there.

Posted by: Wonderduck at 03:26 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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I have spoken of the 2012 movie Dredd before, about how I thought it captured the feel and texture of the Judge Dredd universe quite well.  My opinion on the film does need to be tempered by my lack of experience with the source material, but I've enough to realize that it done good.  Karl Urban in particular needs praise for his performance of the title character, particularly because he never takes off the iconic helmet during the film... when was the last time you saw a movie star do that?... and is still able to bring life to the role.  What I'm saying here is that if you like a good action film, or you're a fan of Judge Dredd, go watch it immediately.

Posted by: Wonderduck at 10:30 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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Saturday night, somewhere around midnight.  I'm listening to a playlist I found somewhere, apparently just random music when a song pops up: Don't Fear The Reaper by Blue Oyster Cult.  Yes, yes, the "more cowbell" song, ha ha very clever skit.  Every time you listen to the song unironically an angel gets a Stratocaster, so forget you ever saw the skit.  Anyway.  That sent me on a tour of BOC's catalogue.  Classics like friend Ben's favorite tune, Godzilla, or their tribute to Cthulhu, The Old Gods Return, or even Cities Aflame With Rock And Roll.  It was at that point that I really realized:

Posted by: Wonderduck at 11:25 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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As I was getting dressed for work this morning, or more correctly, dawdling over getting dressed for work this morning, I spied a post over at that Reddit place asking why people like music or songs in languages they do not understand.  Now, I've participated in a few threads like this in the past and have a stock answer: "You're wondering why people like this?"  But as I looked through the thread, two comments leaped out at me.  The first was a relative newby asking for music from anime... "I've seen FMA, and that had good music.  Is there anything better?"  A few moments later, I had posted God Knows...,  which even if you're tired of the whole Haruhi thing, you've got to admit is a pretty darn good song, Undine which is a beautiful song that can still bring me to tears, and my latest OP obsession, Live for Life from Ben-To!.  I felt smug.  Not for any good reason, I just felt like I had dropped a bomb on this rookie's musical world.  As it turns out, the responses have been quite positive.

Posted by: Wonderduck at 06:33 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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There comes a time for everybody who is honest with themselves where they must admit that they are not, and never will be, the absolute best at something.  There is always someone better.  Case in point: Ranveer Singh.

Posted by: Wonderduck at 11:55 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Y'all remember Moonbase Alpha?   The co-op game that NASA put together to simulate spaceman life on the Moon?  For a while there, there was a hot meme involving the game's text-to-speech program repeatedly saying, and later singing, "John Madden."  It's that last bit that concerns us today, for some of the singing that was arranged was actually fairly good... I mean, as good as you could expect a Stephen Hawking soundalike to sound.  I've played around with text-to-speech in one game or another, and making it sound like... well, speech... isn't all that easy, so even those simple bits impress me.

Posted by: Wonderduck at 07:32 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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The other day, I was chatting with a coworker during one of my rare lunchbreaks that didn't involve me taking a nap, and she told me something that both stunned and amused me.  See, the Powers That Be decided that it was time to put someone in the desk next to me... it had been empty for a month, much to my pleasure (imagine discovering you're the only person in a row of seats on an airliner)... and my new neighbor apparently was able to hear the music from my headphones... but only a certain type of music as it turns out.  Metal and/or Other Loud Aggressive Music.  Via conversations with her friends, a good portion of the office appeared to believe I listened exclusively to Screamo.

Posted by: Wonderduck at 07:56 PM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
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The car is still in the shop, the costs are mounting, I don't care, let's have some live music!

Posted by: Wonderduck at 10:44 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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Most, if not all of you, my lovely readers, are looking at the title of this post and wondering just who the heck Pat DiNizio was.  This was Pat DiNizio:

Posted by: Wonderduck at 09:10 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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So the Cubs are playing the final game of the NLDS against the Washington Nationals as I write this.  It's kind of a slugfest, and I'm kinda going insane.  The Cubs lead 9 - 6, but that means nothing right now.  

Posted by: Wonderduck at 09:55 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Long have I been of the belief that the flat-out filthiest instrumental line in the history of rock music is found in Rage Against The Machine's track entitled Killing In The Name Of.  I can take or leave Zach de la Rocha's vocals, but Tim Commerford's punching bass,  Tom Morello's hot guitar lick and Brad Wilk's metronomic drum performance is, in my mind, about as close as you can come to perfection in a post-punk / alt-funk-rap-metal thing.  Listening to live performances of the song, you have no doubt that band came either to play or kick your butt, and they still haven't figured out which they want to do more... so what the hell, let's do both!

Which is why this made do an honest-to-god spit-take when it popped up on my screen.

Actually pretty funky... makes me wonder what the apparently joyless de la Rocha would think of it.  Or any of the cover versions that are out there.  See, there's actually quite the cottage industry around covering the song...

more...

Posted by: Wonderduck at 08:48 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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During my usual peregrinations throughout yootoob, amazon and twitch, I have been exposed to music and bands that I'd never trip over normally.  Usually it comes to nothing... 90% of everything is still crap, no matter how you wind up finding it... but every now and again something bubbles up out of the remaining 10% that forces you to pay attention.  At which point you listen to it, say "huh, that's nice," and immediately forget it.  Then there's the the really special songs, the ones that you listen to twice in a row, save in your "trax" folder in Firefoxy, so you can revisit it every few days.  I've had a few of those experiences recently, and they've all been... emotion-appropriate.  So here, my friends, are a few songs I've recently been impressed by.


more...

Posted by: Wonderduck at 11:59 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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I think that 2017 cannot improve upon what I just witnessed, for I have seen 10000 people cheering deliriously as they watch a Japanese hologram dab.

Hatsune Miku - 39 Music! (from Magical Mirai 2016)
How does one top that?

Posted by: Wonderduck at 10:32 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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Caravan Palace - Black Betty

Ramalam.

Apocalyptica w/ Till Lindemann - Helden

How this slipped past me all these years is entirely beyond me.  Apocalyptica is a heavy metal cello trio, and Till Lindemann is the lead singer of Rammstein... and the song is, of course, a cover of David Bowie's "Heroes". 

Want more?  Click...

more...

Posted by: Wonderduck at 11:47 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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The unstoppable beast that is 2016 has claimed another victim.

Leonard Cohen died today at the age of 82.  By the time I first experienced his incredibly rich, almost frighteningly bass voice, he was already legend.  Strangely, it was in the slightly-better-than-mediocre movie Pump Up The Volume, which had a killer soundtrack.  Cohen's "Everybody Knows" was featured throughout the film.

This young duck was stunned... and then he quickly tried to find out more about this guy.  Turned out he'd been around for nearly 30 years by that point.   I felt right at home with I'm Your Man, the album I purchased.  It was all full of synths and drum machines, and it reminded me a lot of the band Double.  Which just goes to show what I knew of Leonard Cohen.

Allow me a digression here... I promise it all ties together in the end.  When I moved to the northlands for grad school, it was actually the second time I'd been there.  The first time was when I went up to find an apartment.  I was graciously shown around the town by a lass I had contacted via Prodigy... yes, that long ago.  I had sent out 25 or 30 e-mails more or less at random to people in Mankato that were on Prodigy, essentially saying "I'm moving there in a few months for grad school, I don't know anybody, will you be my friend?"  Most went unanswered.  One replied "no."  One said he didn't live there anymore, but he owned a bar and grill in town... I should stop in, tell the guy behind the bar that he had sent me, and I'd get a burger and beer out of it.  Sure 'nuff, I did.  And then there was the one who accused me of writing to her because she was female... "yeah, that's so slick."  Well, she wasn't entirely wrong... anyway, she agreed to show me around the town, have dinner with me the first night I was up there, you know the drill.  And she gave me the nickname that stuck with me throughout my Minnesota years: "Slick".  Actually, for many years after she continued to call me that.  Um.  Like I was saying...  Somewhere along the line, it came out that I worked in radio, and she insisted I let her hear some of my stuff.  So, I made her a mixtape in the station's production studio, with voice drops by me.  The catch was, every song had something to do with her.  The featured tune?

I've often joked that "Suzanne" was Cohen singing falsetto.  According to him, he just wasn't quite sure how to use his voice at that time.  Still, a lovely song.  In case you're wondering, that picture at the start of this digression is of a Mankato landmark; my apartment would be just off-picture to the right.  I could see the place from my bedroom window.

I've often wondered just what it must be like to have written and sung one of the most beautiful songs of all time and have it be famous because of the performances of others.  "Hallelujah", off the album Various Positions, was popularized somewhat by John Cale, turned famous when Jeff Buckley covered Cale's version, which then got used in the movie Shrek, though Rufus Wainright's version was on the soundtrack album, and then kd lang did my favorite performance of the song at the opening ceremonies to the 2010 Winter Olympics.

There are at least 300 known recordings of the song.  He's certainly been honored worldwide for the song, both by the public and by fellow musicians, but one wonders... 

Just a couple of weeks ago, Leonard Cohen released a new album, You Want It Darker.  Given the lyrics of the title song, it's hard to imagine that he didn't know his time was short.

If so, then I think it can be said that he went out on his own terms.

Posted by: Wonderduck at 10:54 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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