Hard News: Friday Music: Partners in Vacancy
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the Lorde Vector thing- you should be sent a email on monday, click the link to claim the tickets, I assume on a first in first served basis. Will be interesting to see how many try to profit from the promotion on trademe...
Saying that awesome to see a digital service vying for ears in this manner, ie target users not industry or tech peeps in a very public way.
Miley was marketing, pure and simple - middle aged men fell for it, fist shaking and bottoms wobbly... the "target market" of tweens probably missed the whole thing
As we weather the spring rains I dream of sunshine accompanied by basic channel https://soundcloud.com/fitn/fitn-basic-channel-tribute
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I’m only mildly miffed about not being invited
Did she invite her biological grandparents too? :P
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This gender swapped version of blurred lines highlighted what was so wrong with Thicke's version for me
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Forever Young?
The Osmonds’ ‘Crazy Horses’
Hah!
I'm still waiting for Crazy Horse's 'The Osmonds'
but everybody knows it's nowhere... -
Peter Darlington, in reply to
Miley was marketing, pure and simple - middle aged men fell for it, fist shaking and bottoms wobbly... the "target market" of tweens probably missed the whole thing
It certainly is pure commerce but I disagree about the Tweens reference. Just check out the likes of Diplo's and other American EDM stars Twitter feeds and it's full of female teenagers posting endless pics of themselves twerking their arses off. It's lucrative current pop culture in the US so no wonder MC wanted to grab some of that action.
As for Robin Thicke, the only thing I like about him is his name, makes me laugh every time...
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Russell Brown, in reply to
Did she invite her biological grandparents too? :P
Oh, please. She's only slightly younger than my younger child.
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The Clean Vehicle t-shirts are in stock.
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Lilith __, in reply to
This gender swapped version of blurred lines highlighted what was so wrong with Thicke's version for me
Thicke's Blurred Lines is a stupid, misogynistic song with an even stupider and more misogynistic video. There's a stinging takedown here on Miss Representation , which also gives special mention to Timberlake's creepy video for Tunnel Vision .
So while Miley's twerking was kind of embarrassing, I thought it was a nice irony that Thicke was upstaged by a woman dancing.
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liking these goodies from getdownedits... Cheryl Lyyn - Got to be real, and Laidback...
https://soundcloud.com/getdownedits/cheryl-20lynn-20-20got-20to
https://soundcloud.com/getdownedits/laidback-20-20white-20horse-20
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Aah, Crazy Horses, the Osmonds' One Good Apple! Apparently the song was making an environmental statement, referring to air pollution from cars. Can't imagine though they were driving about in 1.6L Ford Pintos to back their 'convictions'!
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The best thing about all the Miley Cyrus hand-wringing and pearl-clutching is that in the midst of it all is some quite good writing about pop music culture. I like this essay about how profoundly sad Miley's single is - the one she performed at the VMAs that wasn't "Blurred Lines".
But what bothers me about all the Miley obsessing is the fact that there was actually a whole lot of really amazing stuff at the VMAs that everyone seems to have forgotten about (or didn't even watch in the first place, if their exposure to the VMAs was only a flipped YouTube video of the Miley performance). My highlights:
* Lady Gaga's opening number, featuring five different wig/costume combos, effortlessly switched. And she finished wearing a tiny seashell bikini, which she kept wearing for the rest of the evening as she watched the show in the audience. Yeah, she's still got it.
* Kanye West's minimalist performance of "Blood on the Leaves", with his silhouette against a projection of a photo of lynching tree. Pretty much the exact opposite of Miley's giant foam fun finger.
* Nsync reunited! Justin Timberlake seemed conflicted about being awarded the Vanguard award (and I don't think his body of work justifies it) but while the five were reunited for a brief Nsync medley, the stadium partied like it was 1999. So much joy! And One Direction caught an uncomfortable glimpse of their future - who will be the Justin Timberlake and who will be the Joey Fatone?
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Alan Perrott, in reply to
One good apple (and I get the ref, nice)?? Not even…
check Gotta Get Love off Brainstorm
then there’s the track wot I can’t remember off Plan. the common ingredient is brother Alan Osmond, under the magic Mormon undies, the dude was a proper rocker.
also worth checking is the clip with Donny wigging out on his homemade synthesisers. I once yarned with a woman who used to hang with them in Brewster and went to a lot of their parties – seems like they cross pollenated with all and sundry. interesting bunch.
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Lilith __, in reply to
Lady Gaga's opening number, featuring five different wig/costume combos, effortlessly switched. And she finished wearing a tiny seashell bikini, which she kept wearing for the rest of the evening as she watched the show in the audience. Yeah, she's still got it.
Loved Gaga's costumes, especially the shell bikini. She's such a chameleon!
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Ian Dalziel, in reply to
especially the shell bikini.
She’s such a chameleonThis must be clam elan, surely...
;- ) -
I had to go look for that other Osmonds track - Traffic In My Mind
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More cast offs from the Silverfish Ranch...
Out they go, the baubles of the past, the memories, the artifacts of existence, back out onto the streets they very nearly disappeared from, looking for a good home, or some final exposure before sharing their latent stored solar energy with the universe...Most kiwis won't have seen this rare Sydney Toy Love poster from April 1980 - Toy Love did many gigs with INXS, (as they were on the same label - Deluxe, owned by ex-AC/DC manager, Michael Browning), this poster advertised the last two gigs they did together...
I can still remember the fear of late night poster runs over there, the cops had guns!! Half the time you'd finish your paste-up run and find that some other band had come behind you and covered them all up...
(NB: the image above is pushed to look much like it would have when originally silk screened - the one for sale is a tad 'flatter and duller' than that...)
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Perhaps I’m just old, but it seems to me that the problem with some modern pop music is that it is so empty of the things pop music is supposed to possess. Such was the case with the joyless mess that Miley Cyrus performed this week at the MTV Video Music Awards.
It could be symptomatic of a wider pop culture stasis, which also applies to fashion, movies, design - you name it. This Vanity Fair article points to technological advances - particularly the Internet - as a major reason for such cultural stasis.
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Russell, think the link to the nethui video is munged?
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Russell Brown, in reply to
Russell, think the link to the nethui video is munged?
Ta. Fixed now.
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Chris Waugh, in reply to
This Vanity Fair article points to technological advances – particularly the Internet – as a major reason for such cultural stasis.
And I'm calling bollocks on it.
Well, I think he has half a point here:
So as the Web and artificially intelligent smartphones and the rise of China and 9/11 and the winners-take-all American economy and the Great Recession disrupt and transform our lives and hopes and dreams, we are clinging as never before to the familiar in matters of style and culture.
And here in China there are certain trends like soap operas set in the Qing-dynasty or early-80s and people expressing nostalgia for the good old days when life was simple and stable - and sometimes I want to say, "Yeah, because suddenly finding yourself the subject of a struggle session when you wound up on the wrong side of the fickle political winds or your neighbour wanted to get vengeance for some perceived slight 20 years ago is so much less chaotic than rapid economic growth," but, y'know, sometimes it's better to bite your tongue. Anyway, it does seem to be a reaction to the rapid economic and technological changes of the last 20 years, and is quite understandable. A bit of nostalgia gives you something solid to hang on to.
But:
One reason automobile styling has changed so little these last two decades is because the industry has been struggling to survive, which made the perpetual big annual styling changes of the Golden Age a reducible business expense.
Yeah, it couldn't possibly be that like civil aviation, the car industry is getting so closed to the aerodynamic ideal that massive style changes are impractical and, well, stupid.
If blue jeans became unfashionable tomorrow, Old Navy would be in trouble.
Then Old Navy shouldn't be in business. Who wants to bet they manufacture nothing themselves, that's all done off shore? And how could their designers not come up with something to meet the new fashions then have the contractors probably here in China or perhaps somewhere even more third world make them? And how hard would it really be to change colours, materials, and patterns?
And I think everything he complains about as an example of stagnation is in fact the exact opposite. For example:
anyone anywhere with any arcane cultural taste can now indulge it easily and fully online, clicking themselves deep into whatever curious little niche (punk bossa nova, Nigerian noir cinema, pre-war Hummel figurines) they wish.
How is that not innovation?
And raising the spectres of Empires Past.... The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Sartre, Camus all appeared as their empires were collapsing. Not just reaching the top of the hill and beginning to walk down the other side as the USA seems to be doing now, but actually falling apart (where and when was Camus born, FFS? Oh, Jean Reno and Marguerite Duras fit in there, too). As I believe somebody pointed out in the Syria thread, Britain and France carved up the carcass of the Ottoman Empire (gee, thanks, guys...), but Turkey still produces some pretty cool films. And Orhan Pamuk.
Conclusion: Just more of the adolescent navel-gazing wank that seems to be published far too readily in the US.
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Perhaps I'm just old, but it seems to me that the problem with some modern pop music is that it is so empty of the things pop music is supposed to possess.
The same could have been said in the 1970s about punk.
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And just because somebody somewhere mentioned nostalgia, Cui Jian/崔健 《一无所有》__yìwúsuǒyǒu/Nothing to my Name__ – Mandopop in its youth – and Faye Wong’s Take My Breath Away from Wong Kar Wai’s As Tears Go By – Cantopop at its best, and in my opinion vastly superior to that American version from the film with fancy aeroplanes.
ETA: How many films has Andy Lau survived? I can only think of one, God of Gamblers, in every other film I can think of he's killed.
ETA again (my memory seems to have gone the way of my summer holiday): Hope those two vids are not geoblocked, and sorry for the long ads if you can watch them.
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I’m thinking of parting with this gem…
But damned if I can remember who did it, I’m thinking Ronnie van Hout; or Lesley Maclean; or Stuart Page; or a Kilgour; or …
Does anyone remember/know fer sure?Still looks great though, don't it…
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Russell Brown, in reply to
The same could have been said in the 1970s about punk.
Not really. Punk was shortform, emotionally direct, consciously youthful. The Miley song just seems like unfocused drivel produced by middle-aged men.
And I'm not saying all contemporary pop music. Just the machine stuff.
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Chris Waugh, in reply to
Just the machine stuff.
And there, I think, is your problem. The machine stuff is to music what McDonald's is to food.
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