Sunday Morning Coming Down News Report 07.18.10

Posted by Michael Melchor on 07.18.2010

Waters and Gilmour together again (and again), the future of Black Sabbath, a Live Aid TV movie, the return (kinda) of Scribble Jam, and a three-way brawl erupts on the internet involving MIA. All this and a brand new segment to celebrate going back to the old school.


The views and opinions expressed herein are those solely of the author and may not necessarily reflect those of the rest of the human race.

Well, I woke up Sunday morning with no way to hold my head that didn't hurt. (Come on, what did you think I was going to quote?) Hey there and thanks for checking back. I know it might look a little different, but you're in the right place. Sort of.

You see, since I started doing this on-and-off again last October, I mainly used this very site to cull the big news everyone else was talking about and give you yet another person's my take on it. Standard operating procedure for 411 Music. It was an easier route and I like getting involved in the news of the day as much as anybody, but that's not the sort of thing I can put my whole heart in to (and you could probably tell by reading it).

That's not to say the last nine months have been me just phoning it in and going with the popular opinion. Not at all; I still cared about what I did, just not necessarily everything I reported on. (Case in point: do you think I give a tinker's damn about whether or not Katy Perry wants to get on "Glee"? Seriously?) That coupled with taking the "easy way out" by only using our site for news cheated not only me but you, as well, out of some of the other stuff going on worth a little more attention. Something much lazier and different than how I started out here...

You see, when I did this back 5-6 years ago (grief, has it really been that long??), I presented whatever news happened to fall in accordance with my personal tastes, for good or ill. Not to necessarily say that I only did news about artists/situations that liked back then, but I had a personal interest in each story I was doing one way or the other. (Ask Arch Enemy about that, because I'll be damned if I didn't call that one.) A far cry from trolling 411 and reporting whatever looked interesting by a damn sight.

With all that in mind, I decided to go back to what I used to do in the first place (with a few videos as needed and a brand new segment near the end). With, oddly enough, a change in name to differentiate the newer style I was doing under the same old name. If that makes any sense. It's cool; my head hurts, too. Although, this may be a little shorter than what you'll normally see for reasons I'll also explain in the new segment below.

Anyway, with all that out of the way, you can take comfort in the fact that some things never change...like this:


Okay, This Is Boring - What Else Is There To Read?

A BIG thanks to Steve Cook for the hearty welcome back. Much appreciated, sir. And yes - in your house, with your people, I will damn sure respect you. As far as the Forumers go...if only they loved me as much now as they did--oh, wait...

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...and, for the pure, unadulterated hell of it, me!
...and, oh yeah - me again!


All The News That's Fit To Post

Leading us off is HUGE news courtesy of...me...and, well, me again.

The long awaited Pink Floyd reunion that everyone's been clamoring for (me included, I ain't gonna lie) could actually happen. As it stands now, Roger Waters and David Gilmour - the two guys at each others' throats for many, many years now - have already pulled a surprise reunion for a small (like, 300 people-small) charity gig where they sang...get this..."To Know Him Is To Love Him". Heh.

And now, via Facebook, Waters has not only explained how the one-off reunion happened, but also dropped the bombshell that it will happen again

Below is Waters' note in its entirety (with significant portions bolded):

So here's what happened. Last year, 'The Hoping Foundation' a charity that supports Palestinian refugee kids, (www.hopingfoundation.org) put on a fund raiser at Ronnie Scott's Club in London, the idea of which was to raise money by auctioning karaoke performances by various celebrities. David was there as a supporter and was moved to perform an impromptu rendition of George Gershwin's 'Summertime?' which he performed aided and abetted by supermodel Kate Moss.

In the wake of that evening, someone, I think it was David himself, came up with this 'Wouldn't it be funny', idea. What if he (David that is) were to sing the old Teddy Bears song 'To Know Him Is To Love Him' with me (Roger that is), what with us having been so famously at each other's throats for years and years. Get it!!!! Anyway he E-mailed me with this suggestion and I loved it, so then it was just a question of juggling dates and deciding to do 'Wish You Were Here' and 'Comfortably Numb' to round out our little set. Or so I thought, until he sent me a number of very musical and eloquent demos of how we could do the song in two-part harmony. I listened with a sinking heart, knowing that David, with his superior vocal skills, could sing either part standing on his head, whilst I would have to search for a different key and then struggle through hours and hours of routining a performance that lay way outside my vocal comfort zone. To my eternal shame I bottled out and told Dave I would happily do 'Wish You Were Here' and 'C[omfortably] Numb', but that 'To Know him is to Love him' was beyond me.

Some weeks passed with David cajoling me from time to time, telling me how easy it would be, but I clung resolutely to my fear of failure until one day he made one final entreaty. I quote "If you do 'To Know Him Is To Love Him' for The Hoping Foundation Gig, I'll come and do 'C[omfortably] Numb' on one of your Wall shows". Well! You could have knocked me down with a feather. How fucking cool! I was blown away. How could I refuse such an offer. I couldn't, there was no way. Generosity trumped fear. And so explaining that I would probably be shite, but if he didn't mind I didn't, I agreed and the rest is history. We did it, and it was fucking great. End of story. Or possibly beginning.

Roger

PS. Just heard from David, he will decide in due course which gig he wants to do, it will be a surprise!

There you have it. You just read history. Waters and Gilmour will, at some point during Waters' run of The Wall on tour, get back together at least one more time. And, to hear Waters tell it, this could finally lead to more.

I know the cynics are all crying, "but these two wouldn't even share a fire pit in Hell, they hate each other so much!" And I completely understand all that. (In fact, I would still say that about Morrissey and Johnny Marr, but that's another subject for another time.) BUT...the old adage "time heals all wounds" may apply here. They put all that aside for Live 8 and they did it again under a week ago, with a promise that it will happen at least one more time.

If this leads to something long term, I can die happy. This is the reunion that true music fans have wanted to see forever - and forever may have just come to an end.


This. Will happen. Again.

Next bit comes from Blabberskag (Oh, hell yeah - +20 nostalgia!) and concerns the future - or possible lack thereof - of Black Sabbath.

Not of Heaven & Hell, mind you. They're done. Straight from Iommi's mouth:

This will be the very last gig we play as Heaven & Hell. We chose the name because the band comprised the Black Sabbath lineup that made the 'Heaven And Hell' album. We couldn't carry on under that name without Ronnie. It just wouldn't be right, and none of us has the desire to do that. We wouldn't call ourselves Black Sabbath either.

A word of explanation: "the very last gig" in question is the Ronnie James Dio tribute show next weekend at the High Voltage festival in London. Sitting in on vocals for Heaven & Hell's last gig will be Glenn Hughes and Jorn Lande. Heaven & Hell is obviously going away because it was the particular version of Black Sabbath with Dio as their vocalist. With him gone, Heaven & Hell follows.

Black Sabbath, however...well, even Iommi's not real sure:

I spoke to Ozzy while I was in Los Angeles after Ronnie's funeral, and he said he'd give me a call when he got to England on his own tour. But I've not had that telephone call yet.

Ozzy and I have a complicated relationship but we've always kept in touch, no matter what else might have been going on. Would I play with Ozzy again? Who knows? It's weird with me and Ozzy.

There can be all sorts of shit going on but when we talk, it's like nothing bad has ever happened. Once the tribute is done, we can all sit down and decide what it is exactly that we'd like to do.

The easy joke would be to go, "well, Ozzy's so doped up and scatterbrained even he doesn't know, LOL!" However, even a cursory glance of how bad he screwed his session musicians - going so far as to issue "remasters" of his old studio albums that were, in fact, complete re-recordings that were unadvertised so that he wouldn't have to owe the original musicians any royalties - can knock that theory right out of contention. Ozzy's just released his own solo record and is spending the summer reviving Ozzfest (for all that good that'll do...I mean, Motley Crue? On OzzFest?? What, was Cinderella's schedule already full? We couldn't get Dangerous Toys back together??). Ozzy has probably the rest of his year pretty booked already.

But, is it safe to call Black Sabbath dead once and for all? Probably not. Ozzy's worked with the old chaps before and there's not a lot of reasons to believe he wouldn't again. Especially if the time - and the money - is right. Nostalgia acts are always a great draw because of the feel of familiarity and the knowledge that people are going to hear what they came for. We'll see what happens, but I'm taking the over on a year that Ozzy and Black Sabbath will be together again.

From us (What? It was the first place I saw it) comes word that the origin of Live Aid will become a TV movie. When Harvey met Bob. Starring Harry Potter's Domhnall Gleeson as Bob. Geldof.

If that sounds sarcastic...it shouldn't. I've actually never seen any of the Harry potter movies, so I've no idea how fitting Gleeson would be to play Geldof. Besaides, if you don't know already, I'm a Live Aid/Live 8/Bob Geldof mark. I think what he did - twice - is historic and stands on its own grand scale in so far as putting together the biggest music shows ever (in terms of size, length, and who he was able to get to play both of them). So, yeah, I think it's cooler than hell that somebody thought this story would make a cool movie, because I happen to agree.

Blabbersnizz has the new Stone Sour single, "Say You'll Haunt Me", available for streaming. I got to download the first one, "Mission Statement"...and I'm kinda still waiting for it to grow on me still (and apparently, that's how Corey Taylor felt about "Say You'll Haunt Me"). Not that I don't like "Mission Statement", per se - it's well made and I get it. It just didn't grab me like their stuff from the first 2 records and it sounds a little disjointed.

"Say You'll Haunt Me", for a love song (which Taylor pretty much admits to, as the lyrics are about his wife), sure doesn't sound like one - a sign that Stone Sour may still be headed in the right direction...even if it sounds a little poppier than I'm used to from them. The only song that's any competition for this in that respect is "Through Glass", and that one was catchy and earnest enough at the same time to get over. So far, I guess i just have to give the tracks from "Audio Secrecy a little more time and trial before I really make any kind of call.

You don't have to take my word for it, though; feel free to give it a spin and form your own opinion...

BlabberJaw (on a roll!) brings details of the new Blind Guardian album, At The Edge Of Time, due in the States on August 24.

Vocalist Hansi Kürsch stated about this new one, "This will be our most bombastic and epic album so far. Each and every song has a completely different approach in comparison to each other and one complements the other in a perfect way." Man...if he's right, this could lead to mass cases of spontaneous combustion worldwide. Seriously.

Italian rock site spaziorock.it did a video interview with them, which I'll post after the next video...because the next video is of the song, out of all they've done, that finally sold me on Blind Guardian and convinced me I needed to hear these guys. And I was right. very quietly, they've become the best prog-fantasy band around. If you want to hear tracks about Middle Earth in the double-digit lengths and have your ass kicked while doing it, this is where to go.

But, before I got to all that, I heard them do this...and absolutely lost my mind:



I'm sure Phil Spector's antics had the Ronettes rolling over in their graves. Problem is, that probably put them back right, as I'm sure this did it first. And yet, I love it so. More on "Mr. Sandman" later in our program, but for now here's the promised video interview:

Next piece comes to us from...nowhere. Well, actually, I stumbled across it on Facebook, but does that count as a news source? Well, I suppose it could, but be that as it may...

Scribble Jam is back...kinda. I think. Or something a lot like it, anyway. It's the Red Bull EmSee: The Road To 8 Mile national competition. I'll let the guys that put this together do the talking:

Red Bull EmSee: The Road to 8 Mile is a freestyle rap battle of sight and sound, curated and directed by Eminem. The national battle series features the rawest lyricists competing for the honor of being named the illest MC in the country. We have the scoop on everything you need to know, and there will be even more to come.

Oh, hell yeah. Totally cool. Besides the fact that I love hearing freestyle battles, I'm so glad to see an outlet for these guys to throw down and compete again. I was a sad panda when I heard Scribble Jam had folded, as it introduced some awesome talent including, of course, Eminem and Skratch Bastid.

Scribble Jam grew to be about more than just rappers, but I'll forgive the DJs being left out of the equation here simply because I'm just damn glad to see this kind of thing being brought back. (Maybe the DJs can be incorporated next year?) With a corporate sponsor and the current reigning heavyweight champion in rap right now to oversee this, this should stay around a while.

And now, "The Champ" talks about the Red Bull Emsee competition:



"I'm looking for somebody to stand out, to be unique and to say the sickest, most ridiculous, most retarded shit you can say, something that makes somebody want to quit"...AHHHAHAHAHAHAHAAA! Love it. You know, I will be too. This is gonna be a great time.

And finally this week, we've got a treat for the rasslin' fans in the house - a bonafide, old-school, elimination-style three-way-dance. Our main event is M.I.A. vs. the New York Times vs. Pitchfork.

The match started with a New York Times piece on MIA that (deliberately, in all probability, since the Times had to print a retraction, but I'm getting ahead of myself) made her out to be a hypocrite. In particular, people latched on to this set of quotes:

"I wasn't trying to be like Bono," Maya told me. "He's not from Africa â€" I'm from there. I'm tired of pop stars who say, ‘Give peace a chance.' I'd rather say, ‘Give war a chance.' The whole point of going to the Grammys was to say, ‘Hey, 50,000 people are gonna die next month, and here's your opportunity to help.' And no one did."

For one, this is where the retraction came in. Appended to the end of the piece now is:

The cover article in The Times Magazine on Sunday profiled the singer and political activist M.I.A. While discussing her efforts to draw attention to the civil war in her home country, Sri Lanka, she was quoted as saying: "I wasn't trying to be like Bono. He's not from Africa - I'm from there. I'm tired of pop stars who say, 'Give peace a chance.' I'd rather say, 'Give war a chance.' The whole point of going to the Grammys was to say, 'Hey, 50,000 people are gonna die next month, and here's your opportunity to help.' And no one did."

While M.I.A. did make those remarks, she did not make the entire statement at the same point in the interview, or in the order in which it was presented.

The part that begins, "The whole point of going to the Grammys," up to the end of the quotation, actually came first. The part that begins, "I wasn't trying to be like Bono," and ends, "Give war a chance," came later in the same interview. The article should have made clear that the two quotations came from different parts of the interview.

A retraction is normally relegated to the back pages and therefore mostly overlooked nowadays. It gets too much in the way of a story the writer wants to tell instead of the actual truth and doesn't sell as well as the rest of the sensationalism does. Nonetheless, a retraction - basically a journalistic admission of guilt - was not only printed but placed prominently at the end of the story online so it can be clearly seen. It's fun watching a "reputable" (*cough*) source having to admit they fucked up.

Secondly, a quote that tells a much clearer picture was virtually ignored:

"We went to the Grammys, we had the baby and we bought the house," Maya said as she studied the menu, deciding on a glass of wine and French fries. "A month later, all this stuff was happening in Sri Lanka" - the Tamil insurgency was being defeated amid reports of thousands of civilian casualties - "and I started speaking up against it. And then, within a month, I found out my house was being bugged, my phones were being tapped and my e-mails were being hacked into. I was getting death threats, like ‘hope your baby dies.' The biggest Sinhalese community is in Santa Monica, people who are sworn enemies of the Tamils, which is me." She paused. "I live around the corner from Beverly Hills, and I feel semiprotected by Ben and, if anything happens to me, then Ben's family will not take it. Jimmy Iovine, who runs Interscope, my record company, said, 'Pick your battles carefully' don't put your life at risk,' but at the end of the day, I don't see how you can shut up and just enjoy success when other people who don't have the fame or the luxury to rent security guards are suffering. What the hell do they do? They just die."

This is much more important because, for those paying attention, this just torpedoed Lynn Hirschberg's (or the Times's as a whole) entire agenda. The point was to show MIA as portraying herself as a downtrodden speaker who's life is so rough, yet she lives in a posh California home with her baby and the son of the CEO of her label. See? She's living the high life! What right does she have to speak about stuff she known nothing about just to be controversial?

Well, for one, she's speaking about her background and trying to bring attention to those that are suffering where she comes from. Two, she admitted her lifestyle, but still uses her public platform to do some good. I wasn't aware it was such a sin in this country to use your higher status and wealth to attempt to help others who are unable to help themselves but are still in dire need of it.

MIA responds to this attack by posting Hirschberg's phone number on Twitter (ha!) and imploring people to "call me [MIA] and let's talk about the story ;)". Hirschberg called the move "fairly unethical...infuriating...and not surprising." And that seemed to be the end of it - until Pitchfork got involved.

At first, Pitchfork took the side of the industry darling they feel they helped create (echoing some of what I thought upon reading the original piece)...

...a correction is a correction, and it does make you wonder if Hirschberg's desire for a strong angle got in the way of her piece's veracity.

(Ulterior crackpot theory I just thought of: Perhaps New York Times columnist and notorious peacenik Bono is behind this entire charade!)

Even more damning was Hirschberg's recent statement to The New York Observer about the part of the piece that depicted M.I.A. as a truffle-fry-eating hypocrite. The writer said, "I don't think the French fries illustrate that much about her character." But, as The Village Voice's Zach Baron tactfully points out, "This statement, of course, is entirely disingenuous-- details like the above are included in profiles precisely because they are assumed to be illuminating, character-wise."

Pitchfork called out Hirschberg on attempting to ruin MIA (which, you notice, she never did answer for) and eliminated her from the match (to take the job of Editor In Chief at W magazine, natch). Once Hirschberg bailed out of the ring, Pitchfork made all niecey-nice with MIA - but the foreshadowing was there...

Will she be able to break free of such online censorship or perish beneath the weight of a mass media conspiracy (supposedly) hell bent on taking her down?! Tune in next time!

That sounded a little...snide. As for some "mass media conspiracy (supposedly) hell bent on taking her down," maybe they can shed some light on that because they totally fed the idea with a sudden charishot right to MIA's skull in the form of scathing review of "Maya" (because I refuse to type all those symbols and stuff), which came out this past Tuesday.

A 4.4. That was their score. Seemed kind of odd for someone whose last album they gave an 8.9.

Okay, time out. Let's look at these a second. From their review of Kala:

If anything, Kala finds her puffing out her chest and asserting herself more strenuously than ever, half-baked agit-prop and all. When she boasts on the stomping, Bollywood-sampling opener "Bamboo Banga" that she's "coming back with power/ Power," you get the sense that by "power" she means "courage of conviction." Regardless of how you square with her politics, her willingness to continue the muckracking is admirable, if not dimension-adding. Don't forget, she's rubbing elbows with the likes of Interscope and Timbaland now; for all the choices she might have made and the audiences she might have aimed at, the fresh-sounding, adventurous, and not-exactly-accessible Kala is the kind of record that obviously demanded a defined personal vision.

And now, from their review of "Maya":

It's hard to tell whether /\/\/\Y/\ is half-assed or half-baked. There are certainly a number of good ideas in the mix here, but the execution is lacking. Tracks like "Story to Be Told", "Lovealot", and "Teqkilla" come across like mildly promising demos ready to be edited into sleeker, stronger compositions. Lead single "XXXO" sounds unfinished, as if everyone involved figured they may as well wait around for someone else to make a better remix. Most of the songs are built out of digital clangs and electronic noise

A little later on, same review...

It's not exactly a surprise that M.I.A. would opt to create such an off-putting and anti-pop album at this point in her career. She may be reaching for an interesting and provocative style, but her motives seem defensive in nature-- reasserting her artsy, agit-prop cred not long after breaking through to the mainstream and becoming engaged to the heir of the Bronfman liquor fortune. On a superficial level, /\/\/\Y/\ is a challenge, but it's really more of a retreat. She's shrinking from her chance to engage with a mainstream audience, and refusing to live up to her potential as a pop artist.

...so, what am I to take from this? That if they take the same sentiment they praised her for in one review and break it up in to two parts using slightly different language, then they're suddenly saying the opposite? Like, she kinda sounds the same as her last album, but they loved her then, so it was okay? And alluva sudden they don't, so now that exact same sound and approach is suddenly no longer cool and she should be raked over the coals for it?

Something stinks, here. And I'm pretty sure I have an idea of what that smell is - Hirschberg and Pitc--excuse me, Bitchfork being full of their own shit.

Hirschberg has a history of this sort of thing (see: Love, Courtney) already. Hell, both of them do, really - Bitchfork is well-known for (wanting to be) tastemakers. What they say goes, and you're a Bolshevik weenie if you don't agree with them.

Their hatchet job even got a mention in Billboard. Good for them, but it's Billboard who blows a pretty big hole in their idea of being the hipster place for music, as well as Heischberg's ill-executed "takedown".

The problem with both of them looking to affect MIA's career is that it would have to be assumed that, in order to accomplish that, sales of "Maya" would have to drop like a brick. That's what determines popularity - the more people buy, the bigger you are. That's how the game works.

While MIA's last album, Kala has been certified Gold by the RIAA having sold over half a million units, it took three after its release for that to happen. ("Paper Planes" didn't take off for well over a year after it came out, and it wasn't the intended single even when it did.) In fact, Kala's first week sales were 39,000. According to Billboard, "Maya" is projected to open with...about 25,000. Not a very big difference, there. Doesn't look like the rest of the planet hates MIA as much as Bitchfork and Heischberg do, because the rest of the planet cares about her as much as they used to - which is to say, not very much.

I'm not a big MIA fan; that wasn't the point of this, to come to her defense. I don't hate her, either, really. I simply haven't heard a lot of her and don't follow her that much (Hell, it took me until a couple weeks ago to realize that she was the hook Apathy raps over in "Swagger Like Us".) I just don't see what the point of this two-pronged takedown was. The problem I have here is both Heischberg and Bitchfork getting themselves over and thinking they're a lot more important than they actually are. People desperately trying to use the media to get themselves over is a big pet peeve; that's why I can't stand that douchelord Perez Hilton. I'm merely here, to paraphrase Emergency Pizza Party, "to call out their bullshit like I was Penn & Teller."

I'm wondering if it was even necessary, because their efforts look like they were for naught. All in all, their combined actions seemed, at the end of the day, to do very little for her career one way or the other. Looks like Bitchfork's supposed reputation of ruining careers with a bad review is a little overblown. And Heischberg simply decided to be a bitch on her way to a career change. Neither, it looks like, accomplished what they wanted to do, and I'm glad for that.

The winner of the match, after last eliminating Bitchfork: MIA.


On The Road Again

Only one item here this week (from us (again), but it's the only one I need because I'm thinking this is going to be a box office juggernaut.

Round 2 of the American Carnage tour is coming, and three of the "Four Horsemen" are on the bill. Anthrax, Megadeth, and Slayer all on the same show. If that's not enough to put asses in seats, consider that Anthrax will have Joey Belladonna in tow, Megadeth is doing all of Rust In Peace, and Slayer is doing all of Seasons In The Abyss.

That's right - all at the same show.

Sure, make all the arguments about old-timers and hanging on to past glory all you want. I won't listen to a bloody one of them. I've only ever seen Anthrax with John Bush, and I've, amazingly, never seen Megadeth OR Slayer in person. I'm on this like a thong on Vida Guerrera.

The dates for this beast are:

SEPTEMBER
24 Verizon Wireless Theatre, Dallas, TX
25 AT&T Center, San Antonio, TX
26 Verizon Wireless Theatre, Houston, TX
28 Lakefront Arena, New Orleans, LA
30 Civic Coliseum, Knoxville, TN

OCTOBER
1 The Arena at Gwinnett Center, Atlanta, GA
2 Hard Rock Live, Orlando, FL (BOO YAA~!)
3 Bayfront Park Amphitheatre, Miami, FL
5 Hampton Coliseum, Hampton, VA
6 1st Mariner Arena, Baltimore, MD
8 Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum, Uniondale, Long Island, NY
9 Toyota Pavilion @ Montage Mountain, Scranton, PA
10 LC Pavilion, Columbus, OH
12 Freedom Hall, Louisville, KY
14 War Memorial Coliseum, Ft.Wayne, IN
15 DeltaPlex, Grand Rapids, MI
16 Eagles Ballroom, Milwaukee, WI
19 E Center, Salt Lake City, UT
20 The Pearl, Las Vegas, NV
21 Gibson Amphitheatre, Hollywood, CA

And...I ain't one to gossip, so you ain't hear this from me...but chances are pretty good I'll have a conversation with more than one of the bands involved before it's all said and done. VH1 Classic and Eddie Trunk (by way of Blabberskank) beat me to Slayer; you can see it at the link you just breezed over. I'd post all three videos there, but it looks like kind of a pain in the ass - and I have a better one to get you as pumped as I am about this tour...




I Like It, I Love It

Let's inaugurate this new segment dedicated to recommendations you may or may not know about with two items, shall we? Well, three.

Before anyone asks and just to really take us back to the old days...yes, my wife definitely falls under the category "I Like It, I Love It." Six and a half years later, she is still on the list of Reasons To Rejoice indefinitely.

First, back to "Mr. Sandman". This is a great opportunity, I realize, to introduce you to Pomplamoose. Odd name aside, it's a talented-as-hell duo that releases most (if not all; haven't been able to check yet ) of their songs as well-edited, behind-the-scenes-during-the-recording-process videos on YouTube. Actually, taken from the description for the video below, is a clearer idea of what they do:

This cover is a VideoSong, a new medium with 2 rules:
1. What you see is what you hear (no lip-syncing for instruments or voice).
2. If you hear it, at some point you see it (no hidden sounds).

Aside from that glowing recommendation and clarification, only thing left to do is show it:



This particular video has a guest, but most of the rest are just Jack Conte and Nataly Dawn. And yeah...like they said, what you see is what you hear and get. There's some originals to peruse, too; they actually do more than just covers of other people's stuff (although their covers are downright amazing). You can check out what they have at their YouTube channel.

As I write this, I'm gearing up for Nerdapalooza. Yes, it is as it sounds - a nerd music festival. And it'll be fun as hell.

A couple acts, like Marc with a C - one hell of a singer-songwriter) and Sci-Fried (Classic rock parodies of Indiana Jones, Star Wars, etc., plus some really cool originals), I already know and looking forward to seeing there. Some, like MC Frontalot (Nerdcore rapper EXTRAordinaire) and Schaffer the Darklord (another excellent Nerdcore arttist, and this one's bringing the Epic Win Burlesque troop...no, you read that right) I've heard but never seen, so that'll be exciting.

And others yet, like the Protomen (who write and perform entire rock concept albumS about Mega Man) and Captain Dan and the Scurvy Crew (a rap group comprised of pirates that really live the gimmick) I've neither seen nor heard, so I'm very interested. And yes, this will be every bit as fun as it sounds - although you don't have to take my word for it - this should tell you all you need to know.

Actually, here's a little taste of both Nerdapalooza and the sort of thing you'll see next week. This is video taken from not even 48 hours ago, at this year's Nerdapalooza Pre-Party, featuring The Megas:



In seven days, you'll know exactly how much fun it was. In great, gory, nerdy detail. There's so much going that I've decided that this column, next week, will be completely dedicated to the Nerdapalooza aftermath. Including possibly a couple exclusive scoops and interviews. You've been fairly warned.


Happy Trails

PPffff. So much for this being a shorter column. But I have to wrap it up here because I have three long but incredibly fun days ahead of me. And yes, I've already seen a follow-up or two to stuff I've talked about here, but that'll have to wait a while.

I hope you liked what you saw, because I enjoyed what I wrote. Feels good to be back - and I will be again in a week. You're more than welcome to join me to see what went down at Nerdapalooza..

L8. Thanks again for reading.


For more interesting reading, click here. And/or here, for that matter.