Earlier, we posted a children’s choir singing Radiohead’s “Creep”. Today, we came across (via Dangerous Minds) a different children’s choir version of “Creep,” this time, with video from the life of Charlie Brown.
Oscilloscope Laboratories? Nitrous canisters? Liquid LSD in a breath mint bottle?
Why does this new Beastie Boys short film seem strangely familiar…?
John Legend and The Roots have a new album out, and one of my favorite songs is “Compared To What.” I played it for some musician friends of mine, and one of them said, “Wow, this is a lot slower than the original!”
There ensued some discussion of “the original.” One person said Common (the hip hop artist); someone else said, “I thought it was from The Seventies.” After a visit to The Google, I found a wealth of information about this interesting, important song of protest, and its circuitous pop history.
Mark Anthony Neal, a music writer and professor at Duke University, gives the best breakdown of the song’s history in a March, 2003 article for Pop Matters. He notes that, indeed, Common did record a version of “Compared to What,” with the singer Mya. But the only lyrics from the original song that remain are, “Tryin’ to make it real, compared to what?” Everything else is a rap by Common that includes lines like “the real can’t be bought or sold.”
The irony (which you knew was coming)? The rapper was remaking Eugene McDaniels’s 1960’s-era anti-war song as part of a Coca-Cola marketing campaign called “Coca-Cola…Real:”
The original version of the song is a powerful example of black pop that wasn’t afraid, echoing Audre Lorde, to speak truth to power, an element sorely missing in contemporary black pop music.
Many of the so-called hip-hop generation’s artists have been remarkably silent, while Bush, Rumsfeld, Rice, and Powell march lockstep to war with Iraq. Thus it is terribly ironic that in the midst of major antiwar protests around the world, one of the most “conscious” of hip-hop artists [Common] referenced one of the great protest recordings in the pantheon of soul music to sell brown caffeinated fizz.
[flvplayer http://www.noiselabs.com/blog/audio/mya_common_comparedToWhat.flv 400 320]
That remake of the song is particularly distasteful when you compare it to the most famous of the 60’s-era versions. You Tube user Dr. Greez had uploaded the classic recording of pianist Les McCann and saxophonist Eddie Harris doing “Compared to What” live at the 1969 Montreux Jazz Festival:
That version really cooks.
It’s interesting to hear John Legend and The Roots, who share enough of an affinity with Common that he appears elsewhere on the same album (Wake Up!), offer their take on this anti-war song. Unlike Common in the Coca-Cola ads, John Legend sings the original lyrics more or less as written. The Roots provides a much more stripped-down, slower base for the song. Overall, it’s a stirring version.
As we’re in the midst of two “overseas contingency operations” that continue to kill and maim on a daily basis, the potent protest lyrics of “Compared To What?” remain sadly relevant. John Legend, ?uestlove, and the Roots have taken a small step toward restoring the honor, and the power, of Eugene McDaniels’s original.
Have a listen below.
[audio:http://www.noiselabs.com/blog/audio/roots_what.mp3|titles=Compared to What|artists=John Legend and The Roots]
Sifting through a bunch of data viz projects for a project I’m working on. Came across this one that is like no other I’ve seen yet.
On May 4th, 2007, we asked internet users to help isolate Michael Jackson’s white glove in all 10,060 frames of his nationally televised landmark performance of Billy Jean. 72 hours later 125,000 gloves had been located. wgt_data_v1.txt (listed below) is the culmination of data collected. It is released here for all to download and use as an input into any digital system. Just as the data was gathered collectively it is our hope that it will be visualized collectively. Please email links to your apps, video, source code, and/or screen shots to evan[at]eyebeam[dot]org. Work will be exhibited in an online gallery and depending on popularity and interest potentially in a forthcoming physical gallery exhibition as well. Huge thanks to everyone that contributed to the data collection.
Be sure and watch the video to see some of the crazy and not so crazy uses for all that tracking data.
Spotted this track in the background of the trailer for the new movie about Facebook, and had to buy it immediately! It’s a young women’s choir called Scala performing Radiohead’s “Creep.” You want to listen to this, trust me.
[audio:http://www.noiselabs.com/blog/audio/scala_creep.mp3|titles=Creep|artists=Scala]
How did I miss David McAlmont for so long? He’s got an incredible three-octave range, and he’s been singing as an OUT gay man since the early 90’s. WTF!?
He’s shown above in a still frame singing a James Bond cover song, “Diamonds Are Forever.” The video is below.
Monday night February 8 at Beat Research (at the Enormous Room in Central Square), dj’s Flack and Wayne’n’Wax are hosting dj/rupture. I’ve mentioned rupture on the blog here before. He was one of the founders of the Toneburst collective, with whom Noise Laboratories had the pleasure of collaborating back when we were all so much younger…
Via dj/rupture comes Auto-Tune the News’ songification of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s speech in Memphis, the night before he was killed:
Lorin Bassnectar has done it again! If you don’t absolutely love his remix of the Pixies’ Where Is My Mind?, then… where is yours??
[audio:bassnectar.mp3]