While we’re on the subject of Cyndi Lauper (kind of), here is one of the many reasons she is awesome: the video for Girls Just Want To Have Fun, from 1983.
It includes some of the first ever computer-generated images, as well as an appearance by wrestler Lou Albano and one scene that is a homage to the Marx Brothers movie A Night At The Opera.
April 2003
I’m in library school. Spring Break is coming. We’re all too old and over it but talking about our plans anyway.
“Vegas,” I say, trying to keep a straight face, because I am living a cliché. “I’m going to Vegas.”
They widen their eyes and make appreciative noises and ask For what?
I pause, organizing all the possible explanations. A music festival, I say, finally, because that’s mostly what Convergence is. There will be a fashion show and a lot of other shenanigans, I will hang out with a friends from home (by which I mean New York) and friends from afar and maybe even some people I have known for years but never met, but basically it’s a music festival. It’s close enough.
A few days later I finish my last exam or paper or whatever it is and pick up my bag and backflip myself into the slipstream, destination: Nevada. When I get there I am surprised that there really are slot machines in the airport, and that I can, in fact, see the lights of the Strip glimmering in the distance.
Unlike Pittsburgh, where I have been living, Vegas in April is hot and sunny. And now full of people in black. We learn not to make metal fingers at each other because apparently it looks like a gang sign and attracts unwanted official attention. This cuts our ability to communicate in public by about a third.
While the others are sleeping or primping I go to a fine art museum in the basement of a casino (The Bellagio?) because I have museum design homework to do and no car and I can walk there from The Flamingo. I discover that this museum is the only place in the whole town where there are no slot machines. The silence is both blessed and deafening. The art is a respite from the non-stop glitter, blinky lights and vast tides of humanity upstairs.
I also go to Siegfried and Roy’s Secret Garden and Dolphin Habitat because because I like tigers and dolphins and also it is quiet there.
The fake Rialto in the Venetian gives me déjà -vu induced vertigo.
I decide I may be constitutionally unsuited to Las Vegas.
In the evenings we go out.
Convergence is a national event. People come from everywhere, often from places with no clubs and no scene, where they are all alone, and the only other goths they know are the ones that live in their computers. But the city mice come too. This year the LA goths have shown up in force. They are all impossibly thin and have perfect teeth and remind me vaguely of preying mantises.
At one point I repair to a handicapped stall with a friend so she can fix my corset, because I’m wearing it upside down. She knows because she made it.
Later that same evening I hide in a different stall to have a five minute meltdown because everyone has one Convergence blow up in their face, and this one is mine.
At some point during the weekend I end up gaffa-taped to a slot machine. I am wearing a Poison tank top and maybe a skirt covered in tiny silver bells and am completely sober. I am with other people. We’re waiting for someone, losing nickels to kill time. Someone we vaguely know drifts by and they have gaffa tape in their pocket, because of course they do, and the next thing I know I’ve been affixed to a slot machine.
I don’t work too hard getting free because I don’t care that much and also I think it’s funny. Eventually our straggler appears and we leave and go to find food. I eat terrible cheesecake somewhere in deep in the recesses of a casino.
On Sunday, I go to mass by myself, because it’s Easter.
Church in Vegas is more sedate than I expected it would be. The palette is sandstone and cool blue, very 1970s. It makes me wonder what it would be like to live in Vegas full time, and go to that church every week.
On Monday I leave for Los Angeles, to discover that even non-fancy people live in apartment buildings like the one on Melrose Place and to visit dinosaur bones on purpose and the beach by accident.
Then I take the train most of the way home. I take a lot of pictures I will later label “maybe Utah” and discover that Texas goes on forever, even longer than Montana, which I did not think was possible. I re-read Infinite Jest while the ladies around me keep up a low hum of complaint about not being able to smoke.
Pittsburgh, when I finally get back there, is kind of chilly and still wearing the bright bruised colors of a rainy spring, but I am glad to see her just the same.
2013
GoldBoot is Logan Lanning, Bobby Lucy and Jules Manning, and they actually do live in Vegas full time. You can buy their tunes here.
And now, from deep in the vault, an ’80s classic: Wild Wild Life, by the Talking Heads, which actually won a VMA for Best Group Video in 1987. Though this video can be watched and understood on its own, it is not self-contained; it’s part of a larger work, a movie called True Stories, that was written and directed by David Byrne.
There are a couple of celebrity cameos (John Goodman! Sam Kinison! Someone whom I’m pretty sure is Spalding Grey!) and a couple of parodies of celebrity cameos (Prince, Billy Idol, The Karate Kid, someone who is supposed to represent Cyndi Lauper and/or Madonna); really it is a gently biting commentary on the state of pop culture at the time it was made.
It has been well over a year since this song surfaced as a teaser for Alex Greenwald‘s solo record and I must confess, I was beginning to wonder if the project had been abandoned.
But lo, a video has appeared! Hopefully this means the record will emerge soon too.
Without further chatter, here is Mr. Greenwald (looking very professorial) along with Darren Robinson and Jeff Conrad from Phantom Planet and Stuart Zender from Jamiroquai (?!) with a live version of the song performed at a live variety show put on by The Kennedy Administration in Echo Park, in Los Angeles.
Arch Woodmann is: Antoine Pasqualini (voice/drums/guitar), Benoît Guivarch (guitar), Lucie Marsaud (guitar, keyboards) and Thomas Pirot (bass). They are from Paris, France, via Bordeaux, and this is their video for Fangs, from their self-titled third record.
It was filmed at the Mus̩e des Beaux-Arts de Rennes, by What Comes Around Goes Around, who from what I can gather РI have a feeling a good deal got lost in the Google translation Рspecialize in flash mob-style concerts Рthe flash mob being the bands Рhappen in a wide variety of public places.
In this case, the cool reserve of the art gallery throws the aggressive grit of the song into high relief. Also, the one dude who popped up only long enough to look super annoyed to be having an unexpected cultural experience which he must dutifully record on his cell phone totally made me laugh.
Listen to Soul, Listen to Blues by SAFIA is one of the many songs included in Marshmellow Pavement, Vol. 1, a new all-indie, all-Australian compilation from the A&R Department.
I like it because it starts out as a meditative soul-infused electronic ballad and then about halfway through, in an audacious but charming move, they switch gears and straight up drop the bass and it becomes a meditative soul-infused dub-step jam.
I realize that sounds like a contradiction in terms and possibly a disaster. I promise it is truly a delight.
I also like the video for the song. The cool blues and shimmering silvers simultaneously underscore the soul and make the jump to dub-step feel like nothing more than taking a particularly deep breath on the dance floor.
If you don’t like it: There are 21 songs other songs available for you to choose from, so go find some that tickle your fancy.
Long-time friends and collaborators Brian Keenan (Proud Simon) and Ben Yonda (Cricket Spin) have come together for the first time in seven years to make a six song split EP they are calling Broken Brothers.
They are working within one genre – indie folk – but their voices and styles are distinctly different. Keenan is smooth, mournful and dreamy; both Yonda’s lyrics and his guitars have jagged edges.
They each contributed three songs; I’m putting one from each of them below to serve as enticements.
From Brian Keenan: I Watched You Disappear, a song about watching someone fade away in front of your eyes. It is good company in the silence of empty late-night trains, or during long walks under heavy skies.
From Ben Yonda: Paper Match, to which you should listen closely, so you may also wince in sympathy and appreciation.
Chris Clarke is an emcee/producer from Los Angeles. This video, directed by Muttjob, is a two for one deal: it showcases two songs, Constantly Always (prod. Great.Jsn) and More Than Just (prod by Chris Clarke), both from Clarke’s newest release, the handpicked.
the handpicked could also have easily been called the overstuffed, because it is full to bursting with guest stars, including: Blu, Thundercat (Suicidal Tendencies), Sleepy Brown (Outkast), Smooth Bee (Nice & Smooth), Double K (People Under The Stairs), Computer Jay, P.U.D.G.E., Sum, Ali Abnormal, J Thorn, Ronald Bruner Jr, Big Sin, Kamasi Washington, Taylor Graves, BLVME, Voy, Lil Miss, JTowers, Ahmad Rashad Jr. and Bei Ru.
The vast quantity of cooks have not spoiled the stew, though. the handpicked is diverse but cohesive, sometimes smooth, sometimes spicy, sometimes a bit like wandering through a party and listening while conversations wind through pauses in familiar and well loved tunes.
I am particularly fond of this video because, you know some people talk with their hands, and it’s at least 50% of the conversation? Chris Clarke raps with his hands, and it is at least 50% of the song. Also the last frame is an interesting pause/jolt sort of moment.
http://youtu.be/O2d71-9tLgY
This video for Hot Knife, from Fiona Apple‘s most recent record, The Idler Wheel . . . , is the product of a collaboration between Apple and filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson.
Hot Knife is one of my favorite songs on The Idler Wheel . . . , mainly because it has multitudes of interlocking layers and an insistent, urgent heart. Here, Anderson and Apple have made a video for it that illustrates and illuminates both the layers and the urgency, and showcases Apple’s magnificent voice.
William Pilgrim & The All Grow Ups are PM Romero (left) and Ishmael “Ish†Herring (right); they are from California, and they are awesome.
They play Americana, but it’s the Americana of men who show their love by stealing their lady a new car. Ish Herring has a great whiskey-gravel blues voice, and he can also stretch his wings and put some soul shine on a tune.
This is the video for Farewell, from their new record The Great Recession. The video has a retro look and feel, but listen closely: the song is rooted in the here and now. It’s also got a two-step beat and lyrics like a glass of cold water to the face.
