ALEXCALIBUR (Alex Gulla) has an incredible voice – rich, supple, and flexible – and his live show is nothing short of mind-blowing. Note: that link may or may not be NSFW, depending on where you work, and contains pictures of Mr. Gulla singing while wearing very small trunks and not a lot else.
I chose this particular song because I find it incredibly soothing, and the video, created by Gulla and Katie Torn, is illustrative of his general aesthetic. You can listen to more of his work here.
AF THE NAYSAYER x Luke St. John, photograph by Tyler Walker
AF THE NAYSAYER x Luke St. John are currently based in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. AF THE NAYSAYER (right, above) is an electronic musician formerly of rap group Shuggie Watts, while Luke St. John (left) has a background in spoken word. Together they create groovy, funky jams.
They are currently hard at work on their first record, but you can get a preview of their sound in the videos below. The first song is The A. M., and the video was shot and edited by Tyler Russell; the second song is r.a.w. talent, and the video was filmed and edited by Jon Rogers. Both videos are of live performances: one at a club, where they are assisted by drummer Logan Leis and bassist Taylor Lee, and one at the Brec skatepark in Baton Rouge. The second video also features local Baton Rouge skaters.
If you like what you hear, you can keep up with their progress on Facebook. Other places to find them: AF THE NAYSAYER’s solo project, and the GRNOLA May 2011 Mix by DJ Def D. Also, Luke St. John has a mixtape you can listen to.
This time I picked two videos by the same artist because I genuinely just couldn’t choose only one to share. They are both from the same record, The 11th Day Single Collection, but that is about the only thing they have in common. The first one Arittake No Ai De [With All My Love], is a sweet pop song for “the one that got away”; Redemption is a hard-rock howl of rage and loss.
I picked the first one because it looks predictable and uncomplicated, at first, and then all of sudden there is BLOODY VIOLENCE and then Gackt comes in and literally hits rewind and redirects / fixes the narrative arc:
GACKT「ありったけの愛で」
The second one I selected because it was used as the theme song for Final Fantasy VII: Dirge of Cerebus and so has Final Fantasy-themed costumes and also Deeply Symbolic Birds of Prey all over everywhere:
GACKT「REDEMPTION」
As some context for all of this, Gackt was formerly the lead singer for Malice Mizer, a visual kei band, whose look and sound was essentially goth crossed with glam, punk, metal, and French romanticism and turned up to 11. Ten years ago he went solo, and in addition to his musical accomplishments he’s also appeared in several films and stage productions and lent his voice to a number of different projects.
Also, the YouTube channel for the label he’s on, Nippon Crown, is full of fascinating material and well worth checking out.
That’s right: we haven’t even closed the Hayes Carll contest, and we already have another great giveaway. I’m pretty tickled by this one. Scott Miller, of V-Roys fame, is releasing a new solo album. Check out the charming video for the first single, “Lo Siento, Spanishburg, WVa — A Story of the Real Americana”.
How can you not love that closing chorus?
Now, the goodies. We have two prize packs to give away, one men’s and one women’s, that contains Scott’s CD, a T-shirt and a FREAKING KAZOO. A kazoo, y’all! How great is that? Each winner will get to choose the shirt style and size of his/her choice from Scott’s nifty shop.
All you have to do is drop a comment below with your favorite of the 50 United States of America – and your preference for men’s or women’s shirt. One man-style and one woman-style winner will be chosen at random. We’ll give y’all until August 3, 2011 at 5 PM EST to enter. Winners will be announced on August 4.
The Bronx , though named for one of the boroughs of New York City, are actually from Los Angeles. There have two wildly different incarnations: as The Bronx, they are a punk/hardcore band; as Mariachi El Bronx, they are a mariachi band. This video is for one of their mariachi songs. To quote the YouTube description, “Light-up suits ahoy!”
I have been thinking about this post for a couple of months now, never sure how to start it and never sure what I had to contribute aside from “It’s really good. You should buy it.” There is some Cajun blood down my mother’s family line, but it’s not a culture I was ever directly exposed to. I have always enjoyed the friendly, happy, highly danceable vibe of Cajun music whenever I’ve heard it, but, until this album, I never had it around for listening on a regular basis. I haven’t studied Cajun music. So, in considering this post, I have felt wholly adrift. But as Joel Savoy’s brother Wilson said in an NPR post about the current crop of Cajun string bands, talking about the audiences the Cajun musicians find when they play outside of lower Louisiana and southeast Texas, “Even if they didn’t grow up in that culture, they can tell if the music is real or fake.”
This is My Chemical Romance, broadcasting from a post-apocalyptic California, in 2019. There’s lots of geeky details, fancy driving and things blowing up in a very satisfying manner. Every time this one comes up on shuffle I almost wish I had a car just so I could plug my iPod into the speakers and crank this one up while driving very fast. It’s also the first video in a series, and served as a visual introduction to the concept and the world of their latest record, Danger Days: The True Life of the Fabulous Killjoys.
My Chemical Romance - "Na Na Na" (Official Music Video)
You may recognize Phantom Planet, or at least singer Alex Greenwald’s voice, from The OC, as they sang the theme song for the show. (You might recognize his face from Donnie Darko.) This song is from Raise The Dead, their last record, released in 2008. The video should get some sort of prize for creepy, horror-movie inspired effects.
Jail Weddings, of Los Angeles, are in the process of an ambitious project: making a video for every single song on their new record Love is Lawless. This one, for The Spell is Lifted, is directed by Lauren Everett, and intersperses performance shots with vintage pictures of Los Angeles. Some of them evoke the glamor of Old Hollywood; others of them depict the far uglier and twisted flip side of that coin. It is a visual meditation on the lure of Tinseltown, and the way that lure can be dangerous.
A couple of weeks ago, James Leg posted this video to Facebook as a “guilty pleasure”:
I’ve always liked this song, too, and hearing the soulful groove of it again reminded me of the early ’80s when I often listened to 93.1 WZAK. They had a late-night, slow-jam show called “For Lovers Only”. This was the theme song:
I was a big admirer of Jeffrey Osborne at the time, and though I don’t specifically remember hearing this song on “For Lovers Only”, I’d be willing to bet it turned up in the playlist at least once.
I do, however, very clearly remember hearing this racy number from Kwick on the program (remember, I was about 10 years old at the time):
And you can’t do slow jams without including the late, great Teddy Pendergrass. (And it gives me an excuse to put his handsome face in the feature image.)
Thus ends another edition of Why April is the Way She Is.
![Phantom Planet: Do The Panic [OFFICIAL VIDEO]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/9p8DVxc16CA/0.jpg)
