I thought this YouTube video on the music used in the movie Inception (which is brilliant, go see it if you haven’t yet) was cool enough to share it here so I’m going to embed it even though I usually have a no YouTube video policy (since they so often end up getting deleted.)

Last week I wrote a post mentioning how I had been reading Guitar Man by Will Hodgkinson (and how it inspired me to start learning guitar again with Next Level Guitar.) I actually finished the book not long after making that post (this is probably the quickest I’ve read a book in a long time) and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since I finished it.

I was actually dreading the book coming to an end because then I wouldn’t have anymore to read, that’s how much I enjoyed it. And when I found out he had another book (Song Man) I ordered it right away (it hasn’t arrived yet.) Read the rest

I used to play a bit of guitar but I never got very good at it. Recently I’ve been inspired by a book I’ve been reading (Guitar Man) to pick it up again and after coming across a few of their YouTube videos while looking for guitar lessons I’ve decided to buy the 12 DVD set from Next Level Guitar. I really thought their YouTube lessons were that good, that I wanted to just go ahead and buy these DVDs without a whole lot more convincing needed.

12 of them for $229 seems like a good deal anyway, that’s 24 hours of guitar lessons (there’s 2 hours on each.) Think about how much it would cost you to hire a guitar teacher to teach you in person for 24 hours. It’d be a hell of a lot more than $229. And with these you can watch them over and over again rather than just having that access for a short bit of time.

I don’t know. I’m just excited about this and wanted to share. If you’re into learning guitar too then check it out. No, I haven’t actually watched the DVDs yet, but when I get them I’ll add to this review, you know so it’s actually a review of how good the guitar lessons are rather than just me sharing my excitement. Anyway CLICK HERE if you want to check it out for yourself. Read the rest

Check out M.I.A.’s insane performance of “Born Free” on Letterman last night complete with lots of M.I.A. doppelgangers. This is just too noisy for many listeners but I think it straddles the border of unlistenable dissonance on the right side. The insistent drums and bass along with the sloppy energy of the vocals makes it work for me.

It has this feeling of barely controlled chaos that makes it exciting. It’s rare that something this chaotic makes it’s way to network television and I think that’s a big part of what makes it interesting. Of course this makes it easy to say it’s “performance art” rather than “music.” But I don’t think it’s necessary that we make these clear lines at where one thing starts and another begins.

I don’t like embedding YouTube videos (especially when it’s copyright stuff like this) because they get deleted so often, so I’ll just point you to the video (if it gets deleted, just search for it, someone else will probably upload it.)

Occasionally I like to peep into the world of mainstream music to check out what teenagers and secretaries are listening to lately. This could be seen as a waste of time (and I won’t argue too strongly that it’s not) but I do think it’s a decent idea to keep a bit of perspective on things.

It’s easy for those of us who are really into music and who listen to a lot of bands that teenagers and secretaries have never heard of to get into this weird mentality where we think that these popular indie bands are much “bigger” than they actually are in the “real world.” In the indie hipster world you can’t get much bigger than Animal Collective but their last album only reached #13 on Billboard (the one before that only reached #72!) and none of their albums has even been certified Gold (500,000 copies sold in the US.) In the mainstream world they are a small player. Read the rest

Ringo Starr turns 70 today. He was born as Richard Starkey on July 7, 1940. Ringo was the oldest Beatle. John Lennon would be turning 70 on October 9 of this year and Paul McCartney just turned 68 (June 18th.) George Harrison was the youngest Beatle as he would have turned 67 this year (on February 25th.)

Ringo wrote two songs with The Beatles: “Don’t Pass Me By” and “Octopus’s Garden.” He also sang lead vocals on the following Lennon/McCartney originals:

“What Goes On” - Rubber Soul (Ringo has cowriting credit.)
“Yellow Submarine” - Revolver
“With A Little Help From My Friends” - Sgt. Pepper’s
“Goodnight” - The White Album Read the rest

It’s been nearly two months, but I’m finally picking up with the next entry in my series on each of the original Beatles songs. “Hold Me Tight” is #9 in the series. “Misery” was #8.

This song was one of the band’s earliest originals as it had been a part of their live act from 1961 (and remained a part of it through ‘63.) It was recorded on February 11, 1963 (along with most of the other songs that ended up on Please Please Me) in 13 takes but was scrapped and not put on their debut album. It was recorded again on September 12, 1963 for their second album, With The Beatles.

While it’s not among the band’s greatest songs, I do agree with Ian MacDonald’s opinion in Revolution in the Head that it’s actually quite a bit better than most (including Lennon & McCartney) give it credit for. It’s got great energy. Read the rest

According to this story on Billboard, Michael Jackson has sold over 30 million copies of his albums around the world since his death one year ago (June 25, 2009.)

In the US alone, MJ has sold over 9 million copies of his albums in the past year. On top of that he has sold over 12 million track downloads.

The This Is It film made $72 million at the box office in the US making it the highest grossing concert film ever. On top of that, it made another $188 million overseas.

Today at 3:30PM EST Paul McCartney is performing a benefit concert which is going to be streamed live on the Born HIV Free YouTube Channel.

In other cool McCartney related news, I appreciate that he is refusing to apologize for the joke he made about George W. Bush when he was collecting the Gerswin Prize at the White House. Read the rest

Radiohead has released seven studio albums to date. What if you were to take the top two most played tracks on Last.FM (using the last 6 months rankings) from each of those albums and put them on a mix? It seems like this mix would be a pretty good introductory overview of Radiohead’s career to date.

That’s my theory anyway, the 14 track mix below is the result of that theory put to the test (each song title is a link to where you can download the song so you can put this mix together yourself.)

The songs are in chronological order. The total amount of unique listeners for each song to date is included. Read the rest