Hearing this amazing (brand-new) Charles Bradley song for the first time has been life changing. I am not–however–sure if it is because I recently have a new babe (yeah, I just called her my babe) (and, aww look at me) or if it is because it reminds me of that 70s funk, that 70s soul that I wasn’t around for but have a pretty superficial understanding of thanks to movies and MTV.
I dare you to listen and not dance or become smiley all of a sudden. Although I do expect you to be a smiley person if you are in P1, naturally.
Everyone who lives in Austin knows of First Thursday. It’s the first Thursday of every month on South Congress, an evening filled with festivities, art, and sales. Street performers are already relatively common on South Congress, but the number of acts on First Thursday increase dramatically.
Being a street performer requires a lot more courage than it would typically take to just play a show. This seems like a reversed concept, but many people who are in successful bands have never played on the street. In some cities, it’s a job specifically reserved for the homeless, while in other cities it is respectable and exciting. There is a humbleness and sense of thrill that comes with playing to strangers who never expected you to be there. Gaining attention of streetgoers helps a musician understand how their music affects people and who it appeals to– and mostly, it is inspiring as a musician or an appreciator to simply spread the love of music, with no censorship or price tag attached.
I played on the street for the first time two years ago in Hong Kong, in a “street performer” district that is famous there to tourists and locals alike. I sang three songs on my ukulele, and accumulated a total of 86 cents. It was still incredible. I remember very clearly a little girl who was maybe two years old listening in on two songs. I often wonder what that little girl thought of me.
I played on the street this past First Thursday celebration, and I found that people were a lot more receptive than they were in China. Maybe because I suck less, or maybe because people in America are just generally more open about their opinions and what pleases them. Who knows. I made a total of $30, which isn’t half bad for something I would spend the evening doing in my room anyways, and the longest duration someone stood there and listened was two songs. That worked out well in my favor, considering I sang the same four songs for over half an hour.
When I’m playing on the street, I’m often surprised at the reactions I get. More often than not people just walk by. But pretty often someone will stop and listen or smile at me. They encourage me. I live in a wonderful city where there is no stigma attached to doing what you love and sharing it with people. I often find myself wondering sometimes whether people would still treat me that way if I were an old man with missing teeth. Is it my musical ability, or the way I carry myself?
From street performing I’ve learned maybe it’s just a little bit of both. The most important lesson I’ve learned is that if you can play to a bunch of people who don’t necessarily even look at you and just walk by, you can play to anyone or take on anything that comes your way, whether in the music industry or otherwise.
Most people would probably agree that music is a form of creative expression. I definitely agree with that. But since I’m not musically inclined in any way, the best way I can express myself through music is by creating playlists.
A playlist has to have balance and cohesiveness in order to fulfill its purpose. Playlists are created around a specific mood or occasion or activity. It’s different than just listening to one artist though. There must be diversity in a playlist, but still a connection between each song that ties them all together letting them work together in the same track list.
I take pride in the playlists that I create, and I love using 8tracks.com to publish them and let others enjoy them too. 8tracks is a great site because sometimes I’m in the mood to work out or draw or go for a drive, but I don’t have to time to set up the perfect playlist before I begin. This is where 8tracks becomes a clutch tool for finding great jams for any occasion. You have the option to browse through most popular, recently uploaded, etc, but you can also “explore”. When you explore 8tracks, the site prompts you with “Play me some…” then you choose from a list of categories such as “spring”, “chill”, “pop”, “study”, “electronic”, etc, etc. Then once you choose, it prompts you again. So if I chose “chill”, then it would say “Play me some chill + _____”, and you choose another word to complement the first word. So when I choose “happy”, 8tracks generates a list of user-uploaded playlists that are described as “chill+happy” for all those happy, chill times, like say, on a Sunday afternoon.
So next time you need some background noise or theme music for your Sunday afternoon, check out 8tracks for the perfect playlist solution. Or better yet, next time you’re bored, get on the site and try compiling some playlists of your own and see how people enjoy them. You never know, you could be the next big hit DJ.
With the approach of Daft punks highly anticipated album “Random Access Memories” the group has begun to reveal new exciting details through a variety of attention grabbing advertisements. Between sets at Coachella they teased their first new single “Get lucky (ft. Pharrell)”. Then they released a bizarre video about the making of the song in which Pharell describes the otherworldly qualities of daft punk’s “robots”. This content along with the release for the first single has taken the release of the album from highly anticipated to the most anticipated album of this year.
American Express will be presenting a live stream music show this Sunday April 28th in New York City. This is their fourth year doing this and I had no idea that this event even existed. They get really cool bands to play too; this year’s show will feature Vampire Weekend and they have chosen Steve Buscemi will be kicking off the performance. Amex partnered up with VEVO and YouTube, where people will be able to watch the live stream on Sunday via the YouTube website or the VEVO mobile app. You can also watch the awesome promotional videos that Amex has released featuring Steve Buscemi and the members of Vampire Weekend discussing Easter while they paint their Easter eggs. There’s also a video where Steve Buscemi asks Grimes if she will be attending the Vampire Weekend show on Sunday and she turns him down, it’s awkward and hilarious.
Here’s the whole series of videos, I promise they’re fun
I really liked the concept behind these promo videos and I actually replayed them and I even showed them to my friends because I thought they were really funny. If these videos had shown typical interviews with the artists or if they had used clips of past concerts, they would have turned out extremely dull. Having Steve Buscemi was also a big win, after all, who doesn’t love the guy, he’s freaking hilarious. The “we’re cool and hip and you’re not” thing might be overdone but I think that they really made it work in this case. The Vampire Weekend dudes were able to show their quirky personalities and Steve Buscemi was this usual weird (but awesome) self. I’ve really enjoyed the advertising for Amex in the past years, both print ads and videos. Amex’s advertising is especially good at using celebrities in a really smart way, which I think is hard to pull off after seeing other brands and their use of celebrities. I’ll be tuning in this Sunday to “American Express Unstaged” in hopes of listening to some of Vampire Weekend’s new stuff.
This is the new (and by new I mean month-old) single off of the upcoming Vampire Weekend album “Modern Vampires of the City.” I tried to avoid listening to it. Every time there’s an album I’m excited about, I try not to listen to any leaks or singles or new live tracks. As much as possible I listen to my music in albums, and I love a good album more than anything. So, part of me always really wants to wait and have the whole experience, while the other part of me is impatient and always wins.
I gave in and listened to “Step” today, and I love this song. I’ve played it like ten times in a row and every time I hear it, it makes me happy. It’s such a comforting song. It’s not a revolutionary Vampire Weekend song, if anything, it’s the opposite: this might be the most stereotypical Vampire Weekend song they’ve ever released. The harpsichord is there, the vaguely hip-hop drum beat, the weird non-sequiturs. But, it’s their best song.
In a lot of ways, Vampire Weekend are the Wes Anderson of music. They sound like the soundtrack to the Life Aquatic, their arrangements are as fussy as Anderson’s set design, and they’re always talking about rich people having feelings. They’re also hyperliterate pop artists. What’s great about both of them is that there’s a real sense of place, and within the pop culture constructs they’ve created they manage to make incredibly evocative art.
That is, I don’t really know what “The gloves are off/the wisdom teeth are out/Whatchu on about?/I feel it in my bones” means intellectually, but I feel it. It’s a beautiful song.
Everyone respects a hipster. Everyone loves a cool, creative, individualistic person. But would you lie to someone or yourself about who you are? Or how much you know about a topic? As creatives, I think we like to set ourselves apart from others, but do we make an ass of ourselves? Yeah, sometimes we say some quirky or odd stuff. But I doubt I’d ever be excited to see The Obesity Epidemic play at Coachella––if they existed. Embed yourself in culture and soak it in, but don’t make a fool of yourself like this:
Moral of the video: Be true to yourself. Just because you’re creative doesn’t mean you have to dress, act, or be a certain way. We all love a bomb ass creative with a tattoo, a septum piercing, or long surfer boy hair, but save yourself the time and effort if that’s not your style.
Last spring, I spent my semester and most of my summer studying abroad in Paris, France. While I was there, I was lucky enough to experience some great electronic shows at a few intimate parisian nightclubs. I fell in love with a particular french electronic record label based in Paris; Ed Banger Records. The music itself is definitely not everyone’s cup of tea, but the music videos being produced on this label definitely have loads of creative value. Even if you don’t love the style or find it aesthetically pleasing, it’s hard to deny the uniqueness and originality in these videos. I picked of few of my favorite videos from three of the artists on the label.
This video by JUSTICE is definitely, well, weird. But I just really like it anyway. It’s like a crazy, provacative, unpredictable screensaver. I find myself watching it over and over, feeling like I’m falling into the screen of my computer and soaring through the interior of a french electronic blackhole. Plus, you can’t hate that beat.
“Baby, I’m Yours” by Breakbot & Irfane is hands down one of my favorite songs of all time, but besides that I love to watch this video. Unlike the JUSTICE video above, this one really is very aesthetically pleasing. It’s very pretty. I could play this video on repeat even without the music and still enjoy it. The swirling watercolors stimulate my mind and retinas. It’s exactly what I would create if I tried to express the images my mind projects onto the inside of my eyelids while I’m daydreaming.
The last video is “I Love U So” by Cassius. A remix of the song by Jay-Z and Kanye gained some popularity in the US, but the original track and music video are awesome. Ed Banger Records created an smartphone app that anyone can download for free, where different sets of lips sing along to this song and the user can choose the lips they want, hold the phone up to their mouth, and make the lips seem like their own. The music video in a way served as an ad for this app, showing different interesting people using it in different ways and in different places.
If you liked what you saw here, check out the Ed Banger Records YouTube channel and see what other weird, interesting, creative, unique videos they’re producing over there in Paris.
(The above video is NSFW, but I’d probably still watch it at work anyway. It’s kinda like a moodier Skinemax, which–incidentally–while I was back home for the holidays only played a show called Zane’s Sex Chronicles, which is a great title. But srsly, the song is great)
Autre Ne Veut, How to Dress Well, Rhye, and James Blake. Four white dudes getting their sex jams on.
That the four of them have come into prominence recently is an interesting (and unsurprising) trend/subgenre in independent music (whatever that means anymore). I guess it’s to be expected, contemporary R&B has been going through a kind of resurgence recently (Frank Ocean, The Weeknd, The Dream, and Miguel have all put out albums that were critically well-received hit albums) as has the sounds of 80’s and 90’s R&B. Just try counting the rototom fills.
What’s compelling is how far these four artists have gone in incorporating R&B elements into their music. It would be a lie to pretend that they aren’t appropriating R&B (black music) for a white audience (indie kids). But, that being said, it’s a two-way street. Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon sang all over the last Kanye album, Beach House has been sampled about a thousand times, and Jay-Z went to a Dirty Projectors concert. Then there’s the Gorillaz, who do a pretty awesome job at everything on top of being cartoons. That’s how things are today. It’s not Elvis singing songs on the radio before the civil rights movement and it’s not (thank God) the horrible frankenstien-ing of rap and rock that Limp Bizkit inflicted upon us either. This feels like a more honest collaboration, each group influencing the other on their own terms. Rap has always been sample-based, so to turn to indie and electronic music as source for those samples makes sense. R&B, meanwhile, has injected independent music with a sensuality that was by and large missing. As a result, the genres are becoming more porous and more interesting.
As for the four artists mentioned at the beginning of this post, they’re contributing to that.
I love the Autre Ne Veut and Rhye albums. They’ll probably both make it onto my 2013 albums list. I read an interview with Autre Ne Veut (ugh, his band name is the worst) on Pitchfork that talked about his primary inspiration for the way he sings being the kind of go-for-broke singing style that you see at karaoke. I think that’s great. The idea of just going full-on and trying to hit all the vocal runs of a real singer and not reallllly being able to do it is great. That’s not to say that he’s not a good singer. He is. But he’s no R. Kelly. Meanwhile, Rhye put out a video of himself playing piano and singing “Open” to his girlfriend, by candle-light. Dude’s got some moves. But the video is just such a great performance and sweet, honest idea. That video sold me on the album, which didn’t disappoint.
The other two, I’m less excited about. How To Dress Well, while interesting, is a little too slow-paced and not catchy enough for me. James Blake just put out Overgrown, which–after only a couple listens–I like much more than his first album (which I couldn’t get into because pretty much every song had one lyric that he’d repeat over and over again). Blake is interesting though. Lots of cool noises.
Anyway, maybe this Sade-influenced indie music is a flash in the pan. It could be, but I don’t think so. It’s my hope that pop music keeps moving forward this way, and it becomes the norm. It’s good times for music. Anyone who says otherwise is full of shit.
So, I had to post about it. Pepsi has just released its second spot after it’s Superbowl halftime takeover and Beyonce’s $50 million dollar endorsement. Today is not only a big day for Pepsi, but also for Beyonce as it marks her fifth anniversary being married to hip-hop mogul Jay-Z. Despite one of my previous posts where I questioned using celebrities in advertising, I like this commercial. I don’t know, maybe I’m biased because I’m a part of the Beyhive. After watching it hmmm 13 times so far, I’m still not sure what the commercial actually says about Pepsi. Maybe I’m just distracted by all the Beyonce video references and the snippet of her new single. Either way, I’d definitely go drink a Pepsi right now. I guess Pepsi is using Beyonce to attract new consumers and it might work. For some odd reason, I believe drinking a Pepsi will surface my inner Beyonce.
TX Creative P1 