music

I really should be working on the book, but just a couple more: The amazing Louis Jordan performing "There Ain't Nobody Here But Us Chickens" - fabulous! I admit, I have a lasting fondness going back to high school (hey, I'm a kid of the 80s, what can I say) for John Mellencamp, and he certainly has worked his ass off to raise comprehension of the farm problem in America - and he's been singing it at FarmAid concerts for decades. I have to include "Rain on the Scarecrow" which makes as much sense now as when I was a kid - maybe that's why I don't even mind his 80s hair: There are only 4…
There are a few snow showers still falling around here, so that means it has been snowing here continuously since Tuesday morning. We have a little less than 4 feet of snow on the ground. Which makes it hard for me to remember that spring is nearly here - in fact it has been warm through the whole storm, which makes everything heavier and wetter, but is a sign of hope (soon we'll be rid of this white stuff and get floods and six inch mud...woohoo.) In the face of this, I need some inspiring music for spring. One of my favorite goof-off games is the combining of good music on related themes…
...and I can't argue with Symphony of Science:
tags: comedy, humor, funny, fucking hilarious, birds, streaming video This particular exhibit is a living art piece made up of 40 zebra finches jamming on electric guitars and cymbals at the Barbican, in London. The artist, Boursier-Mougenot creates a walk-though aviary for a flock of zebra finches, furnished with electric guitars and other musical instruments. As the birds go about their routine activities, perching on or feeding from the various pieces of equipment, they create a captivating, live soundscape. This video is cute, because it shows a female zebra finch, building a nest on the…
tags: Law & Order, Pups & Order, television, music, dogs, pets, comedy, humor, strange, behavior, streaming video I love Law & Order so much that this one TV show is enough to tempt me into purchasing a television (I've never owned nor possessed a TV, although I do watch TV in "my" NYC pub). But according to this curious video, the theme music from Law & Order is enough to cause dogs everywhere to howl (with delight?). This video was compiled from a collection of "pups & order" videos. Does anyone have a dog that also howls when the opening credits for Law & Order…
The Australian psychiatrist, musician, amateur astronomer, daddy, and blogger Tsuken just sent out word that his custom electric guitar has arrived from New Zealand luthier, Adrian Hamilton, at Ash Custom Works in Auckland. At his blog, Music, Medicine, and the Mind, our giddy colleague writes: Oh. Baby. Yeah. I'm here today to tell you: there is nothing - nothing - like a custom guitar. No way will a production instrument compare. To illustrate, I will describe the guitar I have just collected. This is truly a fantastic instrument; I can hardly keep my hands off it. It plays like a dream,…
Transatlantic, "The Whirlwind (Part 4) - A Man Can Feel": a track from the new Transatlantic album. Transatlantic is a supergroup: it's made of members of Marillion (Pete Trevawas on bass), the Flower Kings (Roine Stolte, guitar), Spock's Beard (Neil Morse, vocals and keyboards), and Dream Theater (Mike Portnoy, drums). In general, I don't like supergroups; they're usually more of a commercial stunt than anything else. But I love Transatlantic; and this album is fantastic - it's a bit less smooth than some of Transatlantic's earlier work, but the writing is fantastic.…
Here's my first little editing project for my documentary film class. A day in the lab, but much much faster paced.
Following this weekend's loss of musician Doug Fieger, I'm going through some YouTube vids and found two of my favorites from the less-appreciated 2nd album by The Knack, "But the Little Girls Understand." "I Want Ya" was the second cut - just a bunch of simple chords but Bruce Gary's drumming is even better than I remember. This is the cover of The Kinks', "The Hard Way," that I mentioned on Monday. And yes, I owned a black and a brown skinny tie - the only way to express individuality in a boys Catholic school uniform in the late 70s and early 80s.
The future potential of synthetic biology is usually discussed in terms of applications in fields like medicine, food science, and the environment. Genetically engineered life forms are being designed to make medicines cheaply, to target tumor cells, to make more nutritious food, or to make agricultural plants that are easier to grow with less of an environmental impact, to clean up pollution or produce sustainable biofuels. What if synthetic biology systems were instead designed for use in culture or entertainment? David Benqué, a student in the Design Interactions program at the Royal…
I was an angry 14- or 15-year-old in late 1978 or early 1979 - can't recall which year, but definitely angry - walking home on a Sunday night after a dishwasher shift at Grandma's Saucy Apron, a now-defunct Italian restaurant in my hometown where I was working to make money for a Spanish National Honor Society trip to Spain over the upcoming Spring Break. I turned on 99X (New York City's WXLO-FM) at 9 pm for a new radio show I enjoyed from KXOA in Sacramento, CA, called The Great American Radio Show with Mike Harrison. It was the near-end of the disco era and this album-oriented rock (AOR)…
tags: nerds, valentine's day, comedy, funny, humor, parody, offbeat, music video, education, streaming video I did what this guy suggests and went one further: I married a nerd (but not on VD). It's kinda hard being a nerd on Valentine's Day. Cause Statistically ladies don't feel the same way. So i say to all the girls, From the nerds across the world. Hug a nerd on Valentines Day. Oh it only takes me one minute so solve a rubix cube. But when it comes to the ladies I'm a really big noob. So i say to all the girls, from the nerds across the world. Hug a nerd on Valentine's Day. Spoken: YOU…
tags: Beaker's Ballad, humor, funny, silly, weird, Beaker, The Muppets, streaming video I can't help it, I've been bitten by the Beaker Bug! Besides, I need some silliness in my life right now since I've been suffering from wacky brain chemistry this week and I am faced with a weekend where I have to spend a large portion of time unpacking boxes. So you'll just have to suffer alongside me and watch this video;
Lately I've been listening to Canadian 90s/00s orchestral popsters the Heavy Blinkers. Here's a fine song off of their '02 album Better Weather, "I Used to Be a Design". I actually prefer this live version since its production is scaled down and Ruth Minnikin's vocals are heavily processed on the album version. The band performing here has since disintegrated, with the female lead singer going on to head Ruth Minnikin and Her Bandwagon, a folky outfit that will have a new album out any day now.
What's the application? The use of lasers to provide an entertaining light show for humans, dogs, or cats. What problem(s) is it the solution to? 1) "How will I entertain my dog or cat?" 2) "How can we distract people from the fact that Roger Daltrey has no voice left?" Why are lasers essential? Lasers provide coherent beams of light, which remain small over very large distances, allowing you to project a small spot or a tight beam across a room, or even a football stadium. Why is it cool? Duuuuude! Lasers, duuuuude! Why isn't it cool enough? 1) It's fundamentally just a toy. 2) No amount…
The music from the Darwin Electro-Opera I mentioned a while back is now available for free, streaming on Pitchfork! (via Nick)
With all the technopop, hip-hop, sampling, and all kind of nonsense in music today, it's always refreshing to see an incredible songwriter kick total and complete ass with just a glorified wooden box, some steel strings, and her/his own voice. This is Lake Claire/Atlanta-based singer-songwriter Shawn Mullins singing perhaps his biggest hit, "Lullaby (Rock-A-Bye)" in the studio of WRVR in Memphis back in 2006. This is a killer version enhanced further by his great taste in wearing a Colorado state flag T-shirt. Joining him is Clay Cook, another Atlanta musician who was instrumental, as it…
On Oscillator, Christina Agapakis lays out some of the history of synthetic biology. While in the last century this field has employed molecular and informational toolkits, in centuries past inventors relied on grosser modes of simulation. Such was the case with eighteenth century wetware, which aspired "to make machines look and feel more like living things—soft, flexible, moist." One of the grails of early synthetic biology was the simulation of the human voice, and to this end we see such terrors as a fake face attached to a phonetic keyboard, which allowed "an operator to play a '…
Modern day biological engineering and artificial life research focuses on the microscopic, the molecular, the informational, the stuff of the scientific revolutions of the past one hundred years. Our current synthetic biologies aim to turn the living into the designed, the wet into the computational, the complex into the understandable. In the 1700's, the interplay between the living and the mechanical was reversed; engineers were trying to make machines look and feel more like living things--soft, flexible, moist. Studying these historical artificial life technologies provide a valuable…
Since I'm on-route to a Human Microbiome Project meeting (uncharacteristically, it's being held in a climate-friendly location--Houston; last year, it was held in Boston. In January.), reviewing this paper about the GEBA project, the Genomic Encyclopedia of Bacteria and Archaea, seemed appropriate. Sequencing bacterial genomes not only tells us a lot about the biology of the organisms sequenced, including their function, potential ecology, and evolution, but it also has a far more pragmatic use too. As we try to understand microbial communities using DNA sequencing, including those microbes…