Intro to the Ondes, featuring Ondes virtuoso Jean Laurendeau (as if you didn't know...)
Thomas Bloch, another Ondes virtuoso, working with some rock singer. Also features Bloch's other weirdo instruments, a glass harmonica and Cristal Baschet.
Bloch again, ripping it up in London.
An army of Ondes Martinots co-opted by some poser ass rock band. Also featuring Thomas Bloch again. This guy is like the Zelig of blindingly obscure weird noise instruments, although it's not really surprising that he keeps popping up considering the fact that like 30 people on the planet own original Ondes. And I'm sure Jonny Greenwood has the phone number of every last one.
"It's very easy to say that worrying about finding a path or a job that makes you happy is a first world problem, but it doesn't make you an asshole for doing it...the people I've met who really inspire me are those who take the horrendous inequality of the world very seriously, but also have compassion for any number of problems. You can't even begin to trust people who say they are concerned with equality but act like assholes. In every basic way, compassion is just an enormous thing that has to cover the micro and the macro of your life."
Who'da thunk it? That one of the more fascinating philosophical insights to be found this past year (by me anyway) would come from, of all things, a Vampire Weekend interview. You don't get to pick and choose who and what is more or less deserving of one's empathy and compassion, and not just by using the old "it's all relative" chestnut. Where does it end? The decision to put a five in a bum's hand or to pull over to help a guy change the tire on his ragtop Beemer comes the same emotional place, assuming it derives from a genuine feeling rather than the sociopolitical version of "what tshirt defines me as a person." Otherwise it's just divisive and hypocritical. It cheapens the very concept of empathy to think that it only applies to certain situations; yet I've caught myself doing it any number of times, and I won't deny that middle-class self loathing had something to do with it.
I don't know why exactly, but somehow this quote by VW's Ezra Koenig talking about people who don't like his band really put that in perspective. Still not a fan, but not for the thoroughly obnoxious and reactionary reasons flaunted by their detractors. It's mostly because I wish they did more of this:
Leonard Cohen being unprofessional because he actually believes in his songs. The song is only 3 minutes of the video, the rest is all aftermath--legendary. The woman spliced into the performance footage is Cohen's ex-wife, and the person the song is about.
Yeah, I haven't updated in fucking forever because I've been planning a move to a new city and burning what little time and money I have left hanging out with friends and going to trendy sit-down restaurants. Stare at these rotating snakes awhile and you'll have an idea of how I feel at the end of the day lately.
Okay. I'm at least glad that whoever designed this abomination used the grey sweater outfit from the MTV Unplugged taping, rather than that fucking green striped one from the "Teen Spirit" video that was used for the action figure. Even better would have been Courtney's nightie as featured heavily in the Live!! Tonight!! Sold Out!! video, but that might have, you know, confused people. And you have to admit that the facial expressions animated onto digi-Kurt's face while he's rapping Flava Flav lyrics are pretty fucking funny. He actually looks like he's having fun!
After a minute or so this actually starts making me nauseous. It's uncanny, in the literal sense of an object causing queasy discomfort by appearing familiar and foreign at the same time. Watching this cartoonish, but pretty accurate, digital approximation of the most sarcastic misanthrope in music history mime generic rock star moves while lip-synching "Dancing With Myself" really makes me wonder if the Large Hadron Collider didn't create a black hole after all, a black hole of irony that, rather than destroying the world, made it possible to unlock the Kurt Cobain character on Guitar Hero 5 and make it sing Billy Idol songs.
Who is this meant for? Fans of the Cobain mythos, the ones with the hardback version of Journals and the Japanese import of In Utero on vinyl (um, whoever you are, hrm), would just as soon throw up as look at this thing, while the kids these days probably see him as another one of those dorm-room martyr props, like Hendrix and the guy from The Crow, that wind up on lots of tshirts and posters sold in head shops. Maybe that's the idea.
No doubt this remarkably crass bit of licensing will line Courtney's purses with Percocet for years to come (although she did, apparently, have a problem with this). But probably the worst thing about knowing this exists, for me at least, is that it makes me feel like one of those crotchety old people yelling at kids to get off my lawn, except the lawn is my childhood.
UPDATE: Bon Jovi recorded a tribute Cobain sung in the nineties. Yes, it is actually called "Lonely At The Top," and it is actually sung to Francis Bean. Unbelievable.
Blog about home recording, mix tapes, and punk videos from YouTube, wrapped in fake nostalgia for the nineties. My website has stuff about my band Shallows A.D. www.deepwaste.net thanks
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