MUSIC and TELEVISION/VIDEOS: VHS, MTV OMG

This is from a blog by Robin Hilton of the internet program, Our Songs Considered, on NPR's internet site. I didn't care for most of the videos, but some of you who are a little younger than me might appreciate it. - I'm in my mid-40's. - And those of you quite a bit younger than me might find this humorous. - OlderMusicGeek

VHS, MTV OMG
by Robin Hilton

My head is sloshing with a thick glop of sentimentality.

This past weekend I was visiting my brother who still lives in the small town where we grew up. It's always a bit of a nostalgia trip going home again, but on this visit he produced an old VHS tape with a video we'd made when we were in high school in the early 1980s. It was just a bunch of dumb kids goofing off, but it made me a little dizzy seeing all the mullets and how young we were.

Then this morning I come in to work and Bob drops me a link for this remarkable and hilarious video of a 1983 MTV broadcast. It's three hours long, complete with commercials from the time. The news updates are particularly priceless, like "Loverboy tour dates announced."

I wonder if this resonates at all with anyone under the age of say, 25.

The video was too big to upload - so here's a link to the original piece and the video!

TELEVISION/VIDEOS: Some Interesting Takes on Colors

These are some interesting commercials made by the paint company, Adicolor. I found them using StumbleUpon. I think they're the most interesting take on colors since Ken Nordine had a go. - OlderMusicGeek



A link to other Adicolor commercials

And here's some videos that were done to some of the tracks from Ken Nordine's album, Colors.

MUSIC and BOOKS: Some Christmas Stuff

This Christmas, I listened to a couple of great books and some pretty good music.

I strongly recommend The Stupidest Angel: A Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Terror by Christopher Moore. To quote the Entertainment Weekly review, “This is, without a doubt, the greatest story ever told about fruit bats, zombies and miracles.” Basically, if Stephen King wrote a Christmas comedy, it would come out something like this tale, which features among other unique characters... 1 - a former druggie who got blackmailed into being a tourist town's only law enforcement, 2 - the wife of the former druggie who was the a star in the Kendra, Warrior Babe of the Outland movies and has quit taking her anti-psychotic drugs to have money to buy her husband a gift, 3 – Tucker Case, a former womanizing pilot who is trying to better himself and only doing a mediocre job of that, and also has a pet fruit bat that wears sun glasses, and 4 – an angel who announced Jesus' birth 10 years too late because he got caught up in a card game.

And I read Skipping Christmas by John Grisham, the book that the movie, Christmas with the Kranks, is based on. Can't compare it to the movie, cus I haven't seen it yet. And don't have much motivation to do it either. The book starts really slow. I would suggest skipping to the part where the daughter calls and says she's coming home, because that's really the point where it starts to get funny.

I also heard some great new songs this Christmas. Cyndi Lauper of Girls Just Want to Have Fun and She Bop fame has a fun romper called Early Christmas Morning.

And Ringo Starr has had a cd, I Wanna Be Santa Claus, out for a few years, but I only got around this year to listening to these two songs, Christmas Dance and Come on Christmas, Christmas Come On. The first one is a sweet tune about a young man trying to get a courage to ask the girl who he admired from afar to dance with him at, of course, the Christmas dance. The second is just an arena type rocker about Christmas. - Hey, when you have 2500+ Christmas tunes, you don't get to them all each year!


And I still love these tunes I heard the last couple of years! Nobody does such an unique version of this Christmas tune. I mean Ted Nugent and Twisted Sister can both really rock it out, but I still think The Roches' version of Deck the Halls is best! Something about that rocking acoustic guitar and those strange but lovely harmonies.


And their Good King Wenceslas is still my favorite version of that song!


And I can't say enough about my reggae Christmas tunes. Who would think people from the warm Caribbean could do such great versions of tunes associated with the cold and snow! But I strongly recommend Yard Style Christmas, Christmas Greetings from Studio One, The Reggae Christmas Collection and that 3-cd collection from the condom people, The Trojan Christmas Box.

A link to an excerpt of Christopher Moore's The Stupidest Angel

MUSIC: Moby's Take on Barack Obama

I got this from Moby's blog on MySpace. He talked about all the candidates, but I loved what he had to say about Barack Obama. - OlderMusicGeek

barack obama. first off, he has the single worst name anyone could ever have in the history of politics ever ever ever. barack(rhymes with iraq) hussein(like the guy who tried to kill gw's daddy) obama(one consonant away from bush family pal osama bin laden).

personally i see his terrible name as being kind of a plus, as it really couldn't be worse unless his name was satan hitler babyeater.

he's the least experienced of the candidates but he's also really smart and principled and telegenic. he seems like he would be fun at a barbecue but he'd also be good if you needed help doing your taxes and he'd definitely be nice to you if your goldfish died. ironically i think he's the democrats best chance to win. ironic, as he's:
a-inexperienced
b-1/2 muslim
c-possessed of the worst name in the history of politics

but gw was a coke addict with 2 dui's and a history of running companies into the ground(not to mention a last name that is colorfully and colloquially used to describe ladies baby making parts). so who knows? barack obama seems like the dem's best choice.

plus it would be awesome to have an african-american president. the rest of the world wouldn't be able to hate us as much, which would be nice.

and i hope that dennis kucinich runs every 4 years, because, not to sound shallow, it's great to have a healthy vegan with a beautiful wife running for president.