"Better Man" is recombinant "Save It For Later"

Out of touch with Seattle... It's strange to years later finally notice influences in pop songs: for example Pearl Jam's "Better Man" is based on "Save It For Later" by The English Beat. Apparently Pete Townshend of The Who liked the song too, which may explain Eddie Vedder's windmill motions in some videos.

Here's some footage from Chicago 2006 and 1982:

Jazz: Maiden Voyage/ Everything in its right place

Robert Glasper Trio - Maiden Voyage/ Everything in its right place - Bridgestone Music Festival `09, or and a later trio in a more abstract mood with Chris Dave drumming.





On the other hand, the visuals look good for the Flying Lotus tour, as detailed in Step Inside Flying Lotus's Mind-Blowing Performance Sculpture at The Creators Project.

Music: Philip Glass and Ali Farka Touré & Toumani Diabaté

Revisiting some the heuristics of the mystics, without Brian Eno:

Siskel and Ebert Outtake + Annette

The balcony is closed.

via @comebackshane

Here's Head, with Annette Funicello (part), Victor Mature as The Architect, and Ronald Reagan as The Messiah.

They won't make me an overnight star

Have You Heard From Johannesburg?: Free at Last on Independent Lens might have put you in the mood for The Specials (or abc). You can hear a few here, though the originals are more interesting:




'Gangsters' was a reworking of a Prince Buster tune. In the same period, The Specials had a talkative baby with The Go-Go's:

And just for fun (choosing sound over visuals), coming full circle with the producer of The Specials 1st album:

Up On The Sun for a music break

Here's the Meat Puppets' version of a Touch of Grey:

Ungolden oldies: a fortune for the undertow

To cushion the fall, here's some not so golden oldies from R.E.M. that were played on D.C. radio a long time ago. Those are for jumping around, and are followed by one for resting your bones:

Natural’s Not In It

It's still very strange to hear the Gang of Four on that XBox commercial, or on TV at all really. Maybe it's no stranger than some stuff you might hear on the muzak in Safeway.

commonsExplorer: a browser for Flickr + more

commonsExplorer is an experimental interactive browser for the Flickr Commons, a collection of pictures with "no known copyright restrictions." It provides a "big picture" of these collections with a single screen interface that reveals structures and patterns and encourages exploration.

commonsExplorer is a Java executable, so Windows and Linux users will need to have Java installed. The application requires a network connection, and may not work from behind a firewall or proxy.

Creative Commons has had its own search function for awhile according to a post at Google Operating System, which has a nice cache of articles on new features in Google Image search, which can filter for usage rights under advanced search.

For video, see Free Online Stock Video Footage | 9 Of The Best Public Domain Video Resources from WebTV Wire (one dropped out); for audio see Videomaker's compilation of royalty free sound FX and Legal Music For Videos from Creative Commons.

Update: via @juanmiguelsalas comes 15 Best Places for Designers to Get Free Stock Photos Online by Six Revisions.

Update 2: see Royalty Free Music For YouTube Videos at Who Is Matt, and Openfootage.net.

Maestro Ali Akbar Khan passes on

The great Indian musician Ali Akbar Khan, famed teacher of the 25-string lute-like sarod, passed on last Thursday in Marin County, California, where he taught since 1967. Violinist Yehudi Menuhin once called him the greatest musician in the world, though his father's student Ravi Shankar became more popular. You can read obits at the SF Chronicle and New York Times.

His shows with the gracious drummer Zakir Hussain (son of Ravi Shankar drummer Alla Rakha) were particularly entertaining. You can treat much of this stuff as ambient music or pay attention as closely as you're able.

If that Jubilee don't come, maybe I'll meet you on the run

It's Pete Seeger's 90th birthday today, so here's "Sinnerman," a traditional song by The Weavers, heard in another form on a recent rerun of Entourage. Perhaps first recorded by Les Baxter & Will Holt, a visceral version by Nina Simone is also below:





Update: Democracy Now covered the event for the hour on Monday.

Edit HDV footage of Nine Inch Nails shows

Not a NINi, but it's interesting (more background on PC World)... from Discrete Cosine:

'Trent Reznor has released (sorry, some "mysterious shadow group" has released) 400 gigs of raw HDV footage from three concerts on a recent [Nine Inch Nails] tour. They're available as torrents from this page, so you can cut your very own concert dvd. It even includes Final Cut project files.'

Winter with Vivaldi: "L'inverno" I

'The Four Seasons' itself is a subset of a larger work, 'The Contest between Harmony and Invention.' This performance was directed by Christopher Hogwood, with "original" instruments for the richer sound:

Your automatic arms

Here's a Worldmapper view of world arms exports; they also have a morph between different maps. The countries fat from the arms trade compose the UN Security Council, which sometimes seems like a protection racket:


And, bypassing the rattle and hum of U2, a meta-commentary on balance (featuring an aspirate H) by Laurie Anderson in 'O Kal El':

'So What' with Miles Davis et John Coltrane, 1959

Ball of Confusion (That's What the World Is Today)

from Yahoo News: 'Norman Whitfield, songwriter and producer who co-wrote a string of Motown classics including "War," "Just My Imagination (Running Away With Me)" and "I Heard It Through the Grapevine," has died.'

He also wrote and produced this song by The Temptations that still seems fresh today (despite the decline of the Motor City):

'Laughing' from David Crosby

'Laughing' from David Crosby (like 'Teach Your Children Well' has a nice pedal steel sound)

Seahorse from Topanga Canyon

"Seahorse," a song from the new Devendra Banhart album, does remind me of David Crosby and the 1st Jefferson Starship ("stars" wma).

Summertime Get Together

There's a Summer of Love 40th Anniversary event in Golden Gate Park on September 2nd. There's also similar bands at the Sausalito Art Festival this holiday weekend. Sure, the hippies took some wrong turns but at least we've got wheat bread now. I can't imagine what it would be like to grow up with separate drinking fountains for black people.

The Youngbloods ask you to reach for the gold ring inside, listen


Also, Big Brother doing Summertime

Orchestral version of "4'33" by John Cage

Can you listen to all 4 and a half minutes?