"Do stuff. Be clenched,curious. Not waiting for inspiration's shove or society's kiss on your forehead. Pay attention. It's all about paying attention. Attention is vitality. It connects you with others .It makes you eager. Stay eager." -Susan Sontag
Vapnet will do a small UK Tour. Something pretty rare for a swedish singing orchestra. Vapnet can be appreciated by anyone with a weakness for fluent pop music though. That's what Vapnet plays: fluent pop, bound by no language. Pitchfork wrote about Vapnets album.
Here is an acoustic performance by Vapnet, so you will know what to expect:
The UK tour dates:
22/1 London - Tack! Tack! Tack! at The Social w/ Cat 5 23/1 Oxford - at the Cellar w/ Borderville and Jack Harris 24/1 Glasgow - at Sounds of Sweden at Nice n Sleazy
As a follow up to the lush and posh 80s we post a collection of videos that somehow are so damn likeable in some sense or the other. It's a mixture all over the map and yet there are something that connects them. It's some form of charm in all of them. Here it goes:
Asobi Seksu - Thursday - Fantastic, fantastic song and very nice lo-fi video. They fit.
The Kooks - Ooh La - Taken from La Blogotheque series. For sure the peak of this otherwise mediocre Nu-Britpop band. Context is everything and this is just charming!
Suede - The Drowners - Speaking of Britpop. Bret couldn't had more than like a cup of blood in that body.
Mudhoney - Suck you dry - You know, all you really need is one devoted fan.
Young at heart - Fix you (Coldplay cover) - These people are our heroes.
Screamin Jay Hawkins - I put a spell on you / Stranger than paradise trailer -
Jobriath - Sunday Brunch - Live in a pyramid, being Jobriath In NY. Fantastic. The chicken in the end seems a bit off-topic though.
Klaus Nomi - The cold song - It must have been so easy to taunt him. Klaus nomi had to have had a ton of bravery.
The Seeds - Pushin to hard - Garage rock, the only genre that always is better with movin pictures?
Visage - Fade to grey - Seriously, how could ANYONE be lured into hard rock in the 80s?
The Specials - Ghost town - Erie!
Townes van Zandt - Heartworn highway - Making Seymore Washington cry.
George McRae - Rock you baby - One man, a mic. It is 1974, you notice?
Eric Burdon & War - Spill the wine - Ah, yes the 70s.
Cat Power - Lived in bars - Warmth.
Leslie Gore - You don't own me - Sing your heart out girl!
La Scala - Heartbeats - Nice cover. Nice pictures.
My morning Jacket - Gideon (Live at Letterman) Big performance
Sigur Ros - Svefn g Englar - Pretty much the video of the videos.
Dion and the Belmonts - The Wanderer - THE song and a great flick. What more to ask for? Bonus Franki & The Vialli tune too.
Elvis Presley - Trouble - He never looks for trouble.
Andy Kaufman/Elvis Presley - - Sweet lord what a genius!
Sylvester - You make me feel mighty real - Diva supreme!
The Kelley Affair - from Beyond the valley of the dolls - The original pippetes. "I like to strap you on sometime". Uhm.
The Pipettes - Pull shapes - EASY one of last years greatest songs
Deus - Little Arithmetics - Belgium at its best. 90s at its best!
Les McKeown - Shes a lady - This is how the 80s REALLY looked like. Yikes. Great song though.
Teen Witch - I'm hot and you're not - "Look how funky he is". Classic! Top that!
The Who - My generation - Taken from Swedish Television 1966. We dont get it. There were like 6 'hip' people in Sweden in the 60s. Yet they managed to do all these ultra-cool clips of acts coming to Sweden to play. Swedish Television would never ever never forever! be able to catch a clip this totally naturally great today. What is your problem? Is it because it's like the same guys still working there? You just lost it or what? Answer us!
France Gall - Les Sucettes - Story goes France Gall didnt 'get' what this song was about. Ah, that world is all gone isnt it. Innocence lost. What an excellent video.
Flights of Conchords - Business time - one of many great clips of this Aussie duo. Check em out out there on the 'tube'.
OMD - Maid of Orleans - Someone pointed out this video after our OMD vid in the 80s post previously. Really a great song and video. Something we guess the swedish society Gycklarbloggen would like very much.
Mazzy Star - Halah - Great colors. Great voice. Just great.
Gene - Sleep well tonight - Pretty underrated band. So 90s. Great.
Kate Bush - Hounds of love - A thriller killer!
Massive Attack - Blue lines - Funny how some videos just are perfect. Perfect song, perfect idea, perfect visuals, perfect together. This video is just about as perfect as they get.
Francoise Hardy - Tous les garcons et les filles - Nice Super 8 camera feeling to it. We used to sing this in french class.
Jacques Brel - Ne me quittes de pas - Jacques Brel had feeling! Look at the man! They dont make em like that anymore. One in a billion.
Jacques Brel - Amsterdam - Just listen to thar rolling rrrr! Listen! Amsterrrrrdam!
Studio 54 - Jeans - Were can we buy a pair of those?
Kings of convenience - Misread - Best norvegian video ever
Tricky - Black steel - Remember when trip hop was the shit? Then you are old. Nice homemade video to this PE cover. Tricky never made a good track after this.
Goldfrapp - Utopia - Large video, big song.
PJ Harvey - Down by the water - If we were girls, we would try and look like PJ Harvey.
Galaxie 500 - When will you come home - Simple and just perfect.
Rialto - Monday morning - Oh, poor Rialto, they just missed the Britpop train!
The Bluetones - Slight return - And the Bluetones, they never flew did they? Quite nice though.
DJ Shadow - Midnight in a perfect world - if he only could focus on doing songs like this more often. And not scratching and shit. This video, and song, made us stop and freeze in front of the TV the first time. Couldn't move an inch or hardly breathe for as long as it went.
Moloko - Bring it back - What a monster! So simple. So straight to the feet. Dancing feet.
Einsturzende Neubaten - Blume - Weird. And nice.
This could go on for another 40 videos or so, and it will someday. Enough is enough for now though.
As a follow up to the previous post about how you download and also as a response to complaints from within the Hybris organisation of the "Steel guitar and stuff" Lemonheads used in "Big gay heart" we present to you: The 1980s as seen by the way of Hybris! This is the first in an endless serious of Youtube-themes we will give you.
The 80s. So lush, bombastic and vulgar. So much about dressing up. Fantastic!
Roxy Music - Avalon
Blue nile - Headlights on the parade
Black - Wonderful life
Chris Isaak - Wicked game
Martika - Toy soldiers
Bonnie Tyler - Total eclipse of the heart
Belinda Carlisle - Heaven is a place on earth
Sandra - Maria Magdalena (Keytarr!)
The Bangles - Eternal flame
Cindy Lauper - True Colors
Terence Trent Darby - Sign your name
Sade - Smooth operator
Bryan Ferry - Slave to love
Alphaville - Forever young
Falco - Rock me amadeus
Adam Ant - Goody two shoes
Adam ant deserves another Adam Ant - Stand and deliver
David Bowie - Blue Jean
Eurythmics - There must be an angel
Soft cell - Tainted love
The Cure - Pictures of you
Frankie goes to Hollywood - Relax
Wham - Club Tropicana
Duran Duran - Rio
David Bowie - Let's Dance
Miami vice - Theme
Talk Talk - It's my life
Elton John - I'm still standing
Bananarama - Cruel summer
Milli Vanilli - Girl you know it's true
A-ha - Take on me
OMD - If you leave
Starship - Nothings gonna stop us now
The Communards - Don't leave me this way
Blondie - Atomic
Modern Talking - Cheri cheri lady
Sweden was pretty much a developing country in the 80s when it came to class and sophistication but we had some nice artist then too, kind of lo-fi but still, this guy has some larger-than-life moves! So what - I should be so lucky
Rick Astley - Never gonna give you up
Narada Michael Walden - Gimme Gimme Gimme
Laura Branigan - Self control
Chaka Khan - I feel for you
Whitney Houston - I wanna dance with somebody
Bill Medley & Jennifer Warnes - I've had the time of my life
Irene Cara - What a feeling
Berlin - Take my breath away
Jevetta Steele - Calling you
Robert Palmer took the Kraftwerk robot 70s style, applied it to girls and gave it an 80s touch. What can you say? Magic. Robert Palmer - Addicted to love
More robot girls Robert Palmer - Simply irresistable
ZZ Top - Rough boy
Skid Row - 18 and life
Greg Kihn - Jeopardy
Ok. Hope that was enough 80s bonanza for you. Next time we will try and assemble some 80s videos that for the untrained eye may look exactly like some of those collected above. Like this one for example:
Youtube, this heavenly and divine source to knowledge. Knowledge is power. Thus Youtube was bought for billions and billions by Google. Nah, not really. It was bought because people love to see other people do stupid things lika miming to a song, filming their cute kitties and funny children.
However, Youtube is filled with music videos, rare perfomances and short movie clips. Wonderful pieces. Enriching in every true sense of the word. Hats off to Youtube for making last year The Youtube Year. In fact, we all spent so much time slacking at work watching Youtube videos that Time Magazine made the Youtube slacker Person of the year.
But this blog isn't about that. This post is about how you can download every single Youtube video to your very own external hard drives. It is very easy! This is how you do it:
1. Copy the "URL" link to the right of the video when you watch the video at Youtube. 2. Go to Dubayuos page for downloading Youtube videos 3. Paste the URL-link for the video and click "Rip it" 4. Right click and choose "Save as" and name your video and give it the ending .flv
The fastest way is to add Dubayuos website to your favourites and when you are watching a Youtube clip just go to your favourites and click the Dubayou link. That way you don't have to cut and paste.
The ending "Flv" is a format for compression Youtube uses. Just like Mp3 or something like that. You will need a special player to play "Flv"-movies. Most players don't support Flv-movies yet, so download the free flv-player (Only PC, if anyone knows a Mac-one, please do post a comment about it) Great thing about the Flv-format is that the movie clips are very small. A standard music video clip downloaded from Youtube is about 5-8 MB so a standard external hard drive with around 300 GB would hold like...um..a lot of videos!
Here are two outstanding clips you could start with: The Lemonheads - Big gay heart, song
Hal Hartley - Ambition, short film
If you want to convert the flv-files to watch on your iPod or other players, use Videora iPod converter, a free and easy one-click-program.
There are a lot of other pages to download videos from Youtube(and every other site that has streaming videos). Here are a few: Keepvid Rip my videos Ripzor
And there you go. Hope it's been educational! Questions, suggestions? - post a commment!
It is 2007. Here are some words of wisdom to carry through the twelve months that lies ahead. Make them count!
"If you're going to try, go all the way. Otherwise don't even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives, jobs. And maybe your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery, isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance. Of how much you really want to do it. And you'll do it, despite rejection in the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you're going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods. And the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It's the only good fight there is."
And then read: The third single from The Kid's debut album "La Société Nouvelle" is no detour from their trademark of punk, goth and straigt on assault of beats, guitars, rythm and that dark voice of singer Mary-Anne going deeper by the second. This release contains a Radio edit by "The noble art of jealousy". If you are swedish you will enjoy the description of The Kid's sound below. If you are not, go to Babelfish and be confused. Or just download the track and feel the music do the doomsday dance.
"Hur ofta planerar du ditt soundtrack till domedagen? Jag gör det ofta och med stor glädje. Som ungdomskille var Wagner det givna valet. Lite senare någon form av metal. Och sedan dröjde det ganska länge tills jag fick chansen att höra The Kid första gången. Det var räddningen. För ifall domedagen kommer och jag har musik i öronen så vill jag absolut inte vara förutsägbar. Jag vill heller inte vara för pompös eller gotisk. Jag måste vara säker på att det blir kul de där sista ögonblicken. Så det blir The Kid för mig. Gladhatisk självföraktsdisco. Försedd med hundratals giftiga bashullingar. Gör sig alldeles utmärkta till synen av ett gammeltestamenteligt regn som sköljer en nation av pungrakat annonsförsäljarslödder från F12-trappan. Jag vet inte var jag har fått det där sista ifrån. Småländska bombnedslaget Mary-Anne sjunger aldrig om det. The Kid låter egentligen ganska glada. De rullar ständigt in små vinnarfanfarer i splittret, glittret och smattret från The Kids maskiner. Det är fint och ska säkert symbolisera något i stil med att det finns hopp. Men jag vet inte. Det är känns fullkomligt meningslöst att analysera The Kid. De är bara det efterlängtade ljudet av en uppsluppen undergång med ett beat." -Kaiser of Köln
