NYTimes: Keltic Dreams

With a student body that is 71 percent Hispanic and 27 percent black, Public School 59 does not seem an obvious home for a thriving Irish dance troupe. And when Caroline Duggan first arrived from Dublin at age 23 to try her hand as a New York City public school music teacher, it wasn’t. Many of her students had never heard of Ireland. Why, they wanted to know, did she talk funny?

New York Times Video.

Article.

Photos.

Link to Performance on Irish Television

Same As It Ever Was?

Recently I read a profile of David Byrne from 1993 which went into some detail on the televangelists that inspired Byrne to write the song "Once in a Lifetime," which became a hit single for the Talking Heads in 1980. In the article, Byrne also noted how much the gestures of these evangelical preachers informed the choreography he and Toni Basil created for performances of the song in both the original music video and the live concerts of the Talking Heads.

Thanks to YouTube, and especially the Wembley Stadium clip (which intercuts actual footage of these preachers), you can see exactly what Byrne and biographer John Howell are talking about.

YouTube:
Talking Heads: Original Music Video for "Once in a Lifetime," 1981
Talking Heads: Live Performance of "Once in a Lifetime," Wembley Stadium, 1982
Talking Heads: Live Performance of "Once in a Lifetime," from Stop Making Sense, 1984

But I only bring this up because I happened upon a very different YouTube video tonight.
Kermit the Frog:
Covering "Once in a Lifetime," Muppets Tonight, 1996

Now I've always found the Muppet photo parodies (of album covers, of Calvin Klein ads, of famous paintings) spot on... not just clever, but powerful, iconic even. This re-creation of Springsteen's Born in the USA doesn't quite have the power of the original, but substituting Kermit for Bruce comments on the cult of celebrity, the power of image, and the ouroborous-like ability of pop culture to swallow itself.

Sadly, however, this power doesn't translate to video.

This may be a function of the Muppets Tonight writing staff in 1996 inability to see this sketch as anything but a parody of Stop Making Sense. (An odd target in 1996 considering that the Talking Heads had broken up 5 years before... Byrne had 4 solo albums out by this time...) Certainly, the image of Byrne dancing and singing in the oversized suit was an indelible image in the landscape of musical performance.... but as you can see in this clip... NONE of the stage presence that Byrne brings to the song translates to Kermit. This clip apes the form (not the content) of the Stop Making Sense clip, but not very well. There's not even a Muppet take on the song.

Okay, I stacked the deck. Gave you three Byrne clips first. Maybe in 1996, without having seen Byrne recently, the clip would have been hilarious.

But if the first season of The Muppet Show and the first three movies showed us anything, it was that as much as the Muppets depended on an immersion in pop culture, they rarely needed to resort to parody.

Counterexamples welcomed. My memory is selective.

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More versions (listed here, to avoid the Michael Bolton and Keith Urban songs with the same name)

1. Mashup of Talking Heads' "Once in a Lifetime" with bizarre conceptual video from The Ernie Kovacs show
2. The Smashing Pumpkins cover, done as a heavy metal dirge/drone
3. Tornoofo17's surprisingly watchable music video of his friends dressing up and lip-synching to this song.
4. Acoustic emo version by Scott Stevens of the Exies
5. Performance in a warehouse by experimental band Invisible, with a conceptual twist: a performer typing out the lyrics on an electric typewriter, not only to provide the lead singer the words, but as the typewriter is hooked to a piano, adding an original countermelody.
6. Music video by Cienfuegos, an Argentinian rock band, doing a cover, c. 1998

Thrillermania: Not "Thriller", but an incredible simulation

Boing Boing and Spectacular Self-Indulgence pointed us to the mass dance phenomenon of the week: hundreds of prisoners in a Philippine prison recreating the dancing from Michael Jackon's "Thriller" music video (as seen in a single wideshot).

Remind me when I'm convicted and sent up the river to find a jail with THAT kind of activities director.



Of course the YouTube "related" list sent me straightway to the Tollywood (sic, see comment below) "Thriller" ripoff, which I'd not previously had the chance to see.



And for those who missed it in 2004, a shot-for-shot Lego stopmotion recreation of the ENTIRE thirteen minute Michael Jackson video.



BONUS: Apparently there is a whole subculture of people dedicated to recreating Ok Go's backyard and treadmill dance videos using lego people and stopmotion animation. How would these people ever connect without YouTube? Link

Thanks YouTube: Love is a Battlefield

If you and I were hanging out at a party, or over dinner, and the 80s came up, and you said, "Hey, remember Pat Benatar? Her video to 'Love is a Battlefield' was the worst. video. ever." --if you said that, I'd laugh, and confess I don't remember it, I must have seen it, but it couldn't be the worst, could it, if I have no memory of it. And then we'd go on to dessert and I'd forget all about it by the next day.

But if I read the same discussion on a blog, which handily provided a link to YouTube, well... I'd just have to click. I couldn't stop myself.

And then... and then I'd realize that I actually had seen this video. I probably was there for its premiere on ABC's Friday Night Videos.

And then... oh good Lord.

They're right.

This very well could be the Worst. Video. Ever.

And the worst of it... it was gone from my mind for the past 25 years. Now it's back. AND I CAN'T GET IT OUT OF MY HEAD.

Haruhi Suzumiya: Dance Craze!

Six videos play in parallel, illuminating the latest (or, who knows, maybe this was yesterday's) craze in Japan.

In the top center: the closing credits to "The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya", an anime feature. As in America's "Down With Love", the credits are juxtaposed with a dance number, in this case over a pop song that is the exact opposite of melancholy.

In the lower center: the dance number, full frame without credits.

To the left and right of each are fan-created versions of the same clips.

We missed the Ok Go backyard dance competition.
We gotta get in on this one.

Below: the full frame dance.

OKGO Dances with You(Tube)

So OKGO, of the infamous backyard dance video to "A Million Ways," is holding a contest on YouTube to find an amateur group to join them onstage for one concert to dance to the song.

I have no time to learn the choreography to this song.

Apparently college kids have a lot of free time on their hands to do exactly that, and post the results on YouTube. So far, over 80 videos of different "dance troupes" have been posted.

The reason I don't have time to learn the steps? I'm too busy watching the copycat videos on YouTube.

Can't Touch This: Guild Wars vs World of Warcraft

I know you all have been wondering which MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game) to join in your spare time.

This video may help settle the case, at least until D&D Online comes out of beta testing.



Or it might just get you dancing.

Pretty Woman (Remix)

Kal Ho Naa Ho - Maahe Ve

Bhangra remix of Roy Orbison's "Pretty Woman," featuring Sharukh Khan in, of all things, a Fourth of July parade.

With Spanish subtitles.

YouTube: "Indian Beatles"

via Boing Boing

From 1965, a two minute clip from Jaanwar, featuring four musicians in Beatles suits, singing a Hindi cover/rip off of "I Want to Hold Your Hand."

The comments note the title in Hindi is "Tumse Hai Dil Ko," but most other references to this cover song (on sites that cover either the Beatles, cover songs, or that track Indian film music plagiarism) call it "Dekho ab to."

Bollywood + Narrow Gauge Railroad: That's Entertainment!

(YouTube alert: mediocre video quality)

What's more fun that Shahrukh Khan leading adorable moppets at summer camp in a musical number? What could be more fascinating than being introduced to the Hindu festival of Holi by Sharukh's "Dead Poets Society" homage?

A playback song on top of a moving train, that's what.

Check out the shot about 4:55 into this video where the camera moves into the lead couple, goes around them, and backs into the chorus dancers.

From 1998's Dil Se, directed by Mani Ratnam. Song by A. R. Rahman. The combination of electronic beats with the traditional instruments was new at the time. This song appeared again in the musical Bollywood Dreams and in Spike Lee's 2006 film, Inside Man.

Project Bandaloop

I've never seen San Francisco dance company Project Bandaloop live, but I still think their dance is fabulous. Maybe it's that they dance on location.

Well, more specifically, it's that their locations are three stories, or seven stories, or ten stories in the air. On the side of a building. Dangling from the Space Needle. You know, just to play with our conventional notions of "up" and "down."

Of course, dancing in Yosemite is breathtaking, too, and not just for the scenery. It might have something to do with the two thousand vertical feet of air between the dancers and valley floor.

Nice CBS Sunday morning featurette here.

OK Go: A Million Ways

Perhaps you've seen this music video online already. Perhaps you heard Robert Siegel's interview yesterday with the lead singer and choreographer and then watched the video on npr's site.

But then, perhaps you haven't. In which case.