Hanging Out the 15th Floor
Monday, February 11, 2008
WE NEED A DRUMMER FOR DRIVER DOWN. SOON. NOW.
If you or anyone you know is interested in being the final, crucial component of our little sludge metal band (although we are not limiting ourselves to that one subgenre; to give you an idea, our sound leans more towards the semi-hard to hard stuff in general), please don’t hesitate to message me here, on YM (YM ID: the_urgency), or through email or SMS (weepy.devotchka@gmail.com; 0915-710-4641) for the details. This call is pretty damn urgent, being that we are slated to play at Mag:Net Katips this coming Feb. 25. (O diba, kasasali mo pa lang, may gig ka na. Exciting yan.) Hurry hurry hurry, honey. And if it makes even a lick of difference, our bassist makes killer tinola. Killer. Killer. Tara.
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In less panicked news, I have quite a bone to pick with Mark Ronson. This guy has gotten plenty of attention as of late thanks to Versions, his album in which he collaborates with current music acts on remakes of slightly older songs. I’m not apprehensive towards the concept, really; it’s just that some of the tracks he’s produced do not do much justice to the originals. His effort with Amy Winehouse on The Zuton’s “Valerie” is pretty damn good, though I feel that this is only because the song was already nice and bouncy to begin with (Ronson has a penchant for the brassy and upbeat). The recreation he and Lily Allen did for the Kaiser Chiefs’ “Oh My God,” for instance, has completely done away with the delightfully menacing feel of the original, replacing it with something that just sounds cartoonish at best.
The track I really want to bewail right now, however, is his alliance with Phantom Planet’s Alex Greenwald on Radiohead’s “Just.”
Say it with me, everybodeh: …HUWHAT.
While the lounge-y, almost Maroon 5-ish treatment of this incredible Generation Whine anthem is more than enough to induce this hissy fit, the corresponding video just dragged things down to a level beyond despicable. That’s right, kiddies. It has a video.
Now, those who have seen the original “Just” viddy will fully understand all my melodrama. This is not just because it happens to be my favorite music viddy of all time, giving me license to ride on the rage of my personal sentiments. Directed by Jamie Thraves, the “Just” video is a mindfuck of an example of good visual storytelling. It is glorious and harrowing and all those other adjectives I use on all brilliant bits of media. I got the heebie-jeebies the first time I saw it. I was ten then. Twelve years later and it still blows my mind, is still one of those I could die happy if I’d directed that deals.
Observe:
(NOTE: I do suggest, though, that you watch both viddies on Youtube itself, since these smaller, blog-friendly versions sport poor subtitles, and the subtitles are highly instrumental to the whole deal. Ridiculously so.)
And then here comes a viddy that serves as the perfect parallel to the rehashed song: a lame parody of the original, an attempt to be a chirpy, tongue-in-cheek version that, to my oh-so-apparent remorse, does not succeed at proper self-deprecation.
Here, gademmet:
You can’t dance your way out of this, you evil, evil viddy. You are nothing more than a bastardization, and baby, I am livid.
posted by marguerite @ 7:30 PM
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