It took it a while to be put up on the website, but now you can listen to the 4 songs they performed, or the whole half-hour segment.
This is unbelievably awexome! KEXP is a big deal! It’s one of the most well-respected radio stations in the world, and even though it is based in the Northwest it has devoted listeners all the heck over the place.
By the way, the next JM+FFD show is this Saturday the 25th at The Crocodile in Seattle, where they are the opening act for the CD release of “Happy, Good Looking, and in Love” by Friends and Family. Also on the bill are the Hoot Hoots! So you should check that out (I won’t be going because of Fools Play).
There are lots and lots of independent movies floating about the world and the internets in various stages of production. Many of them have Kickstarter campaigns. One of them is called “Winning Dad.”
How is it that this movie came to garner my support when so many others have not? Well, for starters it’s being made locally: all Western Washington cast and crew and whatnot. For another thing, it’s got a pretty intriguing premise that fits very well into our enlightened, Pacific-Northwest mindset:
Colby’s dad knows his son is gay, but he doesn’t like talking about it. He respects it, but ignores everything about that aspect of his son’s life – he doesn’t even know about Colby’s long-term boyfriend, Rusty.
Increasingly committed to Rusty, Colby hatches a plan to trick his father into camping with Rusty under the pretense that Rusty is Colby’s straight friend and future business partner. Colby is convinced that, given the chance, his father and his boyfriend will get along great…
But what REALLY sealed the deal for me was the fact that my pals Julia Massey & The Five Finger Discount were hired to write the soundtrack for the movie. The ENTIRE soundtrack!
Here’s their Kickstarter vid so you can learn more:
As an added bonus, they’ve also hired Ellen McLain, who you probably know as the voice of GLaDOS from the Portal games (and in Guillermo del Toro’s upcoming Pacific Rim extravaganza) as one of the on-screen characters in the film. She’s also gotten involved in the Kickstarter campaign, and let’s just say that this time the cake is NOT a lie:
And what’s that song that was playing in the background during that video? Why it’s “Skatepark” by Julia Massey & The Five Finger Discount!
Good pal and Fools Play member Esa Hakkarainen (the Periwinkle Fool) has become the third Fool to be in a band that has had a Kickstarter campaign (after Geoff the Yellow Fool and Nathan the Orange Fool). Esa plays bass for the band “Simon the Leper,” which I can best describe as kind of a cross between spacey post-rock and screaming metal.
You can head over to their Bandcamp page to listen to an EP and a live album. Here’s a sample from the “You Are OK” EP (mixed by Geoff the Yellow Fool, incidentally):
And if you like what you hear, of course head on over to Kickstarter and toss in your two cents.
A few years ago some researchers from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders did a study where they hooked some jazz musicians into fMRI machines and had them do some musical improvisation to see what their brains looked like when they were improvising as opposed to when they were playing rehearsed, learned musics. The results were interesting.
Interesting enough that it caught the attention of hip-hop artist Mike Eagle and hip-hop “enthusiast and producer” Daniel Rizik-Baer1. They contacted one of the researchers with an interesting proposal: the original study had been about improvising music. What about improvising lyrics?
Soon twelve hip-hop freestylers including Mike Eagle were hooked up (one at a time) to fMRI machines to see what happened in their brains when they went off-script and started improvising rhyming lyrics.
Researcher Ho Ming Chow uses an fMRI machine to scan the brain of hip-hop artist Mike Eagle. Daniel Rizik-Baer
THIS IS SCIENCE! And it’s completely awexome. There are tons of ramifications for studies like this; seeing how the creative process happens in the brain can lead to all sorts of applications for developmental disabilities and brain damage.
You really should read it, because Mr. Mike Eagle is one of the co-authors! Yes, that’s right: Mike Eagle co-authored a scientific paper. Unbelievably cool.
I am friends with SO many musicians, so this was bound to happen eventually: Two of my friends’ bands are having Kickstarter campaigns at the same time!
First off is Julia Massey & The Five Finger Discount, with their Kickstarter for their next album, Five Letters from Far Away. Also, they might be running for president in 2016 and Geoff needs a better hobby than making a heap of rocks. Here’s the explanatory video:
And second is Nathan Geyer the Orange Fool’s Band Locust Street Taxi with the Kickstarter for their next album, their final album before they become famous. This is kind of an all-or-nothing proposition for this band; they say that if this album doesn’t make them famous then they’re callin’ it quits. Here’s their video:
Two worthy Kickstarters at one time!? What is someone to do? The answer is simple. Give pledges to both by following these links here!
On Monday Google did one of my favorite of recent Google Doodles, this one based on Little Nemo, the old-timey comic strip created by Windsor McCay. You should click this image and enjoy, then come back here for more info:
If you don’t know about Little Nemo, you really should take it upon yourself to get some educamation about him. Here’s some primers:
The Comic Strip: Little Nemo began as a comic strip at the turn of the 20th century, in which Nemo has a series of short adventures in Slumberland that always end with him waking up in his bed. You can read a whole bunch of these amazingly-drawn strips at the Comic Strip Library here. Here’s an example of one, the famous “Walking Bed” sequence:
Little Nemo: The Walking Bed, 1908
The Animé:
In 1989 there was an animé version of the charachter, Little Nemo Adventures in Slumberland. It unfortunately is not exactly stellar entertainment. There’s some excellent animation, but the screenplay went through too many hands. Eventually the screenplay was co-credited to Chris Columbus, of The Goonies, Home Alone, and Harry Potter fame. The whole movie is actually on YouTube right now, but due to the dubious legality of it, you might not be able to watch it for long:
The Video Game
There was also an excellent and quite difficult NES video game that was released around the time of the movie, called “Little Nemo: The Dream Master.” In it you throw candy into various animals and then climb into them and wear them like pajamas, each one giving you a different ability (frog lets you jump high, mole lets you dig, bee lets you fly, etc.). It’s really a classic of the NES, and you can play it online at NESCafe (again, of dubious legality) right here.
The Songs:
The “Little Nemo: The Dream Master” video game, of course, inspired the opening line of The Crazy Boy Floyds song “Scrambled TV Super.” Wot’s that? You ain’t never heard that song? Well, take a listen:
Yes, that’s right: “Sometimes you crawl into a frog, and wear it like pajamas as you hop along your log.” Pretty sweet, I know.*
And then, of course, rapper Mega Ran wrote a song about the video game that samples the 8-bit music from the game! Take a listen:
It all just keeps going! Little Nemo forevah!
*Full disclosure: I wrote the music for the “Scrambled TV Super” song, so I might be a bit biased.
Here is the latest official video from Mr. Eagle‘s 4NML HSPTL album. This one is a suitably trippy video for a song called Self-Medication Chant. Enjoy!
Sorry I haven’t posted much lately, but I have been “busy” as they say. There is a big post upcoming, though. Mayhaps early next week? Who is to be knowing?
album. This one is a suitably trippy video for a song called Self-Medication Chant. Enjoy!
