All posts by Hallgeir

Indie, pop, Video

Video premiere: Mr FROSTY MAN by Sufjan Stevens

1 Comment

“Mr. Frosty Man” by Sufjan Stevens from the upcoming “Silver & Gold” box set
Animation by Lee Hardcastle.

Those of us that preordered Sufjan Stevens’ new christmas box set got the following mail today:

“Halloween is just around the corner. How better to celebrate the ghoulish occasion than with a new Sufjan Stevens Christmas clay-mation video for “Mr. Frosty Man,” a fast and furious tableau featuring a renegade snowman’s battle against flesh eating zombies.

It’s a veritable Christmas bloodbath (made especially not for children) by the infamous clay-mation master Lee Hardcastle, displaying all the gore of a classic horror flick: zombies interrupt an otherwise normal family Christmas dinner but are thwarted by a rebel snowman wielding a chainsaw, a shotgun, and chip off his shoulder. Children (and spoilers) beware: Mommy gets mauled under the mistletoe and Jolly Ol’ Saint Nick gets a hard-knock lesson in weight loss, but, rest assured, Mr. Frosty Man doesn’t go down without a fight. He’s a real American Christmas hero!”

Fantastic!!

– Hallgeir

Classic Concert, Funk, Great albums, James Brown, Soul

James Brown – Live at the Apollo was recorded 50 years ago today

1 Comment

“When I’m on stage, I’m trying to do one thing: bring people joy. Just like church does. People don’t go to church to find trouble, they go there to lose it.”
– James Brown

“Our whole thing was based on James Brown. We listened to Live at the Apollo endlessly on acid. We would listen to that in the van in the early days of 8-tracks on the way to the gigs to get us up for the gig. If you played in a band in Detroit in the days before The MC5, everybody did ‘Please, Please, Please’ and ‘I Go Crazy.’ These were standards. We modeled The MC5’s performance on those records. Everything we did was on a gut level about sweat and energy. It was anti-refinement. That’s what we were consciously going for.” 
– Wayne Cramer, MC5

Recorded October 24, 1962
Genre R&B, soul
Length 31:31 (Original LP),  40:47 (CD reissue)
Label King, Solid Smoke, Polydor
Producer James Brown (original), Harry Weinger (Polydor reissues)

See also the calendar post of today

One of the best live albums in music history, James Brown – Live at the Apollo was recorded on this day 50 years ago.

My favourite moment: The whole horn infused “Think” that borrows heavily from jazz legend Charlie Parker in the way Brown scats over the band with the crowd participating enthusiastically. Not remotely like the studioversions and terribly good!

Continue reading James Brown – Live at the Apollo was recorded 50 years ago today →

Country, List, Singer Songwriter, Video

Dwight Yoakam Top 10 Music Videos

1 Comment

I’ve liked Dwight Yoakam since the late eighties. There was a music magazine here in Norway, Beat, that really championed those new country artists and I was smitten. His first two records really got worn out at my student home in Bergen.

Today I am going to list his 10 best videos (you know he came up at the same time as MTV and he’s always had great music videos). This is my own list and it is not discussed with Egil (the other half of JV) before putting it out here.

1. Guitars, Cadillacs:

2. Streets of Bakersfield (with Buck Owens):

Dwight Yoakam to the magazine Country Guitar in 1994:

‘Bakersfield’ really is not exclusively limited to the town itself but encompasses the larger California country sound of the Forties, Fifties and on into the Sixties, and even the Seventies, with the music of Emmylou Harris, Gram Parsons, the Burrito Brothers and the Eagles — they are all an extension of the ‘Bakersfield Sound’ and a byproduct of it. I’ve got a poster of Buck Owens performing at the Fillmore West in 1968 in Haight Asbury! What went on there led to there being a musical incarnation called country rock. I don’t know if there would have been a John Fogerty and Creedence Clearwater Revival had there not been the California country music that’s come to be known as the ‘Bakersfield Sound’.

Continue reading Dwight Yoakam Top 10 Music Videos →

Blues, Rap, Rock, Video

Video Premiere: The Baddest Man Alive by Black Keys and RZA

From The Black Keys’ Facebook page:

World Premiere: “The Baddest Man Alive” a music video by The Black Keys & RZA for RZA’s new movie The Man with the Iron Fists.

…and what a great track it is, AND what a bad (meanin’ good) video!

From Paste Magazine:

The rockers and RZA teamed up to record a sultry track that combines the best of both rock and rap worlds. The video for “The Baddest Man Alive” pays homage to the kung-fu film that it accompanies. Audiences see The Black Keys and RZA sitting at a table in a restaurant when, all of a sudden, they all begin to battle each other. Throughout the fight sequence there are small clips from The Man With The Iron Fists on different surfaces. The bloody aspects that audiences can expect to see from the feature (it was produced by Quentin Tarantino, after all) make their way into the video, including RZA ripping someone’s arm off. (Read more at Paste)

– Hallgeir

Country, Great albums, Rock, Singer Songwriter, Soul

Great Album: No Other by Gene Clark (update)

2 Comments

Gene Clark (1944-1991) was one of the founding members of the legendary The Byrds, and this is what he is known for among the majority. This is too bad…In 1974 he made a solo album “No Other”. It was released on David Geffen’s Asylum Records. Apparently, after spending more than 100 000 $ to record the album (with an all-star cast of musicians, singers, and Thomas Jeffereson Kaye at the helm producing), the album was  named “uncommercial” , it was considered  the “Heavens Gate” of records.

When it finally came out it was not appreciated by his contemporaries and sold very poorly. Before 1976 it was out of distribution.
Today, most critics will agree that this is a so-called “Lost Masterpiece” or “Burried Treasure”. They are certainly right about that.

I had heard and read about the album for nearly 20 years, before I finally bought it after having heard it in passing in a local record store.
Holy shit!

Continue reading Great Album: No Other by Gene Clark (update) →