All right, we’ve got two hash, one burger, no sauce and an Open Thread for you. ORDER UP!
In TV news, AMC released the full trailer for The Walking Dead that everyone at Comic-Con got to see. Directed by Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile), this TV series promises to be a slower, more intimate look at post-apocalyptic survival than your typical scream-and-splatter zombie movie. Later that same day, CBS asked AMC if it planned to hoard all the good television forever, and maybe if they had some critically acclaimed drama exploring the emptiness of the American dream that they weren’t using, perhaps CBS could borrow it. AMC laughed and kicked over their sand castle.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yg46DWI_fCE
The music industry has apparently discovered this Internet thing! Neil Young’s newest album, Le Noise, will not only be released on CD and iTunes, but also as an iPhone app. “”It gives you an interactive album cover,” Young said of the program. “Forgive my use of the word ‘album.’ I am old school. When you buy the songs/movies from I-tunes they show up in your APP.” Someone please tell me what that means. I’m being serious here.
But if there’s one music mogul who it’s impossible to misunderstand, it’s Kanye West, who’s announced that he’ll be releasing a new song online every weekend from now until Christmas. His new series of releases, called “G.O.O.D. Friday,” already feature a remix of his latest song “Power,” and may soon include his remix of Justin Bieber’s “Runaway Love” featuring Raekwon. Kanye will be posting these songs to his Twitter feed. If you’re not already following Kanye West on Twitter, then you probably don’t have Twitter. Everyone on Twitter follows him. I’m not exaggerating; I think he has all of Twitter as a follower. If you sign up for Twitter today, it probably adds him to your feed automatically.
Movies opening this week: Roman Empire adventure flick Centurion, critically acclaimed but doomed for obscurity; horror mock-documentary The Last Exorcism, which blends two good movies into one tolerable smoothie; and Takers, the movie that finally teams up Matt Dillon, Chris Brown and “T.I.”. No word if someone gives Chris Brown a fat lip.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Zba6lg1Z9Y
Will 2011 feature Kanye West and Neil Young as criminals who take hostages in a bank robbery, only to find zombies in the basement?* Or is there something else we failed to address? Sound off in the comments, for this is your … Open Thread.
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* Actually, that sounds kind of cool. Kanye as a street hustler, Young as the aging cowboy who mentors him. Bank robbery gone wrong; cops surround the building; hostages corralled in the basement. One of them starts foaming blood from the mouth and bites the woman next to him. It’s a bank full of zombies and a street full of cops. Who’s gonna crack first? Kanye West, Neil Young, Karl Urban, David Morse and Gabrielle Union in: Overnight. This film has not yet been rated.
And then, a surprise. (unless this has happened before without my knowledge)
One new song every weekend until christmas? The music industry has been waiting for someone to make a move like this for a long time. In the quest to stay relevant 24/7/365 it’s a wonder that artists try and get through by dropping one album every couple of years (or something close to that).
Once the singles are played out, and the artists disappear on tour, they seem to drop off the realm of the collective conscience. Not even an ever present media personality can keep artists afloat forever.
Granted, not all of the songs will be his, they will all be connected to him somehow, and as long as they are all good, will keep his name fresh in the minds of music appreciators (can I call Kanye fans that) until at least christmas, if not for the music itself, for the anticipation of new music to come.
And no, I don’t follow him on twitter, but I will now.
I told myself that if I ever became an influential musician, this is something that I would incorporate. How can it not work?
Now all that I want to see is the music industry to take up my next idea, the ever changing, updateable song, that the artist can change digitally whenever they see fit, leaving you with a new song every time you listen to it.
It’s actually somewhat unusual for an already-established act to do this, though it’s not unheard of for the lesser-knowns.
Jonathan Coulton acquired the majority of his fanbase during his Thing a Week project. I tried to do something similar at the beginning of this year and failed after about six weeks. It’s harder than it sounds.
And keep your eye on another Jonathan who might become (more) famous in the next year or so: Jonathan Mann has been writing and recording a new song every single day for the last year and a half. CNN recently did an online video feature thing about him.
This all begs the question: Why on earth did I decide to shorten my first name?
Well, while I am glad to hear that Kanye is not the first person to do something like this, I will have to pass some judgement on the two artists presented to me: Coulton and Mann.
Before I do that, let me say that my vision for the continual song release strategy was to release songs that have already been written in a bottlenecked fashion. Not writing for a deadline. It worked in the classical era, but those guys were really good at what they did.
I just realized that this may hamper live touring, but then I though that if an artist released one very good song and played another 10 only at shows, wouldn’t you be more inclined to see them? I’ve been wrong a lot before though.
Now, on to Coulton and Mann. They strike me as gimmicks for the same reason. Not gimmicks in the pop music sense, but gimmicks in the sense that they are only famous for their projects and not for their music. I listened to one song from Coulton’s site (Code Monkeys) and it had a guitar riff that was stolen/sampled from another song which I can’t think of right now. As for Mann, can his babbling really be called music? His biggest hit is a viral video for the iPhone4. One of his songs is ‘a short song about nothing’ (taken from the video). I don’t think that he will last. I’ve been wrong a lot before though.
I once read a nice quote that said a good song is not written due to the need for a good song. A good song is written due to the need to say something. I might have just opened up another topic entirely.
@Ras, I think you should give Jonathan Coulton more of a chance before dismissing him as purely a gimmick. His music has no pretension of being anything more than funny/geeky power pop, so I don’t think it’s fair to criticize it for being derivative of other power pop songs. The strength and appeal of music is primarily in the lyrics.
Try these other tracks:
“Re: Your Brains”
“The Future Soon”
“Shop Vac” – less geeky/funny; actually genuinely poignant and touching.
At any rate, he’s built up a huge following among geek circles, including I assume many OTI readers.
I went ahead and checked out a lot of his stuff, and gimmick was the wrong word. He definitely has a nice niche section cut out for himself, and his songs are cute. I can’t really connect with any of it though.
Coulton also gave us the ‘Still Alive’ end credits song from Portal.
Sticking with the geek music theme, while not specifically a song a week, They Might Be Giants had their dial-a-song answering machine where they would put songs on the outgoing message for people to listen to. I have no idea how often they changed it. I forgot to call whenever I was visiting New York and didn’t feel the need to call long distance for it.
Back in the day, Dial-A-Song was updated with a new song daily! I can’t believe I forgot about it. These days it’s still up, but they really only change it when they feel like it.
Full disclosure: I actually know Jonathan Mann. We’re not best buds, but we both participate in Song Fight on occasion, and we met at last month’s live show in San Francisco. His live show is way better than (most of) his recordings. Honestly, I wish he would give up on the Songatron thing and just start devoting more time to his good ideas; his recordings from before he started the song-a-day project are much better.
Coulton, on the other hand, you really ought to give another shot. “Code Monkey” is definitely not my favorite of his (though it seems to resonate with his target audience). the ones that Lee recommended are pretty good starting points. I’ve also got a soft spot for his Christmas song “Chiron Beta Prime” and his George Plimpton tribute “A Talk With George.”
That song fight site looks really interesting.. I might give it a try
Egads. I just listened to this week’s fight, “When Did You Know.” You know there’s a week fight when I’m one of the top contenders. If you’re just exploring Songfight for the first time (and I recommend it), I’d advise you check out the previous fight “The Middle Part” instead of the ones up there right now (except mine, of course :P ).
@Ras
Now, I know he’s not exactly “in the industry”, but Wichita rapper, XV, already did something much more impressive than Kanye’s project. He released a track every day and night, for 40 days, which resulted in an 80 track album which is referred to as 40 Days and 40 Nights.
I’m not sure if Kanye took that as inspiration, but XV (who just signed to Warner Bros. in the past month) is associated with Big Sean (Kanye’s new protege, and most recent appointment GOOD Music if I’m not mistaken). It’s not unreasonable to think that Kanye is at least familiar with XV considering that both of them have a relationship to Big Sean. If you accept that, it’s not much more of a leap to think that Kanye is familiar with XV’s project, whether or not he listened to it.
Anyways, just making the point, it’s been done before. On top of that, I’m of the opinion that XV maintained a pretty high standard of quality throughout most (though not quite all) of the project.
That’s cool to know. I’ll check out his music and his project later today.
Wait, there’s not a movie about vampires coming out this week? Hollywood is really dropping the ball.
Thinking of Justine Bieber remixes, the paulstretched version at 1/8th stream is some tasty Sigur Ros style ambience: http://soundcloud.com/shamantis/j-biebz-u-smile-800-slower
Well, in terms of not addressing things, this weekend is the Emmys. They already gave out the “Creative Arts” Emmys (also guest star Emmys) but it is the “big” award show on Sunday. Of course, the Emmys are impressive in their ability to make the Oscars seem substantive and on the ball, but despite the fact that I put no credence into the Emmy awards, I do like to know who won for the sake of trivia and in hopes that shows and actors I actually do like win.
Granted, when the nominations came out there was discussion in the Open Thread, if I recall correctly, but it certainly seems like an apt topic given the proximity of the event and because we now know the episodes that all the actors and actresses submitted on their behalf.
So, anybody have anything to say about the Emmys?
Bill Maher will once again lose.
The real losers are anyone involved in Community. Not a one. Pbbbbbt. At least Colbert’s writing team finally got their due. After a few years of close-call losses, I feel like they earned that one.
All I want is for Aaron Paul to win. Best performance of the year, yo.
I assume the award will go to Terry O’Quinn (because Emmy voters love when actors play more than one part in a single episode) or Michael Emerson (who was amazing, to be sure, but was barely featured in this season at all), with an outside chance of Andre Braugher (because he’s Andre Braugher).
If Emmy voters love multiple-role actors so much, then how come John Noble got snubbed? He’s terrific in Fringe as two versions of the same man from parallel universes.
Oh well. That’s just a personal gripe; Fringe‘s ratings are fairly middling, so it’s no surprise it wasn’t shortlisted. The Lead Actor In a Drama category is a tough fight this year, as is the Supporting Actor in a Comedy award.
The toughest fight of all, however, will be slogging through an entire awards show hosted by Jimmy Fallon. Ugh.
My guess is that it’s because Fringe is part of the sci-fi ghetto. Lost is only kinda-sorta in the ghetto (following the “if it’s popular and critically acclaimed, it must not be sci-fi” rule), so it can sometimes win less important awards.
And you’re right. The lead actor category is already filled with potential winners. Although I think it’s going to Hamm this year, I would not be surprised if Cranston, Laurie, or even maybe Matthew Fox won.
I shall also be rooting for Aaron Paul, even though those in the know think he didn’t submit the right episode for his nomination. I however, disagree. I’ve heard he should have gone with (spoilers, I suppose) the one where he’s in the hospital after Hank beats him up but he went with the penultimate episode where he plans on killing those two drug dealers. (end of spoilers, I once again suppose) I personally thought that episode was his best of the season, but I do also think that somebody from Lost will win.
I will also be interested in seeing if anybody can topple the 30 Rock/Alec Baldwin juggernaut in the Comedy Series/Lead Comedy Actor categories. I fully expect 30 Rock to go down to Glee or Modern Family, but Baldwin could definitely take home another Emmy. Of course, the fact that Parks and Recreation (or Community, for that matter) weren’t even nominated renders the category tainted for me.
Also, I expect Jimmy Fallon to be affable enough. If I learned anything from when I tuned into the Golden Globes just to watch Ricky Gervais it’s that the host of award shows don’t really do much after the opening monologue.
Hey, in case you’re interested, you can now get email updates whenever someone posts something on a comment thread you want to follow. There’s a checkbox right before the “Submit Comment” button, as well as an email signup at the bottom in case you want to subscribe but don’t want to leave a comment right now.
Happy trolling!