Is that what you're into?

Hey reader-- you know what I just realized? I've never done any music reviews on this blog (and by extension, ever). Let's fix that.

OK, so you remember when I talked about the first episode of the second season of Flight of the Conchords, featuring the eponymous duo, everyone's favourite 2-man New Zealand acoustic parody/ novelty group? If you did, that means you understood that last sentence, and deserve a prize*! Anyway, it turns out said band produced an record album, and additionally that I got the album for Christmas. So guess what I'm reviewing?

On its own, there's absolutely nothing problem with the disc. It's shiny and has a picture on one side, and if you stick it in a comupter, it plays music. The music is pretty good, 15 hilarious and catchy songs that are good and tasty.

The problem is that most (14) of the (15) snongs (or as they're called in America, "songs") come from the show. And even then, you don't even need HBO or the DVD to see them. Every one of them is available, in multiple forms, on Youtube. To wit:

1. Foux Du Fafa:


Funny, but it loses something without the Super-8 type video.

2. Inner City Pressure:


The album version is about two lines longer, but the two are otherwise identical.

3. Hiphopopotamus vs. Rhymenocerous




4. Think About It




Probably the only song that's better on the album then the show (though it lacks that spoken-word intro...). You can tell this was always supposed to sound like "What's Goin' On", and the album version comes the closest to that.

5. Ladies of the World




6. Mutha'uckas


See, it's musically interesting, but lyrically it's kind of a one-joke song. I'm not sure why they chose to include this one.

7. The Prince of Parties


Another song that doesn't work nearly as well without the video.

8. Leggy Blonde


This was another one where I'm not sure why they included it. For one thing, it's not technically an FotC song, an for andother, the office-supply percussion part only works if you can actually see it.

9. Robots




This is probably my favourite of the songs that made it onto the record, but my least favorite on the record. The version on the record is too overproduced-- part of the fun of "Robots" is that it's an acoustic song about, well, robots**. Also, all three have different lyrics, for whatever reason.

10. Boom




Also kind of one-jokey, but it's a better joke than "Mutha'uckas".

11. A Kiss Is Not A Contract


12. The Most Beautiful Girl (In the Room)




13. Business Time




14. Bowie




I couldn't find video of track 15, "Au Revoir", the only song on the CD to not feature on the show (at least, not yet). There's not much to it, anyway-- it's less than a minute long and song almost entirely in French.

But more depressing than nothing is what was left out (by the way, good job on scrolling this far. I bet your middle finger is tired. Mine is). Some were songs that only work in context, sure. A couple were probably left off because they weren't on the show. The rest are more confusing. I think "Sellotape" is probably their best song, better than "Bowie" or "Boom", definitely. Maybe that one's too long. But some of their funniest, most quotable songs were left off as well. Whatever, man. There's always next year.

*It's already in the mail. Expect a 3 to 5 week wait. Prizes ship to every country but New Zealand.

** For the record, I want to say that my own, as-yet-unreleased, song "Kill all Humans (Hey Sexy Mama)" was conciev independently of this song. I have witnesses that heard it performed before the show even started airing (though probably after the song was originally written).

I just watched The Shining...

...And instead of a review (it's good, what'd you expect?), I'm just going to post this (pretty old, by internet standards) video that you've probably already seen.

Since I didn't do anything today...

... I figured I'd just link to this. And this, if you don't get the joke.

[Insert Lame Star Wars Pun Here]

So I finally got around to watching The IIIrd and Final Episode of George Lucas' Star Wars hexology*, and it's... actually pretty good. Not mind-blowingly awesome good, or even Serenity good, or even Lego Star Wars good, but I completely forgot what I was saying.

Oh, right. The only real problem with the movie (the acting and dialogue are still weak, but forgiveable, since the movie's 94 percent CGI anyway) is that I know everything that's going to happen beforehand. We already know who wins every fight, who lives and dies and goes into exile on a swamp planet. The only people who wouldn't know what was going to happen are people who've neer seen the first three (let's call them "future generations").

But when those future generations see the whole six-part shebang of Star Wars for the first time, they can start at the beginning (by which I mean Episode I) and not have to worry about any of that, right? Nope. This one (and, to be fair, the two before it) pretty strongly and blatantly ruins the biggest surprises of the last movie. [If by some strange act of fate you managed to live this long without seeing Episode IV through six, and somehow care about avoiding spoilers, skip to the next paragraph. Luckily no one here has to worry about that, because I have no readers at all, let alone those who've never seen Star Wars]. I mean, they just up and call him Darth Vader halfway through the movie! You see him raised from the dead! You know they're twins! How hard would it be to write the damn movie and still leave some suprises for the unitiates! Or put in some real shockers, like maybe he's not their father at all! Maybe it's R2 or Jar-Jar or Samuel L. Jackson? Come on, man. [Spoilers endeth here]

So either way, no surprises. Not only were the blanks filled in, they were re-filled, in all-caps with a Sharpie, just to make sure nothing was left up to the imagination. Why? What's the point of making something so nonessential? Why can't what happened before A New Hope (once known as Star Wars) just be left up to the imagination? Seriously, what's wrong with that?



Still probably my favorite movie ending in III (suck it, Coppola!).

*Or sexology, if you prefer.

Since I must document everything I do...

...and apparently I only post on Thursdays now, here's a picture of my X-Mas haul:
...and of course...(I couldn't figure out how to rotate it).

Trying to keep things simple...

...and not make you have to read anything.



DOWNLOADABLE VERSION:
Rerelease Notes: Some mixing and EQ stuff.

Grant, You're Too Late

I just found out about this the second season premiere of Flight of the Conchords is on Funny or Die dot Com. Click here or (if you're not a loser) watch the embed version below. Oh, and I haven't watched the whole thing yet, so no spoilers. Also, I'm apparently a loser, because I actually didn't watch the embed version (it's a whole Firefox thing, and then there's because I wanted to watch it fullscreened, and you get the picture).

Season 2 Online Premiere - Flight of the Conchords (US Only) - watch more funny videos


I actually watched the whole thing right after posting that, but various things kept me from posting again. I don't have any critical comment about the episode, other than you should watch it right away because it's free and awesome.

Oh, and: this video only works in the U.S. of America. Sorry to disappoint my huge Japanese fanbase*.

*It's only the one guy, but he's huge. He's a sumo wrestler. Hey, Takeshi!

You know what's awesome about having a blog?

I can link to ridiculous shit like this.



[You know what's not so great? Gorram "k" key on my keyboard doesn't work in the title bar any more. I had to copy and paste it in for the title to make sense.]

Did you guys really think I'd forget Song of the Week?

[Song of the Week is a "weekly" feature which is supposed to update every Thursday, but almost never does. In it, Drew records a song, or attempts to record a song, or gives up and writes another movie review.]

"Effect & Cause"*:


*(I spell it with an "&", so you know it's not the original).

This one's pretty self-explanatory. It's just a straight cover of this song.

... and then I lost my entire post. Goddamned Blogger.

...what I tried to say was something like, don't tune your guitar B-E-A-D-G#-B, but I managed to sneak in the words "perfect fourth" to show my musical knowledge, because you fall out of tune before even finishing the song. This was going to be paired with another song, which is why the quality is kind of low (I wanted to keep things lo-fi and record in only a couple takes). Turns out that song is really hard to play, as was my third choice. I was worried this cover would technically be illegal. My last cover counted as a parody, and thus protected speech, this one maybe not. I don't think the White Stripes care too much about covers, though.

There. Imagine that but about twice as long, split into three separate paragraphs, and you have my original post.

DOWNLOADABLE VERSION:
Rerelease Notes: This is a wholly new recording, which was super hard & took like forever. It's much better though. You'll hear most of the differences yourself.

A Trickle Becomes a Flood...

I just had to point out this before doing anything else, at all.

Slowly catching up on TV reviews, Part I of a Ridiculous Number: [adult swim]

First of all, they changed the website! Still not sure if that's an excited "!" or an angry "!".I figured I'd split these up by show since otherwise they'd be 10 or so pages long. Also I figured I'd start here since the last Morel Orel is tonite tonight (sorry, I just learned how to do strikethroughs in HTML)*.

* It's "del". If you know HTML you know what to do with that.

Drinky Crow Show, "Whale Show" (and "God of Monkeys", sort of):
"Off with their heads! Off with their heads!"-TMBG
I actually watched the first three four of these, but this is the only one I cared enough to blog (wait, did I just use "blog" as a verb?) about it. Like a lot of [as] shows, there's not much I can say about it. I really like the theme song, an the art style, and the totally over-the-top violence-to-end-all-violence gags. But it's not really different than a Saturday morning cartoon, just more gross and violent.

The thing is, it might be shaping up to be something more. "Whale Show" is a pretty big "F You" to the [as] fanbase, and by "F You" I of course mean "Fuck U". "God of Monkeys" has the call to imply the whole show is a dream...in the fourth episode. Admittedly, meta-jokes aren't exactly new to the mininetwork, but this show does it with such a ferocity that it might actually have a point. Or not, I don't know.

Robot Chicken, "Help Me":
"Hang on to my coattails, my less-famous friend!"-Cartoon Oz
Another show I probably won't bring up again, bu I wanted to say how much I liked this one. I liked it a moderate amount, mainly because they managed to sneak a few notes of a certain theme song in when Joss Whedon showed up. Also most of the other sketches were funny, if a little too in-jokey (then again, remember waht show this is).

Hey, is applesauce supposed to be green?

Merry X-Mas, readers!

I'm giving all you guys a video game!

Just click here!

Or else?

Accidental Song of the Week (Plus Video)

[Song of the Week is a "weekly" feature which is supposed to update every Thursday, but almost never does. In it, Drew records a song, or attempts to record a song, or gives up and writes another movie review.]

I don't have an excuse for not posting, other than what I call "[long string of creative expletives] finals." And I haven't watched any movies in a while, so there's that. Let's all just pretend I was abducted by aliens.

So I find myself having to do a presentation, and I think-- hey, if'n I makes me a movie, I reckon I wouldn't have to stand up while presentatin'." At the time it didn't occur to me that the movie would be more work than a normal presentation. So then I thought, "well shoot, I's can make up a right purty song to go with'n my movie."

As they say in the business, EPIC FAIL.

I was going for something James Bond with the song, with a heavy bassline, surf guitar, and the kind of drumming that goes tsk-tsk-tika-tsk-tsk, but the bass sound was weak and messy and both my guitars are broken (I've taken to calling one "ol' five-stringy," because I'm too busy/lazy to buy new strings). I managed to get the drums working, and figured I'd try some of the other MIDI doodads Garageband offers.

Come to think of it, my recording process of trying to start the movie on one PC, the recording software on another, and playing an instrument at the same time so they'd all sync up? Really stupid for people with only two hands.

I tried to get a tight drumbeat on this song, but the other instruments are just keyboard-mashing. I tried an experiment with doubling the bassline, but I'm not entirely sure it worked. I really do like the ending, mainly because it's a lot louder than everything else.

Oh, and just ignore the movie. I'm just too lazy and pressed for time to make a whole other music video.


Drew's DIY Presentation: "Battle Theme"


[Update: Sorry about the weirdness. I was trying to upload the wrong file for the first 18 or so hours.]

DOWNLOADABLE VERSION:
Rerelease Notes: This one's the same.

So here's what happened

My original plan was to not post anything last long weekend. Then I thought, "you knows what? I wills put up some bloogings" (my inner monologue can't spell "blog"). That was... Friday?

Saturday morning I decided to bust out the old DVDs, so as to avoid being productive. The first thing I watch is this. I notice a quote about a certain character having a "funny aneurysm," and instinctually note the significance*. But I brush it off and watch the rest of the discs. I also watched this, and this, and this, and got started on this, which, to be fair, I just got Wednesday (and apparently paid too much for).

*If you don't know what I'm talking about, I won't tell you.

While I was looking for something, anything, to do, I stumbled across this. Which quickly led me to this (see above). I consider this a tremendous cosmic coincidence, like Jefferson and Adams dying on the same day, albiet more important.

From there, I was hooked. It's like Wikipedia was in the early days, where you think, "what's that? what's that?" and before you know it you have 224 tabs open. Though I did learn a lot, or so I keep telling myself.

So that's what I did this weekend. I was on vacation in a different part of the Internet. And I watched a lot of TV. We'll be back on schedule... um... now.