By Jed
Merry Christmas and Happy Holiday Season, friends. As usual, see below for a collection of carefully selected music videos and commentary, courtesy of me, Video Jed (a nickname to which I seem to sometimes be referred). Enjoy them. But permit me to make a request: if you or your loved ones are aware of any Christmas/Chanukah/Holiday Season related videos, new or old, funny or serious, wonderful or dreadful, that you would like to see posted on the site, please send them to me at RFSLJed at gmail dot com. I'll most likely be posting a collection of them as the Holy Day draws near (as I did last year).
1. Modern Time Machines will be sharing the bill with Marvelous Toy on December 7, for the first of the four Radio Free Silver Lake residency shows at Labrie's (in Glendale, every Tuesday). They'll be premiering the music video for the song "Mammoth" (which you can listen to on their Myspace page). Here's a 30 second preview of the video -- if you want to see more, come to the show:
And performing "Dweeb" at Spaceland:
In addition to the RFSL residency show on December 7, MTM will also be playing at KROQ's Local's Only's Silver Lake in Pomona festival, which will be held at two venues: the Glasshouse and Alladin Jr. (MTM will be playing at the Alladin Jr. venue).
2. As I can tell from the fact that at this moment you are reading the Radio Free Silver Lake blog, you've most likely already seen the Happy Hollows at some point. So: you know how much fun their shows are (like really, really a lot better than the standard fare fun, fun). Here's a promotional video for the Happy Hollows show scheduled for December 9 at the Satellite (formerly Spaceland):
And here...a video of a February 11 performance of the song "Faces" at the Smell. True, the sound isn't great, but the camera angle captures well the energy and feel of the live show.
3. Facebook is ALIVE with lamentation as to the recent death of serious, but then comic actor Leslie Nielsen, who appears to have been, at some point, to have been the childhood hero of nearly everyone born between 1965 and 1990. And for good reason. Although too young to catch Airplane! in the theatre, I had my sides split by all three Naked Gun films (trivia fact: Weird Al Yankovic appears in them all), the first of which I probably watched well over 50 times on TV while growing up.
While the following scene is hopelessly slapstick, and probably far less clever than many of the countless brilliant others featured in the original Naked Gun film, it has always been one of my favorites, in the Benny Hill sort of way:
I have to admit that I was unfamiliar with this scene from Police Squad (the six episode television series that preceded the Naked Gun series -- and which contains many of the same jokes that later turned up in the films) until I saw it in my newsfeed (thank you facebook for helping me to stay relevant). It made me chuckle, so here you go:
My favorite facebook comment re Nielsen's demise: "Maybe Nordberg killed Frank Drebin."
4. Robyn released a new video for "Dancehall Queen" on Monday. Unlike her last few videos, in which she is prominently featured, and which seem thoroughly contemporary, "Dancehall Queen" goes retro (and features no Robyn), with VHS style video quality, and looks like a documentary/karaoke video. If only more Robyn songs were listed in the karaoke bar books...
5. Lower Heaven's opening night performance at the newly christened Satellite is RFSL Brad's recommendation for Friday night, and after listening to/watching the video for "Today is All We Have", I can see why. That is, if you aren't already planning on trying to squeeze into the Atlas Sound show at the Echo. As far as I can tell, Lower Heaven sounds like Ride. There's my band comparison of the week for you.
6. In the interest of sating Los Angeles' thirst for Icelandic music videos from the mid-1980's (that is, in my interest in exposing you to something odd, old, and which you actually might like): mid-80's Icelandic punk(ish) group S.H. Draumur's video for the song "Öxnadalsheiði". I saw these guys play at the Iceland Airwaves festival this last October for one of their first shows in 17 years (Pixies-style, right?). I promptly bought their one and only album, which I've had on repeat ever since. The video is subject low budget, but the cue cards (in Icelandic, sorry guys) explain why:
And if you are really curious, here's my best effort at translating the cue cards in the video from Icelandic into English: "1. Shall we make 'Oxnadalsheidi' popular? 2. We may try that. We need a video. 3. ...But that's so expensive, man! 4. We'll just use the handcam. 5. We wont get that shown anywhere, terrible image quality. 6. We'll try, man, we'll try... 7. Okay, but no miming the instruments. 8. Now I know...lets let Gunnar eat dog shit! 9. Devine has already done that. 10. Yeah, but to show us only to as speaking with each other! 11. Yeah and so we have cue cards like in old silent movies. 12. Uh, oh! Tintin is coming! 13. Who dies the coolest? 14. The End." Kind of makes sense, right?
Remember, email me at RFSLJed at gmail dot com: cool videos of your band, cool videos of the band you manage, some awesome video you captured of a live performance in the LA area or of a karaoke performance from last Monday where you really, nailed it. And don't forget the Christmas videos!
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