They Didn't Mind

 

 

TikTokker 2Krispii tells the story of how we got here. In 2024, it was the price of eggs, never mind any of that other stuff. And here we are. (via a comment at Metafilter) 

Improving, Not Ruining, "Ghostbusters"

Dustin Ballard of There I Ruined It brings us his Ghostbusters Super Mashup Party for a quick giggle. You have the unmistakable beat from Ray parker Jr's "Ghostbusters" with vocal clips from a variety of other songs. The secret is in the clip selection. Many of them rhyme nicely, which is funny enough, but you also get different clips quoting the movie together, and a tribute to the best Halloween trick-or-treat candy you can receive. Even the way Ballard labeled the clips is designed to bring out the funny. 

Broken Peach Does "Thriller"

We check in with the Spanish band Broken Peach at least once a year for their new Halloween video, and this year they bring us a hard rock version of Michael Jackson's "Thriller." They also incorporate parts of "Somebody's Watching Me" by Rockwell into the song, and a small taste of a surprise song at the end. 

This song is so Halloweeny that they don't need their full body skeleton costumes, and instead they dress like Jackson in the original 1984 video. Broken Peach's signature glitchy twitchy dance moves are still part of the act. 

Ow!

Dustin Ballard, also known as There I Ruined It, made a song completely out of vocal extras. The first half is the word "Ow!" which made me think of walking across a floor strewn with LEGO bricks, and then it switches to "Whoa," as if you are on a slippery floor, because there's a lot of those. 

Ghostmashers

This time of year, you can count on hearing Ray Parker Jr's "Ghostbusters" quite a bit. Sure, it's still appropriate, and so is the movie, but what it really needs is a mashup with eleven other songs from the 1980s. Yes, twelve songs, and if you don't recognize them all, there's a list at the YouTube page. Bill McClintock revealed this mashup in honor of Halloween. Some of the songs are what you'd normally think of as Halloween songs, but most of them are just dance hits that you know by heart. So you may as well get up and dance to them now! 

Sex Bomb

Imagine you've traveled to a market fair somewhere in Jolly Olde England around 1500. Among the farmers and craftsmen selling their wares, there are also jugglers, puppeteers, and singers to keep the crowd around. A four-man choir performs a cappella in harmony, but what are they singing? It's Tom Jones' 1999 hits "Sex Bomb" which was a big hit in Europe, but was never even released in the United States. 

German music theory professor Jonas Wolf has a particular thing for Renaissance music. He has made a hobby of translating modern music pieces into different historical styles. This one is a one-man project, with Wolf singing four parts. While the song is quite pleasant, the real interest is the incongruity of the tune and the subject matter. However, from what I've read, performers in the Middle Ages could get pretty bawdy at times. (via Metafilter) 

Midnight Rider

Gregg Allman performs with Bonnie Raitt, Aaron Neville, and the Neville Brothers in 1989. 

Song for America

Kansas, recorded in Las Vegas in 1996.

Africa, '50s Style

It's an '80s song set to a '50s beat, and Generation Z doesn't understand at all. But the rest of us can enjoy Postmodern Jukebox with guest musicians Casey Abrams and Snuffy Walden performing Toto's "Africa." (via Laughing Squid)

Live?

(via Bad Newspaper)

Rainy Days And Mondays

"Rainy Days And Mondays" by the Carpenters was released in 1971. It would have gone to #1, except for the juggernaut that was "It's Too Late"/"I Feel the Earth Move" by Carol King. This one's for gwdMaine. 

Star Wars: Duel of the Fates Singalong

The real lyrics are revealed. (via reddit)

The Best Karaoke Selection

You'll want to remember this if you are ever forced into Karaoke. (via reddit)

September

Today is the 21st of September. Do you remember? Time for some Earth, Wind, and Fire!

The World's Oldest Recorded Song

The Seikilos epitaph is a marble tombstone from the first century that has a song recorded in its stone inscription. The large letters, in Koine Greek, contain a poem about grief.They are accompanied by marks above each word that indicate the musical notation. The stone was discovered in 1893 in the town of Ayden, Turkey, and followed a circuitous route to the National Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen, where it resides today. 

We have documentary evidence of older songs, but those are in fragments, while this stone contains a complete song. The musical notation on the Seikilos epitaph is not so old that it couldn't be translated, and that's why we are able to hear the song as it was meant to heard. The lyrics are appropriate to a tombstone, about the fleetingness of life and the futility of grief. Instead, we are encouraged to enjoy life while we have it.   

"Eruption" on Accordion

One of the coolest musical sequences on earth, played on the world's uncoolest instrument. Yeah, the accordion is super difficult to play, but you don't see it on most stage shows, with the exception of Weird Al Yankovic, and he's a comedian. I was surprised to learn my last husband once took accordion lessons when he was young, the only musical instrument he ever played. That was a real turn after my previous late husband was a professional bass player. I did not laugh, though. 

What we have here is the Finnish duo the Morander Brothers recreating the Eddie Van Halen guitar solo "Eruption" note for note on accordions. You're welcome.  (via Laughing Squid) 

Movie Characters Sing "Mr. Brightside"

The Usual Suspect made this CinemaSings mashup by taking clips from 144 movies and arranging them to sing the 2004 sing by The Killers, "Mr. Brightside." This sort of stunt has been done many times before, but this one sounds really good because it's so precisely edited, and many of the movies are musicals, so many of the clips are actually singing a song, even though it's not this one. That adds much more musicality to the finished product than we're used to. Even the parts without lyrics are dance scenes, which keeps the music flowing in your mind. 

If go to YouTube and open the settings, then change the audio track to Klingon mode, you can hear the raw edit without the music. Sorry, that won't be in the Klingon language. (via the Awesomer) 

Appliance

(via Pleated-Jeans)

A Modern Day Typographer

    
We know Elle Cordova is extremely witty and can make us laugh about the most arcane subjects, but this time she's outdone herself. And it's all about fonts. 

The "Major-General's Song" from the musical The Pirates of Penzance has long been a medium for parody, with the fast-paced and difficult lyrics repurposed for other subjects, most notably Tom Lehrer's "Elements Song" and Randall Munroe's "Every Major's terrible." Cordova follows suit by reciting all the fonts for better or worse, along with her opinion on their importance. The ability to sing the song is enough to impress me, but the more you know about typography, the funnier it becomes because there are jokes within jokes in these lyrics. 
  

Rock of Ages (Mix)

    
You want some rock 'n' roll? Here's all of it, just about. There's a list of the songs used in this mix by DJ Schmolli at the YouTube page.