I’ve updated my Bands page with a video clip of Dream Out Loud performing “Hope” at Breakers Music Hall on May 2, 2002.
That’s me standing stiffly stage left and playing my beloved (and former) aquamarine metallic Fender American Jazz Bass V. (Well, I do miss it, but I certainly can’t complain about the translucent orange Music Man StingRay 5 I bought to replace it.)
Note: This video requires QuickTime.
You may be familiar with mashups, but this has to take the cake. It’s a mashup from three music instruction videos.
http://curved-air.com/bitties/kels.mov
And just so I don’t seem like a bandwidth hog, the original page in context is here. (Even though I’m being less of a bandwidth hog by linking straight to the video because I’m not forcing you to download three long QuickTime movies simultaneously! But don’t get me wrong; all three are worth watching… as long as you have broadband.)
Very cool idea. Gets a little stale (and not as well-executed) by the end, but still impressive. And of course, Beaver Felton is the guy who sold me my Music Man StingRay 5. (True, I bought it from his shop, not him personally, but I did have direct contact with him personally both by email and on the phone. Not that that makes me cool or anything.)
I was perusing some of the older articles on my site today, such as the one about Bucker and Garcia. For those of you who don’t remember B&G (or, shame on you, were too young to experience them), they’re the one-hit wonders behind everyone’s favorite video game themed song, “Pac-Man Fever.”
Well, as we can see from this video, they’ve still got the fever.
It clearly is a home video, apparently shot in the home music room of either Buckner or Garcia (although I notice that the plaque on the gold record says “Presented to Mike Stewart). Our heroes are set up with a pair of microphones and appear to be performing the song. Buckner (I’ll assume top billing means he’s the lead singer) most definitely is singing live, but the backing music sounds suspiciously canned, despite Garcia’s keyboard (and miraculously chorus-like backing vocals).
I got suspicious when I realized Garcia was lip-syncing the backing vocals even though Buckner was really singing, and when the guitar solo appeared, note-for-note and bend-for-bend consistent with the original that’s permanently etched into my brain from the 8 billion times I listened to the song in 1983 alone, I finally realized what was going on…
You see, it was fairly common for singles released by Columbia Records at the time to include an instrumental version of the song on the flip side. And that is what was playing in Buckner’s spare bedroom. He was doing karaoke to his own song.