Off Notes: Sock Puppets Playing Heavy Metal

Off Notes, Sock Puppet Parody

Happy Friday!

It seems that I opened the floodgates last Friday by featuring a few weird and wonderful videos in Off Notes. Ever since, the whole office and all of our friends have been piling on top of each other, sending increasingly bizarre and beautiful finds for today’s round-up. We’ve got some great stuff in this post on the relationship between music and the mind and how electric guitars wound up sounding so distinct, but are you going to remember any of that once you see this:

The best of the musical internet this week

  • UK electronic artists, Autechre hacked their own Discogs site. The result is a bizarre, endless manipulation of the page with their music playing over top. Give it a few seconds and the elements on the page start transforming in front of you. And suddenly you’ve lost ten minutes of your day. [Discogs]
  • The Atlantic went in depth on how a series of failures and accidents gave the electric guitar the sound we all know and love. [The Atlantic]
  • The angst and ire of heavy metal music feels uniquely authentic when performed by the single socks that remain after losing their match to the heartless washing machine. [SockPuppetParodies on YouTube]

    • Such good gossip coming out of the “Blurred Lines” copyright case. Even the normally stoic New York Times makes it sound like a pulpy grocery store novel: “Testimony… revealed lurid details of drugs, unearned songwriting credits, and intentional deception of the news media employed as a standard promotional practice.” [NY Times]
    • A Minneapolis reporter dug up this picture of Prince on his junior high basketball team. His look just warms my heart. [Twitter]

  • McSweeney’s thoughtfully offers some simple solutions to the problems of 90s alt-rock artists. [McSweeney’s]
  • While researching my Sam Smith article a few weeks ago, I stumbled across Vicky Williamson’s work on music psychology. Her TED talk on the connections between music and memory is riveting. [TED MED on YouTube]
  • Have you taken Jeremy’s “Touring on a Shoestring” course yet? Check that out and then find out how you can take it one step further with this story on “Eco-Touring”bands taking to the road on bicycles. [Paste]
  • Looking for ways to deliver a memorable live show? WIFE—whose members include a projectionist, a choreographer, and a composer/arranger, working together with body mapping technology—have come up with something so strange and yet so captivating I can’t even imagine seeing it in person. [WIFEPROJECTIONS on YouTube]

  • Just what you needed! A onsie inspired by Left Shark at Katy Perry’s Superbowl performance. I’m sorry. [Bandpage]
  • Another great TED Talk (particularly for bands interested in “Touring on a Shoestring”) about how “Thinking like a Fan” engages audiences and makes for the best live experiences. [TedX Talks on YouTube]

What we’ve been listening to

And because we’re all grown-ups around here, let’s end on a sophisticated note. Here’s a 1986 spoken-word-slash-rap music video about the benefits of doing Karate. Enjoy your weekend!

RJD2: From Samples to Songs

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