Entries Tagged 'Music Video' ↓

When director James Frost decided that he wanted to make a music video without cameras or lights, but instead using ultra-high bandwidth laser scanners, he wrote up a concept and sent it to the group he thought would be most responsive: Radiohead.

They bit. The result, “House of Cards,” is as eerie and emotionally unraveled as you’d expect from the R. (Thanks to Core 77 for the tip.) Special bonuses include a “how they did it” short, as well as frames you can roll under your mouse and see interpolate in real time.

Take a bunch of sexy twentysomethings, have them remove their clothes, get ’em dancing, and, in no time, you’ll be watchin’ ’em get it on, right?

Right, but only if “get it on” means “make funny signs and symbols out of the censorship bars that inevitably accompany televised U.S. nudity.”

At least, that’s the way it works in the brilliant video for “Toe Jam,” above, by the BPA (Brighton Port Authority), a collaboration between Fatboy Slim and David Byrne, here featuring Byrne and Dizzee Rascal on vocals. Scandalous!

Aside from the performances themselves, what I love about Kanye West’s 2007 single, “Classic (Better Than I’ve Ever Been),” where he invites Nas, KRS-One, and Rakim to join him in the cipher, is that, though guests, they all spank him, like a child, on his own record.

As it’s been often said, don’t send a boy in to do a man’s job.

Introducing the dance remix of Bill O’Reilly’s now notorious, “twenty years old” hissy fit, obviously just as NSFW as is Bill.

Wait…is that…my old lady? I never knew!

This is probably about as close to perfect as it gets: Rupert Holmes’ FM classic, “Escape (The Pina Colada Song),”…acted out by Sims.

“Forever and a day”: Heatwave’s Wilder counts the seconds

Here you go: A gorgeous piece of videotape, featuring the funk band, Heatwave, performing live. They’re led by their late co-founder, Johnnie Wilder, Jr. (1949-2006), above, singing their perennial, six-minute, slow jam classic, “Always and Forever.” Proms, everywhere: Rejoice.

And we’ll grow 40-ish together: Mariah Carey and Nick Cannon begin their married life…and Month #2 of knowing each other

Is Mariah Carey getting stupider with age?

Like most, I didn’t get the Nick Cannon connection, when I heard she’d secretly married him. That is, until I read The Daily Mail, yesterday.

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“Now, pretend that you’re Corey Clark”: Paula and Skat role-play

Was Paula Abdul on drugs?

Not last week, when she tried to judge American Idol contestant Jason Castro’s non-existent second performance. No, was she high in the early ’90s, when she agreed to a cameo in the video for MC Skat Kat’s solo debut, “Skat Strut,” a Fresh Prince-ish piffle over Earth Wind & Fire’s “Let’s Groove” bassline.

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I’m not exactly a huge LisaRaye fan.

I think she’s really pretty, and, in some instances, astonishingly so. When she’s lit well and in motion—like she is in this ignominiously titled YouTube clip, “Lisa raye lookin sexy big butt”—her face has a sculptural quality, an interesting-from-any-angle form. I loved her in 2Pac’s “Toss Is Up” video, much less in The Players Club…and don’t even mention the execrable All of Us.

But when I first saw the inside-gatefold cover of Smooth, issue #36, above, I have to admit I was actually a little disappointed.

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If you get a chance, do please take a gander at my review, in Wednesday’s Village Voice, of the Roots’ new, this-is-the-way-the-world-ends-ish album, Rising Down, above.

“Get Busy,” the first single, burns like the bombing of MOVE, mating a weighty kick-and-snare to a morbid chorus of fuzzy synth drones. “My squad half-Mandrill, half-Mandela,” rapper Black Thought intones. “My band ’bout 70 strong, just like Fela.” Coupled with guest lyrical maestros Dice Raw (“I’m half-dead/Never felt more alive”; “I’m kinda W.E.B. DuBois meets Heavy D & the Boyz”) and the reedy Peedi Crack, the whole fest bristles with the nervous energy of riot control on dust.

It’s a jaunty read, if I, myself, say so. Enjoy!