So part of my job is to upload a video everyday and as much as I think I can always find fresh content, it's pretty tough with a busy schedule.I have come to rely on a few different sites, but the best has got to be http://youtube-trends.blogspot.com/


YouTube's very own blogspot. It picks out the most shared videos and highlights them in a lovely little blog

It's made me bum the internet so much more

Fit Birds

I was reading about vultures after a phone conversation with my friend Dave led to a dispute over pigeons. He thought carrier pigeons were called passenger pigeons. I thought that sounds like nonsense I also had the internet and checked, expecting to find no valid entries for passenger pigeons. Interestingly passenger pigeons did exist but are now extinct, and no they didn't carry passengers or stuff for humans (like carrier pigeons did and still do) as far as I know. Wikipedia them here. It's a sad dodoesque sort of story.

As an attempt to move on from the passenger pigeon debaucle Dave dropped a bit more unsubstantiated knowledge. This time about vulture behaviour, sort of implying that they have ESP and that's how they all gather around a kill from miles away. This may or may not be the case my Google Search found nothing relevant in the first 2 minutes and I sort of gave up, but it did lead to the discovery of this cool safari safety fact.

A sort of safari safety picture.

As the above image shows, if vultures in Africa are sitting in trees around a fresh kill, even if it at first appears to be unattended there is usually a large predator in the vicinity. So DO NOT approach to try and cut a steak off the zebra because Simba has grown up and is now the Lion King and he WILL eat you.

On the subject of lions I was in Cornwall surfing and after my lovely surf at Widemouth Bay we went to a pub in Bude and had a few drinks and discussed cupping. For anybody who doesn't know, cupping is the sort of cup shape you make with your hand when you are cupping something, such as a boob.

It was unanimously decided that the best cupping scene in all of film history was... 

The Lion King - monkey cups lion's bum.

 

A text-book cub-cup. This cup can be found at 2:49 and lasts for a mere 2.5 secs but the epic soundtrack that precedes and follows this particular cup puts it up there as the best movie cup of all time. The cupping sound effect is also so self-assured and confident, a true marvel of recording.

As a bonus fact, this is an actual translation of what the African bloke is shouting at the beginning of the tune.

Nants ingonyama bagithi Baba  [Here comes a lion, Father]
Sithi uhm ingonyama           [Oh yes, it's a lion]

Nants ingonyama bagithi baba  [Here comes a lion, Father]
Sithi uhhmm ingonyama         [Oh yes, it's a lion]
Ingonyama                     [Lion]

Siyo Nqoba                    [We're going to conquer]
Ingonyama                     [Lion]
Ingonyama nengw' enamabala    [A lion and a leopard come to this open place]

I never particularly wandered what he was shouting but now I know, and it seems pretty sweet.

hot fruit

Melt Banana are pretty Japanesey. Apparently they've been around for ages. It appears that John Peel was a bit of a fan and described them as "the best live band I've seen since Captain Beefheart". They've got a few live videos, most tend to be sub-par sound quality. I did however, quite like their cover of Blondie's Heart of Glass. Defo worth a search.

Melt Banana are:

Refreshingly Energised...

Now I'm not totally against the concept of policing  (like perhaps the NWA were) but here's a list of my most recent encounters. It's truly inspiring work they do...

1. Had my bike stolen and so reported it, they said: "I wouldn't hold your breath if I were you".
2. Got pick pocketed and so reported it, they said: "I don't suspect we'll find who did this".
3. Got stopped whilst cycling over a perfectly safe junction and was threatened with a fine! the cheek. Never there when you need them, but all too present when you don't.
4. Got stopped whilst drunk on my bike outside a pub, with my friend sitting on the handle bars. They asked if we were drunk, we said "yep". So at this point they tried pulling my leg by saying "the bikes been reported stolen" I said "what!?" they said "yeah we're gona have to confiscate it til you can find a receipt".(cue some chortles from the officers) Funny buggers.

Still... I managed to slip a comedy "fuck off" into the conversation but it was filled with such a bitter and genuine sub-text, which they didn't even remotely pick up on. So who's laughing now officer!!!??? HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

And I'll be laughing all the way to Liverpool St. Station, where I shall be filling out forms for and paying for a replacement Young Persons Railcard, stolen in incident number 2.

Here is an epic personal battle between man & machine. I like the bit where he starts to ride upside down.

 

enjoy.

What would you do with multiple audio tracks on youtube?

I was listening to an LCD soundsystem track live on Jools Holland (on youtube), the vocals were a little bit low in the mix. Wouldn't it be good you could turn them up in relation to the band?

It would mean recording & uploading multiple audio files with each video, but with the internet being rapid these days, that shouldn't be a problem.

You could just tell youtube how much volume from each part you wanted, so the original upload was big, but the download was the same size, just in a smarter version, using youtube as the server to host them all...

Possibly an awesome idea and I hope some smart bastard makes it happen. Just like some smart bastard choreographed this bunch at sea world Florida.

So good!

MASSIVE overhaul (relatively speaking)

Ok, so I've been quiet of late, my one follower can vouch for that. But that's not a problem, I've been ok, I've been more than ok, I've been surfing around the Southern Hemisphere and moving to London. All good but irrelevant. Fact is I'm gona change my blog subject a bit, from "in-store music" to just music and things relating to music.

On a river!? I know, it's nuts.

So a close friend of mine "David Al Hilali" or (dauwd) in pretentious speak,  has been a busy bee, finally finishing his engineering degree and working on some great tunes. It's the most wonderful, melodic and creative electronic music that I'm aware of at the moment. Before you ask, NO, I'm not up to speed on electronic music, the travelling and surfing doesn't bode well for new electronic music discovery. Apart from maybe if you were travelling and surfing in Germany where you can surf on a river in Munich and probably head straight to an awesome techno club. But I didn't do that, I went to Bali and listened to J.Lo featuring pitbull and some reggae.

As a young-un his much more talented brothers had already laid claim to the standard instruments most kids learn, so he spent his time in the Welsh country side (as all, half Welsh, half Iraqi children really should do) fiddling with electronic samples on fruity loops; a loop-based music programme .

Dave (centre) the bad apple.

He was probably a lovely child, but by the time I met him at uni, Dave was a textbook bad apple (person) ready to rot his fellow orchard (friends). Together, we shared an amazingly fun few, hedonistic and apple-rotting years at Uni. His room was both a social and musical hub for a group of us. There was a Withnail & I sort of set up with our good friend/guy in the next room Wyn ;short for Wyndham, lovely name, lovely guy and Welsh for winding road. A constant smoky haze was the order of the day. A stream of creative and entertaining people were always passing through his room in the uni halls. Digeridoos, guitars, bongos, synths and microphones cluttered the tiny living space making for one of the most self indulgent muso times that anyone could possibly hope for.

On Bold St. Liverpool eating a creative subway.

He never really did much more on fruity than a 16-bar loop (normally just 4) which he edited as he went along on the fly, making for very intriguing, creative progressions with beautiful build-ups and drop-ins, that suited both the post-chibuku clubnight sessions and the chilled weekday afternoons down to a T. His downfall, at the time at least, was always with structures. A lot of people could always see the potential in his music and a few of us sensible ones always urged him to do some actual tracks.

I personally think he found it either dull or difficult (probably a combo of the two) and didn't want to work on it, but with  maturity and plenty of time on his hands, that focus on creating whole pieces has come through. What we are left with now on soundcloud fills me with joy. Dauwd has just released his first single through pictures music a track called "Could it be", my answer to that is yes, yes it could be and I think a great few years lie ahead for dauwd.