Category: musical things!

these things sound nice!

Electric Light Orchestra, the early days

There’s a reason why Electric Light Orchestra was so popular, and it wasn’t because they made standard music like all the other groups were making in the 70’s, Jeff Lynne and the group knew how to rock, and rock hard! The fact they could go from classical music to classic rockabilly in one go, and bring undiluted energy to both, that is what made them one of the biggest rock bands ever!

Here is a video of them performing Grieg’s “Hall of the Mountain King” and Jerry Lee Lewis’ “Great Balls of Fire.”

The guy rocking out on the bass or cello or whatever is manic! Oh, and this is before Jeff Lynne started wearing the shades, it’s strange to actually see his eyes!

Enjoy!

J-Pop, old school – Hitomi Ishikawa

Surfing through some Japanese videos on Youtube, I found some videos by a J-pop singer from back in the 80’s who’s still performing (and still looks very nice, even if she doesn’t look like a high-school girl anymore) named Hitomi Ishikawa (石川ひとみ). She started out (looks like) when she was in high school in 1976, winning a Fuji TV singing contest. She had one big hit in 1978, she was a voice actress on an anime, but her career came to a halt when she contracted Hepatitis B in 1987. She recovered and started performing again in 1988, got married in 1993 (dang it!) and still performs on TV. She has a fantastic voice, even when she was just starting out.

Anyway, here’s a compilation video of some of her songs, and video clips of her performing them through the years.

From the Youtube page, here’s the playlist of songs:

♪ 1．くるみ割り人形
♪ 2．夢番地一丁目
♪ 3．Blue Dancing
♪ 4．ハート通信
♪ 5．君は輝いて天使にみえた

Enjoy!

“Brazilian Cups” on some kind of glass keyboard – “Mystery Guitar Man”

(waves hands around, brushes dust off)

Man, you go away for a week and the website gets all manner of cobwebs on it!

Back from vacation, but didn’t have a lot of Internet ‘splorin’ time, but I did come across this nice little music video by a prominent YouTuber named Joe Penna, who goes by the handle “Mystery Guitar Man“. I first saw Penna some years ago, before his YouTube “fame”, he did a fun stop-motion/video song where he “played” a song by glomming together short clips of himself playing one note at a time. It was a lot of fun, and he’s done a whole lot of other songs like that, as well as other types of music videos using creative digital video effects.

This one song isn’t so much that kind of music, but it is interesting in the type of instrument he uses. He tied together a keyboard with various lengths of sticks at the end, which hit glasses with a certain amount of water in each in order to make a note. Kind of like the people who play glasses by rubbing the rim, except this is more staccato. It works really well, for the song “Brazilian Cups.” The music only lasts for the first half of the video, though.

Enjoy!

Lady Gaga, Japanese style!

Two years ago, Lady Gaga helped out the people of Japan after the Great East Japan Earthquake, and in recognition a pair of musicians, part of a Japanese group “Team Kozan,” created this music video, a cover of Lady Gaga’s “Telephone” using the traditional musical instruments of shakuhachi (flute) and koto (strings). They also got a pair of dancers to perform some of her dance moves in kimono, eventually joined by the shakuhachi player. Of course there’s other modern instruments accompanying them, but the combination is pretty good, and very catchy. I doubt that I’ll bother with the original, but this one is definitely worth the watch and listen.

Enjoy!

Nerdtour 2012 quickie: Enoshima Girls

Be grateful you can’t hear me singing this! And I only did one verse so you can be even more thankful!

Enoshima Girls
(sung to the tune of “California Girls” by the Beach Boys)

Well Tokyo girls are hip, I really dig those styles they wear,
And Osaka girls with the way they talk, they knock me out when I’m back there.
The Tohoku farmer’s daughters really make you feel all right,
And Hokkaido girls with they way they kiss they keep their boyfriends warm at night.

I wish they all could be Enoshima
I wish they all could be Enoshima
I wish they all could be Enoshima girls!

Sun, sand, surf and cute girls, the Beach Boys would have loved Enoshima! =^_^=

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Coolest. Astronaut. Ever!

Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield has been using his time on the International Space Station to show that space is not just for scientists, but also for artists and creators. He’s been posting some beautiful photos of the Earth from space, and now he’s made a music video of his cover of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” with a few revised lyrics! He apparently recorded the video and audio of his song on the station, which the producers on the ground mixed with the music track and edited together into this video. He recorded this with new lyrics having to do with his return from the ISS, which you can tell he’s going to miss. It’s really a great job that he’s done, and I hope others get to follow the musical and artistic trail he’s blazed!

Now, by definition (mine), astronauts and cosmonauts are cool people, but I have to say that, after the Apollo astronauts, Chris Hadfield is on my list of The Coolest Astronauts Ever!

Enjoy!

A little boogie-woogie from Japan!

Courtesy of the Japanese girl duo “Puffy” (in the US, “Puffy Amiyumi” to avoid confusion with the rapper). here is a video of their song “Boogie Woogie #5”, a really upbeat swing song from one of their older albums. Puffy made it big in the early 2000’s by doing the theme to a kid’s show, “Teen Titans” (even doing a Japanese version) as well as having their own animated show on Cartoon Network. They kind of faded away though, which is a shame because they were very good at high-energy J-Pop songs.

See for yourself! (unfortunately the video quality isn’t that good, but the sound is fine!)

A little enka music

So, the last post I talked about enka music, but didn’t bother to link to any examples. Well, this time I’m going to show you what I mean by “Japanese blues”.

This one is one of my all-time favorites, “Sake yo” by Ikuzo Yoshi. I even learned enough to sing it fairly well, and sang it in one of my Japanese classes. It was easier to learn once I could know that he was singing about the friends he had when he was young, and that are long gone, leaving him with his one friend, sake, and listening to enka.

This one is about a man living far from his home up north, remembering his girl, his father and mother, as the cold wind and snow reminds him of home. He drinks sake to help.

And lest you think that only men drown their sorrows in sake, this lady is singing about “lonely sake” (ひとり酒) in an izakaya bar.

And even not all enka are sad songs, my favorite singer (the one I knew when I went to the enka store the first time), Ishikawa Sayuri is known for singing both sad and upbeat enka songs, as you can hear here:

So, that’s just a tiny tiny sample of what enka is. It’s not to everyone’s taste, and in fact it’s considered “middle-aged peoples’ music” or even “old folks’ music” in Japan. Uh, oh, since I’m middle-aged…

=^o^=