Tag: music

Funky 70’s. 1770’s that is…

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Classical music never sounded better than the Piano Guys’ take on it, melding 18th Century instruments and 1970’s funk, as they create a “quartet” playing “I Want You Bach”.

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!

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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Music discovery: Mongol pop music!

So, pop music from Mongolia, that you can buy on iTunes, how 21st Century is that! (update, bonus video!)(another update, fixed video sizes)
Continue reading “Music discovery: Mongol pop music!”

“Hazy Shade of Winter”

One of my favorite songs by Simon and Garfunkel, later performed in the 80’s by The Bangles for one of those “Brat Pack” movies, which I never saw (being too old to appreciate the subject matter).
Continue reading ““Hazy Shade of Winter””

Flashmob, classical style!

The Banco Sabadell arranged this performance of Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” as a flashmob event to celebrate the anniversary of their founding.  I really like how the music just builds and builds, and how the little girl who first puts money in the cellist’s hat stays there almost the whole time.  Seeing the little kids enjoy the music as well as the adults is beautiful, too!

Enjoy!

Some new, kind of strange, kind of neat music

Okay, I really like roaming around the Internet following random links that come up in searches and on Youtube, and occasionally I find some really neat music, often wildly different from the kind of pop music we’re used to here in the US.

Continue reading “Some new, kind of strange, kind of neat music”