Hey Subterranean fans - not much blogging today because we're bogged down with tasks to complete before the VMA frenzy kicks in. Your Subterranean blogger has been assigned as the talent handler for the Ting Tings this year so you can look forward to hearing about their every move over the course of this year's VMA goings on - along the lines of what we did with Mark Ronson last year.
At any rate, this weekend the famed and awesometastic Black Keys are our guests on Subterranean so tune in for that - today we offer you this teaser from the guys about licensing music. In light of our very long selling out vs. selling up post about the Santogold/Pharrell/Julian Converse ad, what do you guys think about licensing music?
This video was directed by Adam Kurland and Panoptic Gary Breslin (not so much on Breslin, as it turns out - he ended up not getting a video credit...drama! and we've given up on understanding wtf is going on here!), whose treatment for it starts in boldface with this sentence: A love story between a man's head and his own body. The two reference this scene from the movie "Holy Mountain" is the sort of gore-filled spectacle that inspired them, but ultimately they didn't take it that far for this music video. They also, very clearly, drew inspiration from the look and feel of "The Science of Sleep," although the video has far more visual effects on it than Michel Gondry would use - the same lethargic, surreal vibe swaddles it.
Do any of you, by chance, remember a late 90s indie rock show on MTV called Indie Outing? It was often hosted by Janeane Garofalo and featured great interviews with indie artists plus a smattering of videos. This was circa the time 120 Minutes got not super awesome and people like Creed and Lit were allowed to be guests (yes that really happened - we found the tapes).
At any rate, in honor of the Merge 20th anniversary box set announcement we pulled out this raw interview footage of Superchunk on Indie Outing from the set of their video for "Watery Hands."
Let's discuss. You remember the first Virgins video for "Private Affair". Racy. This new one? Also a wowsa. We're gonna guess The Virgins enjoy sexy and womens underwear. Let's call it the "last night's party-fication" of a video.
More importantly though is the continued low production value of their videos. It's like if The Replacements made a video without artistic merit.
Ok, so the Kings of Leon video for "Sex Is On Fire" is out (via Stereogum, via MySpace) and since certain people have been blasting this song in our ears lately we opted to watch it.
The only word is perplexed. Our hunch is this is a terrible video that makes us think of what extreme religious people might do when they're scaring the devil out of you or something. Also, what the hell does "sex is on fire" mean? Is that UK slang for burning venereal disease? And another thing, why does this song remind us so much of the Foo Fighters?
All that said, we're still kind of mesmerized by the video. Maybe it's because we spent the whole time waiting for something to happen. Maybe it's because we're not clear on why singer Caleb Followill (love the new haircut) burps the black monster from Lost. We're gonna mull it over some more, let us know what you think.
Ah, it's a flashback to Bjork & PJ Harvey's 1994 Brit Awards collaborative performance. It starts out as the most dour cover of "Satisfaction" imaginable and then denigrates into the kind of controlled musical chaos in which Bjork specializes. We feel that if Natalie Portman's character in "Garden State" had listened to more Bjork her life would have been changed in an entirely different way.
What a name, right? You may also refer to Hawnay Troof as Vice Cooler or by his birth name, Christiana Vincent Richards-Touchstone. Let's start by saying we strongly suspect this sounds like nothing else anyone from Mobile, Alabama has ever created.
He's been releasing electro albums since 2001 but he's got a punk-inspired band called Xbxrx. And countless side side projects, just to get all the creative styles out. When music just won't do it Cooler serves as a photographer for publications like Rolling Stone, Punk Planet, Vice and Maximum Rock 'N Roll.
We think this dancing extravaganza of a video will shake up your otherwise dull Tuesday.
Your Subterranean blogger is currently reading this book called This Is Your Brain On Music: The Science of a Human Obsession that's a sort of neuroscientific look at the way we all listen to and enjoy music. The front part has a lot of basic explanation of musical terms and how hearing actually works and so we learned that if a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it then no it does not make a sound. Why? Because sound is a vibration and if there is no human memory to retain that vibration then it did not exist.
And so we ask you: if Tricky releases an album in 2008 and no one is around to hear it, did a Tricky album get released?
We look forward to your feedback on this one. We're honestly curious about who's looking out for Tricky and/or struck by this video.
Sorry for the delay in posting the link to watch Saturday's episode - your dutiful Subterranean blogger is home siiiiiiick. Summer sick is the grossest, worst thing possible. So while we ice down a fever you check out Subterranean on MTV.com - this week with a bonus playlist of our favorite Americana songs right this Americanasecond.
Don't forget this coming Saturday will feature our guests The Black Keys.
And now, some news - we'll be on a holiday break the week of 9/6 so no new episode and then...we'll move to yet another new time! Hopefully this one will stick. Starting on 9/11 you can catch us on Thursdays at 1AM EST.
This video is a nice mid-afternoon break from the dull drums. White Denim have a fantastic new video for "Shake Shake Shake" that we recommend you watch. We're gonna call it a chavfest due to the location being "a junkyard in South London" on vimeo, but if it were American bred we'd call it hillbilly.
