MC Frontalot is having a DIY video contest for the single “Wallflowers” off his new album Final Boss. I made this as an entry. When you hear nerdcore dance music, who doesn’t think of dancing Transformers?
Looking for that perfect mix for your Halloween Party but don’t want to spend $5 on iTunes? Never fear! The internet will provide!
Return of the Ghostbusters – Main Titles by Jonathon Vandergriff
Jon is a friend and talented film composer whose work I have stolen used from time to time. For the fan film Return of the Ghostbusters Jon wrote a very layered and textured score that crosses Elmer Bernstein with Danny Elfman. It’s like a Halloween march.
Re: Your Brains by Jonathan Coulton
Geek favorite Jonathan Coulton’s song imagines a zombie nightmare as sung by Bill Lumberg for his Thing-a-week series. The comedy comes from the music playing against the situation.
Flee! by Gaby Alter and Damian Hess
Alter and Hess (also known as G-Minor and MC Frontalot) did the musical “Young Zombies In Love” in 2004. It’s a fun Latin dance tune about zombie invasion.
Wearwolf Bar Mitzvah by Tracy Jordan
A joke from 30 Rock played out. I think NBC was trying to make this a viral internet hit, but the song doesn’t have the legs to support it (the song itself admits to it). Still, it’s fun and Halloween-y.
Did I miss any obvious candidates?
http://www.myspace.com/hanrolo
Nerdcore gets a Hispanic voice! There are only two songs posted, but they show a lot of promise. He’s more “Issue oriented with nerd riffs” than “Nerdcore”, but the rhymes are solid. I look forward to hearing more.
Sent to me by my friend Jayson
News from Cory Q, voice of the Movie Monkey
Hello everyone!
I thought I would let everyone know in one fell stroke: My internet radio show starts up again tonight. My show, “The Funkomaticjamatron Presents…” runs every Thursday from 5 to 6pm on KUST.
http://www. stthomas. edu/ustclubs/kust/
It is internet only, so I know a lot of you will be busy commuting and not able to tune. So it goes.
Listen if you can!
I’ve been a very bad film critic as of late. Iron Man has been out two weeks and I haven’t seen it, much to my old office mate’s dismay (though to be fair I’ve made my views of superhero movies well known). Indiana Jones came out on Friday and I wasn’t first in line to see it. And… I guess Speed Racer came out too, though I don’t think I really need a simulated LSD trip right now. I’ve pretty much skipped the movie theater all together this month, and instead listened to some really great music.
Hopefully last year you saw this little indie movie called “Once“. If you haven’t, put it on your Netflix queue. It is a musical for everyone who hates musicals (or likes them). The only reason the film works is that the two stars, Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, are so incredibly natural that you buy into everything that happens to them. They’re so good that I never want to see them in another movie again, as that would just prove that they were just acting.
Thankfully they aren’t going back to the big screen, but instead touring as “The Swell Season“, playing the music from the movie and their own original tunes. They came to the Uptown Theater in Kansas City on May 6th.
Getting to the show such an adventure – Parallel parking the Mini in a tight spot with a line of people watching (they applauded when I slipped between with ease – thanks Mini!), getting tickets to the sold out show at the last minute – that I didn’t believe I actually got in. The show was just incredible. The opener was somebody Hansard heard on the streets of Dublin and invited to come on tour with. After intermission the lights dimmed, and Hansard came out with a lone spotlight, walked to the front of the stage away from the microphone, and gave a thrilling rendition of “Say It To Me Now“. What would have been a high point to most shows was just a launching pad for the Swell Season. Hansard has incredible stage presence, and every song had an anecdote told in a thick Irish brogue. Irglova is much quieter, but no less talented, and together they made beautiful music.
On the 14th, Wilco came to Lawrence. I’m going to admit that I am not a Wilco fanboy, even if I listen to bands that are. I only have Hotel Yankee Foxtrot and I think it’s a good album.
It’s hard to turn down seeing a major act, especially when you can see them for free by sneaking up the stairway of the Lawrence parking garage. They put on a pretty good show, though I only knew three of the songs and the rest didn’t make me want to learn more about them. I’ll have to reserve my fanboy-ism for other things.
And then They Might Be Giants came to the Beaumont Club on the 24th. TMBG must be the fathers of nerd music, and a lot of my favorite music owes a lot to TMBG and their counter-counterculture ways.
Having seen them live, I can honestly say they rock HARD. They put on an awesome show. Having twenty years of music to reach back on means they can pick out their very best tracks for an incredibly receptive audience, though it also means their audience had once of the wildest demographics of any rock show I’ve ever seen including nerd parents and their nerd offspring. I think I knew almost 90% of their set, and I don’t even consider myself an TMBG fanboy anymore – but I did fit in well with the crowd.
Now that May is almost over I’d better start doing some animation again. Hopefully there will be a new Movie Monkey soon, unless summer tour season really takes off.
A few things to mention
A friend’s band OK Jones just released a new track on myspace called Six Fourty Five. Listen to it here, and if you like it go to their myspace page and give them some myspace love.
