Wisdumb: Smart and Not-So-Smart

[please read as if singing the opening to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band]

It was 30 years ago yesterday
that Sony gave portable music a play
Maybe the technology’s gone out of style
But it was guaranteed to raise a smile

Ok, nevermind the singing. Anyway, just this morning I was complaining that I didn’t have enough room on my 30 gig iPod to load up some music I wanted. Currently, my iPod contains nearly 5000 songs and over 14 days worth of continuous music. Just imagine what we might be carrying around or have access to technology wise 30 years from now?

Article.

I imagine the developer’s pitch went something like this:

Songsmith Creator: Do you know how everybody just loves that Muzak elevator music? Wouldn’t it be amazing if you could just blather anything you want and some Muzak was automatically created to go along with it?

Microsoft Product Manager: Wow, that sounds amazing! Could you add some nearly useless slider controls that make marginal changes to the music so completely talentless people could feel they were somehow creative?

Songsmith Creator: You betcha!

I believe, at least for those not from around Denver, this is a pretty new discovery - at least it was for me. Anyway, I like this song from a hip-hop band called Flobots. Now, just liking a song isn’t enough of a reason for me to post about it. The reason for this post is this: have you ever heard a song that you thought was more ripe for parody? I mean, this songs practically begs that Weird Al Yankovic does a cover of it.

The video and song below are not official versions. According to the YouTube page I got this from, “The video was made in 2006 to the first version of the song. A friend of the band, Iyabo made the video as her final project at film school at New York University. The band just signed with Universal Republic Records (yea!) and will most likely be releasing a newer music video for the song sometime soon.”

The video:

Since I have posted some other great guitar and music moments, it is only fitting to post one in honor of Jeff Healey who just passed yesterday…

I always loved his version of the song and I know many guitarists are gently weeping over Jeff’s passing.

Here is another late night post… I got nothing to say, but I didn’t want to start out this week without a post. So, as I have done before, I am posting another guitar video — this time by perhaps my favorite guitar player: Paul Gilbert. However, before we get to that video, here is what inspired me:

I was just going to post the kid video, but since I figure most civilians [read: non-guitarists] don’t know who Paul Gilbert is, I wanted to give my readers a fine example:

If you YouTube search Paul Gilbert, you will find hundreds if not thousands of videos by him, featuring him, or by other guitar players covering his music. It is quite amazingly actually. I only chose the above video because it was one of the better ones from an audio and video consideration. Besides being arguably one of the most talented players of all time, Paul really seems to be a nice guy. He is very witty, he shares his knowledge, he respects musicians, has a very cool and funny website and he is a god in Japan (search for Paul Gilbert and Marty Friedman to see some hilarious and amazing Japanese TV show appearances). Lastly, if you want to hear what the young Daniel was playing by its originator, search for Gilbert GOOMY to see what a fine job he did trying to cover Paul’s impossible playing.

Lastly, if Paul’s neo-classical heavy metal/shred style isn’t your thing, please do not dismiss him over this. Paul is also about the most versatile guitar player I can think of. I believe I have all of his CDs (including the Mr. Big and Racer X stuff in addition to his solo work) and he has plenty of stuff that is more accessible to the average rock or pop music fan.

Just because I came across a nice clean version of this song (both audio and video), I decided to post it. Although Vai has plenty of more difficult and significantly more complicated songs, Tender Surrender is for me, is his shining moment:

This is a pretty freakin’ cool video. I suggest you check it out (click Kanye’s noggin’). The guys behind the digital magic, RhinoFX do a lot of very nice work. As I am myself a moderately talented motion graphics artist and video editor, I really pay attention to this type of stuff.

BTW, my favorite line from the song:

Since Prince was on Appolonia, since OJ had Isotoners