Rocky & Balls, my favorite female uke-playing duet, recorded another song about facial hair. This one is for charity.

The proceeds will go to The Prostate Cancer Charity and we would love it if you could all buy a copy since it is for a very very very good cause!

In addition, we will keep a track of your names, if you purchase the song, and feature them in our music video when we finally get together to record it!  Be part of Rocky and Balls history ;)

It is a minimum of $2 so everyone is donating about a british pound, but think of the good that could do!

The Mo Song by Rocky & Balls

Carbon/Silicon (a band fronted by The Clash's Mick Jones and Generation X's Tony James) has a new album called The Carbon Bubble. They are giving it away in the MP3 format on their site.

Carbon/Silicon's The Carbon Bubble album

In this video clip from New York University's annual talent show four years ago, Stefani Germanotta — aka Lady Gaga — performs two songs she wrote herself. She came in third place. At the end of her performance, one of the judges says: "Norah Jones, look out!" Little did she know that Lady Gaga would not be making Norah Jones-ish music at all. After the jump, a music video from her new album, The Fame Monster, which comes out Monday.

Brian Turner from WFMU's Beware of the Blog has a post about an 80s band I've never heard of -- The Men with No IQ's. The two MP3s ("Can't Resist It," and "Dreamin'") are really good. Here's a comment from The Men with No IQ's' My Space page (run by a third party):

"When I was 15 I used to sneak in to a dive called W.C. Don's in Jackson, Miss to see the monthly hardcore shows that seemed to come around at that point. Inevitably, Men With No IQ's would be opening the show. They were three African American guys who looked about as out of place as anyone ever could. The bass player, Booger Man White and the drummer, Steve Harris (no relation to the bass player from Maiden) were so huge that they would literally dwarf their tiny pawn shop instruments. Sylvester was the hot shot of the band, and he had like 10 Peavey practice amps, all stacked up on one another. Sylvester would always play with his shirt off while the other two guys wore custom MNI shirts and baseball caps that were most likely made at one of those iron-on shops in the Jackson Mall. THEY WERE AWESOME. I regret to say that I didn't appreciate them nearly enough at the time but they would always SLAY."

Men With No IQ's: True Black Metal from Mississippi

Autumn sez, "DJs at local underground parties have been losing their laptops to police raids - even when they're not DJing. They're being told that they'll lose their laptops - and often their livelihood - for an indefinite period of time, with no information on when or how to get their property back. The EFF has taken on the defense of several local DJs, but this is having a huge effect already on the local dance scene."

Over the past six months, music fans who have been spinning records -- or even just attending friends' events -- claim their laptops, soundboards, and mixers have been taken by the cops in police raids. The busted gatherings include an illegal dance party, an artist fundraiser, and a private Halloween bash. While it's unclear whether the lack of official permits was enough reason to close down all these parties, the bigger question is why the police are seizing and holding private property that DJs and attendees use as valuable tools for making their art and living.

Mike Holmes, aka DJ White Mike, was a recent victim of an SFPD sweep. On Halloween night, he DJed at the Beauty Bar and then hit a friend's costume party at a SOMA loft. He stored his bag, which held his laptop, in the DJ booth to prevent it from getting swiped. Ten minutes later, around 2:30 a.m., he says the police arrived and announced that they were taking all the laptops in the warehouse space. "I tried to explain that I wasn't even playing at the party," he says. Nonetheless, his computer was seized by a cop who identified himself as part of a "task force," who told him that he shouldn't expect to get his laptop back "for at least three months." Other DJs at the party claim to have received similar warnings -- as well as threats of jail time, if they were seen DJing at warehouses again -- from officers who said they were part of a task force.(The SFPD claims it does not have a specific task force looking at underground parties, but it does routine checks in the SOMA area, sometimes with other agencies such as the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control, for permit and other violations.)

S.F. cops may have gone too far in seizing DJ gear at underground parties

Stop the War on Fun

(Thanks, Autumn!)

Watch video: Download MP4, YouTube, subtitles at Dotsub.

Boing Boing Video proudly debuts a new piece from the "great god almighty could it get any more awesome?" N.A.S.A. music project, this one from two personal music heroes: Tom Waits, and Kool Keith. The track is called Spacious Thoughts, and you can pick it up on the project's debut album, Spirit of Apollo (Amazon link.)

NASA, short for "North America South America," is a music collaboration project assembled by Squeak E. Clean (aka Sam Spiegel, brother of film director Spike Jonze) and DJ Zegon (Ze Gonzales, professional skateboarder).

The music video embedded above was created by Montreal-based Fluorescent Hill, and I asked collaborators Mark Lomond and Johanne Ste-Marie a few questions about how all that crazy magic came together. Below, and after the jump, are their replies.

BB: Tell me a little about Fluorescent Hill? Who are you guys, where are you, what do you do?

Fluorescent Hill: Well, we're a very small collective of artists, basically myself (mark lomond) and johanne ste-marie. we started working together while in school here in Montreal, along with some other friends. So we've been together for almost eight years. We do design, illustration, animation, live action, basically anything artistic, but with a primary focus on film.

BB: How did the NASA video project come together, and what were your first thoughts when you learned what track and what musical artists would be involved?

Fluorescent Hill: We got an email one day describing the entire NASA project, the musicians involved the visual artists involved and it just blew our minds. As soon as I saw the list of musicians, deep in my brain I already was hoping to work on the Kool Keith and Tom Waits collab. They're two artists that I go way back to my early tape buying days with. So when we finally got on the phone, and they said it was this track "Spacious Thoughts" a small peice of my brain exploded. Then when they sent the track I was absolutely just ecstatic.

This 1961 issue of Science & Mechanics features instructions for building an electric bass out of a 2 x 4 (left). Lot of other homemade instrument plans are available at Cigar Box Nation.

Fun with a 2 x 4 electric bass

Funnyman Dave Hill, who stars and performs in the music video embedded above, says,

This is the new Valley Lodge video for their song "All of My Loving." It's the story of a man tormented by his apartment furniture. Kind of like a naked Ethan Allen shoving his bait & tackle in your face all day long when all you really want is a hot girl in cute panties.

Oh, and there's a bear.

The video was produced with a company called Mekanism. Mr. Hill is doing standup shows this week at LA's UCB Theater, go check him out if you're in town.

Ed sez, "Here's an article from 1985 in the Association for Recorded Sound Collections Journal about record piracy in the 19th century. Includes illustrations of three duplicators from the 19th century."

Record Piracy: The Attempts of the Sound Recording Industry to Protect Itself against Unauthorized Copying, 1890-1978 (PDF) (Thanks, Ed!)

Jon Skovron's debut novel, the YA book Struts & Frets, is a dynamite, nuanced story about fannish love, musical obsession, first romance and true friendship. It follows the adventures of Sammy Bojar, a small-town, midwestern high-school senior who's life revolves around his band, a trainwreck of ego and conflict called "Tragedy of Wisdom." The band means everything to Sammy because music means everything to him. He frames his whole world with indie pop, seeking out authenticity with a driven, blinding passion.

Sammy's at the turning point in his life. His best male friend is coming out, his best female friend is in love with him (and it turns out it's mutual, though he didn't know it). The frontman for his band is a roiling, angry bully who is ever on the verge of physical violence. His beloved grandfather, a minor jazz legend, is sliding into incapacity as age and a hard life catch up with him.

The plot-points are all pretty standard YA set-pieces, but there's never a stale (or dull) moment in Struts & Frets. That's thanks to the incredible nuance and heart that Skovron brings to the interpersonal relationships, using these familiar emotional scenes as pivots for a deft emotional acrobatic act that is as moving as it is engrossing.

I was never a (good) musician, but I've always been passionate about music. I remember what it was like to be in the band, to be wrapped up in all the issues around creativity, friendship and identity; to seek out answers to life's big questions in music, to worry at the unanswerable questions of commercialism, success and popularity. Struts & Frets will feel instantly authentic to anyone who's ever felt the pride and shame of being an outsider.

Struts & Frets

I owe the Hacklab.to people an apology. Last spring I ran this post about how they'd tuned the motor on their laser cutter to play the Super Mario Theme as it repositioned itself, and I mentioned that it was too perfect, and wondered "if it's not just some video of a laser cutter with a flanged-out version of the theme cut into the soundtrack."

Yesterday, I dropped in at the Hacklab in Kensington Market (it's an amazing place), and saw the laser cutter do its thing. And you know what? It plays an absolutely perfect Super Mario Theme. Seriously.

Laser etcher plays Super Mario. It's real! Hacklab.to, Kensington Market, Toronto, ON, Canada.avi

The Times Labs blog takes a hard look at the data on music sales and live performances and concludes that while the labels' profits might be falling, artists are taking in more money, thanks to the booming growth of live shows. The Times says that they'd like more granular data about who's making all the money from concerts -- is there a category of act that's a real winner here? -- but the trend seems clear. The 21st century music scene is the best world ever for some musicians and music-industry businesses, and the worst for others. Which raises the question: is it really copyright law's job to make sure that last years winners keep on winning? Or is it enough to ensure that there will always be winners?

Why live revenues have grown so stridently is beyond the scope of this article, but our data - compiled from a PRS for Music report and the BPI - make two things clear: one, that the growth in live revenue shows no signs of slowing and two, that live is by far and away the most lucrative section of industry revenue for artists themselves, because they retain such a big percentage of the money from ticket sales.

(It's often claimed that live revenues are only/mostly benefitting so-called 'heritage acts'. Unfortunately, the data doesn't shed any light on this because live revenues are not broken down by type of act, gig size or ticket price.)..

It's interesting too that, overall, industry revenues have grown in the period - though admittedly not by much - which arguably adds strength to the notion that, when the BPI releases its annual report claiming how much 'the music industry' has suffered from the growth in illegal file-sharing, what it perhaps should be saying is how much the record labels have suffered.

The graph the record industry doesn't want you to see (via We Make Money Not Art)

From GOOD: "The remarkable similarity between the arcs of U.S. oil production and songs in Rolling Stone's "500 Greatest Songs of All Time" by year is staggering." (Graph created by Overthinkingit.com)

Last week, I stumbled into a jam session with Frank Fairfield and other musicians by accident, and blogged a quick iPhone video snapshot. The next day, I started googling and YouTubing and Myspacing to find out more about each of the musicians, and found this. A stunning video of Fairfield performing "Nine Pound Hammer." Give me chills. Shot and directed by Keith Musil (I'm dying to know what he shot with, doesn't it look great?).

There are a few more YT clips in this series, they're all gorgeous. I missed Fairfield's live show last night at the Redwood in LA with Blind Boy Paxton, but I hope to catch them, together or separately, soon.

Robin from the Fleet Foxes described him like this, in Rolling Stone:

"He's like 26 years old and he sounds like Mississippi John Hurt," says Robin. Fairfield plays fiddle and banjo player and strums back-porch bluegrass, complete with shaky jug-band vocals reminiscent of The Foggy Mountain Boys from way back in the '40s (think O Brother, Where Art Thou?).

"He's kinda crazy," says Robin. "He has his own radio show where he just plays these old gramophones. He just puts a mic up and plays all these field recordings from the 1900s; it's insane. He dresses like it's the early 1900s. He's born out of time, and his voice is amazing."

Buy his music: His self-titled album Frank Fairfield, and the EP I've Always Been a Rambler (Amazon MP3s).

He's playing a bunch of West Coast US tour dates from now through January: San Francisco, Eugene, Portland, Tacoma, Seattle and other ports of call.

Videos:
• Frank Fairfield - "Nine Pound Hammer"
• Frank Fairfield - "Short Life of Trouble"
• Frank Fairfield - "Tim Brooks"

Some blog posts about Fairfield: LA Record, naturalismo, passionweiss. And here's an LA Weekly profile.

Jan & Kjeld are Swedish brothers who made a number of banjo records in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Their rendition of "Tiger Rag" in 1959 was popular in Germany. (Via PCL Lunkdump)

If you've got a Master's in Library Science and a love of the Grateful Dead, the University of California at Santa Cruz is looking for you -- a rare job opening in the UC system, and what a plum gig it is: official Greatful Dead Archivist.

The University Library of the University of California, Santa Cruz, seeks an enterprising, creative, and service-oriented archivist to join the staff of Special Collections & Archives (SC&A) as Archivist for the Grateful Dead Archive. This is a potential career status position. The Archivist will be part of a dynamic, collegial, and highly motivated department dedicated to building, preserving, promoting, and providing maximum access both physically and virtually to one of the Library's most exciting and unique collections, The Grateful Dead Archive (GDA). The UCSC University Library utilizes innovative approaches to allow the discovery, use, management, and sharing of information in support of research, teaching, and learning.

Under the general direction of the Head of Special Collections and Archives, the GDA Archivist will provide managerial and curatorial oversight of the Grateful Dead Archive, plan for and oversee the physical and digital processing of Archives related material, and promote the GDA to the public and facilitate its use by scholars, fans, and students.

Grateful Dead Archivist (via Resource Shelf)

I'm in the market for a new MP3 player -- my second-gen iPod Nano is finally dead, and I don't want to buy another iPod, or any other player with DRM built in. I figure that any company that wants to devote its engineers to figuring out how to frustrate my desires doesn't really want my business.

Who'd got a suggestion? I'm looking for something:

• * small (Nano-sized or smaller),

• * low-capacity (8GB is fine, all I use it for is podcasts),

• * chargeable and connectable with a standard USB cable,

• * reasonably rugged,

• * with an LCD,

• * capable of marking some files as podcasts or audiobooks and remembering where you stopped playing them, and,

• * most importantly, I'm looking for something that can be connected to a set of lanyard headphones like these

I don't care if it has WiFi or Bluetooth, or if it plays games, or if it has a "store" on the net that lets me get music for it directly. I just want a chunk of solid-state storage with a headphone jack and a decent menuing system and headphones I can wear around my neck so that they don't get tangled in things.

Suggestions? Feed the comments, below (don't send email, I'm taking a break from it for the weekend).

Next year, the UK's Royal Mail will sell 1st class stamps that feature images of 10 famous British album covers. The postal service collaborated with music mag editors and design writers to come up with the list — interestingly, no Beatles albums were chosen, but artists represented include Led Zeppelin, The Clash, Pink Floyd, Coldplay, David Bowie, and The Rolling Stones.

I wish the USPS would do something like this instead of boring us with stamps decorated with bells and reindeers.

Studio Dempsey via Creative Review

(Watch video: YouTube, Dotsub, or download MP4.)

A quick little goodie from Boing Boing Video. Last night, I sat in on a live recording session at Santa Monica's Village Studios with the Carolina Chocolate Drops, described as "African-American string band revivalists." They were amazing: I have never been so emotionally moved by someone playing a musical jug (and banjos, fiddles, cow bones, and kazoos). Their performance was witnessed by a handful of music biz folks and oldtime music enthusiasts, and made me feel deeply homesick for Appalachia (I'm also craving cornbread and butterbeans today - there's a song for that).

The Chocolate Drops have a new record coming out in 2010, and Boing Boing will be all over it like gravy on grits. If you dig R. Crumb, Smithsonian Folkways recordings of pre-blues and pre-bluegrass banjo music, and love folks who bring new life to authentic American music, you will flip out.

So, the video above: after the Drops' performance and recording session ended, Dom Flemons (of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, seated in center in the video), Blind Boy Paxton (seated at left in the video), and Frank Fairfield (seated far right) sat down together and jammed pure, sweet magic for a spell. I wasn't prepared with a proper camera or crew, but I grabbed my iPhonetraption out of my pocket and got to shootin'. I hope you enjoy it as much as everyone in the room did. Pure magic, these guys.

Michael Simmons of Fretboard Journal says: "Here's an interesting video from olden times [1964] featuring a song called 'Teenage Fallout Queen.' And there's this site devoted to Cold War pop music."

(I love the lettering in the title at the beginning!)

The Wu-Note Project, by Logan Walters. Photoshop rules everything around me. (thanks, PJ)

Boyhowdy sez, "The folk covers of Straight to Hell I compiled last year were so well-received by your readers, I thought you might also be interested in this week's entry, which compiles folk and acoustic covers of more songs from Punk's first and second waves. From banjo-tinged Stooges covers to countrified Blondie, singer-songwriter Bad Brains covers to smooth and ghostly Clash transformations, there's likely something here for everyone. Especially fun for uke-fans: a cover of Ramones classic I Wanna Be Sedated from Allo, Darlin'."

Don't miss the bluegrass "Lust for Life" and the king-hell sweet Japanese acoustic "Lost in the Supermarket."

All Folked Up: The Punk Rock Collection, Vol. 1 (folk covers of seminal first and second wave punk music)

I remember reading a book years ago that mentioned a CIA plan in the early 1960s to sprinkle thallium salts into Castro's boots, which "would cause his beard, eyebrows, and pubic hair to fall out... like a follicle deprived Samson."

Today, I listened to this catchy Tin Pan Alley song called "If Butch the Rough Barber Man Shaves Castro." Why did people in the 1960s think Castro's hair was so magical?

"If Butch the Rough Barber Man Shaves Castro" Thanks to WFMU's Bob Purse for finding this 45 and converting it to an MP3!

WATCH: MP4 Download, YouTube, or Dotsub.

Boing Boing Video proudly presents "Man in the Sand," from Gordon Gano and the Ryans' new record "Under the Sun." Video directed by famed illustrator, photographer, and filmmaker Matt Mahurin. Read Cory's review of the album: Gordon "Violent Femmes" Gano's solo album "Under the Sun" is out!

A new British independent poll conducted by Ipsos Mori concluded that the people who do the most illegal downloading also buy the most music. This is in line with many other studies elsewhere and is easy to understand: people who are music superfans do more of everything to do with music: they see more live shows, listen to more radio, buy more CDs, buy more botlegs of live shows, buy more t-shirts, talk about music more, do more downloading -- all of it.

And of course, these are the people the music industry's supergeniuses have set their sights upon for bizarre enforcement regimes like the one that British Business Secretary Peter Mandelson has promised: anyone who lives in a house that generates three or more copyright infringement notices will be barred from Internet access.

"The latest approach from the Government will not help prop up an ailing music industry. Politicians and music companies need to recognise that the nature of music consumption has changed, and consumers are demanding lower prices and easier access," said Peter Bradwell, from the think-tank Demos, which commissioned the new poll conducted by Ipsos Mori.

However, music industry figures insist the figures offer a skewed picture. The poll suggested the Government's plan to disconnect illegal downloaders if they ignore official warning letters could deter people from internet piracy, with 61 per cent of illegal downloaders surveyed admitting they would be put off downloading music illegally by the threat of having their internet service cut off for a month.

"The people who file-share are the ones who are interested in music," said Mark Mulligan of Forrester Research. "They use file-sharing as a discovery mechanism. We have a generation of young people who don't have any concept of music as a paid-for commodity," he continued. "You need to have it at a price point you won't notice."

Illegal downloaders 'spend the most on music', says poll (Thanks, Libbi!)

Zoran sez, "The night before Halloween is known as Mischief Night because it is a time for young people to act out and do things that may get them in trouble with neighbors, with the law, and with satan. One of those pranks is downloading music illegally, usually in search of a fitting soundtrack for All Hallows' eve, one that will frighten the trick or treaters. Well this year, we can all focus on bigger and better things, thanks to a set of demonic artists who believe that it is in their interest to give away some of their sonic concoctions for free, because it will help them to cast their spell on a wider audience."

Creative Commons Halloween Mix (Thanks, Zoran!)

Enjoy Вивальди "времена года" Лето-3часть, the Russian boy accordion genius. It's all in the head shake. Once you get that down, the rest is easy.

A number of news sites and blogs erroneously (or hoaxily?) reported the death of Chuck Biscuits (Wikipedia), who has performed over the years for bands including Black Flag, Circle Jerks, DOA, and Danzig. The reports were all wrong. He will live to bang on de drum again. Apparently the whole thing was a prank on a particular journalist. Or not. All I know is the photo in this post was taken by Glen E. Friedman, who broke the news about the fact that everyone who broke the other news was wrong. Oh, and: this blog post is an elaborate excuse to post the Danzig "home video" above, in which Mr. Biscuits confesses his love for sugary breakfast cereals. His addiction to the likes of Quisp and Boo Berry ("the caviar of breakfast cereals") is the stuff of punk legend. (thanks, Sean)

Toronto-based folk singer Taylor Mitchell died after coyotes pounced on her during a solo hike in Cape Breton national park on Monday. She was hospitalized with injuries from multiple bites, and died in critical care yesterday. Ms. Mitchell was 19 years old. More: LAT, BBC. Artist pages: Facebook, and MySpace.

Michael sez, "Library 101 is a song, a video (with pics of over 400 library staff who submitted them to be in the video), 23 essays from some of the most respected minds in 'Libraryland' and resource list of 101 hyperlinked things we think libraries need to know to succeed as technology changes so many things for us and society. The project even has over 1,900 fans on the Facebook page, almost all of them library staff (from over a dozen countries!)."

Library 101 (Thanks, Michael!)

Worst and weirdest Beatles cover ever. A choir of ventriloquistic monstrosity, from Hungary. Nabbed from Robert Popper's newfangled webble-site.

John from CC-friendly record label Vosotros sez, "Learning Music is a band from Los Angeles - they release an album of CC music every month through a subscription series called Learning Music Monthly. That's a lot of music to keep up with, so we decided to put together a free anthology of songs from the last six albums. Download it for free and see what you've been missing!"

CASH Music: Learning Music (Thanks, John!)

If only the video and audio quality in this clip were better! Iggy Pop at the first peak of his greatness (I think he's still pretty great), talking about how the technology and industrial ambience of his hometown Detroit influenced the "raw power" that became his trademark sound.

He reveals to Dinah Shore that his mom worked at a military technology company that made bombs and missiles, and his dad ("Mister Pop") taught media communications at a local high school. At the time, brothers Tony and Hunt Sales, sons of the recently departed comedian Soupy Sales, were playing in the Stooges in Iggy's band. Iggy Pop on the Dinah Shore show.

The clip stops right as Iggy gets ready to launch into a performance, but I believe this is the stupendous performance that followed, with some guy named David Bowie on the keyboards! Looks like this was another performance from the same show.

[YouTube, thanks @EuclidAlone, via @bbsuggest]

Previously: Alice Cooper on the Soupy Sales show, 1979.

Banjoleles are the coolest kind of ukulele, as evidenced in this magnificent video by Mr. B The Gentleman Rhymer.

"Other rappers can't stand me, but give me respect. They do give respect really. I mean they do act tough, but generally speaking, they're awfully nice chaps."

(Thanks, Casey!)

Eclecticmethod turns YouTube baby videos into fun music.

There are times I envy those who have to get dressed and go work with other people. Like, for instance, when I watch this awesome karaoke video. I haven't worked in a real office since 2006, so I'm left to conclude that you all totally have this much fun every day. Right?

P.S., the best part of this video is the woman who refuses to join in. Clearly, a fun-hater who hates fun. At the same time, I feel really sorry for her and would love to hear how she described this event to friends and family at the end of the day.

The Underwater Land project recently supplied me with an MP3 download of their CD, "Underwater Land," created by the late, great and sorely missed Shel Silverstein. This was the pitch:

I'm writing you on behalf of the Shel Silverstein estate's Underwater Land project. Underwater Land is a kid's music project created by Shel Silverstein. This project was Shel's final major music project and also his final children's recording. Shel wrote Underwater Land, produced it, travelled to Nashville in 1997 to handpick the best musicians and studios there, and sings on several tracks with the primary singer and old friend Pat Dailey. Kim Llewellyn, Shel's longtime graphic designer, designed the lovely 32-page liner notes which features many previously unpublished Silverstein illustrations and all the song lyrics and verse.

And here's my take: this is some seriously awesome kids' music, full of Silverstein's flawless, legendary rhyme, his wicked humor, and some damned fine music and playing beneath it. It's fast, witty, and full of jokes that work on levels that can be appreciated by pre-verbal toddlers -- the broad, comic recitations of songs like "Fish Guts," a kind of "I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major General" for the fish-kingdom -- by kids, and by adults, who will appreciate the snatches of extremely grown-up jokes woven into the whimsy.

Some of my favorites: "Dale and Shale," a rapped advertisement for a notional store selling naught but tales (think of Tom Waits's "Pasties and a G-String" except about fish, not strippers); "Captain Octopus" (a rollicking sea chanty recounting the eight things a sailing octopus can do at once); and "Poor Anna," the sob-story of Anna, a flounder from Havana whose love affair is pull of superb and terrible fish puns (every now and again Silverstein and Dailey break each other up on this track, and I defy you not to do the same).

If you're a Silverstein fan, a fish fan, a kid, a grownup with a kid, or have an intact sense of humor, you will enjoy the heck out of "Underwater Land."

Underwater Land (Thanks, Kenyon!)

Gary says "Check out the new EP of Halloween themed uke-abilly music from Mad Tea Party! (And check out Ami's new uke-playing skeleton tattoo...)"

Zombie Boogie and other songs by Mad Tea Party

I Love xkcd from NoamR on Vimeo.

Noam sez, "There are so many things to love in this world, so just to point a few of them I've animated the xkcd comic xkcd Loves the Discovery Channel. Singing by the amazing Olga Nunes."

I Love xkcd (Thanks, Noam!)

In an interview with True/Slant, the Wu-Tang Clan's RZA admits to being a geek; in fact, he claims that geekyness played an integral part of hip-hop history. This video is part of an interview about his new autobiographical, philosophical book, The Tao of Wu.

RZA: 'Me Being a Geek Helped Hip-Hop Grow' (via Jason Tanz' Twitter)

Vic Mizzy, the composer best known for writing The Addams Family theme song, died of heart failure on Saturday at the age of 93. Mizzy was a prolific musician who worked for eight decades writing music for radio, TV, and Broadway.

To pay homage to the man whose music we have all enjoyed, here's the opening sequence of the original Addams Family TV show circa 1964. Note that he is also the one singing.

Vic Mizzy, who wrote the theme for "Addams Family", dies at 93

Above: A recently-discovered alternative version of the song "I Will" from The Beatles' White Album (1968), originally deemed too controversial to be included on the release. This rare track was remastered by audio engineer Peter Serafinowicz.

Paul McCartney 'I'll Kill'

A lovely new video for Modest Mouse, by Bent Image Lab's Nando Costa. The video incorporates stop motion, visual effects, and motion graphics techniques, and tells the tale of an artist who enters his personal sanctuary and is "presented with a hand-crafted drawing tool that assists him in materializing his mental impressions."

Through drawing circular patterns, the machine discharges an endless web of yarn that guides him through his visual representations of his memories. The story progresses to reveal that he is divided between two worlds, one of dull reality and the second of warped memories. In the process of finding a way out of his consciousness, he is trapped between the two competing spaces, which eventually inflict lethal damage, acting as metaphors to self-destruction.

Super neat. More about the making of the video here. Stills from production here and here. "The Whale Song" appears on Modest Mouse's new EP No One's First, And You're Next." (Amazon)

Swedish designers get commuters off the escalator by making the stairs more fun. It's awesome. And, yet, part of me wonders how creepy this would be if you were descending into the subway alone late at night. Plink...plink....plink...

David Wahl, a blogger for Archie McPhee's Monkey Goggles blog, wrote a funny story about the time he was working at a toy store in Seattle and assisted Mick Jagger when he came in to shop.

The female owner of the store approached him and I thought her head was going to split in half from the size of her smile. "Mr. Jagger," she said, "I just have to tell you how much your music means to me. I lost my virginity to one of your songs in the back of a 1965 Chevy convertible. 'Jumping Jack Flash!'"

"That's very sweet of you," he muttered, indicating with a slight flare of his right nostril that the conversation was over and that she should leave him alone. But, to her it was as if he had swooped her off her feet, carried her out side and made love to her. That simple sentence flushed her cheeks and made her eyes roll back in ecstasy.

Then he began to shop. At first, I didn't understand his method of shopping. As he entered each new room of the store, he would begin taking things off the shelf and stacking them in the middle of the room. As he left, I would start putting them back, cursing at him under my breath for making a mess. Then, it dawned on me I was supposed to be carrying these items to the register for him.

The photo above is from The Rolling Stone's underrated Their Satanic Majesties Request from 1967 (Read Richard Metzger's essay about the album at Dangerous Minds). Doesn't it look like the lads bought their costumes from a toy store?

Mick Jagger's Adventures in Toyland

Connie Choe is a health and culture writer by day and a professional kimchimonger by night.

The Fender Music Foundation is seeking a rockstar-worthy t-shirt design. The winning artist gets $300 cash money and a Squier by Fender Deluxe Hot Rails Strat Electric Guitar (whew!) with a decal of their winning design on it. Submissions are due by October 30^th. Last I checked they had fewer than 15 entries, so even if your art skills are a little rusty, you're still roughly eleventybillion times more likely to win this than the lottery.

Goodjoe Design for a Greater Good Presents The Fender Music Foundation

Image courtesy of tskdesign via Flickr / CC 2.0

When a rep for Yoko Ono pinged me last week about a new crowdsourced remix project the legendary artist was launching, my first question was, "Will the resulting fan-remixes be made available under a Creative Commons license? And if not, would you consider talking to the CC folks to learn more about why that's a good idea?"

Well, I am very excited to share that after some good conversations between Ms. Ono's camp and the Creative Commons folks (specifically Creative Director Eric Steuer), the answer is YES.

This is so awesome! Brava to Ms. Ono for introducing her work into the realm of "open culture," this is a brave and significant step. It makes me very happy to see this kind of dialogue and risk-taking happen with artists whose legacies and cultural influence are as broad as hers. I also think the remix project in question sounds like a lot of fun, and I encourage you to go check it out -- and participate! Here's the announcement from her team:

Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band - The Sun Is Down (remix) competition.

We're very pleased to announce that thanks to the helpful advice of Xeni Jardin at BoingBoing and Eric Steuer at Creative Commons, the audio elements for Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band - The Sun Is Down (remix) are now being released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 License. We firmly believe that releasing the elements under a CC license embodies the true spirit of the competition.

In light of this, we have extended the competition deadline to 12 December 2009 to allow time for those who may now wish to contribute under the revised terms. In addition, artists interested in permissions beyond the scope of the CC license can email us at remix@yopob.com.

Long live the remix. Here's a post about this cool news on the Creative Commons blog.

Doobie sez, "After many years of boingboing.net introducing me to the most bizarre, space-age, and intriguing information I could ever hope to find, I have decided to reciprocate the favour and make a song in ode to you."

Boingboing
With you its like flippin a coin
Atari fidelity, ancient archaeology
That's what you teach to me

Boing boing
Brain food for girls and boys
Steampunk technology, Klingon Philosophy,
Nutrition-a-plenty

Nice face fur, Doobie!

BoingBoing Song (Thanks, Doobie!)

Access Copyright, the Canadian organisation that collects library royalties for writers, filed a jaw-droppingly dumb set of comments in the Canadian Copyright consultation. Access Copyright came out as opposing the right to record TV shows at home, and the right to "format shift" your media (e.g., load a CD on your MP3 player, or put an old ebook on a new reader or phone). They also say that almost all commercial use, no matter how trivial, should require a license and not fall under fair dealing. They come out against the interlibrary loan system, because it is digital.

Man, if these yahoos set out to destroy the public's faith in copyright, they could not do a better job than they're doing now. Yeesh.

The so-called format and time shifting exceptions, also known as personal use exceptions, were apparently included in Bill C-61 to address a practice that has become common among the public. Access Copyright submits that good public policy should not be dictated by legalizing common public practices.

It is worth mentioning here that Article 5(2)(b) of the EU Directive 2001/29/EC allows member states to introduce exceptions and limitations to the reproduction right for private use (which includes format and time shifting) "on the condition that rightsholders receive fair compensation". The requirement for fair compensation is to ensure that the private use exception complies with the three-step test.

Access Copyright believes that copyright owners should be given the opportunity to address these "common practices" through market-based solutions. We caution against the assumption that uses made by individuals for their personal use are inconsequential on the existing or potential market for a work. Format shifting for example is relatively new to printed works. Copyright owners should be given time to develop and test new services and business models for the delivery of content in the digital environment. The introduction of a format shifting exception for books could undermine the development of emerging business models. At the very least, the government should ensure that any restriction of the copyright owner's reproduction right be accompanied by fair compensation.

Access Copyright: Reduce Fair Dealing, No Taping TV Shows or Format Shifting

Doron sez, "Folk musician Steven Arntson wanted to write a song that riffed on a Woody Guthrie's 'I Ain't Got No Home'. Guthrie's song was based on the Carter Family's 'This World Is Not My Home' which was in turn based on an old spirtual... Unfortunately Arnston is finding out that current copyright law does not allow for the creative give and take that was once a vital and basic part of music composition."

Sixty-eight years later, in 2008, I heard "Can't Feel and Home" and "I Ain't Got No Home," and felt the latter lyric connected well with some lyrics I was writing for what would become The Emerald Arms suite. I decided to arrange "I Ain't Got No Home" as the second movement. After creating the recording and sheet music of the entire work, I set out to discover whose permission I should ask before giving the suite away online as free recordings and a score.

Because the melody dates back to 1909, it's in the public domain (the current cutoff for which is 1923). Guthrie's lyric, on the other hand, is not. Two companies own different rights to it. The Richmond Organization (TRO) owns the rights to reproducing the song's sheet music and the Harry Fox Agency (HFA) owns the rights to reproducing sound recordings of the piece.

I approached TRO first, sending them the score I'd written for concertina and voice, which contains many annotations specific to my purpose as well as modifications to the tune's melody and chords. A few weeks later I received a letter from TRO. "We are enclosing our music copy of I AIN'T GOT NO HOME," they wrote, "and request that you use the "words and music" from the enclosed copy in your book." The following page contained a photocopy of the melody line of Woody's lyric from what looked like a children's book, accompanied by a cartoon of a guy's butt protruding from the front door of a house.

The Absent Second: An Explanation

(Image: Woody Guthrie, half-length portrait, seated, facing front, playing a guitar that has a sticker attached reading: This Machine Kills Fascists, Wikimedia Commons/Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division)