See Through Head

This is "See Through Head" by the Swedish garage rock band The Hives. This song rocks, and its main hook during the verses... I don't even know how to describe it, haha. It's weird. You can see from this slideshow video that the band always wears some matching style of black and white suits. Also, they have a "sixth member" called Randy Fitzsimmons who may or may not actually exist. All their songs are credited to him and there are hints at a sixth person in their videos and album art.

Scroll while looking

 

Adam Ferriss makes these fantastic flickery pieces of monitor/eye abuse. I'm not sure exactly how they work but they're so rad.

Cat Punk

 

 

Here are some punk kitties I drew as a Christmas present for the fabulous Allison on tumblr. One has an earring, one has a Santa hat and Milo glasses, one has a spiked collar, one is a kitten who was born with a mohawk, one is super shaggy, one looks really devious, and one looks really confused. There's an extra close up of the shaggy cat because he's my favorite.

Ladies and gentlemen...

I give you...

Pigeons.

With music.

Road to Nowhere

This is the video for "Road to Nowhere" by Talking Heads, from 1985. I am a huge fan of both this song and this bizarre video. The little icon of David Byrne running in the corner the whole time, the chorus, all the deranged stop-motion (especially at 2:55), the desert vibes- I dig it. After this video, the director (Stephen Tobolowsky) made the video for "Sledgehammer" by Peter Gabriel, which is an award-winning slice of stop-motion insanity that I will probably give its own post someday.

Stay With You

This lovely, chill song is "Stay With You" from the Japanese electronica duo Capsule. The vocalist is Toshiko Koshijima and the song producer is Yasutaka Nakata, who you may know already from Perfume's and Kyary Pamyu Pamyu's music. I'm not that huge of a fan of Kyary's music, to be honest, but Perfume is awesome and Capsule also has some great stuff. I listened to their newest album CAPS LOCK recently and it's really good. It's much more electronica than this song, but I'd definitely recommend it!

S'mores Cake

Q: WHY???
A: Because I was hungry and wanted to share the hunger. Sorry. The picture source and recipe is right over here.

A Different Side of the Music Blogosphere

Here's an article called "The Rise and Fall of the Obscure Music Download Blog" that I found interesting. I've run across a few of these blogs before. Believe it or not, there are still some around and actively updated despite being repeatedly decimated by copyright takedowns and upload services being shuttered. I salute them. But most of them are internet ghosts, not updated in years, with descriptions of obscure artists leading to dead links. I wish I was around at/aware of their heyday, it sounds like it was a crazy internet scene.

SIDE NOTE: The article contains a few references to the Nurse With Wound list, a list of musicians included with a 1979 album by the experimental British band Nurse With Wound. The list seems to have eclipsed the band in music nerd circles. According to Wikipedia, many consider it "a type of 'shopping list' for collectors of outsider and avant-garde music." (Yes, the list does have its own Wikipedia article.) If you're interested, there's a website all about it here.

Yr town's run by criminals

This Monday's music video is for "Criminals" by Johnny Foreigner. It's an amazing song and the music video is so appropriate. All this band's songs are a glorious mess and that's why I love them. Also, I'm in awe of the guitarist Alexei because he plays without a pick. HOW.

I GOTTA KICK 'EM OUT!

Because copyright law fucked over my last Weird Song Wednesday post, I'm making a new one.
Back in the day, MySpace was an amazing way to find bands. You could find a new band from one band's friend list, hear some of their songs right away, and then find even more bands from their page. It rocked. I found a lot of great super-obscure stuff that way. This band was definitely one of my best finds.

The Portugal Japan was a kickass Japanese punk band. They formed in 2003 and broke up in 2007, not long after I found them. Their original songs are sound very early punk rock and have completely indecipherable lyrics (I don't think anyone in the band actually knew English, but that didn't stop them from trying to sing in it). I like their songs a lot, but what's really stupendously awesome are their cover songs. Their self-titled album has two of them, one of Have Love, Will Travel (originally by the Sonics) and this fucking insane cover of Kick Out The Jams by MC5. I like this cover more than the original, to be honest. It's like twice as fast, the guitar is much more distorted, and there's a bass solo!

I would pay stupid amounts of money to get my hands on this whole album. I think the guy on Amazon who wants $400 for it is being a little ridiculous, though.