A reader(listener?) suggested this video to me, suggested the video was like a mashup…I’m a sucker for well made videos (although the hype around the OK Go one means I haven’t posted it) but this is a new band Hold Your Horses! and their amazing video for ‘70 Million’ using a massive collection of artworks for their guide. Must’ve taken ages – and if you’re tired of remembering your Van Gogh from your Vermeer the list is here.
I don’t think it’s a mashup though…;-) To mashup would take the paintings and change them, rather than copy them in a different format, closer to a cover…still really clever though. It got me at the Raft of the Medusa, brilliant idea for a chorus!
I’ve posted about them before (their excellent and funny Canary Wharf video I think as part of their ‘Everything is OK’ series) but I love how Charlie and co. deal with the Fake Bacon (aka Hobby Bobbies, aka PCSOs). They really do seem to be a menace, as they pop up a lot in Section 44 mistakes. Love the comment about the Louis 14th beard, and it seems that even at the end the PCSO is smiling…
More about The Love Police, and the disturbing State of the Nation in Britain which is getting more and more like V for Vendetta and 1984 for my liking. Sadly the ending cuts out but you get the drift.
Sad news I heard via the radio today about the suicide of Mark Linkous aka Sparklehorse. Maybe not a name/band you know of, but Good Morning Spider and later Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot were an important part of my life in the late 90’s. It’s a cliche to say ‘got me through some bad times’ but yes, his music did at a time when really most UK music sucked and I felt little if at all about it…So I got into Sparklehorse, Grandaddy, Radiohead, Super Furries, Flaming Lips et al, as well as a less serious diet of speed garage and drum and bass! But it was Sparklehorse and Grandaddy’s music I’d come back to if I needed someone that expressed that particular confused/down/mid-late 20’s state of mind, where you have the long post-University come-down and realise real life is much harder, and the dreams you had might not be possible. Also wrapped up in that would be coming out and painfully falling in love for the first time…
‘Cause everything beautiful is far away’ ‘I just want to be a happy man’ ‘I’m so sick of goodbyes’ ‘There`s one thing we still got, This one last dance in this parking lot, Oh yeah, I got a heart of darkness’ ‘Summer here kids! Summer here really lies’.
And this comes a few months from the suicide of Vic Chesnutt who with Dangermouse and Mark Linkous worked on the now-to-be-released ‘Dark Night of the Soul’ which last year was embroiled in EMI politics/legals. Sad they didn’t actually get to hear it released while they were alive. Here’s a track off it – certainly was well rotated in my iPod last year when the tracks ‘leaked’ – Mark co-wrote and produced all the tracks and appeared on several, as did Vic, it is a truly collaborative work – the cynical (me!) would say that it’s interesting EMI sorted out their legal problems just as the eagerly awaited and much praised Broken Bells album is released. Hmm.
Here’s The Flaming Lips with Sparklehorse and Danger Mouse with ‘Revenge’ – a beautiful track:
And finally a track off his first LP:
And one that became an anthem of mine – Happy Man (not sure where I heard this – I think it’s a bonus hidden track on Good Morning Spider? Certainly didn’t buy the EP)
I posted this clip over a week ago, and it seems it has become an internet sensation – rightly so as it’s so funny yet so joyous – and the singer’s rather odd Botox-style smile and plastic fixed expression is mesmeric. It now has it’s own websiteFacebook fanpage and name (they call him Trololololololololololo and even copycats have popped up). But who is he?
Well a little Google Translate on the original clip reveal the subject to be ‘I am very glad, because I’m finally back home’ and the info to be ‘The original clip. Singer Edward Gil’ – now searching on the latter comes on this website with this other, wonderfully cheesy video:
And doesn’t this sound familiar (same set and all) – must be from the same show as Trololo, and I suspect ‘Moon Stone’ – it’s ‘Woodcutters’ by the same composer, that’s why:
And another song by the ‘Trolololo’ songwriter Arkady Ostrovsky, a song called ‘Moon Stone’ – holy green-screen Batman!
Turns out the man is Eduard Anatolyevich Khil (or sometimes Gil or Hill) born September 4 1934 in Smolensk, known for several songs (look at the website link above for a list) and is part of a band with his son called Prepinaki.
The song that’s the viral hit is indeed called ‘I Am So Happy to Finally Be Back Home’ and “is an Ostrovskii composition, meant to be sung in the vokaliz style, that is to say sung, but without words”.
Oh in more modern times, with his sons as Prepinaki, it seems Trololololololo man has gone all gypsy drum and bass
Also digging using the cyrillic for ‘vokaliz’ found what is the precursor to trololololo man – it’s a cover?
or maybe that was a cover of this:
And Benny Hill on acid meets Trololololo?:
The mystery deepens…and I suddenly want to hear more strange joyous Russian scat musics…
Brilliant, and to show you’re never too old to rock the crowd!
What I love about things like this is the reaction from the younger people who are amazed that someone of that age gets their music, culture etc. It’s necessary at that age to think that it’s all new and just for you, and make it or think it’s not understandable for older people…it doesn’t say what she is a trained singer in but modern electro house and rock bootlegs/remixes I doubt hold much surprise for those brought up on punk, disco, electro, house and reggae…it’s going to happen more and more as the house kids become of pensionable age
And resist. Nicely.
