This is a PSA: In Harlem, the Harlem shake is serious business. Respect Harlem. Learn the Harlem shake before you make your video. Look it up on YouTube and—

Hm. I think we’re going to have a problem.

It doesn’t help much that there’s no video for the song that’s part of the craze, “Harlem Shake” by Baauer.

Here’s Wikipedia on the dance:

The Harlem shake, originally called the albee in Harlem, is a dance that started in 1981. […]  It has its history from a type of dance exercised in the Amhara region of Ethiopia, called “Eskista” and was allegedly started in Harlem by a man named Al B.

And a hella lot of searching fruitlessly and then looking at the sources for the Wikipedia article yielded this article by the Daily Dot examining the trend in full detail. In particular, note this video showing the dance in several music videos.

Oh, and here’s the Eskista on Ethiopian Idol.

Case closed. But I think South Bronx might like a few words with this guy.

sptrashcan:

kisskissbigbang:

samandriel:

visitingfan:

consultingcorsair:

poppy-popsicles:

I wanted to download We Will Rock You, but…

everytime i hear this my lungs hurt from laughing

This is the most beautiful thing I ever laid ear to.

Ah, Max Raabe and Palast Orchester. They do a lovely cover of Tainted Love as well. And if you like Germans covering rock songs in different ways, may I recommend Señor Coconut?

I love how he gets the timing totally right for pre-Depression popular music.

Speaking of Shepard scales, the end of Wilco’s “Born Alone,” from The Whole Love, makes me think of one.

First of all, how cool is it that their label made the whole album available to stream? I’m so accustomed to bands getting into fights with their labels over this kind of thing.

This is LA punk band Bad Religion’s sixteenth album. I have to laud their consistency—they’ve managed to maintain their chops and their currency for 30 years. Yes, the lyrics here can be a little heavy-handed, but that’s not always a bad thing. It’s protest music; that’s just the nature of it. “Robin Hood in Reverse” is the lyrical high-water mark for this album, to my feeling.

Musically, it’s just what you’d expect from Bad Religion: polished punk backing, clean vocals, harmonizing. Hell, just listen to it.

Ghost - I’m A Marionette (ABBA Cover)

Anthony says this track has Dave Grohl on drums. Nice.

I submit to you “The Holly and the Ivy” as exhibit A that Annie Lennox’s A Christmas Cornucopia is a fucking choice Christmas album, the first to not cause me to roll my eyes, her original song notwithstanding. (You just can’t measure up to the medieval canon; I don’t care how good a songwriter you are.)

My Bloody Valentine recently crashed their website by using it to release their first album in like 21 years, m b v. Kind of fits a pattern, since their previous album, Loveless, nearly crashed a record label.

I don’t like Kevin Shields, the seeming idea man of the group. He seems like a studio tyrant and the worst kind of anti-digital-production snob. And My Bloody Valentine has never been a band I could enjoy, one whole album at a time. That said, by and large, the tracks of theirs that I don’t hate, I quite enjoy. Plus, there must be a good kernel at the heart of Loveless—it inspired a couple of pretty decent cover albums.

Anyway, this third album by My Bloody Valentine has me coming the closest to album-level love: The eighth track, “Nothing Is,” is the only one I really dislike.

I realize that a trance-like state, a feeling of no beginning and no end, is the sine qua non of dream pop, but this is a loop on repeat with no evolution. It’s the opposite of immersive.

I would say that the track that most captured my attention was the last, “Wonder 2.” It’s like a Shepard scale in slow motion set to a breakbeat.

I have to gripe about their streaming option—individual tracks posted to YouTube, each with fades at both ends? Like you guys know that after this hits the torrent sites, some fan is going to plunk the album down, in one unit, on the very same YouTube, right? Without the link to your site? Just save that person the trouble. And put it on Bandcamp for à-la-carte purchases too. Shit, people, it ain’t hard.

I can’t be arsed to put the whole thing up here, in order. Thankfully, the NPR Music blog collated it for me.

sptrashcan:

Well, my near-complete disconnect from popular culture could only protect me for so long.

I just heard “Call Me Maybe”.

I like “Call Me Maybe.”

Shit.

On, i love it when others suffer as I have. In that spirit:

My first experience with it was a guy with no arms drumming the shit out of it.

Unfortunately, Jepsen’s more recent effort doesn’t measure up.

Blur - Tender

I was looking through some older Blur and I stumbled on this. I’d heard it once on the radio ages ago, and I was elated when I found it back. It’s like if Oasis had actual songwriting talent.

Eric B. & Rakim - Microphone Fiend

In E-F-F-E-C-T.