Spurred by recent talk at D's bday party. Abbott and Costello's classic comedy sketch "Who's on first?" from the 1930's. Although they didn't invent the premise (according to Wikipedia the first appearance of it in the moving pictures was in the 1930 movie Cracked Nuts):
Here's a cartoon version of a musical take on the sketch originally (1st shown on TV anyway) done by SCTV:
Here's a take-off of a political version of the sketch that was first done by Johnny Carson about Ronald Reagan, now a viral video featuring now former president George W:
The "Who's on first?" routine has been featured and referenced on everything from the Muppets to Robot Chicken. Another variant plays on the bit's fame by taking the humorous element (the misunderstanding) and killing it, thereby making it funnier. This has been featured on such shows as Kids in the Hall and The Simpsons (Season 10 episode 15) both of which have the straight man ruining the bit by explaining it (Dave Foley and Principal Skinner respectively). It's like someone shouted "Communication people!" at them. HaHa!
NIN started in 1988 by Trent Reznor (he's also the only official member) in Cleveland. Here is the NIN website and here is their myspace. To set the scene, NIN does what is described as "Industrial Rock" which is Industrial music (harder experimental music usually with electronic stuff) and punk rock that dabbles in Industrial Metal. Got it? To quote D, "It's like Tool, but good!" (D.G. pers.comm. 2008). Kids from my day may remember NIN for the single "Closer" from the 1994 album "Downward Spiral". This album also had the song "Hurt" which was covered by Johnny Cash in 2002 on his America IV album (my favorite JC album for sure). Nine Inch Nails - Lights In The Sky 2008 tour ad from Nine Inch Nails on Vimeo. The concert itself was very visually stimulating (there is a pile of videos up on the YouTube if you're interested). Lots of lights, a different background images and themes for each song. It was so highly choreographed that T.R. didn't talk to us at all and the music didn't pause between songs. The show was split into three different feels. The first part was some hard stuff and classics and then an instrumental interlude from the Ghosts albums and then some more recognizable stuff and newer things.
The Set List:
1. 999,999 2. 1,000,000 3. Letting You 4. Discipline 5. March Of The Pigs 6. Head Down 7. The Frail 8. The Wretched 9. Closer 10. Gave Up 11. The Warning 12. The Great Destroyer 13 - 15 some new instrumental stuff from the Ghosts albums 16. Piggy 17. The Greater Good 18. Wish 19. Terrible Lie 20. Survivalism 21. Ghosts 31 22. Only 23. The Hand That Feeds 24. Head Like A Hole
Highlights included: The lead guitarist playing the banjo and the recorder during the Ghosts songs. The bassist played a stand up acoustic bass too! Bitchin'! The sweet, highly choreographed light show that was so much better than Tool it wasn't funny. Well OK it's kinda funny.
Jerk sightings: One guy trying to start a mosh pit. FYI one guy moshing is just a jerk running into people. A couple grope-dancing and using more than their fair radius of space. Nice concert etiquette jerks!
Fun facts in NIN recent history: The concept album "Year Zero" was written while Reznor was on tour for the 2005 album "With Teeth". The CD changes colour when it gets warm! The album critisized government, etc. and painted a picture of an dystopic future. An alternate reality game of the same name was released contemporaneously as a sort of unorthodox marketing campaign. He also released a "Year Zero Remixed" album that featured some of his songs redone by other artists and made downloads of some of the songs available for the public to remix. In 2007 T.R. broke with Interscope records and went solo. This was in the wake of a lot of Trent rage about his label selling Year Zero at inflated prices and arguements about his personal artistic rights. He went so far as to encourage fans to steal it off the internet. Since then he's gone along on this vein scince. In fact, NIN has licensed the new project Ghosts I-IV, a 36 track instrumental collection, under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license. You may remember Creative Commons from this post.
p.s. A mini "This Music in History": NIN - Hurt - Downward Spiral (1994) Johnny Cash - Hurt - America IV (2002) p.p.s. Recent news on the NIN website: Trent enraged that his music has been used at Guantanamo Bay. Read more in this article from the Associated Press.
Thanks to D and T for a sweet birthday concert! It was Killswitch Engage with The End, Throwdown, and Poison the Well (click the links for lists of upcoming shows and play/download some of their songs). Killswitch wasn't selling CDs (I hate it when bands don't sell their CDs at concerts, it puts a damper on my collection). So I got Poison the Well and The End's new CDs. I didn't know anything of them before now but the CDs are actually quite good. In truth the The End CD was a pity purchase because the guy was cute. Also they gave me a free sticker. Anyway, we had been sitting down mostly for the openers because it was hotter than the hubs of Hades in there (I miss winter). But we went down into the throng for Killswitch. They had so much energy and everyone was feeding off of it. The lead singer (Howard Jones) is so chipper. He and the crazy guitar player (Adam Dutkiewicz) play off eachother very well. I jumped up and down and hollered until I was hoarse. That's what it's all about man! Plus, we are managing to drag another one down into the fold with us (One of us! One of us!), so everybody wins. It was so hot and humid in there that everyone was soaked! It was nice to get outside at the end too, a guy was handing out free promotional CDs which had some good songs on them. Hurray!
This Music in History (mini): Holy Diver Ronnie James Dio's album Holy Diver, released in 1983, has been widely touted as his best work. A video game based on the title song was released in Japan for Nintendo in 1989 but curiously was never released in North America (I wonder how big Dio was over there?). Other video game appearances include the soundtrack to Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories and as one of the tracks on Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s. Other bands have covered the song with much less success than Killswitch, mostly in live-only performances, including Otyg, Sum 41, Sons of Butcher, Children of Bodom, and Tenacious D. Pat Boone had it on an album but it was with Dio so it doesn't count. KillswitchEngage's cover of Holy Diver first appears on the compilation album High Voltage!: A Brief History of Rock done for Kerrang! magazine. It was their first Billboard top 20 single. It was released as a single in 2007 and appears as a bonus track on the 2007 re-release of the As Daylight Dies album. Killswitch played this as their encore song at the concert (I think, either that or the last song before the encore. Help me out here guys). Which was sweet! The music videos for both versions of the song are hilarious. Killswitch gives comical props to Dio in their version but I'm pretty sure Dio's wasn't meant to be funny.
Artist: Killswitch Engage Album: As Daylight Dies (2007 re-release)
Artist: Dio Album: Holy Diver Year: 1983
These videos rated MF (Mom Friendly) by the Captain McShanty's N'oh!-Fun-4-U Bureau of Censorship and Superfluous Roadsigns (notes: a little bit of yelling in the Killswitch video but it's OK, extra points for whimsical fantasy based theme).
p.s. If you are curious here is Otyg's version of Holy Diver.
I was listening to some random music on my computer and I realized that I had 2 versions of this song on there (the Taco one and the Fred Astaire one), and I wondered what was up with that. So, I bring you the first installment of the Chickens! "this music in history" series.
Inspired by the Ritz hotel, "putting on the Ritz" is an old timey slang expression meaning to dress fashionably (also used to refer to something being high class or extravagant ie. "this room is very ritzy"). This popular song was first written and published in 1929 by Irving Berlin and introduced by Harry Richman in the musical film "Puttin' on the Ritz" in 1930.
Its next famous film depiction was by Clark Gable in the 1939 film Idiot's Delight.
Next we have the incomparable Fred Astaire in the 1946 film Blue Skies (note the revised lyrics)
Of course the amusing Young Frankenstein version performed by Gene Wilder and Peter Boyle in the 1974 Mel Brooks film.
Then we skip straight to the highly popular synthpop version recorded in 1982 by the one hit wonder Taco Ockerse. This baffling music video was the only music video version of this song ever made.
The most recent version is by Rufus Wainwright. He went back to a more classic version on his 2007 DVD release "Rufus! Does Judy Live at the London Palladium".
