Crimson Wave -- Tacocat

Bounce that Dick

New Video: Cocaine

This this is... um... this.

Lady Gaga as an oily mermaid; Sure, why not.

Link

This is the cover of the Billy Joel memoir that is now not going to happen. Joel said:

"It took working on writing a book to make me realize that I'm not all that interested in talking about the past and that the best expression of my life and its ups and downs has been and remains my music." 

Apparently one of the things he didn't want to talk about was his three marriages.  generally the press referred to them as "failed" marriages.  But if everything that ends is a failure we are all pretty much destined to be mammoth failures eventually.

Apparently most people hate the new Lady Gaga cover art...

But I kinda like it.  Maybe you had to be alive in the eighties to appreciate the aesthetic?

Grammys go Unisex

In a bold move the Grammy music awards are doing away with gender-specific categories. This is part of a move to drop the number of categories and perhaps increase the prestige of the award. Responses to the announcement have been fairly ambivalent.  It will be interesting to see what happens to the gender balance of the winners of the top awards.  I suspect they will be carefully managed to stay roughly 50/50.

An American Sign Language Performance of Cee Lo Green’s “Fuck You”

[via Womenist Musings]

Amanda Palmer & The Young Punx - "Map of Tasmania"

Emphasising the assets

A lot of energy is devoted to fashion that displays the upper torso assets of the female to best advantage.  But in the last century fashion that does the same for the lower torso assets of the male have been neglected. 

JLS (a.k.a. Jack the Lad Swing) seems to have broken some new ground in groin-enhancing trouserwear in a recent appearance. While not going the full codpiece, JB is certainly making the most of what he has.

Ice Ice Cry-Baby

Vanilla Ice has recently been talking about how he broke up with Madonna (back in the day) because of her provocative book "Sex". Specifically because:

"...I was hurt to be an unwitting part of this slutty package."

Because dude has standards, right?  None of this nudity, objectification and sex appeal business for him. Not then, and not now....

Cheerful Zombie Christmas Music by Jonathan Coulton

Human Furniture Video

Valley Lodge
"All of My Loving"
music video.



Directed by Dave & Rory. Produced by Margaux Ravis. Valley Lodge is Phil Costello, John Kimbrough, Rob Pfeiffer, Eddie Eyeball, and Dave Hill.

See also
Art :: Human Furniture by David Blázquez

Mattel superverts "Barbie Girl"

Logically speaking 'supervert' would be the opposite of 'subvert', and Mattel is a master at it.

Do you remember the song "Barbie Girl" by Aqua?

Do you remember how Mattel tried very hard to sue for copyright infringement (and failed because the song is a parody and so "fair use").

And yet today, over ten years later, I saw a TV advertisement for a barbie doll with hair you can style that used the distinctive hook from the song.

And that's not all, look at this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_u-bWHFDf6M

I guess money always wins in the end?

See also:
Barbie Girl embraced by Mattel
Years Later, Mattel Embraces ‘Barbie Girl’

"Hits"

When Duke Ellington wrote Hit Me With a Hot note (and Watch Me Bounce) in 1943 it clearly had nothing to do with violence. It was a metaphor for the visceral impact of truly great music. But it is interesting that the song is sung predominantly by women.

But a few decades later the similarly named song He hit Me (And it Felt Like a Kiss) performed by The Crystals in 1962 was quite the reverse. It was written by a woman as an explicit defence of staying in a violent relationship. It met with an unfavorable public reaction and has remained controversial ever since.



Another few decades later and Hit Me With Your Best Shot performed by Pat Benatar (1979) was again read as a metaphor, this time for the impact of love, positive and negative. It was part of an album that included "Love is a Battlefield" and is general accepted as feminist in tone and intent.



With this back in mind I was never really sure what I felt about Hit Me Baby One More Time as performed by Brittney Spears [at youtube] (1998). It the violence implied by "hit" a valid metaphor or a desire to be victimised in the name of love? If the currently pattern continues we won't be due for another "hit" hit by a female vocialist until around 2020.

Clistening

Over on the right column under the feed is a link to "Clistening". This is a custom online radio channel for the blog--supported by the free custom radio host Pandora. Clistening has a slowly expanding play list mainly of ballad, power ballad, rock and fem heavy metal--but with a little emo and some covers mixed in. Some examples of the artists are shown below. If that doesn't suit you, you can make your own custom station from scratch or by modifying a station that already exists. And yes, I take requests. In fact I could probably do with some suggestions from the last decade or so to get Clistening a little more up-to-the-minute.

Jann Arden, The Bangles, Sara Bareillis, Pat Benatar, Blondie, Belinda Carlisle, Dido, Melissa Etheridge, Evanescence, Marianne Faithful, Heart, Natalie Imbruglia, Joan Jett, Lacuna Coil, Annie Lennox, Sarah McLachlan, Nightwish, Pink, Puerto Muerto, Rihanna, Katy Rose, Rachel Sweet, Bonnie Tyler, Xandria.