Our faux-mustachioed brethren, Sons of Maxwell, sing a true song of woe called United Breaks Guitars. The band’s singer/guitarist, Dave Carroll (no relation to our own Ian Carroll), had his Taylor guitar obliterated by the United ground crew at O’Hare, and when he didn’t get no satisfaction from that fine airline over the course of 9 months, he decided to get all songwritey and YouTubey about it. YES! I love this man!
This, my friends, is why The Industrial Jazz Group is a Southwest Airlines kind of band. I love their low fares, snarky attitude, no-change-fee policy, blah blah blah, all that. They just freakin’ rule.
You know, for all the cross-country flying that we do (which is a lot, considering we’re 17 people), I think Southwest should give us some kind of corporate sponsorship. Don’t you think? “The Industrial Jazz Group: The official avant-garde party band of Southwest Airlines” sounds pretty good to me.
Recently, I’ve been watching a lot of beatboxing videos on youtube.
These are just two videos that are blowing my fucking mind as of lately. These videos are from the beatboxing world competition wildcard division. The first video is from Julia Dales (who actually won the category) and the second is from a Daichi who didn’t even place, but in my opinion could’ve easily taken first or second place. Both beatboxers have some amazing control of the entire envelope of each different sound.
The reason why I’ve been watching videos like these is because I’m trying to find some crossover applications to playing a wind instrument; specifically trombone. There are some literal attempts of applying the ‘beatboxing’ to wind instruments, such as the beatboxing flautist and some decent beatboxing tuba-ists (is it tubaist? I prefer tubist) on youtube. However, I don’t really think those attempts have really examined all the parameters.
But thats not really what I’m here assert/insert my opinion about…
Under the ‘related videos’ category on the aforementioned Julia Dales video is a video of what I originally thought was a 5 year-old Julia Dales beatboxing ‘Merica’s national anthem. Wrong. Its a completely unrelated little girl singing the national anthem in probably her parents living room. Which blows, ’cause I really wanted there to be a beatboxing prodigy. Damnit… But, after being mildly dissapointed at first, I was soon rendered speechless…then, I couldn’t stop laughing.
Don’t get me wrong. I know its a tough little fight song to sing. And I know she’s only 5. I know some of the lyrics are a little graphic… BTW, here are some translations of some other countries national anthems that are awesome-ly gory:
Algeria
“We swear by the lightning that destroys, By the streams of generous blood being shed”
“When we spoke, none listened to us, So we have taken the noise of gunpowder as our rhythm, And the sound of machine guns as our melody”
Italy
“Mercenary swords, they’re feeble reeds. The Austrian eagle has already lost its plumes. The blood of Italy and the Polish blood it drank, along with the Cossack. But it burned its heart.”
Hungary
“No freedom’s flowers return, from the spilt blood of the dead, and the tears of slavery burn, which the eyes of orphans shed.”
Anyways…I was laughing at the 5 year-old because of the musical humour of modulating at the end of each phrase, something at the beginnging of new phrase…Its so fucking funny to me. There’s also another funny video of a police officer really fucking up the national anthem:
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On another topic of videos/songs I have been watching recently that are blowing my fucking mind is this:
Nick Cave’s “Mercy Seat,” live, with a little intro from Nick about the staying power of this AMAZING song.
This goddamn song has been stuck in my head for about a solid 3 weeks now. I cannot get it out of my head. I’ve had dreams of hearing it or singing. I’m trying to find as many different versions as I can. In the intro, Nick explains that its a song that the Bad Seeds (almost) always play at every show and that its the kind of song thats so good it can be played in many different ways and still remain effective. I agree. But, the lyrics are also pretty fucking good, Mr. Cave.
A brief addendum to this. Jazz critic James Hale, commenting on his list of “albums I distinctly remembered hearing for the first time, and knowing I was hearing something special”:
All of which leads me to conclude that these types of indelible experiences may be limited to your first quarter-century, since I haven’t had a single memorable moment like this since — not for lack of listening to new music. Maybe having children (and pets, and debts, etc.) in your life has something to do with it, too.
I definitely still have those “indelible experiences,” but as I said, it feels like they are harder to come by now that I am older and more musically experienced. The thought that they could ever go away drives me to despair. (For the record, I don’t believe they ever will — but who knows? There are plenty of things I don’t believe for a while and then later they turn out to be true.)
After digging through some emails exchanged between the space bee (bees??!!) and finding my username and password for this hiveblog, I’ve finally gotten around to writing up one of these posts.
…I don’t have much to write about at the moment. Its 3:13am, smack in the middle of another one of my fights with insonmia.
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Shameless plug? Why the fuck not…
www.myspace.com/tinhornjustice
And if somehow you are magically transported to a transcendental/nirvana-like state of being and you just HAVE TO have more, get in contact with me and I’ll email you some more mp3’s. But not all of them. Unless you like the first couple I send you, then I’ll send the rest. But only if I like you.
The band is comprised of some of my favorite people that I am so lucky to play with…all in the same damn group no less! Cory Beers plays a drumset that is of his own haphazard design (I think there’s an old military bass drum? and a propane gas tank…sometimes a fire alarm tuned perfectly to something in between a B and H). Tony Digennaro (Canyoneroooooooo!) plays his poop-scrotum guitar which is not the same as the scrotar…which he invented (sounds like ass, trust me). Jimmy James Jim-Jims Barry plays bass most of the time but will occasionally oblige the rest of the members’ tastes for the annoying and whip out his electric cello and electric accordion. Chris Stewart plays electric violin. If you ever have the pleasure of meeting Mr. Stewart, you are fucking lucky. And me on my dumb-looking trombone thats appropriately amplified.
And don’t worry folk’ls, Tinhorn will be recording all new tunes (and some old ones that we never got around to polishing up) this summer. Then…there will be a new album for us to assert/insert into the music/art world.
Alright…thats enough plugging this morning.
So we’re not really industrial. Were The Beatles really insects?