Vinyl enthusiasts should take a look at the pretty nice Vinyl Art creations by Daniel Edlen.

Creating portraits of musicians on their original record albums, Daniel honors the music we all now listen to mostly on CD or MP3. He uses white acrylic to bring the face out of the shadows of the grooves and capture the spirit of the subject. Daniel's Vinyl Art gives people a way to say, "This is my music, my culture."

In addition too his online gallery, his work can also be check at Vinyl Art blog and his YouTube channel. (via BB-Blog)

Posted by Bibi on January 21, 2008 09:00 PM in Art, Music ||

60's & 70's Asian Pop Record Covers Photo Gallery with tons of covers uploaded by David Greenfield. This gallery contains scans of my ever-growing collection of rare 60's and 70's Asian pop singles. I mainly collect Singaporean titles, but I also have records from Indonesia, Hong Kong, Japan, and Thailand. Even with the cultural differences, many of those covers remind me French Yé-yé albums from 1960's.

More collections of album covers: Album Cover Art Collection of Links.

Posted by Bibi on October 1, 2007 03:59 PM in Music, Vintage ||

Doug Savage is known for his humorous cartoons Savage Chickens drawn on post-its. The Savage Chickens is daily cartoon with an acid humour, and for your enjoyment has a feed available. And I must say that just now I've got a decent attitude to subscribe to it (yes, I know, I should do it before).

The sometimes-slow-creature-here noticed this neat cartoon due to Doug Savage had won the Laura Veirs and Saltbreakers music video contest. The stop-motion video was made to the song "Phantom Mountain". The contest rules were simple: made a videoclip for any of their songs and send it until August 31th. He tells about his video experience on the page Behind the Scenes. Some of the Phantom Mountain Fun Facts:

There are about 500 sticky notes in the video, including a butterfly and 4 or 5 stunt butterflies.
There are over 1500 photos in the video. I used a digital camera on a tripod, which I had to sort of crouch over. My back was killing me!
I drew so many cartoons that I actually developed a callus on the inside of my left thumb from drawing too much. Towards the end, I had to get up and shake out my arm every few minutes.
The old clock radio on the table used to belong to my great-grandmother.

And finally, the winner music video bellow (3 min). Great work.(via Koreus)

Posted by Bibi on September 28, 2007 01:10 PM in Animation, Comics, Fun, Fun, Music ||

The parents of Zoya Eydelman keep their collection of 1970's and 1980's Russian Records and she kindly decided to share those treasures through her Flickr. The '70s & '80s Russian Record Covers photoset contains 89 pictures of diverse kind of covers. The covers for children albums have the prettiest covers, in my humble opinion of course The true is I'm familiar with most of those images, because I've been watching to many old Russian cartoons in the last months. I'm not able to resist to something with a illustration of Cheburashka or Crocodile Gena. (via swissmiss)

Read also Album Cover Art Collection of Links with several links and always updated. Enjoy also to watch Cheburashka and Krokodil Gena at Videos with Bibi.

Posted by Bibi on September 11, 2007 09:00 PM in Music, Vintage ||

To release the album Dylan: His Greatest Hits, a brilliant marketing idea was created: making a site with a Dylan message generator. You can go to the site and create a video message in up to "ten cards" to share with anyone you want. Designed by Ten4 Design, the generator uses the classic Bob Dylan video clip for the song "Subterranean Homesick Blues", in which one he appears holding up cue cards for the audience, with selected words and phrases from the lyrics. The video is available to watch on the site too. (via Yahoo! Picks)

Update: there is now a Facebook app. I tested it on my Facebook profile and it works fine.

Posted by Bibi on September 11, 2007 07:28 PM in Media, Music, Tools, Video ||

Jamaican Label Art . is a website for those people who are obsessed with Caribbean music and the artwork and design of the labels on the vinyl reproductions of that music. With 322 pages, over 1603 label scans and 954 details, the site was conceived by Mike Murphy and Ian Causer, friends who met through a love of Caribbean music in the Summer of 2004. (via Coudal Partners)

Posted by Bibi on February 10, 2007 11:24 PM in Art, Music ||

I'm not sure why I will post this. The excuse that I gave to myself was that I needed to exorcise the demons of my childhood, including the 1980's Japanese TV shows with superheroes doing funny choreographies, and Ultraman is a very good example.

Part one: download and listening at least three times Ultraman 80 soundtrack to get in the mood. (via Bubblegum Fink) Part two: watch three episodes of Ultraman 80. Just watch, because they are in Japanese. Or try the 16 episodes in Chinese. Part three: explore the Ultraman fan sites UltraColony, The Ultra[man] FAQ and Ultraman Toys. Part four: post about it. I will be fine after all - or very bad.

More Ultraman: Ultraman: Singing and Dancing and International Superheroes.

Posted by Bibi on January 28, 2007 03:38 AM in Culture, Music, Toys, Video ||

I think that this is for Pingu's fans: Eskimo Disco 7-11 Featuring Pingu. It's not a pingu cartoon, but a musical video by the English electronic group Eskimo Disco, starred by Pingu. If you have no idea of who is Pingu, and loves claymation, try a search at your favourite video site, or start with this one.

Posted by Bibi on January 22, 2007 09:39 PM in Animation, Music, Video ||

100 Awesome Music Videos is a neat list from Pitchfork, that has other cool music lists. The list brings us videoclips from 80's, 90's and new productions, with classics of A-ha, Cindy Lauper, Bronski Beat, David Lee Roth, Eurythmics, Art of Noise, Duran Duran, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Sigue Sigue Sputnick, Smiths, Talking Heads, Kate Bush and Madonna - what is a list of awesome music videos without Madonna?

However, for me that list have big mistakes. What M.I.A. "singing" Galang is doing there? And Lionel Richie with "Hello"? That's very kitsch not awesome. Where is Pet Shop Boys? Not even "Domino Dancing"? And Queen? Maybe I missed something, but I think that "I Want to Break Free" deserve to be on it. Anyway, stay with another classic "We're Not Gonna Take It" by Twisted Sister.

Posted by Bibi on January 22, 2007 07:00 PM in Music, Video ||

Odd Music is home to unique, odd, ethnic, experimental and unusual musical instruments and resources. Explore their gallery with pictures, descriptions and sound clips of those weird instruments.Thanks to that site I discovered a better use for beer, at least the bootles. (via ladrilio)

Posted by Bibi on January 15, 2007 01:26 PM in Music, Weird, Weird ||

What do you know about old cars? I know the Ford Model T, just because it is too famous to don't know it (or because I watched too many documentaries with its name), the Cadillac, Porsche and the Simca, because there is a Brazilian song from the group Camisa de Vênus with his name. Don't ask me about the automobile history, my knowledge about it doesn't go too far. But thanks to the Fleischer Studios I discovered one more of those model antique cars: Oldsmobile Curved Dash.

The story started when I was at Archive searching for Fleischer's animation and I found a musical animation called "In My Merry Oldsmobile", from 1931. It's a funny animation that starts as a normal cartoon and introduces a popular popular song from 1905, "In My Merry Oldsmobile". With music by Gus Edwards and lyrics by Vincent P. Bryan, it is "one of the most enduring automobile-oriented songs".

The animation is on-line at Google Video, and , before I forgot to say, it has the subtitles with the lyrics, as the classic old cartoons, to sing together. If you like the song get the sheet music of it here as a PDF.

Posted by Bibi on January 8, 2007 04:28 PM in Animation, Culture, Music, Video, Vintage ||

A tort ou a raison is a very creative animation that plays with a fly, cups of wine a table, coins, the paper used in some restaurants and drawings made on it to composed the video. Produced by Virginie Giachino and directed by Joris Clerte and Philippe Massonnet.

Au paradis by Gérald De Palmas was directed by Nobrain to Cosa. The videos was made using CGI animation, creating characters that look like marionettes and theatre of shadows, an inventive way to describe the story of an unhappy married. It's pretty nice.

C'est une belle journée by Mylène Farmer. That isn't a new videoclip: its 2001 animation, realised to Mylène's album Les Mots. It was directed by Benoît Di Sabatino based on the drawings made by Mylène, probably the sheep, her as a young playful girl and a kind of alter-ego as a kid. I'm not sure, but it looks this cheerful animation was made using the classic method hand-drawn.

Ce que je suis is one more musical video produced by Virginie Giachino and directed by Joris Clerte. I have no idea if the girl that sings is the Virginie Giachino, if this is a "real" videoclip or what. However this is a lovely and a bit sad animation that uses silhouettes to tell the story of The meteorological strolling of a young girl with dark thoughts.

Flowers by Emilie Simon. Well, it's not a song in French, but she's French and most part of her songs are in French. This lovely short animation has something of Tim Burton, the macabre atmosphere with very "cute" characters, you know what I want to say, something that reminds Corpse Bride. Flowers was also directed by Nobrain, of Cosa Productions, that also directed "Fleur de Saison" from her third album Végetal.

La Femme Chocolat by Olivia Ruiz. This musical video directed by Valerie Pirson is composed by puppet animation parts and video images of Olivia. This song is from her second album, La Femme Chocolat and I couldn't imagined a better video to this song. (via NicoSite)

Posted by Bibi on January 5, 2007 10:12 PM in Animation, Music, Video ||

Christmas is over, and I hope you had a great time. But that's no reason to stop listening to good Christmas songs, is it? No! So take a look at some videos, and sites where you will find a very nice, or very funny, selection of Xmas songs.

10 + 100 Creative Commons Christmas Songs - Uwe Hermann. I posted this last year, however the site was updated and now it has more than 235 songs which are all explicitly released under a Creative Commons license.

142 Comedy and Novelty Christmas Songs by Bob Rivers and others, available to download via Torrent with 442Mb (be careful with the ads at Mininova site). (via Unscathed Corpse)

As usual, Rato Records Blog made a special for Christmas: A Special Xmas Song. Want more? Try the last year post Les Chaussettes Noires, which link still working, with two Xmas songs.

A Very Scary Solstice: The H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society is pleased to offer a new way
to bring horror to your holidays... [...]a delightful yet hideous combining of over-commercialized holiday tunes and the unspeakable horrors of the Cthulhu Mythos. It's highly suggested that you buy this CD if you like of Lovecraft work's, however, if you won't, or can't, download the Sheet Music with full choral arrangements to sign with your friends. BTW, download the song extracts to have an amusing and funny time. (via Mystery of the Haunted Vampire)

Christmas A Go Go! is a whole blog devoted to spread the spirit of Christmas. Created by a group of six talent bloggers, the selection of songs is delicious, presented in posts with humour and cool Christmas images. Don't miss it!

FaLaLaLaLa is like paradise for fans of Christmas music. They have been collected songs from vintage and obscure albums in the last two years, so you can imagine how fantastic is their collection. Do you have kids? Take a look at Rudolph The Rednosed Reindeer by The Caroleer Singers And Orchestra and Frosty the Snowman, by Walter E. “Jack” Rollins and Steve Edward Nelson.

Jul igen - Christmas Again is a Swedish blog (in English) to celebrate the Christmas record. I came there attracted by Christmas at a Brothel album (NSFW illustration), via Sex?, and I found a much more. Even if they look different to you, give a chance to them. Try first Jingle Bells in 7 different versions and 5 different versions of White Christmas.

Martin Klasch did a collection of Christmas songs last year, actually two. This year he went far, he did three. Get them: Santafobic, Santalicious and Santology.

Santastic II: Clausome: collection of Holiday mash-ups and bootleg remixes offers a new and unusual spin on the classics you know and love. It's funky. It's postmodern. It's the intarwebs. It's Santastic!

Sebastian did it again: Christmas Audio 2006 and More Christmas Audio 2006 at PCL LinkDump, two impressive collections of links of Xmas songs. After the terrific work of Sebastian Splogman did a "small" contribution with the post Strange Christmas Sounds at radio Zwolle. Don't miss it!

Spiked Candy have three cool posts about Christmas: spend Christmas with some lovely ladies, Anorak Christmas and Christmas with Serge and Chantal, with a video.

Not only This is for Last.fm users: Spiked Candy created a Xmas radio station there. Don't use Last FM? Well, that's a good reason to start it. But just in case she put the radio station embed.

Wonderful Wonderblog provided a curious Christmas album: Christmas In The Stars - Star Wars Christmas Album.

For Children:

Kiddie Records Weekly is a three year project celebrating the golden age of children's records. And among all the good stuff posted, there are albums dedicated to Christmas. Here are the classics for children of all ages:

- Christmas Party with "Two Ton" Baker, The Merry Music Maker

- Howdy Doody's Christmas Party - creepy cover

- The Nutcracker Suite for Children, narrated by Milton Cross

- The Story of the Nativity, with Gene Autry and Supporting Cast

- This is Christmas, with Irene Wicher, The Singing Lady

Videos:

Nowadays you have a huge selection of videos available on-line. I didn't make a super research to discover which nice videos I could find, I just follow some suggestions of IWR and claudine longet blog. Get those videos as inspiration and search for more (while they still available).

- 12 Days of Christmas by Boymongoose (an hilarious musical animation)

- Little Drummer Boy David Bowie & Bing Crosby

- Silent Night by Claudine Longet & Andy Williams

- The Cristmas Song by Nat King Cole

- War Is Over - John Lennon (my favourite Xmas song because of its message)

And, if you have courage enough, watch the video Christmas Song (Ding Dong) by Gunther from last year, or the special version, that is available for limited time and it's probably NSFW.

Posted by Bibi on December 26, 2006 05:16 PM in Fun, Fun, Music, Video ||

How about some nice French songs? I made a selection with the last stuff that I found in the last weeks, most of them from a new music blog (and Brazilian) La Voix de Son Maître, that has many other cool stuff, specially Brazilian music from 60's, like Bossa Nova. The links that still working are:

- Charles Trenet - At His Best

- Claire Chevalier & Rosinha de Valença - Saveur Brèsil

- Edith Piaf - Sparrow Of Paris

- J'adore la Chanson Française Volume 1

- Jacques Dutronc - CD Collection

- Jean Ferrat - Je ne Suis Qu'un Cri

- Juliette Gréco - Juliette

- Juliette Gréco - La Femme

- Les Plus Belles Chansons Françaises: 1950

- Les Plus Belles Chansons Françaises: 1952

- Les Plus Belles Chansons Françaises: 1953

- Les Plus Belles Chansons Françaises: 1958

- Les Plus Belles Chansons Françaises: 1959

- Les Plus Belles Chansons Françaises: 1960

- Les Plus Belles Chansons Françaises: 1961

- Les Plus Belles Chansons Françaises: 1962

- Michel Legrand - Jazz in Paris: Paris Jazz Piano

- Patricia Kaas - Le Mot de Passe

- Serge Gainsbourg - Bonnie and Clyde

- Serge Gainsbourg - Melody Nelson

- Serge Gainsbourg & Brigitte Bardot - Bonnie and Clyde

- Vicki Benet - O Toque Parisiense

One more suggestion is the album Les Girls, released in 1963 with songs of various female singers, like Jacqueline Boyer, Gloria Lasso, Christine Fontana, Annie Cordy and Michele Arnaud. (via Martin Klasch) However, if you speak French here it is a tip, also from P-E: Noel Regney Singers - Songs That Help You Learn French.

PS.: remember, if you like the songs, buy the albums to support the artists - some of them still doing good music.

Posted by Bibi on July 9, 2006 11:01 PM in Music ||

I should post this before, however never is too late. Rato Records makes a wonderful voluntary work of share songs from old records, specially 60's music. My favourites are definitely the French singers. Since I discovered them I'm love form 60's French songs - and it's much better since my French classes are going very well. I would like to suggest to you some posts with songs of great French singers. The posts aren't new but I checked the links to be sure that they were still working:

- Aufray Chante Dylan: a 1965 album with 11 French versions of Bob Dylan's songs sung by Hugues Aufray.

- Bébé Johnny: an album with a nice selection of Dick Rivers' songs- the singer of Les Chats Sauvages - songs.

- Brel Pour Toujours: Anthologie I, Brel Pour Toujours: Anthologie II and Brel Pour Toujours: Anthologie III: 3 collections of Jacques Brel's albums. Jacques was a superb Belgian singer, one of my favourites.

- Brigitte Bardot Show, Brigitte Bardot, 1964, BB 1970 and La Belle Est de Retour: two EPs and two albums of B.B. (Brigitte Bardot). I don't think that she was too good, even so I know that a lot of people like her songs.

- Gillian Hills, 1961 and Gillian Hills: two Gillian Hills' EPs.

- Le Jardinier de L'amour - I, Le Jardinier de L'amour - II, Vous Permettez, Monsieur? and Tombe La Neige: two anthologies and two EPs of Salvatore Adamo's songs.

- Les Chats Sauvages, 1961 and Les Chats Sauvages: Twist à ST. Tropez: two collections of songs from the French rock and roll band Les Chats Sauvages.

- Les Chaussettes Noires: two Christmas songs from another famous French rock and roll band from the 60's, Les Chaussettes Noires.

- Michel Polnareff, 1966: the two first EPs of Michel Polnareff.

- Nicoletta 67: a 1976 album of Nicoletta, a fine French pop singer.

- Sylvie Vartan en Italie, 1968: 3 singles, with 2 songs each one, of Sylvie Vartan singing in Italian.

- Toi L'ami: a Richard Anthony's EP with four songs. I didn't check this album, but he used to sing rock and roll versions of famous songs in French.

There were more cool albums, like Sylvie Vartan, Brel at the Olympia, Françoise Hardy, more Les Chausettes Noires and Les Chats Sauvages, unfortunately the links aren't working anymore.

Posted by Bibi on June 3, 2006 02:11 PM in Music, Vintage ||

Whitney Music Box: a musical realization of the motion graphics of John Whitney as described in his book "Digital Harmony".The thirteen variations of the music box are the result of Whitney's idea of harmonic relationships, based on audio, graphics and programming.

The animation and the music were composed by Jim Bumgardner. He has more info about it at KrazyDad: While Whitney was interested in turning musical ideas into motion graphics, I’m doing the inverse — turning one of his key animation ideas back into music. Here is what Whitney said about it:

An early intuition about how to control total dynamics led me to activate all graphic elements through a motion function that advances each element differentially. For example, if one element were set to move at a given rate, the next element might be moved at two times that rate. Then the third would move at three times that rate and so on. Each element would move at a different rate and in a different direction within the field of action. So long as all elements obey a rule of direction and rate, and none drifts aimlessly or randomly, then pattern configurations form and reform. This is harmonic resonance, and it echoes musical harmony, stated in explicit terms. I tried this procedure in several films, and was gratified by the consistency of the confirmation it demonstrated.
– John Whitney, “Digital Harmony”, pp. 38

(via Hoemro)

Posted by Bibi on May 31, 2006 11:54 AM in Animation, Audio, Music ||

Hey cinema lovers, the soundtrack of the wonderful epic 1900, also known as Novecento, is available tow download at Rato Records. Directed by Bernardo Bertolucci in 1976, the casting has an impressive list of great actors, like Robert De Niro, Gérard Depardieu, Dominique Sanda, Francesca Bertini, Laura Betti, Donald Sutherland, Burt Lancaster and Alida Valli. The soundtrack was brilliantly composed by Ennio Morricone. Watch the film and listen to the soundtrack after.

Posted by Bibi on May 30, 2006 08:58 AM in Cinema, Music ||

Je suis venu te dire que je m'en vais is one of the prettiest, and sad songs composed by Serge Gainsbourg. And now you can enjoy this song in 11 versions - until now, including Spanish, French and English versions, thanks to the great work of Guuzbourg from Filles Sourires that complied them in a single post. My favourite of all the versions available there the one with Jo Lemaire. Plus: watch Jane Birkin or Serge Gainsbourg singing the song.

Posted by Bibi on May 28, 2006 01:28 PM in Music, Video ||

Tenacious D (= Kyle Gass and Jack Black band) in "Fuck Her Gently", presented by Spümco. Adorable and funny! Ok, I'm going to tell the true: NSFW lyrics and probably the animation too, but I loved it. BTW, the image above is from the QuickTime version that has an almost safe for work animation.

PS.: Why did nobody show me this before?

Posted by Bibi on May 16, 2006 04:59 AM in Animation, Music ||

Lovers of French music, don't cry. I have two solutions for those that missed my list of French videoclips. The first one is a very nice video blog: Vidéo Nostalgie. The blog makes a homage to the French vintage videoclips from 60's and 70's. It's a very new blog, but it has a good selection of videos for almost all tastes. (via Martin Klasch)

My second solution came from a suggestion of a reader, it is Ina - Institut National de l'Audiovisuel. The French institute opened its doors with an amazing collection of publications, multimedia files, videos and audio files of 70 years of radio and 60 years of TV programs. The best part is that almost all free! The size of the image doesn't help a lot in the videos, but it's great see things like Françoise Truffaut talking about Les 400 Coups in 1959, or listen to an interview with him from 1974, or watch Jacques Brel singing "Mathilde".

The collection with more than 100,000 of files can be download: emissions, series, news, speeches, sports, documentaries, historic transmissions, TV shows, TV journals and much more. But, you have to pay. You can download the videos with a DVD quality to watch on your computer or download the audio files, for prices that start with 1€ a for audio file with less than 10 minutes and 6€ for videos with more than 30 minutes. There is also a rent option for 48 hours. Not the cheapest price, but it's not so bad too, if you receive in Euro - that definitely isn't my case.

But go fast to there, because last week I watched part of a documentary of 30 minutes with Truffaut and it was was free to see. Now there is short sample and I have to pay to see all the video. Yes, there are videos that you can't see in the small window if you don't pay for them, most of them are videoclips and programs with more than 10 minutes. Not so good, ahn? Yes, I should watched the whole video last week, my fault, but who could now? Anyway, go directly to the Archives pour tous before they change and put all the videos for pay-version. (Thanks Massilianana)

Posted by Bibi on May 9, 2006 02:26 PM in Blogs, Music, Video, Vintage |