James Mercer (of The Shins) and Danger Mouse forming a band

This is cool news:

To be clear, this is not just a "produced by Danger Mouse" one-off thing. Mercer and the Mouse are apparently in it for the long haul and already have plans extending past their first album. The pair recently collaborated on the Danger Mouse/Sparklehorse album Dark Night of the Soul. Our review hailed the Mercer track, "Insane Lullaby", as "one of the finest moments on the album."

ANd if you want to hear Insane Lullaby, you can listen to it here (just right click and save for the mp3).

Paul Shirley: Oasis is better than the Beatles

I'm not sure if this is the crappy journeyman basketball player Paul Shirley being a contrarian, being sarcastic or just being plain dumb.

But he decided to write a column about how today's music is better than the Beatles -- which I guess some tone deaf people would agree with. But then he blasts this nugget:

I'd much rather listen to Oasis than The Beatles. Oasis, or any band that came after The Beatles, learned from The Beatles, improving on their work by listening to, building on and perfecting the styles pioneered by The Beatles. The result: The arrangements used by Oasis are more complex, the sound is denser, the production is better.

Seriously?

Shirley, stick to sitting on the bench and not playing basketball instead of trying to analyze music, OK?

Oh yeah, he also says Dean Koontz is a better author than Bram Stoker.

I'm surprised he didn't say that Kobe Bryant is better than Michael Jordan.

NYT Mag explores Spike Jonze's "Where the Wild Things Are"

I have a feeling that this is going to be a great movie that is a tremendous flop at the box office.

But this sounds intriguing:

“It’s in the visual language of, like, some sort of fantasy film, and it is a fantasy film to some degree,” [Spike Jonze] acknowledged, “but the tone of it is its own tone. We wanted it all to feel true to a 9-year-old and not have some big movie speech where a 9-year-old is suddenly reciting the wisdom of the sage.” He hadn’t set out to make a children’s movie, he said, so much as to accurately depict childhood. “Everything we did, all the decisions that we made, were to try to capture the feeling of what it is to be 9.”

And just for the hell of it, here's Jonze's video for the song Sabotage by the Beastie Boys, with some bonus footage at the beginning and end:

A Jerry Lee Lewis song without piano?

Jerry Lee Lewis is as inextricably tied to the piano as Elton John or Billy Joel. But in his latest single, the 73-year old rock icon has a song that is completely devoid of piano.

There's just something wrong about that.

The New Yorker writes:

In a post on YourItList.com, [Cal] Morgan points out that “Lewis has rarely sung without the piano beneath his fingers; it is hard to imagine him without it, any more than we can imagine B.B. King’s voice without Lucille’s tart counterpoint.” But the new song’s lyrics challenge the listener to think twice about who Lewis really is—“If you think I’m a voodoo doll, that’s what I am”—and, as Morgan points out, the rocker’s motives are anyone’s guess.

It just seems weird.

He also sounds a lot like a poor man's Johnny Cash, perhaps because the song is written by Kris Kristofferson.

The Shins - Turn on Me (Video

A pretty damned good video. Check it out.

Rap song about Twitter: "Hit me on Twitter"

And no, it isn't one of those jokey, "I'm a guy who can't rap, isn't it funny!?" rap songs. It's an actual rapper (Mista F.A.B.) telling people, "Hit me on Twitter."

Listen to it.

Modest Mouse music video directed by Heath Ledger debuts

You can watch the animated video for the song "King Rat" over at MySpace.

Ledger directed part of the video and the rest was finished by his company, The Masses.

Craig Ferguson's tribute to Apollo 11

A promo for tonight's Craig Ferguson shows Ferguson saying that his show is closer to PeeWee's Playhouse than a late night TV show. I'm not sure what Ferguson's show is close to -- especially the first half -- but it is undeniably funny. And he proved it again with this musical segment from last night.

Ignore the Paris Hilton thing, but this is great.

Pink Floyd and the Moon Landing

Pretty damned cool. Via @barbwire55.

So what was David Gilmour doing during the moon landing, 40 years ago today? He was jamming out on the BBC. From The Guardian:

We were in a BBC TV studio jamming to the landing. It was a live broadcast, and there was a panel of scientists on one side of the studio, with us on the other. I was 23.

The programming was a little looser in those days, and if a producer of a late-night programme felt like it, they would do something a bit off the wall. Funnily enough I’ve never really heard it since, but it is on YouTube. They were broadcasting the moon landing and they thought that to provide a bit of a break they would show us jamming. It was only about five minutes long. The song was called Moonhead — it’s a nice, atmospheric, spacey 12-bar blues.

What do you do when you mix Nirvana with Rick Astley?

A grunge Rick Roll! OK, it's not the best of mashups, but it is still good. And I still think that Kurt Cobain is the most overrated musical figure of the past twenty years.

Via Mashable.

Alanis Morisette covering "My Humps"

I'm not sure if there is any introduction needed....

Weezer/Notorious B.I.G./Beverly Hills Cop remix

A pretty good mashup. Sometimes the Beverly Hills Cop stuff seems to clash (during the chorus it seems that there is just too much going on).

But listen up anyway.

I'm a sucker for mash-ups, truth be told.

Booker T and the Drive By Truckers playing "Green Onions"

Green Onions is definitely one of the coolest song ever made. And Booker T, the writer of the song, recently played the song live with the Drive By Truckers.

Check it out:

Filipino prisoners who did "Thriller" dance to do tribute to Michael Jackson

I think I can safely say that if you are reading this, you have seen the video of Filipino prisoners doing the Thriller music video:



Well, they will do the dance again to honor Michael Jackson after he died Thursday of cardiac arrest.

Video remix of best sports press conference highlights

Not quite as good as autotune the news, but pretty damned close.

I think all sports fans will recognize these infamous press conference rants.

Dallas Cowboys linemen sign record deal for heavy metal band

Offensive linemen are generally over 300 pounds. And so, it's only fitting that three Dallas Cowboys offensive linemen who are in a band play in a heavy metal band.

Make that "heavier than metal."

From the Associated Press:

Leonard Davis, Marc Colombo and Cory Procter have signed a recording contract as part of a heavy metal band called Free Reign. Their debut album for Australia's Riot Entertainment will be released this fall.

Considering all three players weigh over 300 pounds, it only makes sense they are being referred to as "heavier than metal."

And video from ESPN's First Take:

Auto-tune news 5

If you haven't seen any of the "auto-tune the news" videos on YouTube, you need to change that right now:

The costs of illegally downloading songs

From the New Yorker:

Direct from the land of the crazy verdicts: a Minnesota woman who illegally shared two dozen songs online has been ordered to pay Universal Music Group and other record labels $1.92 million, according to this article, which contains a senselessly large picture of Slash. As the article points out, this verdict works out to $80,000 per song.

How much would you owe?

Daft Hands

I have to watch this video once every week or so. It's a fan video for the Daft Punk song Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger:

T-Pain

While FiveZeroFive says T-Pain makes horrible music (he has a song with Taylor Swift, apparently), I counter with this: