12 posts tagged “electric light orchestra”
That's one of the many songs I think of when it actually rains in Austin. Another good one is "Showdown" by Electric Light Orchestra. Anyway, it rained this morning in Austin, and I think it is still raining right now. It's so rare to see rain now that I thought I would take a video of it with my little Canon SD750 digital camera. There's nothing special about the video, but it is the best feeling in the world to actually see rain and lightning and hear thunder. Austin is in a drought right now so this rain is very much welcomed.
IMDB.com, a website I go to all the time to help me remember what star was in what movie/TV show, and how to spell someone's name, now has free videos to watch. You can watch entire movies for free. I know you have to at least watch on advertisement before the movie starts, but that's not too bad. One of the movies you can watch is Xanadu ...
Try it out here ...
http://www.imdb.com/video/hulu/vi2117271577
It is way too hot in Austin so I thought I would post some songs that either mention "rain" in their lyrics or sound like water/rain. I may have posted some of these before. Here is the current forecast for Austin, TX ...
Here is a song that I could play over and over again if I had to. It has a sort of submarine sound to it ...
This next song actually mentions "rain" ...
"It's raining all over the world" (yeah, right) ...
This song has always sounded kind of underwater to me ...
This last song takes place when a storm is coming in Bram Stoker's Dracula ...
Also, here is a video from last summer in Austin, when it rained so much that they had to open up the floodgates at Mansfield Dam.
OK, there are three songs on Portishead's new album, Third, that make me think of others songs.
The first song is "Hunter", which makes me think of a song from the 1992 horror movie, Candyman, by Philip Glass called "Face to Razor".
Here are the two songs ...
John Stewart - Gold
Beethoven's 5th Symphony was written around 1804-1808. 200 years later, it is still very popular.
Here is Beethoven's version played by the Ljubljana Radio Symphony Orchestra ...
In 1973, Electric Light Orchestra did a cover of the song, "Roll Over Beethoven", which was Chuck Berry's song from 1956 (and it has been covered several times).
In 1977, the uber-successful soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever was released (I like to believe is was released very close to my birthday in November of 1977, but I still haven't found proof of that), and Walter Murphy had the song "A Fifth of Beethoven" on the soundtrack.
Here is a depiction of Beethoven in the 1989 movie, "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure". This is actually my favorite scene in the movie, and I used to watch this over and over again on VHS in the early 90s. The song is "Play With Me" by Extreme (who also sang "More Than Words"). Beethoven gets to learn the magic of synthesizers in this scene. I swear the girl who Freud, Billy the Kid, and Socrates talk to says "keek" instead of "geek". I also love Joan of Arc doing extreme cardio.
In 2002, Robin Thicke (son of "Growing Pains" actor Adam Thicke, and a classier version of Justin Timberlake) released "When I Get You Alone", a song that samples Walter Murphy's "A Fifth Of Beethoven" pretty heavily. The song is a lot of fun, especially if you think about the history of the sample it uses.
Here is "When I Get You Alone" by Robin Thicke ...
I am kind of pissed off because I downloaded the very high-quality version of this video off of iTunes, but there is no way for me to share it on here or anywhere else since it is a protected file. Ugh! I hate how bad the quality of YouTube videos are. I've heard that may change in the future, though. YouTube may start offering different versions of videos depending on your internet connection.
Years and years ago, I used a cassette player to record songs, play songs, etc. Either the player or the cassette would mess up sometimes and cause the entire song to play backwards. Well, sometimes this error produced some cool results. Here are two of my favorite backwards songs ...
Electric Light Orchestra and Olivia Newton-John - Udanax
The cool thing about playing "Xanadu" backwards is that the song has more of a desperate, urgent feel to it, like some catastrophe is about to happen (maybe I am the only that hears this). Also the phrase, "Now we are here" which is sung by the backup singer (is that ELO's Jeff Lynne or members of ELO?) becomes "Now you are here". That little trick makes sense since ELO always played around with secret messages on a song played backwards.
Tori Amos - eeeii
Tori Amos' "iieee" is probably one of my favorite songs ever. When played backwards, the "iiiiiieeeeeeee" parts sound really cool and kind of creepy like something the faux witches in The Crucible would have sung in the woods. ;)
and here are some others I was playing around with just for fun ...
BT and Tori Amos - Blue Skies (backwards)
There's nothing special about this song played backwards. I just thought it sounded cool. Playing vocals backwards can make the emotion in the singer's voice sound a little more intense for some reason.
Bjork - Earth Intruders (backwards)
Again, nothing too special about this song being played backwards. I just wanted to see what it sounded like. The end of this song sounds like Bjork is standing on a boat about to leave the dock. That part of the song begins when played backwards.
Goldfrapp - Clowns (backwards)
I just wanted to see what this would sound like backwards.
Goldfrapp - Eat Yourself (backwards)
Same as above.
Goldfrapp - El Train (T. Raumschmiere Remix ... and backwards)
This remix contained vocals from "Train" played backwards already so when you play the remix backwards, you hear those vocals played correctly. You'll see what I mean.
I love M.I.A.'s song, 20 Dollar, and I wanted to hear what the background sound that's repeated throughout the song would sound like backwards.
OK, that's all I got for this strange and unnecessary post.
I have been listening to Electric Light Orchestra when I get ready in the morning. Everything Jeff Lynne ever touched turned to gold. On the album, Secret Messages, there are many, many great songs, but there are some I never listen to, such as "Letter From Spain". I don't know why I never listen to it, it is a great song, and here it is ...
Last night I was driving home from Dave & Buster's(a weird restaurant/bar/arcade for adults that gets a little boring after a while unless you are drunk), and I was listening to "St. Tropez" by Golden Bug, a song I got from Fluxblog. It's a cool song that reminds me of War's Low Rider and Underworld's "Bruce Lee". Take a listen ...
I did a search for "St. Tropez" in my iTunes library, and it brought up "Tightrope" by Electric Light Orchestra, too, so I need to post it here since it is such a good song ...
Also, if I am going to post "Bruce Lee" from Underworld's album, "Beaucoup Fish", then I need to post the first song on the album, "Cups", which always puts me in a very trance-like state as I listen to it ...
However, I have never liked the ending of "Cups", which makes me think of another song that starts off great, but ends badly, and that is Herbie Hancock's "Kebero (part one)", which features GiGi (aka Ejigayehu Shibabaw) on vocals ...
"The Matrix Reloaded" was on TNT, I think, a couple of hours ago so that reminded me of how much I liked the score for that film. I still think that from the restaurant scene to the end of the freeway scene is one of the greatest scenes in cinematic history(not the greatest, just one of the greatest), but I can watch it now and understand how cheesy a lot of it looks, too. Here are two favorite parts of the score, "Teahouse" by Juno Reactor, featuring Gocoo, and "Mona Lisa Overdrive" by Juno Reactor and Don Davis ...
When I listen to "After All" by Electric Light Orchestra ...
it makes me think of Radiohead's "Exit Music (For A Film)" ...
Speaking of Radiohead, I found this cool video of a person painting a picture of Thom Yorke using Photoshop, I think ...
There is also a cool image of Thom Yorke from Q or SPIN that shows what he would look like if he had a lot of cosmetic surgery to appear more "Hollywood" ...
The picture is tool small. If anyone out there has a larger scan of it, please let me know. Thanks!
The ELO song, "After All", reminds me of Tori Amos' wonderful cover of David Bowie's "After All" that she did as a B-side for the album, "Strange Little Girls" ...
The above photo of Tori was used for the "Strange Little Girls" album's artwork, but the message on the shirt was changed from "Adam kiss my eve" to "Satin Worship"(a play on the words, "satan worship", of course). You can compare the two images below ...
The reason it had to be changed for the album and marketing purposes was due to some sort of copyright violation. I still like the original "Adam kiss my eve" picture, and I had printed it out a long time ago. Lucky for me that I did that because now it is really hard to find the original image online(so I just scanned it and uploaded it here).
Whenever I see the title for Tori Amos' new song, Big Wheel, I think of a song by Electric Light Orchestra. To illustrate my point ...
Here is an interesting article about whether or not radio stations will be able to play Big Wheel.
