Damn the man

Vampire Weekend's first album is a decent amateur effort that hipsters the world over have been eating up like organic vegan soy chips. There are a couple of stand out songs, namely "Oxford Comma", which I have been aching to play on my radio show. Unfortunately, the first line of the chorus is "Who gives a fuck about an Oxford comma?", planting it firmly in the "unplayable" category. So, subversive anarchist rebel that I am, I'm posting it here for your enjoyment.

Oxford Comma - Vampire Weekend

And, in the spirit of censorship, Adam Buxton's hilariously clean version of "Fuck tha Police" by NWA.

Title of the post

As you may have noticed, music is one of the greatest loves of my life. For those of you that don’t already know, I also have a profound relationship with comedy. And there’s one other thing: I’m having a serious love affair with musical comedy. Here are four of my recent trysts.


I saw Tim Minchin for the first time a month ago in New York, where he had a six-week run at New World Stages. The man is a genius, if a bit mad. He is a talented pianist and witty as all hell, and I was hurting from laughing by the end of the show. His style is often dark and vulgar, but he performs with such eagerness that it’s difficult to be offended.

You Grew On Me - Tim Minchin
Inflatable You - Tim Minchin


After the show, we walked down to the UCBT (Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre) and saw Olde English’s variety show, Very Fresh, where they debuted a brilliantly made video, “Akon Calls T-Pain”. If you’ve ever heard a song by either of them and thought, “I can appreciate this very original music and the artist’s clever use of vocoder,” this is not the video for you.



(The three songs parodied are “Buy U a Drank” by T-Pain, “I Wanna Fuck You” by Akon, and “Sexual Eruption” by Snoop Dogg.)


Improv Everywhere is a project headed by Charlie Todd (or Agent Todd, in IE terms) that he started with fellow comedy students of the UCBT improv school. (Todd now performs and teaches there.) Their goal is to “cause scenes of chaos and joy in public places”, which they have been doing since August 2001 with over 70 missions. One of their recent missions, executed in Los Angeles, struck me as particularly great.

I’ve been known to have a slight problem with suspension of disbelief. I walked out of “Superman Returns” because I found it so implausible that Lois Lane did not die in the opening scene that I physically couldn’t sit through the rest of the film without shouting obscenities at the screen. So I definitely understand the problem many play- and movie-goers have with musicals. Strangers shouldn’t be able to effortlessly harmonize after breaking into song about something that, let’s face it, doesn’t deserve to be sung about. Like, say, spilled lemonade:




A bit closer to home, I managed to get a taste of musical comedy on campus at the latest Mixed Company a cappella concert. They invited the Johns Hopkins Mental Notes, and both featured a comedy song; Mixed Company sang “Title of the Song” by Da Vinci’s Notebook, and the Mental Notes sang “Your Love Is (Love Song with Metaphor)” by former Da Vinci’s Notebook members Paul and Storm.

Title of the Song - Da Vinci’s Notebook
Your Love Is (Love Song with Metaphor) - Paul and Storm

I wish I had a recording of the performance to share-- the soloists, Nemo Swift ’11 of Swarthmore and Tom Murphy ’09 of JHU, did a wonderful job. But the real beauty of these songs is in the lyrics. I’ll leave you with verse two of “Your Love Is”:

My love is a sailing ship
Seeking out a friendly shore
To cast out my anchor, happily never to sail no more.
And your love is the ocean that drowns me
Leaving my bones to be picked at by crabs
And bringing settlers to the New World with smallpox and influenza
And wiping out the indigenous population.
Smallpox
Your love is smallpox.

A little bit of folk

Old Springs Pike did a mini-set this Thursday at Rififi as a closing act for Totally J/K with Joe and Noah, a weekly comedy variety show. They are a young, cute, fun folk trio. A lot of their recent popularity is likely due to ex-member John Gallagher Jr., the Tony winning "Moritz" of Spring Awakening. He recently left the band, but they seem no worse for wear-- maybe short a few hands, though. All three sang, James Cleare (the redhead) was on hands-free harmonica duty, they split the percussion between them, and each took on another instrument (guitar, bass, tambourine- the melodica had been left in a car). Appropriate for the evening, the setup became downright comical on the last song. James C. was responsible for the kick and crash setup, Heather Robb for snare, and James Smith for hi-hat. However, James C.'s hands were full on bass, so Heather would periodically duck out from her shared mic and lean across the stage and under his arms to hit the crash cymbal. I guess it's more of a visual joke.

They played "Drowning in Sobriety", "Reply", and "The Hush".

Drowning in Sobriety - Old Springs Pike

Did I mention how supremely adorable they are? Witness:

Brilliance, in meme form

Ah, the culmination of a musical meme.

The original Daft Punk song:
Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger - Daft Punk



"Daft Hands" video:



"Daft Bodies" video:



Kanye West samples Daft Punk:
Stronger - Kanye West



"Kanye Hands" video: [if it's choppy on the embedded video, click through to youtube]


(For more funny videos, check out www.baratsandbereta.com)