"If The Fire's Out, Baby, How You Gonna Keep Me Warm?"

Last night I fulfilled one of my long time goals and saw one of my favorite bands, Canadian pop-rock sensations Metric, in concert.  It blew my mind.  Emily Haines sounded exactly the same live and had great stage presence, which made me love her all the more.

Afterwards, I found this fan-created animated music video for "Collect Call" that I fell in love with.  Check it out.



I love that "Collect Call" and wish they would have played it, but they did however play an acoustic version of one of my all time favorites, "Combat Baby" that was just incredible.  I just found out that this song is on the Rock Band 3 track list.  Ugh.  Watch the original below.

Love her.

Daniel D.

Over the weekend, I attended Fashion Greenville, a two night fashion show that featured local retailers, with my friend Jacob of Friends, Fashion & Food.  The second night's show was opened by a guy named Daniel D., who refers to himself as "The Hip-Hop Violinist" (which is a title I thought Miri Ben-Ari had copy written, but whatever), performing an incredible rendition of Billy Jean.



A little Googling shows that he has tons of videos of him covering current hip-hop songs.  It's definitely worth checking out.

I think my favorite thing about his performance/videos is that subtle smile he gets on his face.  You can really see that he loves what he's doing.

K. West Presents: Runaway

I'm sorry that I post about Kanye West all the time, but come on.  Whether you like him or not, you can't deny that what the guy has been doing is pretty innovative.  This film is probably the most interesting yet.  Say what you want about the video itself (which I love, by the way), at the very least we get a preview of the new album.

Enjoy.

Photography by Jan Kriwol

"A Beautifully Natural Boy"

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I love Mad Men.  I would dare say that it's my favorite show.  This video is a cover of the theme song, R2DJ's "A Beautiful Mine".  The twist is that the original had no lyrics, so this collective decided to borrow them from Nat King Cole's "Nature Boy".



The choice of lyrics is excellent, describing the main character Don Draper (aka my God) perfectly.

Also dope: the fact that this video is one solid shot.  Awesome.

Serpico

Recently I watched Pacino's 1973 corrupt cop flick Serpico.  The film is impeccable.  That part was no surprise. The 70's had Pacino at his best, long before Scent Of A Woman killed his career by turning him into a living caricature of himself, but I digress.  What did surprise me was how great the character's style was and how natural and cool the normally suit-and-tied Pacino looked in it.

None of the clothes look like costumes.  Nothing is perfectly fitted and it's all a little worn.  It just looks so genuine.  It's perfect. 

I can't say I'm not a little inspired.

Die Antwoord - "Evil Boy"

First and foremost, this is Die Antwoord:

They are a very real, very serious hip-hop (?) group from South Africa.  And yes, that is really what they look like.  It's hard to describe them as anything other than ridiculous.  Watch the video to see what I mean.

WARNING:  For some reason, this video features a LOT of penis-like imagery.  It's definitely NSFW.

"Denial Jewelry"

A few days ago, I posted a quote from my friend Jacob in which he used the term "denial jewelry".  I realized that this expression was lost on just about everyone but the two of us, so go read his blog post from yesterday here for a little clarity.  And while you're at it, read through his past posts.  He's got a really nice take on things.

Good Ass Job

This past weekend, Saturday Night Live's musical guest was the always incredible Kanye West, which is the best thing to happen to that show in years.  Needless to say, Ye killed it.

...why exactly did everyone freak out when he said he was the artist of our generation?

You may have heard the buzz in the past week about a couple of unfinished tracks from Kanye's next album that have been leaked.  Just this morning, Kanye made a few big announcements regarding said album.  First and foremost, the album will be title My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (I personally prefer the working title Good Ass Job, but whatever) and if his cryptic tweets are to be believed, it's dropping on November 22.  The album will include a few of the G.O.O.D. Friday tracks, and the first single will be the completed version of "All Of The Lights", one of the previously mentioned leaked tracks.

Shit just got live.

Here's the unfinished version of "All Of The Lights" thats been floating around the internet.  Supposedly once it's done it will blow our minds.  I don't doubt it.

Kanye West - All of the Lights by The Grandiose Co