Category: Music

What a fantastic song. Some will take issue with it being inspired by Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, but to my mind it has, like all great art, a universal message.

Its performance on Real Time with Bill Maher, where I first heard it, is probably the best solo performance I’ve had the pleasure of listening to in a long while*. So good I got his album Evolver, though I don’t like modern soul music. Unfortunately I find the album version overproduced, and so I consider this the definitive version.

* – I guess since Chris Cornell’s live @ O-baren in Stockholm bootleg. It is available on the torrents, so fire up your client, ladies and gentlemen.

A harrowing, brilliant cover of Heartbreak Hotel.

I was never a fan of Mario Bros (never did own a gaming console), but I am a big fan of Django Reinhardt, and this rendition of the Super Mario Bros. 2 theme by Adrian Holovaty in the gypsy jazz style is brilliant. Monstrous technique. Check out his other videos too.

On a side note, he is one of the lead developers of the Django framework.

Elvis can sing anything and make it sound great.

This was recorded during a rehearsal in 1970.

Whatever Lou Reed had in mind when he wrote the song, it definitely wasn’t this interpretation by Asbjørn Tejdell.

Great imagery, and I love the animation style.

Take me up to higher lands
Higher lands, I go

Saigon Kick is probably best known for Love Is On The Way off The Lizard, but the follow-up Water is arguably the superior album. The title track is a highlight, the gospel choir bit never gets old. I am a sucker for gospel choirs in rock songs though.

On the whole, I think it’s a decent list, but come one, there are only 57 singers better than Christina Aguilera, ever?

I also take extreme issue with Mike Patton not being in the list, and Frank Sinatra, and Edith Piaf, and Jon Bon Jovi… oh sorry, that was the 12-year-old in me talking.

Such is a nature of a democratic list.

There goes one of my favourite rock drummers.

I remember watching Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence when I was a wee lad, back when I didn’t even know who David Bowie was. I remember hardly anything about the movie itself, but I’ve never forgotten the beautiful theme song.

This is a live performance, off Mr Sakamoto’s Ryuichi Sakamoto Trio: World Tour 1996 – Complete Version DVD.