March 2009
43 posts
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Watch#342: serge gainsbourg - aux armes et cætera (1979)
you might think it would be physically impossible for serge gainsbourg to ever show more suaveness than this, more tussled-heir ennui than this, more droopy-eyed casualness than this, or more polkadotted trippiness than this. but then he sets his scotch and pipe down by his armchair, sighs heavily, crosses his legs, scratches his cat’s...
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Watch#341: fats waller - ain’t misbehaving (1943)
fats waller had a mustache so salacious that little richard would have blushed, plus libidinous, leering eyebrows that flopped and jumped and thwacked along with his piano playing, not to mention a drummer who broke into solos so uncontrollable that women had to be held down. and yet the great lesson from his greatest song is that humdrum,...
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Watch#336: frank sinatra - too marvelous for words (1961)
whenever a tuxedoed, bowtied, pocket-squared sinatra claps four times, snaps twice, shakes his heads, leans back, and launches forward into a perfect on-the-beat strut, an ill orphan somewhere in the world is instantly cured.
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Watch#333: eek-a-mouse - wa do dem (1981)
like ezra pound and the second season of twin peaks, eek-a-mouse is massively incomprehensible but transcendently awesome anyway. just because he enunciates like michael stipe with a package of saltwater taffy in his mouth doesn’t mean it’s not a beautiful thing to watch him strut around on an early-80s stage with one arm akimbo, transmitting...
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Watch#330: doc watson - roll on buddy and daniel prayed (1962)
the reason doc watson sounds like he learned how to play music in 1924 on a banjo made out of his grandmother’s 16-year-old cat’s hide (which his father used only after groundhog skin didn’t work) is because doc watson really did learn how to play music in 1920s rural north carolina on banjos made out of groundhog and...
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Watch#328: de la soul - ego trippin’ (pt. ii) (1994)
it doesn’t even matter that this is the world’s best 90s rap video about 90s rap videos, or that it’s de la soul’s smartest song about de la soul (which is saying a lot, considering there’s i am i be and me, myself and i). the important thing is that this packs more springtime-in-1994 pleasures than a bright...
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Watch#327: morrissey - sister i’m a poet (1988)
hugs are better than slugs and bugs, which are both better than thugs, and thugs do drugs, and sometimes if you’re in the right mood drugs can be better than hugs, except for when hyper-obsessive smiths fans are hugging semi-shirtless morrisey and getting gently pulled off by a mulleted bodyguard. (somebody should give johnny marr a hug too.)
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Watch#326: al green - here i am (come and take me) (1974)
mighty al green can melt your eyes into useless little puddles of putty with one arm literally tied behind his back. all he needs are a pair of yellow slacks, a vest, a horn section with the depth of kierkegaard, and some roses to fling around. his near-scream sly stone freak-out at the end has the highest wallop-per-dollop ratio that national...
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Watch#325: jimi hendrix - hey joe (1967)
you haven’t lived until you’ve seen a good jimi hendrix music video, and you haven’t seen a good jimi hendrix music video until you’ve seen him playing parts of hey joe at 1967’s monterey international pop music festival with his teeth. it’s not just that his performance is a miracle of modern orthodontics (by the way, if you...
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Watch#324: anamanaguchi - dawn metropolis album (2008)
you know that feeling when you’re in a mansion made out of gumballs and juicy fruit and you go to pour yourself glass of water but lsd comes out of the tap instead, and when you try to turn on your 1985 nintendo entertainment system its hacked squarewaves start singing harmonies with high-fructose electric guitars? that’s what the...
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Watch#322: randy newman - falling in love (1988)
forget dire straits’ money for nothing, a-ha’s take on me and peter gabriel’s sledgehammer: randy newman’s falling in love is the best video of the 1980s. it has everything anyone could ever want from the decade, including mustachioed tom selleck getting his hair cut, mustachioed tom selleck getting hit by a car, and mustachioed...
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