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I <3 you, humanity.
Apr. 28th, 2009 12:10 pmI'm developing an unholy love for random acts of humanness. I can't really describe this one except to say that it's made of joy. In a train station. You'll like it, I promise.
Today YouTube is featuring a really cool project called Playing For Change, in which musicians from all over the world collaborate on a single cover track. Here are their global renditions of One Love, War/No More Trouble, Don't Worry and Stand By Me.
I'm so horribly jealous of people with musical talent. I can haz none. But musical people are super-awesome. Last night I was watching August Rush (for, okay, maybe like the fifth time) and getting teary-eyed (for possibly maybe the fifth time) over how awesome the music is. AWESOME.
In other music news, I'm sure you've all seen Susan Boyle totally pwn reality pop idol TV. I think she's ten kinds of awesome, not just for her voice but for the bravery that carried her out onto that stage in the first place, but what I'm really loving is the soul-searching that the international audience (at least, the parts of it in the blogosphere) seem to be engaging in over the audience's -- and their own -- reactions to Boyle's performance. Everybody's asking the important questions, like why is it exactly that we expect a person who's a little awkward and not classically attractive to have no redeeming qualities whatsoever -- and why it is that we feel a person's looks need to be redeemed in the first place, like they've got to make some phenomenal contribution just to make up for their very existence. I've seen a couple of people examine the idea of how we might have reacted had Boyle performed as that audience clearly expected her to -- that is, completely bombed -- and I'm also wondering what our reaction would have been if that voice had come out of one of the more attractive contestants. Certainly Boyle's talented (liek woah!), but if somebody gorgeous had come out and belted out that tune, would we have been so shocked? Or would we have felt that that was simply the expected norm? It kind of makes me sad that we live in such a video age as far as music is concerned, because I think if that had always been the case, a lot of our musical greats of eras gone by wouldn't have made the cut due to lack of prettiness. (Of course, Johnny Cash would pwn in any era. He's just that awesome.)
I don't know. I do not know, people. I have enough trouble tackling my own monstrously huge body image issues. I can't handle society's, too.
In OTHER other music news, I'm sure you all know Glen Hansard from the film Once (and you may also remember him from Alan Parker's fantastic film The Commitments), who fronts (or fronted? Is he still with them, or is Swell Season his new thing? I DON'T KNOW.) a terrific Irish band called The Frames. I've been kind of mainlining his music lately. If I could inject it directly into my veins, I would. So I thought I'd share the joy. Here's People All Get Ready (this one has a particularly awesome video, too), Disappointed and Song For Someone. And a few from Once with Marketa Irglova: If You Want Me, The Hill, The Moon and When Your Mind's Made Up.
Did you know, people of the interwebz, that there is a Random Acts of Kindness Foundation? How random are they, when there's a foundation? Still, it's awesome. I love acts of kindness.
Today YouTube is featuring a really cool project called Playing For Change, in which musicians from all over the world collaborate on a single cover track. Here are their global renditions of One Love, War/No More Trouble, Don't Worry and Stand By Me.
I'm so horribly jealous of people with musical talent. I can haz none. But musical people are super-awesome. Last night I was watching August Rush (for, okay, maybe like the fifth time) and getting teary-eyed (for possibly maybe the fifth time) over how awesome the music is. AWESOME.
In other music news, I'm sure you've all seen Susan Boyle totally pwn reality pop idol TV. I think she's ten kinds of awesome, not just for her voice but for the bravery that carried her out onto that stage in the first place, but what I'm really loving is the soul-searching that the international audience (at least, the parts of it in the blogosphere) seem to be engaging in over the audience's -- and their own -- reactions to Boyle's performance. Everybody's asking the important questions, like why is it exactly that we expect a person who's a little awkward and not classically attractive to have no redeeming qualities whatsoever -- and why it is that we feel a person's looks need to be redeemed in the first place, like they've got to make some phenomenal contribution just to make up for their very existence. I've seen a couple of people examine the idea of how we might have reacted had Boyle performed as that audience clearly expected her to -- that is, completely bombed -- and I'm also wondering what our reaction would have been if that voice had come out of one of the more attractive contestants. Certainly Boyle's talented (liek woah!), but if somebody gorgeous had come out and belted out that tune, would we have been so shocked? Or would we have felt that that was simply the expected norm? It kind of makes me sad that we live in such a video age as far as music is concerned, because I think if that had always been the case, a lot of our musical greats of eras gone by wouldn't have made the cut due to lack of prettiness. (Of course, Johnny Cash would pwn in any era. He's just that awesome.)
I don't know. I do not know, people. I have enough trouble tackling my own monstrously huge body image issues. I can't handle society's, too.
In OTHER other music news, I'm sure you all know Glen Hansard from the film Once (and you may also remember him from Alan Parker's fantastic film The Commitments), who fronts (or fronted? Is he still with them, or is Swell Season his new thing? I DON'T KNOW.) a terrific Irish band called The Frames. I've been kind of mainlining his music lately. If I could inject it directly into my veins, I would. So I thought I'd share the joy. Here's People All Get Ready (this one has a particularly awesome video, too), Disappointed and Song For Someone. And a few from Once with Marketa Irglova: If You Want Me, The Hill, The Moon and When Your Mind's Made Up.
Did you know, people of the interwebz, that there is a Random Acts of Kindness Foundation? How random are they, when there's a foundation? Still, it's awesome. I love acts of kindness.
