#299 Perfect Boards Of Canada

Marc van der Haas once created Perfect Italo. Here's his take on Boards of Canada...

Enjoy!

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#298 Vampire Weekend for Honda and for Tommy Hilfiger

Vampire Weekend synced their song "Holiday" for both a Tommy Hilfiger commercial and a Honda commercial... In one week!

#297 The Rolling Stones and the Black Ops

Via my friend Niels Post in ran into an article this weekend on Alternet.org called "7 Rock Songs Exploited for Commerce and Conservatism". As the title suggests, an article written from a "corporations are bad and so are the bands that are involved with them" point of view.
As a person working in an industry that helps evil corporations connect with bands that are willing to be evil's minions, I mainly noticed a lot of strange song-with-commercial match ups.

Most notably there's the recent Call of Duty - Black Ops commercial. The commercial uses the Rolling Stones' Gimme Shelter, a song based on the despair of Vietnam. That song is now being used to sell a game that glorifies war. In bad taste? Probably. Strange choice? Most definitely.

Meanwhile the band, that has never shied away from any corporate cooperation, working on commercials in the 60's for Rice Krispies and licensing in the 90's for Microsoft, is laughing all the way to the bank not only making a nice buck from the commercial but also seeing a huge spurt in general sales.

#296 Punk Rock Friday

RIP Jean Paul Toulan

#295 The Flaming Lips For Dell

Apparently this has been around for a while, but I just now ran into it.

#294 200 Cigarettes: The Movie With The Best Musician Cameos... Ever!

Spinner.com just put a list online entitled "Musician Movie Cameos You Might Have Missed". There's the Lemmy Killmister in Airheads part, Anthony Kiedis with a Mister T. hairdo in Point Break and Pearl Jam in Singles to name but a few. I really doubt though, whether you could have actually missed these cameos, but whatevs.

One movie with great musician cameos got left out though. I'm talking about the movie 200 Cigarettes.
Set during New Year's Eve of 1981, in which, according to IMDB, "a collection of twentysomethings try to cope with relationships, loneliness, desire and their individual neuroses".
Long story short, Cristina Ricci is looking for a New Years Party in the Lower East Side, Manhatten, along the way meets Elvis Costello (musician cameo one) and ends up at a concert where Girls Against Boys (musician cameo two) dressed up as "punks" are playing "Boogie Wonderland".

The most important musician cameo (number three) however comes from my friend Marc McCoy, who used to be the singer for my old band Das Oath. He was hired to do The Pogo and is trying to look in the camera as much as possible. Watch below and skip to 00.54.40 to see this particular part. Watch the whole thing over the weekend. It's worth it!


Oh yeah. Courney Love is somehwere in this thing as well (musician cameo 4).

#293 Merry Slayer Christmas (Lights)

I know it's way to soon to be thinking about Christmas yet. What with all the Sinterklaas stuff going on here in the Netherlands. But I didn't want to hold out on this Christmas Lightorama set to Slayers Reign In Blood.

#292 Perfect Swans by Jurgen van den Brand

Perfect Swans. The band that's headlining tomorrow's episode of aforementioned Le Guess Who. Enjoy!
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#291 Perfect LeGuessWho? by LeGuessWho

Le Guess Who is a festival starting tomorrow ending on Sunday in Utrecht. This compilation is a incomplete yet very nice overview of the what's what and the who's who at Le Guess Who.

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#290 Perfect Monolake by Dj Rich Ears

Part one of the triple Perfect Tuesday. Perfect Monolake is not the first mix that DJ Rich Ears has done for this series. Before Aphex Twin, Orbital, Flying Lotus and Four Tet were handled by him. Over at Het Zesde Vlak, additional information about this comp by the man himself.

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#289 Caught In A Mosh With Johnny Depp, Jason Priestly And Agent Orange

Remember that awesome show 21 Jump Street. I do! I watched it recently and suddenly remembered an episode with a bunch of punks. Watch below from 5.35 and on as Johnny Depp goes undercover in a criminally infested punk-den where 90210 hottie Jason Priestly is calling the shots. Both of them get caught in a mosh while Agent Orange is playing.

#288 Jimmy Fallon As Neil Young Featuring Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen joins Jimmy Fallon dressed up as Neil Young on stage to perform a dramatized version of Willow Smith’s (yes, Will Smith’s other offspring) 2010 novelty classic “Whip My Hair”.

#287 Henry Rollins On Selling Your Music To Car Commercials

Staying on the Punk Rock Friday tip. Here's the ever angry Henry Rollins on the topic of selling out to "The Man". "The Man" being advertising agencies and I guess... me.

#286 XXL Reveal The Punk In You Commercial

Speaking of Punk Rock Friday. XXL is asking you to "Reveal The Punk In You" and by their clothing.

#285 Punk Rock Friday

#284 Beeps And Smudges, An iPhone Album

One of the best things about both the iPhone and the iPad are the various apps for making music. These apps all have different approaches to making music, are most of the time very accessible, easy to use and fit in the palm of your hand. It's only a matter of time of course before a slew of recordings that have been made with these kind of Apps will see the light of day.
Doc Pop's "Beeps and Smudges" is such an album, filled with "melody driven minimal electronic music". He has a video (below!) and the album can be downloaded for only one dollar US.

#283 And Now For Something Really Crazy

Meet the future of pop and rock 'n roll. Her name is Hatsune Miku, a singer who's selling out stadiums all across Japan. Hatsune, created by Crypton Future Media, is a physical presentation of the Vocaloid 2 speech synthesis engine from Yamaha. In other words. She's what you'd call a hologram and in Japan has as much appeal as other pop stars. Weird guys those Japanese.

#282 Dr. Dre New Single "Kush" Featuring Snoop and Akon

Rumor has it, that what you're about to listen is the first single from Dr. Dre's for ever and ever delayed Detox album.
Dr. Dre featuring Snoop Dogg & Akon - Kush by Hypetrak

#281 Perfect Zwolle (by Gert Jaap)

Perfect Zwolle by Gert-Jaap is a compilation featuring the best of what Zwolle has to offer in terms of Hip-Hop. All of this is in Dutch so I can't imagine lyrically this being very interesting for anybody not speaking the language. However, the various beats created by the likes of Kubus, Delic and A.R.T. cross all language barriers.

Gert-Jaap's full story here.
Download via wetransfer here.
(Incomplete) Spotify list right here.

#280 Limited Vinyl Records Made From Your Ashes

Nobody likes to think about their own mortality, but face it, we all have to go at one point.
So what to do with your remains after your death? Well... this might be an interesting suggestions, especially for all you vinyl loving, crate digging, collector freaks that frequent this blog. Turn your body into a record.

A joke? No! Over at andvinaly.com all arrangements can be made. A package with 30 records will cost you only 3000 english pounds. You will have to provide your own recordings and artwork, unless you're willing to shove out another 3500 for artwork done by artists they provide.
Just hope you don't end up in the used-bin at a shitty second had record store.

#279 The Ten Crack Commandments In Actual Marble

Artists Swyndle & Hawks created Biggie Smalls' 10 crack commandments... in actual marble. Love it!

#278 Bob Marley Baby

I'm normally not the one to post anything having to do with babies. But in this case I'll make an exception.

#277 Punk Rock Friday

#276 I'm With The Brand, A Post About Dr. Martens The Music Patron

Interesting article on the Mojo magazine website called I'm With The Brand, a headline so smart I wish I had though of it... but decided to steal nonetheless.
They talk about the patron-artist relation ship I mentioned a little while ago, in my post about Converse and there fully equipped, free for all studio.
What they mention, and I neglected, is the deal Converse makes with these artists. Most importantly: Converse has no say over the music, the artist will retain full ownership rights and the songs won't be used in any Converse ads.
Converse is simply giving back to a community that helped them build their brand through the likes of The Strokes and The Ramones, hoping in return for the good will of a new generation of consumers.

What I didn't know just yet, is that Dr. Martens did a similar thing earlier this year.
Celebrating their 50th anniversary, Dr. Martens created a free sampler of current bands doing covers of older bands and combined them with various up and coming directors. Those directors shot music videos and behind the scenes footage (that all look like fashion shoots). All for the cost of... your email address.

Watch MC5's Michael Davis and D.O.A. cover Cold War Kids' Something Is Not Right With Me below.

#275 Gang Of Four In X-Box Kinect Commercial

*Update*
Thanks to my friend D. Van Ark I now know that there's also a LCD SoundSystem version of this commercial.

#274 A Totally SFW-Post About Porn (And The Way More Boring Subject Of Copyright)

Last week there was a story about porn producer Axel Braun. He and some of his smut producing colleagues have started a war on illegal downloaders. That's right downloaders, not the seeders, individual downloaders that partake in the illegal practice of copyright infringement. Axel Braun alone has sued 8000 individuals. The industry is hoping that this "individual" approach will bring shame on the persons involved, hoping that this shame will help resolve this problem.

Being the kind of person that does not walk away from porn research, I dug a little deeper in the world of Axel Braun. It turns out, that besides your regular porn niches, Axel Braun is the Stanley Kubrick of porn parodies. Numerous of popular films and TV-shows, including their characters, story lines and their music, have been reshaped and by adding mass amounts of dicks, tits and ass, been parodied.

When it comes to copyright and parodies all knowing wikipedia states: "A parody (pronounced /ˈpærədiː/; also called send-up, spoof or lampoon), in contemporary usage, is a work created to mock, comment on, or make fun at an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation. " and in that sense has a fair-use policy when it comes to copyright.
What I'm wondering right now, are these porn parodies in fact works to mock, comment on or make fun at the originals, or are these parodies a very easy way to cash in on other people's creative work that has copyright on it themselves.

Watch some of Alex's trailers below.

#273 Perfect Autumn III (according to René Noels, @nudels247)

Perfect Autumn III, the ultimate fall inspired musical collection. Created by René Noels to accompany you during these cold, dark, rainy and windy days.

Enjoy!

Download.
Spotify.

#272 OperaBots... Attack!

The people at MIT (Massachusetts Institue of Technology) have come up with something interesting. An Opera featuring singing walls and dancing robots. Sounds like something from the future eh? Well it pretty much looks like something from the future as well. Just check out the video below and go read more info here.

#271 Backstreet's Back All Right!

Backstreet's back! The group with Nick, Brian AJ, Howie and Kevin performed at Oprah last week and in honor of that Buzzfeed looks back at the 30 most ridiculous Backstreet Boys pictures. Here's some examples:

The Backstreet Race Car Boys
The Furry Loving Sexually Confused Backstreet Boys
The Furry Loving Sexually Confused Backstreet Boys Pt II.

Find the complete top 30 here.

#270 Punk Rock Friday

On a Saturday cause that's what happens when you're cut off from the internet for two days.

#269 Perfect I Am Kloot (by Allard de Wijkerslooth, @manmetbril)

Perfect I Am Kloot.
Enjoy!

Download.
Spotify.

#268 Will Ferrel And Manny Pacquiao Do "Imagine"

Will Ferrell and Welterweight World Champion Manny Pacquiao perform a surprisingly touching duet of John Lennon's “Imagine”....

#267 Bow Wow Wow Yippie Yo Yippie Yee

I find pretty much anything to do with Snoop Dogg funny. Picture of Snoop with a sea lion... funny.
New Pepsi commercial.... funny.

#266 Perfect Kippenvel 4 (according DJ St Paul, @stpauldj)

This Perfect Kippenvel (Goose Bumbs) is already the fourth installment in this series within the perfect series and again done by none other then DJ St Paul. This ain't a compilation this is a treasure chamber.

On December 18tha nd 19th St. Paul is organising " Weekend Van Het Kippenvel" (yes! that means Weekend of Goose Bumbs) in Tivoli de Helling, with amongst others: Maurits Westerik, The Crookes, Pete & The Pirates, Broken Glass Heroes, de Kippenvel Popquiz and Tim Knol.

Spotify.
Dowload.
Previous Installments of the Kippenvel Perfects.

#265 BBC2 NewsNight On The Fiat / Faithless Deal

I informed you all about the Fiat / Faithless team-up from earlier this year. Fiat payed for a full on high production value music video to promote the Faithless' new single but in return claimed part of that video as their own, extensively showing both interior as well as exterior of a new car their were launching.

BBC2's Newsnight is discussing this whole "Bands and Brands" phenomenon, trying to figure out whether this is the beginning of a new era or the end of musical creativity as we know it.