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I posted this on my twitter, but it’s just too good not to draw more attention to. If your a fan of Girl Talk, especially if you also enjoy a bit of the indie rock, then you have to check out The Hood Internet’s fourth mixtape. It’s a collection of hip-hop/indie mash-ups mixed together into one long set. Oh, and it’s free – so why are you still reading this? =P

ladies and gentelmen, i present to you the best song/music video of 2008:

natalie portman’s shaved head – sophisticated side ponytail from thatgo on Vimeo.

Some guy is making music videos for Girl Talk’s new CD.  This one is probably my favorite song.  He has a couple more on his youtube account.

YouTube – Girl Talk – Feed the Animals – Music Video (2 of 14).

I’m sorry for exposing this to you guys but it’s too funny. Now I just have to get this song out of my head before I go crazy…

For those of you who don’t know who Girl Talk is (shame on you!) he is a “DJ” that takes pop songs and mixes them together to make new songs.  The samples are only played for about 10 seconds but can be much shorter.  Often their mixed with 2 or 3 other songs at the same time.  It’s kind of hard to explain so take this time youtube him…

His new record Feed The Animals just came out and it’s just as good as his last, Night Ripper.  If you liked Night Ripper then you’ll like Feed The Animals.  Unfortunately, the same is true if you weren’t a fan.  Girl Talk played it pretty safe and aside from some cuts from recent tracks, it’s pretty impossible to differentiate between Girl Talk and Night Ripper.  The guy pretty much invented a musical genre though, so it’s hard to fault him for his lack of innovation. 

Personally, I liked the album.  Any song that can get me to actually like Avril Lavigne’s Girlfriend has to be good.  Be on the look out for Whoop (There It Is), Stronger, R. Kelly’s Flirt remix, and Glamorous too.  Half the fun is recognizing the next track Girl Talk decides to throw at you.  It’s fun to see someones eyes light up when they are hearing a track for the first time and all of a sudden Girl Talk tosses in a song they really like out of nowhere.

The Record is available online under a Radiohead-like pricing model.  That is to say, it’s name your own price.  If you decide to pay $0.00 like I did, be prepared to give your reason from a list of options.  Girl Talk may not be getting any money from me for his new CD but i’m definitely going to see him next time he is in town (I missed him last time when he played at Firestone because I had an exam the next day).

I went to go see Tokyo Police Club at Backbooth last night, and let me just say right now that they were freaking awesome. If you’re not familiar with TPC, the 4 member Canadian indie rock band first came on to the scene with their debut EP, A Lesson in Crime. They became known for their energy and breakneck pace of their songs (most clock in at under 3 minutes and the EP was barely over 16). Now, they have completed their first full length, Elephant Shell, which will be coming out later this month but has already leaked on the Internet to the delight of fans everywhere (including me)! Elephant Shell continues TPC’s affinity for hand claps and tambourines, mixed with infectious keyboards. Sticking with their mantra of always leaving them wanting more, the longest song on Elephant Shell is the standout track, Your English is Good, which is only 3min 12 sec long. Like Valve’s breakthrough video game Portal, you know your doing something right when critics’ biggest complaint is that it’s too short.

The band started their set with La Ferrassie, a perfect opener that starts of slow but half way through you can almost feel the strain of the band trying to contain itself. By the end of the song, they become the hyper Tokyo Police Club we all know and love and they didn’t let up after that. Because the tracks are so short, I read that TPC were experimenting on how to link the songs together so that they didn’t work the crowd up into a frenzy only to stop and start a new song 2 minutes later. They did a pretty good job of it stopping only twice to talk to the fans and starting up again with slower tracks before delving into some higher tempo things. For their encore, they preformed Cheer It On, complete with fans screaming “Tokyo Police Club” with the band during the chorus. If you like what you hear, get A Lesson In Crime and look for Elephant Shell to drop April 22nd.

I was watching the trailer for Pineapple Express which led me to search for the sweet song that starts about half way through. Its from M.I.A.’s 2007 album Kala and its called Paper Planes. It’s an awesome track and I’ve been listening to it on my iTunes a lot at home. When I’m driving, I hear Sara Bareilles’ Love Song on the radio all the time and I’m willing to admit that I thinks it is a great song too.

Just a quick update from your blogger-in-chief:

I’ve been in kind of a blogging lull these last couple weeks, my last post, An Ode to Television, was kind of a write-in because I promised some friends I would blog. I do have some things I want to talk about though:

• TV
  • I am watching Cheerleader U on WE channel and want to give some thoughts/updates on that.
  • Expect more heated discussion on Lost (sorry for the readers out there who don’t watch it).
  • The Road Rules/Real World Gauntlet Reunion was the lamest hour of TV… EVER. Stop taking it so serious guys – YOU ARE ON A GLORIFIED GAME SHOW.
  • The last episode of South Park one the the best in a while. I keep thinking Matt and Trey are going to lose their touch but they surprise me every season.
    • All episodes are now available for free online… legally!
  • Real quick – the professional dancers on Dancing with the Stars are HOT.
• Politics
  • I want to talk about Obama and the presidential race a bit more .
  • Joe Klein’s article on a possible Gore-Obama ticket reads like a journey through my wet dreams.
  • Look for a new contributer to hectorhector.com to make his debut post in a couple days about the race.
• Music
  • There have been some good records coming out/leaked recently so I want to talk about them and write up some reviews.

So thats what you should be looking forward to on hectorhector in the next month or so. Also, you guys probably didn’t notice but I fixed the categories on the blog so clicking on them will send you to similar posts. Hopefully I will be able to convince Natty to post in the correct categories so I don’t have to fix them for him anymore but I doubt I will be successful.

If you happen to be on my friends list or check my status on xbox.com you will have noticed that I have been playing Rock Band (a lot). The game has taken my house by storm and has even converted my more video game adverse roommates into full fledged video rock stars. Board game night has been transformed into Rock Band night. No one is able to ward off its Siren’s song (especially if that song happens to be Weezer’s Say It Ain’t So). The thrill of riffing a heavy metal guitar solo, spitting the the lyrics for the Beastie Boy’s Sabotage, or playing Travis Barker during Blink-182’s All the Small things is sometimes too much fun.

So, what makes Rock Band so compelling? Well, Rock Band isn’t an ordinary video game. In fact, it can hardly be considered a video game at all. Sure, Rock Band has all the conventions of a video game. You hook it up to your Xbox 360 or Playstation 3, score points and are rated on your performance, and can win or lose depending on your execution. But really, Rock Band has more in common with a night of karaoke than with Halo 3. Rock Band’s allure is understood when you realize that Rock Band is more of a toy than anything else. An expensive, technologically advanced, extremely fun, toy. It has this in common with the Wii and Wii sports. When the Wii came out everyone and their mom was playing Wii Tennis and Wii Bowling. By shattering the conventions of what videogames are, and what they can be, companies like Nintendo and Rock Band’s Harmonix are opening up the video game industry to people it has normally shunned (the elderly, girls).

As if being the darling of the video game industry wasn’t enough for Rock Band, it is poised to lead a revolution in an another, more troubled, industry. Ever since Napster, the the music industry has been scrambling to find a way to make money on recorded music in the digital age. Less and less people are willing to pay for recorded music when it is just as easy (easier most cases, in fact) to download it illegally for free. This is good news for bands who prefer to make their money touring but bad news for record labels. Harmonix, with the help of their new parent company MTV, are offering record companies a new way to sell music online.  All ready, Rock Band has sold 2.5 million songs online.  The plan is to release 200 songs in 2008, including entire records such as Nirvana’s Nevermind.  Imagine record companies and bands not selling music online to listen to on your computer or ipod but selling music online to play.  I’m not saying that this will be a dramatic shift in the industry, but it shows that the music industry can still make money off of music if they embrace technology instead of fighting it.