Man alive, I fucking love YouTube! I’ve found so much good shit on there recently that I can hardly believe my luck. I figure I can’t be the only one impressed by all the great music on that site, so I’ve created this little thread where we can share our best finds. Who knows? Maybe we’ll all broaden eachother’s horizons a little bit? Here’s just a few of the awesome tunes I’ve found on YouTube in the last couple of days:
AWOLNATION - Sail (I don’t know what the fuck this is, but it’s fucking AWESOME!)
Jokers - Jokers Theme (This one’s a rarity. Jokers were an Iranian psychedelic blues band from the '70s. Best I can tell, they made one amazing album - which, incidentally, you can’t find anywhere - and then dropped off the face of the earth. If you only listen to one of these, make it this one.)
In the interests of socially responsible sharing, I should add that, if you like any of the tunes you find in this thread, you really should do the decent thing and head over to iTunes and help support the artists that made it, rather than being crafty and nabbing it off listentoyoutube.com or anything like that. Cheers.
Actually, YouTube and Itunes have made me a music consumer again after years of hardly buying any music at all.
Not sure how the Mrs. and I found out about the Mountain Firework Company (an Irish band that plays folk, country, bluegrass, folk-rock, etc.), but they did some sessions meant to mimic the old radio shows with a bunch of musicians crowded around a microphone. Our favorite is Sometimes.
That song lead us to this lovely duet by Johnny Flynn and Laura Marling, The Water.
Found both of these by chance one evening not long ago. Whether they can be considered “great” or not is most definitely a matter of taste. I was fascinated by some of the similarities - especially considering that this (M. Finissey’s English Country Tunes) is a composed piece and this (Cecil Taylor in a “free improvisation”) is - well - improvised.
I have to thank Rebecca Black for one. I was watching her Friday video to see what all the fuss was about, and I found this Canadian singer named LIGHTS over in the sidebar:
She does all the songwriting, vocals/backing vocals, and music herself.
A couple years ago, on an e-mail list for bass players, somebody shared a link with the comment, “Check out this bass player!” Well, the bass player was outstanding, but I was completely blown away by the piano player, jazz lady Hiromi Uehara:
I’ve ended up buying albums from both of the above on iTunes.
Last week while watching The Guild’s latest music video, I found this cute little dancing violinist, Lindsey Stirling, in the sidebar:
Music I bought because of Youtube is Pomplemoose’s album of covers and this one original song If You Think You Need Some Lovin’. I found them in a thread like this.
Back in the Commodore 64 days, there was a game called Monty on the Run, which had arguably the best chiptune song ever. It’s really rockin’. (And if you liked that, you should also check out Paced Energy and Predestined Fate, by Souleye)
There’s a small subgenre on youtube of people taking famous songs and covering them, solo, recording themselves on multiple instruments and then running them together. When someone recreate a good song, that’s cool, but when someone rehabilitate a terrible song, without even using any instruments…well, that’s just on a whole 'nother level.
If you’re looking for “serene”, then you’d be hard-pressed to find better than Rare Respite.
And even though I mention it every time a thread like this comes up, if you’re at all interested in instrumental music, check out this epic medley piano solo piece. It is outstanding.
Some obscure bands can be found on YouTube that you can’t buy online.
One of them is the remarkable band, Klaatu.
From their second album, ‘Hope’, is this very interesting SF song: One of my favorites is Around the Universe in Eighty Days.
