Thursday Morning Video Dump

[collisionwork]

Hiya, friends.

So there's a buildup of videos I've been finding and bookmarking at YouTube that I thought I'd share wit' you and yours. As I've been doing, these are all behind cuts for those whose browsers flip out if I drop a load of video on them all at once.

So to start, say hello to The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band with three videos:

"The Intro and The Outro," a classic track from Gorilla, which someone has helpfully annotated with images (later, Vivian Stanshall of the Bonzos would perform a more serious job of introducing instruments on Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells).

"Death Cab for Cutie," as performed on the pre-Monty Python kids' show from Terry Jones, Michael Palin, Eric Idle (and others), Do Not Adjust Your Set (the Bonzos also did this song in The Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour). There's another number after this featuring Idle and The Bonzos.

And the classic 1968 single, "I'm The Urban Spaceman," produced by Paul McCartney (and Gus Dudgeon) under a pseudonym -- in a strange coincidence, I was just idly thinking about maybe or maybe not posting these Bonzos videos earlier this morning, when I looked up and saw, in an entirely non-sequitur context, someone who had used Macca's fake name - "Apollo C. Vermouth" - as their own online handle, which decided me on making the post.

And here's a collection of videos from The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion (now apparently just Blues Explosion). Always liked them, don't have enough by them (Berit had more than I did when we got together, mainly some fairly-rare import-only releases that she didn't even know were such).

The videos are for "Wail," "Bellbottoms," and "Talk About The Blues" - in the last the band members are played by Winona Ryder, Giovanni Ribisi, and John C. Reilly.

This is followed by the clip that made me look for the other videos - Jon Spencer demonstrating his theremin technique on a children's show - including some behavior that you wouldn't normally see in the context of a kids' show. I think (and hope that) he may have really broadened the minds of some young viewers here . . .

And finally, for many years while we hung out in NYC, my good friend David LM Mcintyre would occasionally get into pointless arguments with other people (usually around 3am, after shows, in East Village bars) about a ridiculous, trivial little piece of pop-culture advertising ephemera from our youth (as us Gen-Xers can be so prone in doing). This was the origin and original design/characterization of The Grimace from the McDonald's commercials. How's that for Gen-X nostalgia?

David would insist to people that The Grimace was originally a villain, called The Evil Grimace, with six arms. Nobody ever agreed with him and thought he was making it up (I was the only person who would support him at all, as I remembered the multiple arms, but nothing else).

Well, thanks to the modern conveniences of Wikipedia and YouTube, David could now prove to all that he was right (except it looks like four arms, not six), if he ever needed to again. Here's two examples.

And on top of those two pieces of early-70s televisualness included to give some of us a bit of a Proustian rush, there's also an animated report from the police chief of Leonardo, NJ on what is being done about the Mutaba Virus outbreak:

Enjoy.

Comments

Death Cab ignorance

[(Anonymous)]

I'm not a fan of Death Cab for Cutie, the band, and so was surprised to learn that they took their band name from a Bonzos song. That doesn't make me want to like their music any more than I do now (which is not at all). Mainly, I can't get past their band name, although in recent years I finally realized that Mahavishnu Orchestra is not an Indian classical ensemble. I certainly enjoy their fiery fusion, much of which leaves the Red-era King Crimson a distant second. (Nevertheless, I refuse to believe Belle & Sebastian is a band and not a pair of acoustic folkies.)
TXC