One of the best, and therefor longest lasting, Ska bands from Japan is Tokyo Ska Paradise. The first track is Diamond In Your Heart released in July, the second is SUIKINKUTSU featuring the Piano goodness of Hiromi Uehara. The third song is Sky without Canary with Chibayuusuke of Thee Michelle Gun Elephant fame on vocals from 2009, and the final track of tonight’s collection is Chuosame Yoshie singing Cat Playing in the Twilight. If you like jazz, or ska, or big band, this is a group you want to pay attention to when they come your way.
This Sunday, 21Sep14, The Planetary Society will be doing a special live broadcast to welcome MAVEN to Mars: Planetary Radio Live: MAVEN Arrives at Mars. It starts at 6PM on the west coast, 9PM on the east, and I have no idea what time it will be on Mars. If you happen to be in California for the event, you can attend free if you RSVP, but I suspect most folks will be attending online. They will be tuning into NASA TV for the landing itself, here are the list of folks doing the show:
Moderator:
Mat Kaplan: host and producer, Planetary Radio for The Planetary Society
Guests:
Bruce Betts: Director of Science and Technology, The Planetary Society
Emily Lakdawalla: Senior Editor and Planetary Evangelist, The Planetary Society
Bill Nye the Science Guy: CEO, The Planetary Society
Richard Zurek Ph.D: Chief Scientist for the Mars Program Office and Project Scientist for the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)
It does seem just a little strange to me that a bunch of engineers would be calling a video presentation a radio show, they usually tend to be more accurate with their nomenclature than that. It should be pretty exciting, I for one will be enjoying the program, I hope you will be too.
Not an aspect of Korean pop music you usually hear much from on this side of the Pacific, K-Jazz has some quite tasty examples, and I thought I would share a few this week. The first track is Bank by Puer Kim from her new mini-album Purifier. She isn’t singing about money here, but how to save up good deeds in your spiritual bank account, so you end up making a positive difference in the world with your life. The second track is the Girls Generation 2013 hit Twinkle, a jazz/rock fusion K-Pop masterpiece. There are a lot more where these came from, be sure to explore this musical category when you have a chance.
Wye Oak played quite a tasty set when they were on KEXP last month, and after the 15th time I went back and re-listened to it I realized I needed to share it. The band is a couple of very interesting people from Baltimore, MD, named Andy Stack and Jenn Wasner, who have had tracks included in shows like The Walking Dead and the US version of Being Human. Check out this performance and see if you don’t also conclude they are worth tracking down and hearing in person.
If you were there, you know there is no way to make anyone who wasn’t understand the experience. This is the set that closed the show, on Monday morning, August 18th, at 8AM. Of course, it was supposed to happen on Sunday night, but the entire event was running on hippy time, and by the time it became Hendrix’s turn, that rather elastic time frame had stretched more than a bit. The video quality is poor, and the portable audio recording technology of the time was never more than half as good as hearing a live song recorded in a studio, either of which couldn’t hold a candle to what you actually heard in person. But I just find it amazing that I can actually hear this again, let alone see it, and had to share it. The first choice is audio, thanks to Archive.Org, the second video from Vimeo, and the credit for the heads up goes to Open Culture.
They took the video down that I had embedded here, so removed the embed command string. I am guessing they only had it posted through the anniversary of the actual event.
Another variation of Nerdcore has crossed my attention horizon, so I have to mention Epic Rap Battles of History, a very amusing project. I selected a few of my favorites to give you the idea, including Sir Isaac Newton vs Bill Nye and Nikola Tesla vs Thomas Edison, but they are just the tip of the iceberg. Visit their web site to check them all out and vote, and be sure to check out Steve Jobs vs Bill Gates on their YouTube page.