New Year's Eve: Songs for Different Outlooks

How are you approaching New Year's Eve? Are you looking wearily back? Optimistically forward? Or are you living in the moment? Whatever your mood, there's a New Year's song for you.

If you're eager to tell 2012 to shove off, try "Thank God It's Over" by Jim's Big Ego.


If you hope that wishful thinking will make a difference for 2013, check out the new Rescues song "Everything's Gonna Be Better Next Year."


If you're focused on the ever-present now, then it's time for Ben Fold's "Picture Window."


What song fits your perspective?

Life After A Cappella

With the huge number of college a cappella groups out there, it should come as no surprise that some of the alums of these groups should go onto careers in music using (GASP!) instruments. Here's a before and after comparison of four of the best.

Sara Bareilles

Back in College

Before she became the newest judge on The Sing-Off, Sara Bareilles sang in a UCLA's Awaken A Cappella. The collegiate a cappella repertoire is mostly made of cover songs, but that didn't stop Sara and Awaken from singing her original composition "Gravity." The recording was selected to appear on the Best of College A Cappella 2004 compilation.



Life After A Cappella

For her solo career, Sara sat down at a piano, got a band, and recorded a new version of "Gravity." And a little thing called "Love Song." (I think it sold a few copies.) Here she is singing her super catchy "King of Anything" on Craig Ferguson.



Jonathan Coulton

Back In College

Jonathan Coulton sang in the prestigious, if not especially hip, Whiffenpoofs. Here's his solo turn on "Midnight Train to Georgia."



It doesn't begin to hint at the performer he'll grow to be, but it's not bad when you consider how hard it is to be soulful when you're surrounded by men in tuxedos (white tie, no less.)

Life After A Cappella

Jonathan Coulton is a reveared singer-songwriter. Many of the songs are noteworthy for their nerdy sense of humor, but he doesn't write throw-away novelty songs--the songs are built on a very real emotional foundation.

Coulton rise to fame happened while he was doing a project where he'd record and release a song every week for a year. Given his a cappella experience, it makes sense that his homemade tracks would feature great vocal harmonies, but don't forget that he's also a multi-instrumentalist. He played almost all of the parts on the Thing-A-Week songs.



Coulton is currently recording a new studio album -- produced by TMBG's John Flansburgh -- with a full band.

John Legend

Back in College

John Legend used to sing with a pop/jazz group at the University of Pennsylvania called The Counterparts. His solos on songs like Joan Osbourn's "One of Us" and Prince's "Somebody's Somebody" made it clear that he was a talent worth watching. Here's his version of "We Can Work It Out" (in the footprints of Stevie Wonder's cover version.)



Life After A Cappella

How good is this guy? He changed his last name to "Legend" (his real name is John Stephens) and absolutely nobody thinks it was an act of hubris.



Adam Gardner
Back in College

Adam Gardner sang in the Tufts Beelzebubs.



Life After A Cappella

You may know Adam as one of the singers and guitarists of the band Guster. Like the Beelzebubs, Guster was also a founded by Tufts students.



Gabriel Mann

Back in College

Gabriel Mann sang with Off the Beat from the University of Pennsylvania. During this time, he was well regarded for his inventive and extremely influential arrangements. While the Beelzebubs (especially Deke Sharon) are known for having taught college groups how to sing like rock stars, Gabe was credited for introducing an alternative sound to the scene through the use of complex charts and sylables that were more suitable to Pearl Jam covers than than the traditional "Ba," "Da," "Doo," and "Dum" sounds.



Life After A Cappella

Gabriel Mann has released several records as a solo artist. Most recently, he joined the quartet The Rescues.



What Goes Around, Comes Around

The fully instrumented songs by the former collegiate a cappella singers... are now getting covered by a cappella groups. To give you just a taste, here's The Rescue's song "Crazy Ever After" as covered by the Socal Vocals.

As mentioned earlier, here's Ben Folds' audience participation recording of Working Day!



Yeah, I really like this song.

The Perfect Folk Song

Arlo Guthrie makes a very strong case here that this Elvis song is actually a folk song. I'm inclined to agree with him. "I Can't Help Falling In Love With You" is, in my opinion, tied for the title of The Perfect Folk Song. (More on the other song later...) It's so simple and pure that it feels like it belongs to YOU and to everybody at the same time.

It's a great song, a great performance, and a great story. Enjoy.

Thanks, Humanists

I already loved the Molly Lewis song "An Open Letter to Stephen Fry," so I was glad to hear that she would be singing the song in front of the man himself. As I watched the video of the performance, I thought it couldn't possibly get any better. Then the camera pulled back to reveal... an ASL interpreter! Consider the lily gilded.

It's Your Day. A Woman's Day.

Stephen Colbert... in Concert!

Specifically, he will be playing the role of Harry in the New York Philharmonic concert version of Stephen Sondheim's Company. If you're a Colbert fan who's not familiar with Company, it's a great show and the part is very well suited to Stephen's voice. His character is the principle singer of a song called "Sorry-Grateful". Here's a clip of the song from the recent -- and wonderful -- Broadway revival (featuring Keith Buterbaugh as Harry):



If you're a fan of Company who's horrified about the funny TV guy trying to sing, here's Stephen Colbert singing a duet with John Legend:



Need more? Here he is singing a duet with Elvis Costello:

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Oh, and in case you didn't know, the concert will star Neil Patrick Harris. Does anybody still need proof he can sing? Really? Okay, fine. Here's Neil showing how damn good he is with Sondheim:

New Kind of Cool

I think this song really nails what it felt like to be in Junior High and to feel... different. (And didn't everybody feel different?) I couldn't find a video for the full studio recording on YouTube, so I fixed that by making this one. I hope it lives up to the glorious geekiness of the song itself.

All of the toys are real. You can find most of them on Amazon. A few of the odder ones are from the Archie McPhee catalogue, Sideshow Collectibles, Reaper, and Valve.


A New Kind of Cool
by The Rescues
Adrianne Gonzalez

I study you so well
I know your every smell
From the back of the room
I can't learn a thing
All I can do
Is stare at you

But my body is all a wreck
An adolescent mess
They call me names
'Cause I can't squeeze in
And don't know how to act
But I will not be ashamed...

If you'd stay with me forever
We'll be weird together
We'll make up our own rules
Create a new kind of cool

We'd walk the halls with ease
Say all the smartest things
And they'd wish they knew
What makes us laugh and
What cigarettes we smoke
Or even if we do 'cause...

If you'd stay with me forever
We'll be weird together
We'll make up our own rules
Create a new kind of cool

We'd never lose
We can pick and choose
Who soaks up all our fame
And we can shout and we could shut them out
Just to tarnish their names

And how I'd glow in my beauty
'Cause someone out there loves me

Right now life ain't so fun
I don't have anyone
If you only knew
The things that we could do
Just me and you
Conquer the world
King and Queen
At age 13

If you'd stay with me forever
We'll be weird together
We'll make up our own rules
Create a new kind of
A new kind of
A new kind of
Cool

Sing Along With Ben Folds

If you hadn't already noticed, this blog is named after a lyric from "Working Day," the opening track of the new Ben Folds CD. I just saw that Ben (in full Sing-Off mode) is recording an a cappella version of that song with a small, hand-picked group of singers. And by "hand-picked" I mean concert attendees. And by "small" I mean about 16,000 people. He's recording sections with the audiences at eight different concerts and then he'll edit them all together.

Here's a sample from one of the recording sessions:



This touches on multiple areas of interest for me, so I'm looking forward to hearing the finished product.

Muppets vs. Monty Python

Here's the "incomparable" Marvin Suggs (Frank Oz) playing "Witch Doctor" on the Muppaphone.



And, for comparison sake, here's Arthur Ewing (Terry Jones) playing "The Bells of St. Mary's" on his musical mice.



Before you worry about plagiarism, the basic premise for this skit pre-dates both The Muppets and Monty Python. (Fun fact: Terry Jones went on to write the screenplay for Jim Henson's Labyrinth. You probably knew that already, but it's such an amazingly cool collaboration that it deserves to be mentioned again.)

We'll Be Weird Together

On the off chance that you're seeing this post via a link from some other blog... I made a new and improved version of the post that you can see here. Sorry to have to redirect you, but I think you'll like the change.

The Worst Comment I've Seen In a Long While

An actor (who as of this moment remains unnamed) fell during the Monday night performance of the new Spider-Man musical. He was hurt, potentially very seriously. You can read more about it in this New York Times article. 

I think that any sane and decent person is just hoping that this guy recovers. I shouldn't be surprised that there are people online who are neither sane nor decent, and yet the comments section on the above New York Times story still caught me off guard. There are plenty of reasonable comments from people who are concerned about the injured performer and the safety of all of the other actors. But then there's the bitchy folks who seem to take glee in this. They don't want to see the show shut down for safety concerns--they just want to enjoy a juicy story about an epic flop closing while it's still in previews. Yeah, I expected that.

Here's what caught me off guard: The third comment was from Tom from Boston. Here's what he wrote:

"Whee! What a disaster! And all this to bring us the deathless literature of comic books. Good God, what has "culture" deteriorated into?"

Fuck you, Tom from Boston. Fuck you for being so indifferent to the fact that a man is in the hospital tonight. Fuck you for using his pain as an opportunity to show everybody how ever so superior you are. (Golly Gee, where would we be if we didn't have Tom from Boston to tell us how terrible comic books are?) Fuck you, Tom from Boston, fuck you for the sick implication that this accident somehow would have been acceptable if it had been the result of somebody trying to bring us culture (in a form that you consider to be undeteriorated.) Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, a thousand times fuck you for opening your jaw-droppingly shitty post by saying "Whee!"

Tom, if you're reading this, you're no doubt thinking that it's hypocritical of me to complain about your complete lack of decency and online etiquette by telling you to fuck off. (How vulgar of me!) But honestly, is there any more appropriate response?

You have no sense of humanity, Tom from Boston. Fuck you.

The Spoiler Alert to End All Spoiler Alerts

In his song "Spoiler Alert," MC Frontalot starts out by spoiling 15 movies. Then he moves on to give away the endings of Hamlet, the Roman Empire, and the 1980s. Spoiler Alert: At the end of the song you will forward it to all of your friends.

An Open Letter To Nick Hornby

Dear Nick Hornby,

I think there's been some kind of misunderstanding--I actually said Nick Hornsby (with an S) sucks. He's a douche I work with. He always takes credit for everything even when he was barely involved on the project. I actually really like you Nick Hornby (without an S). You write great novels. You write great lyrics. Even the movie versions of your books are pretty damn cool.

Anyway, sorry for the mix up. And, just to cut off any further confusion, I also enjoy the work of songwriter Bruce Hornsby. So if you're reading this, Bruce, please don't write a song about me.

Sincerely,

Some Guy On The Net