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I’m quite jealous of M. Ward.
You can visit the link to see how sickeningly prolific and successful he has been. The guy has churned out nine albums in ten years, five of which are excellent. His most-recent solo album, Hold Time, is my album of the year. He’s an astonishing guitarist, superb vocalist and a surprisingly insightful lyricist and writer. He also seems to be a rather nice guy. Some people have one area that they excel in; M. Ward has several. Why be jealous of a talented musician? He’ll be my age in October.
It must be wonderful to be M Ward. One could look back at a body of work that has actually improved. To have evidence of having so much ability that one can siphon off some of it with side projects such as She & Him and Monsters of Folk. I’m listening to Post War right now, and the richness of the production and quality of the playing has me mesmerised. Like most kids, I once harboured fantasies of being a pop star and having such an impact on people through their headphones. Alas, I had little musical ability or opportunity, but the music bug is served in a little way through making mixes. Having people tell me that they danced to them in the Dallas, Mexico or Dublin still amazes and delights me. It’s a great feeling to put stuff out there and get a reaction.
Earlier this week, a young man from Dublin called Tom O’C uploaded a self-made track called Entrepreneur to YouTube. Very quickly, his video became the most viewed video in Ireland and was making waves across the globe. Tom O’C went viral.
For all the wrong reasons.
He has since pulled the video, but before doing so, he had elicited a maelstrom of criticism and ridicule. Don’t get me wrong, the track is very poor (If the clumsy use of Autotune – itself nearing the end of it’s shelf life – does his voice no favours, the faintly silly gangsta posturing is just too much for viewers to pass up). Anyone who creates and shares is fair game for critique – and some of that can be sharp/bitchy and funny - but the vitriol that this relatively harmless individual has fielded is just ugly.
Tom O’C is a bit silly, but that’s not a particularly awful thing. He’s doing his creative thing and at least he’s putting it out there. He has a lot of skills to acquire -bluster and swagger are very difficult attributes to pull off charismatically. Ditch the Autotune (surprisingly, it actually sounds like you might have a reasonably decent voice underneath all of that gimmickry).
It’s probably a very good thing that M. Ward didn’t have the tools or means to make such an immediate impact as Tom O’C. The accomplished, assured craftsmanship we hear now is the product of years of practice and learning. I have no doubt that there are thousands of equally talented artists uploading their early works to YouTube as we speak. Tom O’C probably isn’t one of these, but he’s young and I’m hoping that this whole nasty business doesn’t crush him.
Respeck.
UPDATE: Seems like it’s not really by Tom O’Connor at all. Apparently someone (“maybe a competitor”) grabbed some of this guys pics from O’Connor’s Facebook and Bebo profiles and autotuned a track by amateur Irish rapper Dizzy D. The plot thickens.
It’s gig time and tomorrow night I see the Pets for the fourth time live in concert.
The first time was in 1999 in The Point in Dublin (now reborn as the O2 incidentally) avec the Mexican Ex (henceforth known as t’ExMex). It wasn’t a sellout and they barely filled half the venue. Oopsies! They were pretty good though.
The second time was in London at the Astoria (RIP) for their Release tour. Again with t’ExMex. Amazingly that was my first ever visit to London, where I now live! ‘Acoustic’ and great atmosphere.
Fast forward to 2007 and a Hallowe’en gig back in Dublin. Are we not jolly. Gig was great but a slight bit lifeless at times. Still, we looked utterly deranged in our outfits, no?
And now it’s time to see them in the monster venue of the o2. 16,000 sellout it appears. Who would have thought, eh?
I’ve heard no reports of the gigs so far, but the vids on YouTube at least look impressive. The Boys themselves are a bit grouchy about people making shaky video recordings on phones and Flips (hee hee), but we shall forgive them as they are getting on and no doubt a bit precious. (They have embraced Twitter though, which is pretty impressive.)
So, just to annoy them, here’s The Way It Used To Be and Jealousy from Moscow.
From Boonehams:
The idea of “Inappropriate Soundtracks” was inspired by the SomethingAwful forums. Basically, it’s taking a scene from a movie, changing its background music to something wildly inappropriate and thus, ruining that scene from the film.
Ok then…
Fight Club
Titanic
Awakenings
The Exorcist
Hee hee!
I love how Chris Lowe has totally gotten into Twitter this last while. He’s great at uploading Twitpics from television studios and various other popstar situations. And you can eavesdrop on tweets between PSB and other ’slebs. How v modern.
He just uploaded this pic of Neil and Tom ‘Superchumbo’ Stephen (Neil’s ex, I think) having tea*.
It makes me feel slightly better about YouTubing our SingStar exploits, Twittering at conferences and the like.
* And how English of them to be having tea at 4pm.
You wait all your life for a ridiculous/fabulous electrocamp track called Shoes to come along and then two come along in as many years.
Here’s Tiga’s one:
And it’s delightful. Continuing this week’s accidental Mexican theme,here is the proper video for my No 1 track of 2008. Shot on location in the towns of Garcia, Xilitla, and the Icamole Desert in Mexico. Here are the EOTS boys throwing shapes and looking silly as all sorts of Día de los Muertos malarkey happens around them.
And this is what proper popstars should do. Huzzah!
Happy weekend.
Ok, that was weird. The previous post was generated from my iPod Touch using the new WordPress application, but I had no idea that anything had actually been posted. What japes!
To apologise for the confusion, I’m posting the very lovely video of Lionel Ritchie’s ‘Hello’ (sort of…) Heh heh..
Ok, if either Apple or The Bird & The Bee don’t immediately approach the guy who made this with a large cheque, I’ll eat my housemate’s second copy of Céline Dion’s ‘Taking Chances’.
