What I love about the approach is that it’s showing us a complicated, virtuoso performance, but making it really clear and accessible at the same time. It’s entertaining, but it’s also an exercise in demystification—which of course is exactly the opposite objective of every music video, ever. Their purpose has been to mystify, to masquerade, to mythologize in real-time.
via Making music without a mask « Snarkmarket.
Had a long internal battle with myself over which of their (Pomplamoose’s) songs to link – it was between September by Earth, Wind and Fire, and Single Ladies by Beyonce (ugh, which I’ve only just discovered I linked to by mistake in another post. More at the end of this post).
As you can see from the video above, September won out – not because I don’t think their version of Single Ladies wasn’t great, because it is (on more levels than one), but because to me, September better represented what the production-as-performance genre is all about – “subdivision of the video frame, lots of gear, performance, but above all performers” – who, by all appearances, to be normal; there’s no smoke machine, nor any hi-tech special effects.
It’s this kind of stuff that makes YouTube great. Like the Awesome Stopmotion Music (and it’s subsequent redux, coming soon to this blog), such pop-culture references, more commonly known as “memes” have absolutely exploded, and yeah. It’s great 😀
Right, so I only just discovered that I linked wrongly to Pomplamoose’s Single Ladies cover, when I was actually supposed to link to the Bottle Bank Arcade, part of the Fun Theory Redux. I’ve since rectified this error, you can now watch the Bottle Bank Arcade on the original post. My apologies for this.
This post part of Blogtober 2009. We’re almost there – and I’ve gotta start pumping out some serious posts, instead of just Pressing stuff from WordPress’ excellent, but making-me-a-lazy-blogger tool, the Press This bookmarklet. Ah well.