Gorgonzola Cheese!

I love music gizmos and don’t blog enough about them.  This is what I’d like for Christmas please:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hELTtsBRie4

Buy it here

I’m still working on getting the next big post up. In the meantime, enjoy this music video by Capsule. Their style used to be very Shibuya-kei (think Pizzicato 5 and early Fantastic Plastic Machine).  But like Fantastic Plastic Machine, they have evolved into more electro-house in recent years.  The song is called “Retro Memory” and available on their 2004 album, Sound Furniture.

external link to video for facebook users

I’ve been painstakingly trying to learn how to play piano for the past year anticipating the moment where I’m sitting at some old timey eating establishment minding my own business when an old crooner from the live band suddenly announces that the keyboardist has been injured and they will have to cancel the show unless there’s anyone in the audience who can fill in.  Like physicians on airplanes, the 2 keyboardists next to me will suddenly get very quiet and avoid any eye contact and then I will rise up to the occasion, a la Marty McFly, and meticulously plink out the keys to the theme of Dr. Wiley’s Castle stage from Mega Man 2 while the band jams along with me and we ROCK OUT.  Until that happens, here’s a guy with actual talent named Ronald Jenkees. There’s no telling if this guy is some Rain Man-esque savant or a classically trained musician fooling the world. Either way, I love how he can play so fluidly and freely and genuinely looks like he’s having the greatest time doing it.

I was reminded of this song the other day and thought I’d share it since it’s a big part of my childhood and probably why I enjoy trippy cartoons, pinball, and have problems counting above 12.  The Pinball Number Count made its debut on Sesame Street in 1977 and was recorded by Oakland’s The Pointer Sisters.

There is an excellent remix by DJ Food on Ninjatune’s Solid Steel Presents Sesame Street.

This cover of Europe’s The Final Countdown using a kazoo, ukelele, and keyboard hybrid made my day. I’d start my magic tricks illusions with this performance any day.

via Reddit

Here’s an excellent cover of Daft Punk’s “Something About Us.” It’s done by Randy George via Reddit.

He’s using a Nintendo DS with Jam Sessions (known as Hiite Utaeru DS Guitar M-06 originally in Japan), a Moog theremin (I had no idea that Moog even made theremins!), and vocoder and keyboard powered by Ableton Live.

Randy George Cover:

Original “Something About Us” Music Video:

Last Saturday, I attended the Distant Worlds: Music from Final Fantasy concert in Chicago. I was impressed by the turnout since the crowd was made up of all kinds of people young and old. I saw a couple dressed as a Red Mage/White Mage combo, an Advent Children Cloud cosplayer, as well as a young woman dressed up as Edea from Final Fantasy VIII. Besides that, I saw mostly normal people who looked like they were dressed up to go see the opera. And boy did we did get to see opera that night.

As we all sat at our seats waiting for the show to begin, a man surrounded by a Japanese entourage walked into the room to sit about 20 seats away in the same row as us. The entire room stood up in respect and started applauding furiously. This man was none other than Nobuo Uematsu, the composer for all the music from the Final Fantasy series.

It started off with some music from Final Fantasy VIII. 3 large projector screens were hung above the symphony displaying FMV and in-game footage from the games. They proceeded to play music from every Final Fantasy game from the series, even FFXI. One of my favorites was a jazzy swing interpretation of the Chocobo theme called “Swing de Chocobo.” Here’s YouTube footage of it from another Final Fantasy concert:

For another song, “Maria and Draco,” they brought out 3 opera singers to do the opera scene from Final Fantasy VI.

The opera song from FFVI was supposed to be the last song for the night, but they came out for an encore, which happened to be my favorite song from all the Final Fantasy games, “Terra’s Theme” from Final Fantasy VI.

The crowd went nuts and yelled for another encore. That’s when the conductor came back out and played everyone’s favorite, “One Winged Angel,” from Final Fantasy VII with Advent Children scenes playing in the background and a full choir singing along.

It was an excellent show and definitely worth watching, especially since Uematsu-san was the special guest of the night. I have never seen young people get so excited to go see a symphony. During “One-Winged Angel,” one attendee stood up and started pumping his fist in the air to the music like it was punk concert. For those that are interested, you can check out the CD of Distant Worlds when they performed in Stokholm, Sweden here. If it ever comes back to Chicago, I’ll definitely go see it again and next time I’m putting on my robe and wizard hat.

The Apple store was down this morning and came back up with new doubled capacity iPhones and iPods Touch (passersby? tacos surpreme? Why not iPods Touch) at 16 gigs and 32 gigs respectively (via Apple). This is what most people wanting an iPod Touch were waiting for since 16 gigs just is not enough when you’re carrying your music collection and DVD rips. This comes at a cost though… of $499.99 each for both the 16 gig iPhone and 32 gig iPod Touch. Ouch.

Maybe once they perfect the PSX and GBA emulators for it with faster frame rates than this:

UPDATE 2/7/2008
Yes to be fair to the author, Zoddtd’s GBA emulator is quite up to speed with a playable frame rate. Here’s a video of it in action: