Capricious Me

I’m listening to Vampire Weekend on REPEAT. M79, in particular, makes me so incredibly happy. It starts out all Baroque-ish with a harpsichord and strings and lovely cello (i’m a sucker for cellos)… adds a modern beat, and then it turns into this Caribbean sounding thing and it just switches back and forth between the two and IT WORKS. According to Wikipedia, they are “influenced by both African popular music and Western classical music.”

And ok. OK. I didn’t think it could get better, but in a very charming, raw kind of way, here they are LIVE.

I’ve had songs from Notre Dame de Paris stuck in my head for a while… so here’s links to one of my favorite songs from the musical: staged performance, another performance, Garou only (3 languages!). Lyrics below:
» Read the rest of this entry «

Instead of packing like mad… I’m watching Lego versions of songs. :)

In no particular order, I present:
Les Mis Preview
One Day More (From Les Mis)

The Les Mis series song by song (chars are usually blurred and not pure lego stop-motion animation): Look Down, Valjean Arrested/Valjean Forgiven, At the End of the Day, I Dreamed a Dream, Come to Me (Fantine’s Death), The Confrontation, Master of the House, The Thenardier’s Waltz of Treachery, Look Down (Reprise)/Stars, Red and Black, Do You Hear the People Sing, A Heart Full of Love, Attack on Rue Plumet, One Day More, and I’m looking forward to more…

On to Phantom of the Opera:
Phantom of the Opera

All I Ask of You
Lego of the Opera 1(Sounds like it’s from the movie version)
Lego of Opera 2
Lego of the Opera 3
Another prologue
A preview of what I hope will lead to more clips…

And enough linking… after one last tidbit of Lego Sweeney Todd. There’s a ton of awesome stop-motion animation done with legos. Including Pirates of the Caribbean, Harry Potter, Star Wars, Monty Python… and the list goes on. :)

So Mike, who is awesome beyond words, got us tickets to see Maroon 5 in September. (Counting Crows will also be there, as will Augustana, who I just started listening to on Pandora and it’s pretty good.)

*happiness*

And then… there’s THIS. Diablo III! The gameplay video looked so awesome. There was a bit with Deckard Cain when he starts to say, “Stay a while and listen,” and get interrupted midway. Heheheh. And he sighs, “No one ever listens.” Which is probably true. Anyway, the new class, Witch Doctor, looks like a lot of fun. Swarms of locusts? Gruesome pets? Firebombs? Mind altering spells? It’s going to be a long wait till 2010.

Saw Sweeney Todd last night… a gory, macabre Tim Burton remake of a Sondheim musical. I really liked it. The lighting and sets were dark and gloomy for the most part and absolutely perfect and grimy. While the singing from Johnny Depp & Helena Bonham Carter was less than stellar, they really got the madness across. Their makeup helped a lot. They looked so much like gaunt corpses! Alan Rickman, in his gold leather pants (hahah), as a corrupt and lascivious judge was well played.

Most of the movie’s sung, but you wouldn’t know it from the trailers. I guess they’re trying to sell it as a gory slasher movie. Hmm and while we were waiting for the movie to start, we saw a trailer for 21, the movie based on Bringing Down the House. It’s about the group of MIT students who successfully gamed the Vegas casinos. Hehe Mike was so excited he kept whispering “I wanna see it! I wanna see that!!”

Thanks to Anita, I’m listening to the Austrian cast for Les Mis. It sounds great, of course, but the Javert is no Philip Quast, whom I consider the quintessential Javert. Marius and Cosette are more tolerable, but Eponine… ever since I heard Lea Salonga as Eponine, none of the others have been quite as good in my mind.

Almost done with this quarter!!

Mike and I went to the Mondavi center to see the UCD symphony orchestra perform Handel’s organ concerto in b-minor and Beethoven’s 9th symphony. The organ concerto featured Martin Neary as the soloist. He exudes jolly British refinement. Some people *cough*Ryan*cough* don’t like the organ… but I think the organ’s an awesome example of engineering innovation… not to mention the physical dexterity involved in playing with hands AND feet. The Handel concerto itself wasn’t extraordinary. It sounded too simple and … generic.

As for Beethoven’s 9th symphony… where do I begin with all the nostalgia? I used to fall asleep listening to a CD of the 9th symphony back when we lived in Somerville. I would usually fall asleep before the 3rd movement, so sometimes I would skip ahead to the 4th movement and have that on repeat. The moment when the baritone begins to sing, mirroring the intensity of the cellos just moments before… aaah, how do I describe what feelings music evokes? There was also that Beethoven Lives Upstairs movie that my mom borrowed for us from the West branch of the Somerville library which I still think is awesome. That was a quality children’s movie.

Alrighty, I seem to be in a moosical mood, so here’s some links to good a-cappella performances on Youtube in no particular order. Starred ones are of course my favs… ^_^

1. DDR Medley by UCLA ScatterTones Pretty good, even though they’re not all that great on most of the other performances.
2. The Wizard of Oz under 6 min. So fun! :) But I’ve no idea who these people are.
3. **Disney Villains Medley** by Florida State University’s All Night Yahtzee. They are consistently awesome in all their videos. I think the best part of it was the 3rd performer.
4. *Kiss the Girl* by MIT Logs. A REALLY old MIT log song.
5. Coney Island Baby by MIT Logs. Another really old song sung by logs from… i dunno when.
6. Qian Nian Zhi Lian by PennYo. One of my favorite songs ever.
7. Dou Jiang You Tiao by PennYo. This is such a cute song… and their video makes me craaaave dou nao & you tiao in the morning!

Well, I was sick and now I’m well. :)

I’ve been very addicted to popera lately. Alessandro Safina and Josh Groban remain my favorites… and I’ve sampled Il Divo, G4, Amici Forever, Popera (the group), and Mario Frangoulis. I guess I’m still on the prowl for really good ones… I hear Linda Eder’s good. I liked her voice from Scarlet Pimpernel, so perhaps I’ll listen to her stuff next. Anyway, Mario Frangoulis is quite good… especially this song: Sometimes I Dream. Lyrics after the cut. He also sings this awesome duet with Lara Fabian on the De-lovely soundtrack called “So In Love”

( Lyrical Desserts )

Ok, so I don’t understand this song… as it’s in Italian, but I looove listening to it. (Conny introduced the song to me. ^_^) Hehehe. It seems like such a Dean Martin song, and I LOVE Dean Martin songs.

( click for a jolt of lyrical goodness )