ATE live videos

Airborne Toxic Event is releasing new music later this month.  Until then they're giving us a preview with these live videos. I've always thought ATE was better live than on record, so these are quite a treat. 

Everyone and their mom is in this video.

...Well, not everyone, but a lot of great random musicians are acting goofy in the very fun new Sara Bareilles video for the song Uncharted.  It's refreshing to see a well-made low-tech video, and here's definitely a case where the video makes the song. Watch below, because when else will you see Pharrell and Sara Quin battle for most adorable in the same video:

I don't really know anything about this Bareilles musician and from the sound of  it I could write her off as radio friendly singer-songwriterzzzzzz...., but there's just 4 too many cool folks (Pharrell Williams, Tegan, Sara, Ben Folds) who agreed to be in this video to not give her more of a chance. Will do so.

Awww... crap!

This is what happens when you don't go to that small show at Mercury Lounge because you're "too tired."   Sara Quin (of the Tegan and ... fame) produced FENCES' new s/t album, which I like much ($5!!). Fences is very good indie heartfelt non-whiny/sleep-inducing acoustic dude-with-a-guitar music.

So, I had planned to go to the show because I suspected -- as you can see from the videos -- he's even better live.  Turns out Sara Quin was there -- she duets on the song My Girl The Horse --  as you can also see from the videos.  Note - Sara Quin is my Beiber, as the kids say. Post on this later. So I could have seen them perform together live on a small stage in NYC; but instead I decided to stay home and be lame on my couch. Lesson learned: in NYC you will always pay for being lame. I apologize to you all that instead of Sara Quin and Fences photos, I have a re-blog.


Fences: My Girl The Horse (feat. Sara Quin) from shoottheplayer.com on Vimeo.


Fences: Sadie (A Shoot The Player Film) from shoottheplayer.com on Vimeo.

SOURCE

This Land Is Your Land: the lost verses

Tom Morello (Rage Against The Machine/The Nightwatchman) and friends sang This Land Is Your Land at a rally in Wisconsin last week for the protesters, public and private employees, who want to kill the union-busting bill.  The whole video is worth it, but if you're in a rush start at 4:20.

Mahlon Mitchell, President of the Wisconsin Professional Firefighters Association on Democracy Now Friday morning, talked about himself and 60 firefighters sleeping in the capital rotunda alongside 600 protesters, even though their union is exempt from the bill: 

"Well, it just shows how important union work is and how important the union is to the middle class. There is not one employee, public employee, state, municipal, local employee, firefighter, police officer teacher, that does their job to get rich. We don’t do our job to get rich. We do our job to have a decent life, to have a decent middle-class family and not have to struggle like a lot of our other people do. Well, what this bill will in essence do is bring the middle class back down lower. And that’s really where the Governor wants and the corporate backers want us, so that we’d have less power and we have less influence on elections. So this is not about just unionism. This is about an attack on the middle class. This is about Wisconsinites, and this is a hard-working Midwest state, and we need unions to help take care of our middle class."

 Video Interview, which I highly recommend.  I think we'd all be better off if we reminded ourselves that we must share this country, it belongs to us all, "us" being a very general term; and we need to make room for everyone to retain their individual potential.  It's not a race to first place, it's a society.  The bottom-line is that you (meaning everyone) should be worried about the middle-class shrinking. How are we doing with that?  Glad you asked.

More about the song, after the jump (because originally this was a music post).

Happy Friday

It's Friday so let's focus on Wisconsin, which is surprisingly giving me the warm and fuzzies.

The video below shows firefighters - LEAD BY BAGPIPERS!!! - walking into the state capital building to join their fellow public workers, who have taken over the retunda. Why is this so important? The voice explains:

"The bagpipers and the uniformed men you are seeing coming into the rotunda right now are firefighters, they are getting huge applause because in this bill they are technically exempt from [Gov.] Walker's proposals. But there has been a huge showing of firefighters in this area."

If you didn't catch that, it's important because the Governor exempted these unions.  These unions, however, protested in solidarity nonetheless.  

SOURCE 

If you are confused about the bill, here's one quick article.  But to understand what's actually going, this may help 1) a month ago Wisconsin was set to have a $120 million budget surplus for the year and 2) watch this (after the jump)

"Gettin crunk on brewskis with my broskis"

This is a fitting "first post" for me (J would concur). The amazing comedy duo Garfunkel and Oates put out a new video for their song, This Party Took a Turn for the Douche. The song is kind of amazing, as you can tell by these lyrics:

Did my last keg stand like General Custer

And I'm assessin' the damage like a claims adjuster

I ain't your Daddy but I'll call you son

Yeah I get metaphysical like fuckin' John Donne

There's also few things more gratifying than singing For the douche, for the douche For the motherfuckin douche!!!!!! If you want to feel cool, you can see their old-skool video, which I kinda prefer. See it after the jump.