This is great. If it's from Muppets Tonight it must be from the 90s though, not 1980.
Ever since I saw this I basically hear ALL Talking Heads songs performed by Kermit.
What about a music recommendation thread? Has there been one like that recently? I had a sort of extinction burst of "old person listens to new music" this year and have both lots to recommend and a wish to hear new things.
Music is generally over rated, but I'm thinking of learning more about Florence and the Machine.
This is incredibly basic of me, I'm sure, but as someone who hardly listens to music at all, I've been enjoying Lizzo a surprising amount since I became aware of her sometime in the last year. But I really hardly listen to music at all. No one should listen to me.
Along with the "yip-yip-brrrrrring!" aliens from Sesame St., this is one of my all-time favorite TV things.
I've actually been on a bit of a Talking Heads kick lately. They have somehow been about the closest to a soundtrack I have - a number of pivotal/interesting moments happened with them playing in the background.
We already knew you were a huge nerd.
I'm just mad because of the Talking Heads earworm.
I just love Kermie's inflection, like he's really genuinely discovering that it's not his beautiful wife, or wait a minute, seriously guys, how did I get here?
Did he get caught cheating on Miss Piggy?
4: Lizzo really isn't my thing, but I think she's one of those musicians who is both popular and innovative/extra-talented at the same time. Popular/"mainstream" music is better than it was when I was growing up, gotta say. Prince was also popular and innovative, but there was only one of him, so to speak.
I am at this very moment listening to King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard's Quarters! album and while it is nice, it mainly reminds me of Soft Machine and Matching Mole and how much better they were. All that old weird prog that was sort of loosely grouped around anti-fascist activist types just has more weirdness and more energy.
Favorite albums that I never heard until this year: Television's Marquee Moon, the Feelies' Crazy Rhythms. Seriously, Marquee Moon is so good. Tom Verlaine inexplicably seems to have really wanted to be a big star when he was obviously too smart and talented for such a thing. It's weird how serious and adult a lot of the late seventies experimental/indie/alternative music sounds and then it gets really childish again in the early eighties - consider the Feelies' "The Boy With The Perpetual Nervousness",in which the singer characterizes himself thusly, which he seems to think is somehow not absolutely appalling:
"It doesn't seem like he does anything
He never helps out in the yard
He lets his mother carry in groceries
'Cause he doesn't plan to work too hard
and then think about Marquee Moon which is definitely about youth but from a less "I'm just a kid", high-school-fetishizing standpoint.
Power To the People, a dance track by Octo Octa which if you don't like dance music of the slushy repetitive kind you won't like. I like it.
A song that I don't like but that is definitely rather odd and could easily be performed by muppets to good effect: The Funky Western Civilization, Tonio K, 1981, Life In The Foodchain.
I think that all will like this old CanCon, My definition of a boombastic jazz style, Dream Warriors. You may like the Dream Warriors in general because they were huge nerds and for instance have a song about Dungeons and Dragons.
1: You're right. I was misreading the muppets wiki. I think 1980 is referring to the original song. Apparently Whoopi Goldberg was on this episode, from 1996, and sang No Woman No Cry with the rats, and Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend with Miss Piggy.
Whoa, dude: This video aired two months after Krakauer's Everest disaster. What if it was filmed at the exact same time?! I'm going to go stare at my hand, like really stare at it.
The Muppets took Manhattan, forcing George Washington to retreat to New Jersey to keep some of his army intact.
And you may find yourself
trapped on Everest in a storm,
And you may say to yourself
"Well, how do I get down?"
Same as it ever was
"This is not my properly oxygenated atmosphere!"
4: I also hardly listen to music, especially new music, and was surprised to discover that I really enjoyed Lizzo.
5.2: "Once in a Lifetime" is an important song for me. It was the first Talking Heads song I ever heard, and immediately intrigued me. A few years later at a party, i I was singing along to it, and at "My God, what I done" I mimed tearing my shirt -- and actually tore my shirt.
Angelique Kidjo's cover of Once in a lifetime is also wonderful.
Talking Heads is very 'soundtrack of high school' for me, in a good way. Life During Wartime too. But not remotely new music.
No, you're right heebie, this is the funniest thing ever created by humans.
17. Love that one.
I like pop covers a lot. Bomba Estereo's cover of Pump up the Jam, Patti Smith's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and Big Black's "The Model" are all favorites of mine. Nouvelle Vague's first album, especially "Too Drunk To Fuck" is fantastic.
Lizzo is a breath of fresh air because the popular hip-hop on the radio recently has had not much funk/soul influence on the music and rappers like to do autotune singing, mumbling or rapid-fire triplets instead of having flow and sounding charismatic. Same thing with Chance the Rapper 4 years ago.
My only opinion on recent music is the songs in Frozen II are worse but earwormier than the songs in the first movie.
Chance the Rapper
I've never heard of this person, but I'm going to go ahead and imagine that it's someone rapping as Peter Sellers' character from Being There.
I don't get modern rap, especially not Post Malone.
It's not just the face tattoos. It's also that he is clearly singing ballads and not rapping. But mostly the face tattoos.
I didn't even realize Post Malone was purporting to be a rapper. I hear him on the radio occasionally and have not been impressed. (Lizzo is great though.)
When I was in Albuquerque for Thanksgiving I saw a really great traveling exhibition at the Albuquerque Museum on Jim Henson. It had a lot of information I didn't know especially about his early career, which started when he was kind of amazingly young, barely out of high school.
I don't know there was an Albuquerque Museum of Jim Henson.
It's a general-purpose museum that is only occasionally on Jim Henson.
No man is an island, but maybe some are a foundation.
Agree with 22. I don't know if it's the same phenomenon or just concurrent, but the whole thing where everything is slow and monotone*... I have no idea what the appeal's supposed to be. I assume it's because all the kids are always stoned these days?
On a related note, Kai's in a new school that requires me being downstairs at around 6:10 every morning, which is when the local independent, music-playing public radio does a Grateful Dead feature. Holy god, I knew I didn't like them, but in fact I hate them with a deep, abiding hatred. Who the fuck wants to hear 5 minutes of repetitive noodling, followed by one poorly-sung verse, at that hour of the morning? Sorry, Charley, and any other fans out there, but I feel like a lifetime of not getting the Dead has been amply vindicated.
*possibly less monotonous and more dynamics-free. Like, the whole song is one, droning volume, never getting louder or quieter or more exciting. Sometimes they rap a bit faster. Thrilling!
21: strong agree on Nouvelle Vague. I saw them live in London a few years ago and they were great. And the Kermit video is also great, a good second place in the list of Muppet songs (unchallenged lead is of course Manah Manah).
No man is an island, but many are standing in the middle of the traffic.
10 That's awesome that you discovered that, Frowner. Marquee Moon is one of my favorite albums, also the Feelies are great. And so is Nouvelle Vague, their cover of the DKs Too Drunk to Fuck is indeed one of the greatest covers of all time.
37. I have a soft spot for Aoxomoxoa and liked going to shows way back when, but: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pQAWOCofXo
Calamity song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJpfK7l404I
You may appreciate the video.
Also
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgjUVDxjvmY
Also
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgjUVDxjvmY
Finally watched the video. Why did they change the video but keep David Byrne's voice?
The recent thing I'm most into is Girl Band, but maybe that's niche. I also liked the Crack Cloud record for weird activist energy. And Goat Girl!
Marquee Moon and the Feelies are both great; it's a weird experience listening to the later Television albums and hearing them slip farther and farther from that first bolt of lightning. Last year I went to see the lineup currently billed as "Television," and man, all they did was noodle for an hour and a half, occasionally drifting into a sleepy rendition of one of the Marquee Moon tracks and then giving up on it. Verlaine was fucking sitting down the whole time.
Oh, and on the more pop front, Mitski's latest remains on heavy rotation because the resident eight-year-old and I can agree it's great.
As I am sure many of you know already, Sesame Street was sold overseas (including in the UK) by the British firm Television International Enterprises, a company founded and run by SAS founder David Stirling as a cover for covert military operations in Africa and East Asia.
I think there's been quite a lot of good music recently (although a lot of mainstream chart pop is really dreadful). I don't mean dreadful in the way that some old people think all modern music is dreadful. I just mean that the same production tropes and vocal tropes have been current for what feels like a decade now, and it's getting really tired and lazy. Broadly similar to the complaints made in 22 above, except also covering stuff that isn't branded as hip-hop or "rap". The likes of Billie Eilish or Lizzo, or whatever, is great, it's not that stuff I have in mind. Ditto lots of grime-derived British pop/rap that uses some of those production tropes is somewhat rescued by good lyric writing, and rappers who have actual flow.
King Krule's last two albums are some of my favourites in years, with elements of jazz, hip-hop, indie.*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5-f1Bnltu8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3AUU-VM4Io
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2HRzIyyXvU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiCzPYAISWw
The jazz scene in the UK is really strong if you like that sort thing, and not po-faced jazz in a certain reverent mode, the people making it have heard music made in the last 10 years. People like Sons of Kemet, The Comet is Coming, and all the various groups associated with Shabaka Hutchings, Seb Rochford, etc.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmN3vFIukk4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mu1FHeNkpo
I've also been listening to Khruangbin a lot, for that Philly Soul/"world music" combination.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4xKvHANqjk&t=7m46s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4xKvHANqjk
Also, just for the hell of it, some brilliant mashups from Bill McClintock, which I think I have posted here before, but which I still love:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCjr2EUHRuk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uzWkJByjCc (few things have made me laugh or given me more joy recently than Tami Terrell, Marvin Gaye, the Four Tops, and Ozzy Osbourne, together at last)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dz7RGARtAgc (or Danzig and the Temptations)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Isl8BPC7UB0 (the Temptations really were a great metal band)
* he's somewhat tangentially connected with the Odd Futures type scene, although he's a pasty ginger guy from London.
I've been listening to the new Blink-182 album, which probably isn't very good. But it has this peppy jam, whose video features prominently The Floss and several other popular-among-the-elementary-set dances.
Blink-182 sold out and became too commercial.
49: Does that mean you got to enjoy them at the annual Sellout Conference?
I don't get to go to the room for people who sold out for more than a million dollars.
47: Sons of Kemet are really good, also all their album and song titles are genius. (Lest We Forget What We Came Here To Do, "The Long Night of Octavia Butler", etc)
A cool Finnish person I used to know played a Polar Bear track one time and this led me to Sons of Kemet, which really somehow clicked for me. I'm not good at music and I don't understand it most of the time, so it's usually just "this sounds nice", but for some reason Seb Rochford's drumming stood out to me and I was able to think about how it worked and understand the music better.
I also really liked the Clientele's newish album, Music for the Age of Miracles, which IMO should be an Unfogged smash both in terms of content and form, and also it has a song which is an arrangement of a Siegfried Sassoon poem. The hilarious thing about the Clientele is that they are apparently only sort of successful in the UK but very popular in the US among people who are presumably just like me and listen to a lot of music from the UK while having what is almost certainly a wildly inaccurate understanding of the actual place. So I feel....seen, I guess you'd say? In a negative way? Called out? Attacked? It me?
But anyway, I think a lot of Unfoggers would like the Clientele.
A cool Finnish person I used to know played a Polar Bear track
Too on the nose. Give it another pass.
re: 53
Yeah, he -- Rochford -- involved in a lot of cool projects. Acoustic Ladyland and Polar Bear were, at one time, basically all the same people, but with one led by the sax player, and one led by Rochford. I saw Acoustic Ladyland in a club about 10 years ago, and they were, hands down, the loudest and most "punk" band I've ever seen, despite them being a "jazz" band. They also had a fantastic support act, comprised mostly of what seemed to be snotty posh teenage mostly queer girls, who should have been annoying* but were hilarious and charming.
* in the way that rich teenagers can often be.