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Reader Feedback RE: FFO

I got some nice feedback about last week’s Friday Face Off.

From longtime a reader (and accomplished musician):

Hey, just saw your latest blog post — I haven’t had time to check it out thoroughly but I just want to say that the only KP song I know is California Girls (sic), which I think is an awesome song.  I remember being really against it when I first heard it, in large part because I’m a huge music snob, etc. etc. but I have concluded that it is a truly great pop song.  The thing that clinched it for me was seeing her on SNL and I realized that she is a pretty impressive musician and performer, and she was actually singing while jumping around instead of lip synching and her band is actually funking it up and can play.  So there you go.  Am I jealous of her and other super-successful musicians?  Yes, and it makes me hate so many of them, but I have decided that KP is legit.  So there we go.  One person’s opinion.

From reader RO:

Thank you thank you thank you for the Friday Face-Off. This Friday’s FFO was awesome! It made my day.


Backstory: The previous night I’d been disappointed to learn that the video I submitted for a (REDACTED) competition had not been recognized for its obvious greatness. I was bumming. Then your FFO brought me back up.


I should probably also say that FFO played a major influence in my video. FFO feels very cutting-edge, insofar as it celebrates this new phenomenon of making public what are often private or at least very personal expressions of joy via the internet …. In spite of the rough production quality of these videos, there’s usually a strong visceral appeal that makes you just a little more in love with the human race after experiencing it. Who doesn’t want that?

ANSWER: We all want that!

Speaking of music and personal expression, boy did I get a real taste last night. After I was done hosting Lollygaggin’ (which was so much fun, thanks to everyone who came out), a gang of us went to a bar to sing karaoke. The Thursday-night karaoke scene at this place is kinda insular — mostly people who know each other and sing with a lot of talent even if I don’t always like their repertoire (Tool, Rob Zombie, et al). Last night the place was more crowded than usual and I saw a guy holding a huge tray of shots and I said “What’s the occasion” and he said everyone had just come from a wake; turns out the karaoke scene had lost a good friend. The deceased was best friends with the karaoke DJ (who is himself a talented singer). So the first song of the night was dedicated to the late friend. It was “With or Without You” by the famous Irish band U2. And the performance of the song was … the karaoke DJ and another friend hugging in silence on stage for the duration of the (wordless) song. Very intense. It motivated all of us to bring our A-game. Unfortunately they didn’t have the song I wanted (“Cowboy Song” by Thin Lizzy), and I didn’t totally kill “When You Were Young” by the Killers. But that’s okay because blog reader JK went a little haywire on “Just the Two Of Us,” and took the crowd into an unfamiliar emotional realm, which seemed appropriate for the evening.

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Lollygaggin’

Hello everybody on the internet. The next Lollygaggin’ show is tomorrow night (Thursday). We’ve put together a great line-up of super-funny females.

Please come to the show! It starts at 7:00 PM and only costs $5. Luca is a nice, low-key bar and I think it’s the perfect place to lollygag.

Best wishes from your friend,
David Rees

FFO: WEEK 25

Friday Face-Offs: Firework — WINNER!

“Pied Beauty,” by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Glory be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.

FFO: WEEK 25

Friday Face-Offs: Firework – 2nd Place

Confession time: I’ve never been able to get into dubstep. I associate it with baggy-backpacked weirdos dancing in a low, scooping motion while wearing those super-double-wide blousy blue jeans. (Dubstep originated in London, the inscrutable metropolis where people dance to music you only hear about 20 years later — “Really? You guys used to dance to the sound of trains colliding underwater?”)

For dubstep people, the sine qua non of sine qua non-ism is the bass drop:

Many dubstep tracks incorporate one or more “bass drops”, a characteristic inherited from drum ‘n’ bass. Typically, the percussion will pause, often reducing the track to silence, and then resume with more intensity, accompanied by a dominant subbass (often passing portamento through an entire octave or more …).

Okay, I do like bass drops. I like any music that gets quiet and then relaunches itself with redoubled force. Who doesn’t? It probably has something to do with when we were monkeys and had to shake trees in order to get coconuts to fall out of them: You’d shake the tree, and then there’d be a quiet beat where you’d wonder if there were any coconuts left in the tree, and then suddenly there’d be coconuts falling every which way and you’d feel a surge of energy and optimism.

Now listen to this video. Listen closely. Access your tree-shaking monkey-mind. Can you tell when the bass drops? Because, LOL, it’s really, really subtle.

Seriously, (1:02) made me laugh out loud:

Head nodding very hard much? Because that beat is sounding pretty weak. Small amount of coconuts falling out of the sky, LOL. And yes, it sounds incredible through a good stereo system. Believe me, I made sure of that.

Basically, if you tried transcribing that bass drop to musical notation, you’d have to draw a five-dimensional explosion moving sideways through time.

So first I listened to the song, and I was like, “Well, obviously that bass drop is the toughest thing I’ve ever heard, but I wonder if actual dubstep people like it?”

Let’s check the youtube comments. Umm … are the dubstep people feeling that drop very hard? Umm, LOL, I’m not sure. From the comments:

At 0:50 – 1:00 I was getting ready to jizz for the drop,and well…anyone got paper towels?

The drop sounds like a transformer orgasm!

its all about that feeling when the drop sends shivers straight through your spine!!!!!!

Bassdrop = child birth.

My favorite comment:

0:00-1:02 — “Oh, I bet this isn’t even going to be that great, just some guy that thinks he knows what dubstep is.” 1:03 — I cried, like, literally.

FRIDAY- FACE OFFS!!! Get those coconuts!!!

Okay guys, the winning video is next. Please promise me you’ll watch the whole thing. You will not regret it, I swear to you. Please just watch the next video!

FFO: WEEK 25

Friday Face-Offs: Firework – 3rd Place – TIE!!!

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we have a TIE for third place!

This video makes me really happy, what can I say? “Firework” only has four chords, but somehow this version has 10,000 chords. And you have to love that. And one other thing you have to love is the guitarist’s complete existential breakdown at the end of the song.

Oh! And one other thing you have to love is the unholy light shining through the bedroom door.

Now, as for our other third-place winner …. not much to say, other than: “Attention Merriam-Webster Dictionary Company, it is time to revise the definition of ‘Smooth,’ since it has obviously been updated for all time by these four gentlemen in their cramped basement, especially the guy in the orange shirt, who should probably have his own separate dictionary devoted entirely to him.”

HOW ARE YOU NOT LOVING THIS:

Guys, I think it’s fair to say I have an ironic sensibility. I’m a product of my culture, and ever since reading Richard Rorty’s “Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity” I’ve believed that an ironic worldview is the one that makes the most (moral and aesthetic) sense. But the one thing I love more than irony is the complete lack of irony. And that’s what this video is all about! And that’s why I’m fuckin’ loving it for all time!!!

From the youtube comments:

this has just made me rape the replay button..

i have been teased and ridiculed since i was twelve,

i am sixteen now and it hasnt ended, people still make fun of me,

i was raped when i was twelve and after that, people called me all sorts of names, telling me it was my fault..i started cutting my wrists thinking that no one cared, my mom wanted to send me away, because she thought i was sick, (mentally). Hearing your beautiful voices sing this song, makes me feel hopeful for tomorrow. Thanks

That’s what I’m talking about.

FRIDAY FACE-OFFS! Even brighter than the moon. Now, get ready for the next video — the 2nd place video — because it is about to get soooo heavy up in here.

FFO: WEEK 25

Friday Face-Offs: Firework – 4th Place

First of all, I didn’t realize that energy-drink companies had actually started producing humans, but there you go. Second of all …. best camera tripod of all time??? Third of all, check out the girl on the left at (0:20), when she doesn’t know the words and just goes “luh-luh-luh,” THEN gets momentarily obsessed with her hair (like “OMG I’m gonna be on Friday Face-Offs!”), and THEN gets back on board for the chorus! THAT is how winners roll in the moment.

I also have to mention this video, because it’s visually stunning, in a weird way. It looks like a Terrence Malick movie. Or a Rothko painting rotated 90 degrees:

I have this painting of St. Francis of Assisi by Francisco de Zurbarán taped to my laptop, and this video kind of has the same vibe for me … reverent and ineffable and ominous.

Friday Face-Offs! “You’ve tried the rest, now try the best.” Three more videos to go!