Airborne Toxic Event, a band from Los Feliz, CA, has a series of acoustic versions of their songs that are completely amazing. The song below, gasoline, features brush hits on a snare and an upright bass, for a version that surpasses the album song.
I saw Beck last night, performing with his father and string orchestra conductor, David Campbell at the Hollywood Bowl. The show was well designed. He started off with Loser, the song that propelled his career, to get it out of the way, and raced through 3 minute arrangements of Odelay, Hell Yeah, Timebomb, and other classics. The orchestra came out for 4 to 5 songs, to wonderful effect. I was disappointed before by the last strings/band collaboration at the bowl, when I saw Belle & Sebastian and the Philharmonic in 2006. In that case, the music was just too diffuse and the melody and vocals were washed away in over-orchestration. But not so, with Beck, probably because David Campbell did much of the original orchestration for the Beck albums anyway. And finally, I forgot about the ability to put on great light shows at the Bowl, and the Beck producers took full advantage of using light to amplify the effects of the music.
King of King is an amazing, gripping documentary about the title for the national high score for the original arcade version of Donkey Kong. As insane as that premise sounds, that is completely true.
Billy Mitchell, as an awkward teenager, set the high score in Donkey Kong in 1982 that stayed intact for 20 years. As a dark horse competitor appears on the scene, from Seattle, in 2005, this documentary documents Billy’s descent to ridiculousness to defend his title. It is clear that this record is what provides Billy the confidence to run his own hot sauce business, to dress in a unique style, and is the basic pillar of his self worth. To watch Steve Wiebe, the challenger - a school teacher with a passion - nip at his heels with grace and cool, is a display of total unbalanced competition between two competitors who barely compete in the same moral sphere. And did I mention that this is a documentary?
To understand the complete context of Mitchell’s actions, one must watch the bonus materials, as Steve, Mitchell’s best friend, describes the paranoia surrounding the Twin Galaxy’s officiating society. And did I mention that this is a documentary?