Hi

Over at comedy site College Humour they have created a really funny and clever parody of Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story. Rather than talking about the rivalry of two gangs in New York City (as the original West Side Story does), the parody uses excerpts from the same songs as West Side Story, but instead weaves the action around how our everyday lives evolve around the internet.

The song “I Feel Pretty” turns into

“I’m on Twitter, I’m on Twitter,

And I’m tweating and singing a song about tweeting

But it’s seven characters too long.

I’m on Facebook, I’m on Facebook,

And my Facebook updates with my tweets,

So I twitter,

And then everybody knows my deeds.”

Compare this to the original lyrics:

“I feel pretty, Oh so pretty

I feel pretty and witty and gay*

And I pity, any girl who isn’t me today.

I feel charming, Oh so charming

It’s alarming how charming I feel

And so pretty, that I hardly can believe I’m real”

(* gay in those days simply went by its original meaning of “happy”)

So, Maria, rather than being a love song about a girl from the other side of the divide, turns into “Pandora, I’ve just found a site called Pandora”. “I Like To Be In America” turns into “I Like To Be On EHarmony”

To compare, here is a clip from the “Original” 1962 film version:

Hi

So this is fun. As part of an advertising campaign a well-known German car manufacturer decided to see if people in a Stockholm tube station were more likely to use the stairs than the escalator, if they made it more fun to use the stairs.

So how do you make it more fun to use the stairs? You make them into a piano (a walking piano). Remember the scene from Big where Tom Hanks plays on a walking piano in the children’s toy store? That’s a walking piano.

The result is rather good fun to watch, and 66% of people preferred to use the stairs rather than the escalator.

Great fun – one thing did strike me, though, which is that this did not look like a particularly busy tube station. I wonder what would have happened had they installed this in a New York or London subway/tube station. Maybe in such busy cities, where people have less time for each other and are always in a rush there may have been the odd dissaproving look?

Anyway, let’s enjoy this cool video:

Hi

Well how did that happen? Korean raper PSY (real name Park Jae-sang) releases his single Gangnam Style on the 15th of July, and a few months later it is a world-wide hit, taking everyone, including PSY, by surprise. I think it’s all to do with the dance. Remember The Ketchup Song, which had a similarrly catchy dance attached to the song? Or YMCA?

It’s great when you have these global events, when one song or movie or event takes the whole world by storm, and even has tufty world-leaders joining in (see heads of state trying to perform “Gangnam Style”). The tune is in the style of K-pop (Korean Pop Music), and of course we have the sheet music for it  here.

But where does “Gangnam” come from. Well it apparently refers to the Gangnam district in Seoul, which is one of the most well-off parts of the Korean capital, hence the references to Gangnam style, i.e. living it up.

Here is the official video:

This video is also quite funny, where PSY is helping teach the commentary team from BBC One’s Formula One coverage the Gangnam dance during the Korean Grand Prix (Former F1 driver David Coulthard, former F1 team owner Eddie Jordan and presenter Jake Humphrey are trying out their dance moves here)

English folk rock band Mumford & Sons have equalled the Beatles’ record of havgin 6 tunes in the American Billboard Top 100.

The Beatles set this record as long ago as 1964 – to put this into historical context this was the year that the death penalty was abolished in Great Britain, Nelson Mandela was sentenced to life imprisonment, interest rates in England were at 7% and a loaf of bread cost 21 cents in the US. Seems like a long time ago?

All 6 tracks in the current top 100 are from the new Mumford & Sons album Babel, which became the band’s first UK Number One Album.

Here is the video for Little Lion Man

Hi There

Coldplay have just announced that they will be realising a live album and live concert dvd to go alongside the hugely successful album Mylo Xylotl, which was released last year (2011). The band commented:

“We don’t tell anyone all the darker side of things, We’ve been through all the break-ups and addictions and all that. But we have a chemistry that no one else in the world has so we don’t mess with it.”?

Mylo Xylotl included the singles Every Teardrop Is A Waterfall Paradise, Charlie Brown, Princess Of China and Hurts Like Heaven, and reached the Number One album slot in no less than 34 countries.

Hi There

Welcome to the third part of our Great Muppets’ Musical Moments series. Today we’ll take a look at Harry Belafonte’s turn as the star guest of The Muppet Show. As well as sharing a drum solo with The Muppets’ Drummer, Animal, he sings one of his biggest hits, The Banana Boat Song with a Muppet ensemble.

For those of you who are not familiar with Harry Belafonte’s music: he was born in New York, but spent part of his childhood at his grandmother’s in Jamaica. As a struggling young singer in New York he became friends with the then also not yet discovered actor Sidney Poitier, and the two were so poor they used to share theatre tickets, switching places during the interval when one would let the other know the state of the play.

Belafonte’s big break cam in 1956 with The Banana Boat Song (Day-O), which introduced the wider world to Calypso music. On the same album as Banana Boat Song was the also highly successful Jamaica Farewell.

Enjoy Belafonte’s lovely voice with the comedy of The Muppets.

Hi Everyone

Welcome to the second instalment in our Great Muppets’ Musical Moments series.

Today we’ll take a look at Beaker’s great musical moment. For those of you who are not too familiar with all the Muppets characters, Beaker is the assistant to Muppets’ resident scientist, Dr. Bunsen Honeydew. Unfortunately for Beaker, Dr Honeydew is not a terribly good scientist, and all his experiments go wrong, which leads poor Beaker to be regularly blown up, or harmed in some other way.

One of the key characteristics of Beaker is that all he can say is “Mi-Mi”, which he usually does at heightened pitch at being the guinea pig for yet another of Dr Honeydew’s experiments.

Yet Beaker gets his one chance of fame, by singing with the Muppets’ house band, and he chooses the song Feelings, a song written by Loulou Gasté and popularised by Morris Albert in 1974/75. Now Beaker can of course only sing “mi”, so the resulting song is absolutely hilarious. You can check out our sheet music for Feelings here.

Enjoy:

Hi

With the Muppets currently enjoying a bit of a revival, I thought I’d share some of the great musical moments that I enjoyed growing up when The Muppets were still on tv.

For anyone who never got to watch the original Muppets’ Show, there was always a special guest for each show, and if this guest was a musical star, they would perform with The Muppets. The Muppets did of course have their own in-house band, the most famous member of which was probably Animal, the drummer, who often featured in these great musical moments.

It is generally quite fascinating watching some of these older clips, as some of the so called stars are still going strong today, others I quite frankly struggle to remember, as time has not been quite so kind to their careers.

This first clip features Animal and the Puerto Rican singer Rita Moreno, who shot to fame when she starred in the 1961 film adaptation of Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story.

The tune, Fever, is commonly associated with singer Peggy Lee.

Anyway, enjoy this great Muppet Musical Moment:

Hi Everyone

Slovakian viola player Lukas Kmit reacted cooly when a mobile phone interrupted his recital at the Orthodox Synagogue in Presov, in Slovakia.

Rather than losing his temper, Kmit adapted the notorious Nokia phone theme that had interrupted his performance, much to the delight of his audience.

Hi Everyone

Just wanted to share a cool little music video with you.

The people from Pianoguys put this version of The Imperial March from Star Wars together, by multitracking several electric cellos – great fun to watch:

The video also features some other Star Wars themes, such as The Main Theme