Each month Q rounds up the best music-related fare Youtube has to offer. Here’s our pick for February...
Vampires on video
You’d expect a band as idiosyncratic as New York Afro-indie troupe Vampire Weekend to come up with a distinctive video, and the promo for their current single A-Punk doesn’t disappoint. A tangle of synchronised clowning and bargain-basement visual effects, it neatly captures the itchy energy of the song.
[Watch]
Grand Mr Yorke marches men to the top of the hill
Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood trek up to a hilltop in Didcot, Oxfordshire – apparently a Radiohead hangout in the early days – to play a hushed acoustic version of In Rainbows track Faust Arp. Originally recorded for their New Year “Scotch Mist” webcast, the performance is preceded by an expletive-strewn poem about piss. Cheers!
[Watch]
Slash’s Microsoft side
No stranger to sharing a stage with whiny-voiced multi-millionaires, here ex-Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash joins outgoing Microsoft boss Bill Gates for a painfully staged game of Guitar Hero, no doubt leaving with a sack of cash for his troubles. We only hope it was enough to compensate for the loss of his dignity.
[Watch]
12 reasons to like Celine Dion
This sarcastic tribute to the long-faced diva has become an unlikely viral hit, racking up 600,000 views on YouTube. It’s not a malicious affair, though. There’s something oddly likeable about the eccentric behaviour exposed here, which includes clucking like a chicken, barking like a dog and singing baffling lyrics such as, “Looking back on when I was a little nappy-headed boy.”
[Watch]
Riffing yarns
There’s a popular sub-genre of YouTube clips in which footage of an expert guitarist is overlaid with the ham-fisted “licks” of a clueless beginner (it’s funnier than it sounds). Best of the lot is this clip of ’80s virtuoso Steve Vai smugly widdling away – accompanied by the painful sound of mangled strings and feedback.
[Watch]
Earth’s best TV show returns
The fifth season of Baltimore-based police drama The Wire doesn’t make it onto British screens until the spring, so we’ll just have to make do with the official HBO trailer for now. Witness McNulty, Bunk and co beat down drug-dealing hoods to the accompaniment of Duran Duran’s cover of White Lines (Don’t Don’t Do It).
[Watch]
Mozzer on David Letterman
This performance of accordion-laced current single That’s How People Grow Up was recorded for US TV last June. Look out for hapless backing singer Kristeen Young: four months later she was kicked off Morrissey’s American tour after telling the audience Mozzer gave “great head… I mean cunnilingus”. Not the smartest move, all things considered.
[Watch]
Duffy: a star is born
Few people had heard of Duffy when she appeared on Later… With Jools Holland last November, but the “Welsh Winehouse” made an instant impact. Singing ballad Warwick Avenue and future single Mercy accompanied by a string section, she drew first wolf-whistles, and later wild applause, from the rapt studio audience.
[Watch]
What Robert Plant did next
Led Zeppelin reunion or not, Robert Plant is also nurturing a fruitful partnership with bluegrass star Alison Krauss. The video for debut single Gone Gone Gone (Done Moved On) suggests there’s definitely chemistry, since it exudes a sense of flirtatious fun,
far removed from the sweat-soaked heavy-lifting of a Led Zeppelin show.
[Watch]
A US Magic Numbers, anyone?
Harmony-soaked Los Angeles indie crew The Little Ones can count Father Ted creator Graham Linehan among their celebrity fans. The video to current single Ordinary Song, which sees the band surrounded by sprogs doing gymnastics, sums up the fivesome’s innocent, warm-and-fuzzy appeal.
[Watch]
5:09 PM | 30/01/2008
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