Art is the music we make from the bewildered cry of being alive. ~Maria Popova
26 Jun 2013 Leave a comment
in On a Lighter Note, Video of the Week Tags: daft punk, get lucky, obama
01 Mar 2013 Leave a comment
in Video of the Week Tags: born and raised, david a. smith, john mayer
(Reprinted from Open Culture)
![b1 [Converted]](https://edcyphers.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/mayer.jpg)
This eighteen minute documentary takes you inside the work of David A. Smith, an English artist who specializes in “high-quality ornamental hand-crafted reverse glass signs and decorative silvered and gilded mirrors.” (Got that? You may want to read that last part again.) In something of a departure from earlier projects, Smith designed an ornate “turn-of-the-century, trade-card styled album cover” for John Mayer’s album Born & Raised. His work is meticulous and exacting. And this “Behind The Scenes” film, complete with commentary from Mayer and Smith, captures the artist’s process in loving detail. Now please sit back and enjoy.
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The music of Mayer’s album is a perfect match for the art of Mr. Smith, and makes a great soundtrack for the film depicting his antiquated craft. If Mayer is smart he’ll keep this artisan on retainer and give all his future albums an unmistakable trademark style, as Yes did with Roger Dean and the Moody Blues with Phil Travers. That said I hope the job pays well; I can’t imagine many album covers have required more hours of painstaking work than this one did.
28 Feb 2013 Leave a comment
in On a Lighter Note, Video of the Week Tags: capitol steps, take ten pills and you're fine
The Capitol Steps have been putting the mock in Democracy for over thirty years now. As songs and albums with titles like Take the Money and Run for President, Liberal Shop of Horrors and “Embattled Hymn of the Republicans” suggest, no one on either side of the proverbial aisle is safe from their razor-sharp skewering.
Here they take aim at the pill-pushing pharmaceutical companies.
02 Nov 2012 Leave a comment
in Best of the Blog, General Posts, On a Lighter Note, Video of the Week Tags: bob dylan, subterranean homesick blues, weird al yankovic
If ever a music video deserved a ‘making of’ featurette, it’s “Bob“, Weird Al Yankovic’s parody of “Subterranean Homesick Blues“, which sends up Dylan’s incomprehensible lyric with nonsensical yet stupefying sentence-length palindromes.
Forget “Thriller“–would you rather see a behind-the-scenes about Michael Jackson putting on a lot of makeup and spending unprecedented amounts of money, or would you prefer to know who came up with palindromes like “Do nine men interpret? Nine men, I nod” and “oozy rat in a sanitary zoo” and how?
24 Sep 2012 Leave a comment
Krispy Kreme and Money Maker Mike have raised the stakes in the rap game. Watch out Jay-Z and company–there’s a new baller in town.
27 Aug 2012 Leave a comment
I have no words to describe what this man can do. Nor am I musician enough to critique or compare what he does to other guitar greats. But I did sit back and enjoy the man’s God-given talent. Hope you do as well.
Every Moment Has A Song 