Black Cab Sessions - Cabbies Never Had It So Good

A few days ago I was catching up on a bunch of the music blogs I follow on Google reader, and one of them mentioned some band or another being featured on some website called the "Black Cab Sessions." I was intrigued, so I checked it out. And wow. Just wow. This site is the best little slice of indie pie since Daytrotter, and that, my friends, is saying something, something serious. When I first happened upon the the site, I spent a good hour just cramming and cramming as much musical goodness as I could handle in one sitting. And now I keep coming back for more.

So, what are the Black Cab Sessions? Well, in their own words:

"THE SESSIONS ARE ALL ABOUT GREAT MUSIC AND THE VENUE STRIPS THIS TO ITS ESSENCE."

What, then is this great venue? Why, the back seat of a little black cab, of course! What these people do is this: they get in touch with some of the best (and I mean the best) up-and-coming indie bands and catch them just before or after they play a gig. Then they share a cab ride to wherever the bands are headed, and along the way they record the artists as they play a one-song one-take stripped-down acoustic session. I am always in favor of 'stripping down' a set. I figure if a song is really good, then the live acoustic version will probably be even better. That's the Black Cab Sessions' above-mentioned philosophy: stripping a song down to its bare and beautiful essence. And let me tell you, they have be-a-utiful songs to start out with. I mean, Fleet Foxes, Peter and the Wolf, Death Cab For Cutie, Bon Iver, Dawn Landes, Calexico, Daniel Johnston, Spoon, My Morning Jacket, The New Pornographers, Damien Jurado, Doves -- these are just a few of the amazing artists with whom they've shared a taxi. Hell, it almost makes me wanna become a taxi driver just for the off chance that I might get the opportunity to see some of these guys perform some of their best material just a foot away from me. In fact, it makes me go "Oo0o00oOOooO0Oo00OoOoh!"

Long story kinda short, you should go there. Nowish. In fact, you should go RIIIIGHT NOW.

Read, Kindly Light...

"Yooouuutuuube" -- another solid choice in addicting time-wasters

"Yooouuutuuube" sounds like something Craig Ferguson would say during his opening monologue (accompanied of course by Salvadore Dali's crazy portrait and obligatory "OOooOooOOOooh!" noise), but it is in fact a real website, albeit a strange, psychedelic sort of website that defies most descriptions.

If you follow the first link, you will be asked to enter a youtube video URL or a youtube word search. You can also simply click for a random video. Then you choose what height and width you'd like to see the videos in, and choose the "shuffle" effect or the "spiral" or neither. Then just click the big ol' "DO THIS" button at the bottom, and you're done. What happens now? Well, now yooouuutuuube turns the video or videos you've chosen into a quirky, fascinating, and often stunning collage of stop-motion footage. It doesn't work well with every single youtube video, but given the right kind of video and the proper parameters, and yooouuutuuube can produce something truly beautiful. It's the kind of thing that makes a straight arrow like me see the appeal of certain eh...... "pharmaceuticals."

To demonstrate this, here are the links to a few new yooouuutuuube videos created by Yours Truly:


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"All Souled Out" - Conor Oberst & The Mystic Valley Band


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"Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?" - She & Him


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"Summer Grof" - The Spinto Band


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"Pork and Beans" - Weezer


If you make any compositions of your own, please post the links in the comments. "I want to see your skills of an artist!"
Read, Kindly Light...