Best of
Best of YouTube is a new periodical feature in which your faithful servant will rummage through YouTube's cabinet of musical curiosities and present his newfound obscure objects of musical desire to his horrified readership.
======================
Take Off Your Sunglasses- Ezra Furman & the Harpoons
Ezra Furman and the Harpoons have been around for a few years and have released two albums. I didn't know about Ezra until I stumbled across his wacky
Take Off Your Sunglasses video on YouTube. He dresses like Phil Spector's long lost son and sings like Gordon Gano, the frontman for the much loved post punk band, the Violent Femmes.
Sunglasses is one of those wise-ass indie pop anthems that screams out to be played over and over again, until your friends & family are wondering which straight jacket size is the best fit for you. Take note of the ever changing frame color of Ezra's sunglasses in the video...
hmmmm.... do you think there's a hidden message?
================================
This Is Note A Photograph (live)- Mission of Burma
This video of Mission of Burma performing at Boston's leading music showcase, the Paradise in 1980 is one of the best videos of an early live performance of MoB among the dozens of uploads I've seen floating around on the internet.
Yours truly was somewhere in the Paradise audience for the show, as I was in attendance for every one of their Boston home gigs for nearly three years. I was so enthralled with MoB, I pleaded with Roger Miller to let me play a tambourine along with the band at their live performances... he politely declined my offer. Roger plays some amazing off kilter, atonal slide guitar on this song titled
This Is Not A Photograph.
=================================
Dancing With Death- Lou Miami & the Kozmetix
For two decades Lou Miami was the dark prince of the Boston garage rock scene. Despite his reputation for dabbling in the dark arts, Lou was a perfectly charming, mild mannered gentleman when he was off stage. Lou and his band, the Kozmetix recorded a couple of underground hits; one was a scary but hilarious bondage & discipline themed cover of Lulu's classic
To Sir With Love and another was a little ditty which he wrote,
Fascist Lover.
I visited his Allston apartment in 1980 for an after hours party and was impressed with his leopard skin upholstered sofa and the kitschy retro decor of his apartment. Lou died in 1995 in Los Angeles of mysterious causes (
ahem!) but thanks to YouTube, the dark prince has achieved a new kind of immortality. This embedded song,
Dancing With Death was from one of his last recording sessions and the subject matter is apropos to his untimely death.
===============================