The Simpsons!
Lethal Bizzle Teaches Dame Judi Dench How To Rap
Ahead of the release of Victoria & Abdul (released in the UK on September 15th), Academy Award winning actress Dame Judi Dench, known for her roles in James Bond, Shakespeare in Love & Philomena, gets an expert rapping lesson from UK grime artist Lethal Bizzle, as they both attempt his hits ‘Pow’ and ‘Celebrate’.
BTS Drops New Album and “DNA” Music Video
BTS’ new album LOVE YOURSELF, ‘Her’ was released worldwide simultaneously at 5AM (EST) / 6PM (KST) on September 18, 2017. The LOVE YOURSELF: ‘Her’ announces the beginning of BTS’ new LOVE YOURSELF series and contains new images of BTS using LOVE as the theme depicting new and first time relationships. Rap Monster, Jin, Jimin, Jungkook, Suga, J-Hope and V are revealing their view of LOVE through photos and music in this collection.
LOVE YOURSELF: ‘Her’ consists of eleven new songs and skits and two hidden tracks, showcasing BTS’ expanded musical explorations into new genres including EDM, Disco, Synth Punk along with their signature sounds.
BTS’ album is already buzzing across the world, breaking new album sale records with the 1.05 million pre-orders. Previous BTS releases have infiltrated the Billboard 200 four times ranking at 26, the highest chart number for any KPOP artist. Now with physical product being made available for the first time through Amazon, expectations are high for LOVE YOURSELF: ‘Her’ entering the charts.
In addition to the album, BTS released the music video for their comeback track “DNA” through the official BigHit website and social network service channels at 5AM (EST) / 6PM (KST). “DNA” falls neatly into EDM-Pop and the song has a unique musical structure using drop parts that are not common to K-Pop tracks. The lyrics deal with love and passion from the perspective of youth and includes the use of whistling along with acoustic guitar.
The video visually represents the lyrics “the two of us are connected fatefully from the beginning, and we’re together from DNA,” through the change of scenes and crossover between virtual reality and the universe. The continuity of time and space is represented visually through the music video cross cutting geometrical graphics and real images. “DNA” reaches its climax during the choreography scene when all seven BTS members hold hands together and connect as one like DNA.
Following the release of LOVE YOURSELF: ‘Her’, BTS will do a live broadcast, comeback special ‘Bangtan News’ on Naver V app at 8PM KST. BTS will also hold a worldwide live broadcast ‘BTS Comeback Show’ with Mnet on September 21 where the audience can watch BTS performing songs from their new album for the first time.
This Violin-Playing Machine Is Pretty Cool
Way more than an ordinary player piano, here’s the fully-restored Hupfeld Phonoliszt-Violina playing “Lotosblumen Walzer” by E. Ohlsen.
Video: George Harrison Gets A Sitar Lesson With Ravi Shankar In 1966
A sitar owned and played by George Harrison is going to be auctioned in the United States. The instrument, purchased from a shop on London’s Oxford Street in 1965, was used by Harrison during the recording of the Beatles song Norwegian Wood. The Indian string instrument, crafted by a well-known music shop in Kolkata, was later gifted to a friend of Harrison’s first wife, Patti Boyd.
Bidding for the sitar will begin on 28 September at $50,000 (£37,327). Harrison had discovered the sitar in 1965, on the set of the Beatles’ second film, Help.
A year later, Harrison travelled to India to learn how to play the instrument under the renowned sitar maestro Ravi Shankar. In an interview with the BBC’s Mark Tully in April 2000, Shankar said when he first heard Harrison playing the sitar in Norwegian Wood, he was not impressed. “I couldn’t believe it,” he said, “it sounded so strange. Just imagine some Indian villager trying to play the violin when you know what it should sound like.” Harrison later agreed, saying the sitar on Norwegian Wood was “very rudimentary”. “I didn’t know how to tune it properly, and it was a very cheap sitar to begin with. But that was the environment in the band, everybody was very open to bringing in new ideas.”
This is a good time to go back to 1966 and watch a lesson or two from the master to the Beatle.
Leonard Bernstein presents 7-year-old Yo-Yo Ma’s high-profile debut for President John F. Kennedy
The New York Times reported that on November 29, 1962, a benefit concert called “The American Pageant of the Arts” was to be held with “a cast of 100, including President and Mrs. Kennedy, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Leonard Bernstein (as master of ceremonies), Pablo Casals, Marian Anderson, Van Cliburn, Robert Frost, Fredric March, Benny Goodman, Bob Newhart and a 7-year-old Chinese cellist called Yo-yo Ma, who was brought to the program’s attention by Casals.”
As biographer Jim Whiting noted, “the article was noteworthy in two respects. First, it included Yo-Yo’s name in the same sentence as those of two U.S. presidents and eight world-famous performers and writers. Second, Yo-Yo had been identified in a major newspaper for the first time. It would hardly be the last. In the years since then, the New York Times alone has written about him more than 1,000 times.”
Why You Should Never Ask What’s It Like To Be A Girl In A Band
Bleached released their latest body of work via Dead Oceans, an EP titled Can You Deal? The centerpiece is its title track, which speaks to Jennifer still having to field questions about her gender in interviews, instead of her art. If you can believe it, this has been happening to the sisters since they were in a punk band in their teens. This EP shows the band trying to make listeners see beyond gender and really hone in on the music that’s being made; Bleached wanted to drop the labels and make people aware that it’s 2017, and yes, women are playing rock ‘n’ roll.
Why did you decide to make a zine with the EP? How did you go about getting the awesome contributors?
Jennifer: When we wrote “Can You Deal?” as a band, I had to figure out what I was going to sing about. I thought it was a really cool song where I thought that anything I would sing about would be more noticeable lyric-wise, because there are some chanty parts. So, I thought I wanted to sing about something I care about, which I usually do, but I felt like it was a chance to say something that mattered. We kept getting interviewed with the same questions: “What’s it like to be in a girl in a band,” or “What’s it like to be an all-girl band,” even though we have a male drummer. I was just like, I’m gonna sing about that. We had a punk band when we were teenagers and got these questions over and over. I felt like it was the same questions 10 years later, so I thought it was finally the time to say something about it. It was fresh on my mind, so that’s how that topic got brought up among Bleached.
Our manager said we could take it further and talk to other female musicians about it. I was a little bit nervous to actually email anybody, because once I did it, I was making myself vulnerable. I had talked to other female musician friends and how it’s annoying. What do you do? What do you say? I just emailed 10 friends that I knew that would maybe be interested, and then some people started emailing people for me. I got so many responses. People were so stoked on the idea. It was awesome. I was so glad I took that leap of faith and decided to email a bunch of people to see if they wanted to be a part of the zine. It snowballed from there and became bigger than I expected. I imagined it would be midnight at a Kinko’s throwing it together, copying and stapling everything. Now, it’s way beyond that. We have a printer doing it. There are so many people participating in it — either artists submitting personal essays, lyrics or poems. Now there are so many amazing people. We thought it would be a better idea to make it look a little nicer. We started out with 500 [copies], but it sold out really fast, so we added a few. All of the money made — other than reimbursing the printer — is going to Planned Parenthood.
