Saturday, January 22, 2011

Spike Jones, Video:

I've had a life-long fascination with Spike Jones's music novelties. He had a crack band, full of musicians who could add ugly sounds in the most complicated rhythms, and he used his imagination to wreck just about every style of music that mid-20th century folk admired. As a child I had seen him on TV, but it never occurred to me that some of his novelties had been preserved in video. Thanks to a link from the Dvorak Blog, I was inspired to search Youtube. I urge you to do the same. Search for:

"Spike Jones"

Some of the results from this search are the worst kind of "video": an audio track of the song, with a few still pictures to look at. I assume these videos are created on the assumption that 21st century people must have something to distract the eyes, in order to hear. Some of the links are actual performances, and some of them have a taste of the modern music video.

I do not know if all of these items have been posted legally, so you are on your own in deciding whether it's proper to view them. Here are the true video links from my "spike jones" search:

Cocktails for Two
Clink! Clink! Another Drink!
Weird Al discusses Spike Jones: the legend
Blacksmith Song
Pass the Biscuits, Mirandy
Beetle Balm (not an original video, but weird enough!)
You Always Hurt The One You Love(the same weird guy)

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