Help Girls Rock Camp Toronto raise $15,000 for an after school program

In 2013, Girls Rock Camp Toronto held three sold out camp sessions and had a long waiting list of kids that never got in. Not only should this never happen but the kids should be able to come back every year. Girls Rock Camp has been one of my favorite things to happen in the…

Download a live recording of They Might Be Giants first album for free

Have you ever gone to see a band that refused to play their “old stuff”? It can be frustrating, especially if it was the “old stuff” that you came to hear. Fortunately, They Might Be Giants have never been that kind of band. They’ve always been good at mixing the old stuff with the new…

Led Zeppelin’s ‘Whole Lotta Love’ on the dulcimer sounds pretty awesome

If Led Zeppelin ever decides to reunite, Jimmy Page might want to think about trading in his guitar for one of these. Here is Sam Edelston playing the classic “Whole Lotta Love” on a 3-string electric mountain dulcimer. Via Laughing Squid

Glove allows you to play piano “like Beethoven”

If you know how to type at any speed you probably understand the concept of “muscle memory”. Your hands “know” where all the keys are, but you may not consciously be able to say where they are. The same basic thing applies to dancers and musicians. They know how to move or how to play…

New Orleans and “Deep Brass” covers of the Game of Thrones theme

Robert T. Gonzalez at io9 posted these covers today. The first is the culmination of a one year project by tuba and cimbasso player Andrew Bove. Bove wanted to create a epic piece of music with an “extra low” brass section. It took him nearly a year to bring together the players and choose the song but…

They Might Be Giants – Star Wars mashup (video)

Fingertips is an odd little song. It was buried at the end of 1992’s “Apollo 18” album. If you played the CD straight through it was an odd collection of choruses – which sounded like parts of 21 different songs crammed together. According to TMBG’s John Linnell that’s exactly what it was: “The project was…

Video: Minutemen Acoustic Blowout from Public Access TV (1985)

The Minutemen were one of the most influential and least known punk/alternative bands of the 1980s. If you don’t know the history, watch the documentary “We Jam Econo: the Story of the Minutemen“. If you do know the history then you’re in for a treat: Via Rafael Landi – a live acoustic set recorded for public access…

The Velvet Underground, live and in color in 1967 – shot by Andy Worhol

This video isn’t great. The picture quality is off and there are some sound problems but in 1967 very few people thought to get video footage of the Velvet Underground, much less in color. They were a band that would strongly influence future generations of musicians and that would achieve a tremendous amount of success…

David Bowie explains the origins of Ziggy Stardust and more in a 1998 interview, animated by PBS

The PBS animated series “Blank on Blank” has devoted their latest episode to a 1998 interview with David Bowie. In just over 5 minutes Bowie and music executive Joe Smith manage to cover a lot of ground including the rock and roll life style, the problems with fame (or the lack thereof), the origins of Ziggy…