Mbube

"Mbube" is most likely one of the most famous melodies known on this planet. The history behind this haunting Zulu-song, which would later be known throughout the world as "Wimoweh" and/or "The Lion sleeps tonight" is as ramified and mysterious as the jungle it evokes with its chants and wailing, ghostly voice.


Salomon Linda, who conceived the melody one afternoon in South-Africa´s only recording studio in the 1930s, sold all the rights to the owner of the record company for a minimal amount of cash. In return he was "allowed" to work as a packer in the small company. During the decades, several people would take on the song and changed it until it became an enduring mega-seller. I found it quite surprising that the song, which is widely believed to be an ancient African lullaby, was written in the 1930s and that it was transformed by several composers who conveniently forgot to mention Salomon Linda as the original author.

For some downloadable versions of "Mbube/The Lion sleeps tonight" and a short write-up of the story head to Any Major Dude. The complete and riveting history of the song from it´s conception to the long law-suits during the naughties can be read in this fascinating story.

This is the original recording of "Mbube" by Salomon Linda and the Evening Birds.

This Used To Be "This Used To Be The Future"

"This used to be the future" is a track from the bonus CD of the upcoming, new Pet Shop Boys album "Yes". The special gimmick: vocals are not only sung by Neil Tennant, but also by Chris Low and Phil Oakey from The Human League.

MARCH 23 UPDATE:
This used to be "This Used to be the Future": After the song was taken down due to our beloved copyright violation bla bla (after all there is no such thing as free promotion?!) there is now the "Ken Saint X-tended Mix", which is surprisingly good and very close to the "original" version. I wonder how long this will be up...

Kuts Thru You

Since yesterday the series of Youtube mash-ups of Israeli musician and artist Kutiman are spreading like wildfire through the net. The original Thru-You-site, where the videos are hosted is currently down, but some people have captured the clips and put them up on Youtube.

Kutiman takes small parts out of Youtube videos of amateur musicians and instrument presentations. He loops them and creates new songs out of the bits and pieces. It´s audio-visual sampling in its purest form and the results are simply amazing! The idea is not new but the artful and musical expertise with which it is done is stunning and very impressive.

"Babylon Band" gives a good impression on how the music and the video works.


"This is what it became", on a reggae tip


"Just a Lady" is just beautiful!


You can watch all seven videos and a short "how-it-was-done"-clip by Kutiman here.

BLIP On My Radar

I am currently fiddling around with Blip.FM. Since I never bothered to follow anyone on Twitter, this new social music site passed me by. After playing around with it a bit, I must say that it is a much easier way to find music than on the deceased Muxtape.

I signed up this afternoon and I am now collecting a track list that is deemed to become very eclectic.
Make sure to drop by at StellaVista´s Outer Base. Slip into something comfy and pour yourself a drink.


The server seems to be quite slow and overpowered at times. You also have to wonder about the legal aspect of the whole thing. As soon as you upload anything you are practically committing a crime. I am expecting Blip.fm to be shut down in Germany pretty soon (now, that I have found it...)

Snip

One of the few really helpful tools that came with Vista (not Stella) is the Snipping Tool which allows you to copy a snippet from your screen and store it as a jpeg (or whatever you prefer).

This way you can easily capture fleeting images from flash-animations, movies or anything that doesn´t work with "save copy as".

Here are a some examples of frozen, unseen digital images from random, perpetual animations. (click to enlarge!)

Mux Nixed

As reported here Muxtape has been shut down by the RIAA.
It took longer than I thought it would, but Mux are confident that they will re-open soon.
Let´s hope for the best.

Final Listening

From "New Embarrasment", "Sad Pop" to "Final Listening". These are a few of the styles and stations Der Plan travelled with their music and state of minds during the last 28 years.

"Final Listening" describes our current state of aquiring (and occasionally listening) of music in its over abundance and arbitrariness. Since everything is connected with everything, there is no outside influence any longer.

Plan-member Moritz Rrr talks about the beginning of Der Plan and his current definition of "Final Listening" in this recent Interview with superb online magazine Is Greater Than. "Final Listening" means to stop buying, downloading, copying and stealing music and instead start listening to everything that is already there.


For Rrr his "Final Listening" was found in the amazing internet radio station Shirley & Spinoza, which I am currently checking out.
I knew after a few minutes of listening to one of their very exotic shows that Rrr is really up to something here.

"Shirley & Spinoza" is like a dream-transmission of cool captured sounds from the ether of a fantastic parallel universe. Absolutely amazing and highly recommended! I hear a new world calling me and I am staying there...

The "Triple WTC" appears on the inner sleeve of "Die Verschwörung" (The conspiracy), the 2004 Der Plan "come-back"-album.

Stabil Elite

"Das Millionenspiel" is the holy grail of German TV-movies. This 1970 science-fiction satire gave viewers a glimpse into the future of TV-entertainment.

At a time when private, consumer based television was in itself still science-fiction for the German audience, the brilliant script and imaginative direction of Wolfgang Menge and Tom Toelle, are still outstanding after almost 40 years.


"Millionenspiel" is a game-show that follows a volunteering candidate for seven days while a group of armed killers are out to get him. Should he survive he will get a Million Deutschmark. Many men have lost the game and one guy who had quit the show later commited suicide because he couldn´t live with the public shame.

Now, if this set-up sounds familiar: It is! The story, which was originally written as "The Price of Peril" by Robert Sheckley, inspired two further movies in the 1980s: "Le Prix du Danger" and "Running Man" with Arnold Schwarzengger. Although "Running Man" is credited to Stephen King, he just varied the story slightly (and made it much less provocative in the process).


"Das Millionenspiel" is a remarkable sci-fi film. It creates a hyper-realism by casting well known TV-hosts and reporters as moderators in the fictional show. By doing so it is dissecting and mocking the hollow phrases and rotten ethics of these show-hosts, which ironically haven´t changed at all during the last 40 years.

The downright cynical manipulation of the audience is acidly shown by peeking behind the scenes of "Trans Europe TV". Producers, who hope to prolong the hunt by planting helpers and traitors along the way, discuss the ratings while planning the best camera-angle for the desired killing-shot in the "Spiral of Death" (a glass-tunnel with bullet holes that the candidate has to pass through on his final way to survival, fame and wealth - or death!).
His mother is shamelessly used for sappy comments ("Take care! We are proud of you"). Passengers on the street are interviewed about the show: "Very modern", or "repulsive" are some of the numb reactions.

The film even deconstructs our expectations of the hero protagonist. How should we feel empathy for him, when greed for money and fame made him beat other candidates in preceeding shows? In backflashes we see him fighting his way through shows like "Case of Emergency" where he finds himself waking up in a descending Cessna after the pilot left the machine with a parachute.


The production-design of the film stays relatively close to the modern style of 1970. Lots of silver, op-art and abstract ballet-dancing were common in German tv-studios of the time. One give-away that the film was fiction were the numerous ads shown throughout the show.
Sponsored by the fictious "Stabil Elite Corporation", the art department really had a ball with these short clips that broke up the film and are clearly an imaginative highlight.
"Stabil Elite" is a sort of ACME that sells everything from over-the-counter abortion syringes to funeral cosmetics, diet pills and amphetamine saturated spring water.


After the film was shown for the first time in october 1970 the broadcast was flooded with letters. The producers had clearly expected to cause a stir with their provocative film but they were baffled by the kind of reaction the mailman brought in. Hundreds of people wanted to be part of the show! Most of them were up for the money, but some also requested to join the "hunters" and bragged that they were better shooters than the ones on TV.


There was also a letter from an American lawyer who claimed that the broadcast was violating copyright laws because film rights were not part of the deal the author had with the publisher of the story.
Sadly they had a point and the film was never shown again for the next 32 years!


In 2002 the broadcast was able to track down the current holder of the rights and bought back the rights to their own film. Seeing "Das Millionenspiel" after all this time is like un-earthing a time-capsule, that despite its nostalgic value still surprises with its acidic social satire.

Sadly, it is unlikely that "Das Millionenspiel" will find its way to DVD any time soon. Due to the fucked up legal situation the broadcast would have to make new contracts with all surviving members of cast and crew. This would also include the soundtrack which was done by CAN under the name Innerspace Productions.

Innerspace Productions (CAN): Title music


Youtube is not of big help to unearth good parts of the film. One clip shows the intro and end-title sequence with original music by CAN. (Still recommended).
Then there is another excerpt which shows the end of the hunt, the "spiral of death" and also one of the "Stabil Elite"-ads (starts at 3:15). I actually wanted to edit this with Omnisio, but this service was recently bought up by Google and is currently discontinued.

YouTomb

I just found YouTomb, a research project site that scans YouTube for videos that were taken down for alledged copyright violations or other reasons.

The FAQ explains more about their goal and the automated scan-process that YouTube utilizes to find copyright violating content.

For a moment I thought the site would actually show these videos, but they actually file them for different criteria to find out how the YouTube algorithm works.

Strangely enough the front page featured several foreign soccer-games (those fuckers are everywhere), some wrestling and on page two I found a "Little Rascals"-clip next to a bunch or arabic stuff.

Very interesting site! I am going to invest some time into it.

EDIT: Just saw that they re-moved a scene from Pink-Flamingos, entitled "Babs Johnson gets a special birthday gift" for "violation of terms"! It was online for nearly a year. Everybody who knows that scene will surely agree that it mild compared to the final scene, which was still viewable, the last time I checked.
Shock never gets old, doesn´t it?!