And so is GWAR. They’ve done Undercover eight times now, which must be a record. Below is my favorite AVU performance of theirs, Kansas’s “Carry On My Wayward Son.”
A.V. Undercover archives are up now too. Right here.
These Just Keep Getting Better
Funny stuff.
Whoa
1950’s Super Panavision 70 style made with #midjourney #elevenlabs and #runwayai and edited in Premiere. Script by Chat GPT.
So This Is Cool
Learned this past weekend on a trip visiting my 81-year-old aunt that my grandmother’s cousin (my first cousin, twice removed) was a songwriter in California. And that I’m named for him, by way of my dad. (Fucked up spelling and all.) Here’s one of his tunes that Bing Crosby recorded.
And here’s another that could be fun to work up as a rocker.
How Much For The Whole Collection?
This is the same guy who did the Clockwork Orange location tour I posted not too long ago. I’m slightly obsessed with his channel at the moment.
How Did I Miss This?
Smoking Popes album from 2018 with the original lineup! Tuck in, you filthy bastards!
What On Earth!
Oscar-nominated animated short from 1966. Anybody seen it before? Seems like I have, but who the hell knows anymore.
Shine A Light On Me
Did you bastards know there’s an official Midnight Special channel on YouTube releasing entire unedited episodes (as well as clips)? Holy shit, it’s a treasure trove!
Timestamped performances for this episode are here. I mostly just watched Sly and the Family Stone, obviously.
BONUS: Here’s another recently released episode with Mott the Hoople and The New York Dolls. Not sure who the guy is in the back playing the Thunderbird for the Dolls. Arthur Kane appears to be in a cast and is obviously miming …
The Internet’s Inevitable Enshittification
How platforms decay, as explained by Cory Doctorow to NPR. Finally a name for what we may not consciously recognize but deep down know is going on.
… I think Facebook’s a good example. Facebook went through the whole lifecycle of platform decay. They started off by offering a really good deal to their end users. They said, “Hey, leave MySpace, come to Facebook. It’s just like MySpace, except we only show you the things that you asked to see, and we’ll never spy on you.”
And then once those users were locked in — because once you’re in a place with all of your friends, it’s really hard to leave — they started to take away some of that good stuff they gave them, and they handed it to advertisers and publishers.
To the advertisers, they said, “We were lying when we said we weren’t going to spy on these guys. We’re totally spying on them. Here’s all the data you need to target them for ads that we’re not going to charge you much money for.”
And to the publishers, they said, “We are also lying when we said we’d only show them the stuff they asked to see.”
And then once the publishers and the advertisers were locked in, well, they took away those surpluses. The ads got more expensive. Publishers had to put more and more of their content — not just to get recommended, but even to be shown to the people who subscribed them. And that’s the final stage, the stage where there’s just only the residual value left on the platform that the platform owner thinks will keep the users and the business customers they bring in stuck to the platform. And that’s when we’re at the beginning of the end.
Further reading.
I’ve Got A Bad Feeling About This
Never made it more than about three minutes whenever I try to watch the infamous holiday special. This looks promising, though!