R.E.M. - Spooky (live)

I love this tune. First heard it when Dusty Springfield sang it. Hopefully, I can find another copy of that. Her version was more Rhodes driven which is uber-cool.

Michael Stipe does a very decent job on this.

Jay-Z - Run This Town (feat. Rihanna & Kanye West)

Not feeling it yo!

Rihanna tries so hard to be gangsta by flippin' the bird. Wow, try smoking crack like Amy Winehouse!

Inch Chua - The Bedroom

Click on the picture!

Galaxie 500 - Ceremony (live)

In my never-ending quest to embarass myself and my friends musically, I've always sought to find some new music (or stuff I like) to ape. As some of you guys might know, me and some of the boys formed a nonsensical shoegazing band called Galactica a few months.

We wrote and recorded a few tunes on the spot for the fun of it, releasing the (intentionally, we hope people could tell) badly recorded and mixed EP Galactica Lives!.

Barring that there will be time (and money), we will like to carry on with this nonsense and do a follow-up EP. However, being the "consummate" artists we are, I believe we should keep evolving... Ahem, yeah, so instead of doing more early 90's British shoegazing rock, we will mine the late 90's American slow-core movement.

I love Low who I mentioned to Bryan. He digs the mp3s I've sent over. Interestingly, he reminded me of an old 80's (now defunct) American act Galaxie 500 which he said are pretty much the pioneers of the whole slow-core genre. Atmospheric and very sluggish in nature.

He's right.

So I'm revisiting all my Galaxie 500 CDs right now. That's the Bostonian band covering Joy Division's 'Ceremony'. Interesting trivia: They were actually friends with talkshow host Conan O'Brien when they were all undergrads in Harvard. I love Wikipedia.

Pulp - This Is Hardcore (live)

Wooo, nice live version.

Pulp got to release this as the first single off This Is Hardcore cause Radiohead released a highly successful sprawling single also known as 'Paranoid Android' the year before in 1997. This didn't do as well as expected.

Could be the fact that frontman Jarvis Cocker is not really a singer than an observant exhibitionist. Could be the issue that the song draws an allegory between his personal demons and all the porn movies he watched in the hotels the band stayed during their European tour.

I love this tune anyway. Great stuff. Lovely and underrated album too.

She & Him - Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?

Apparently, Zooey Deschanel got together with her '(500) Days Of Summer' co-star Joseph Gordon-Levitt to do a video for her band She & Him. Shot by the movie director Marc Webb, it's sorta like a promo thing for the indie flick.

But it's real good.

Zombieland trailer

Cannot wait to see this!!!

U2 - Bad (live)

An old video. One of my favourite U2 tunes.

Check out 'The Unforgettable Fire' here. Amazing playing by The Edge.

Fantastic Mr. Fox

This looks really cute! Based on the Roald Dahl's children novel and is stop-motion! George Clooney, Bill Murray, Meryl Streep, Jason Schwartzman and Willem Dafoe star. And it's directed by Wes Anderson so it should be fun!

The Burning Plain trailer

The Burning Plain is both written and directed by Mexican filmmaker Guillermo Arriaga, who worked with and wrote Alejandro González Iñárritu's trilogy of Amores Perros, 21 Grams, and Babel, as well as the screenplays for The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada and The Night Buffalo. The film first premiered at the Venice Film Festival late last year and has played at other major film festivals ever since then. Magnolia Pictures will be bringing The Burning Plain to very limited theaters starting on September 18th this year.

I've missed 'Babel' which I heard was really good but I've enjoyed watching '21 Grams'. This looks pretty decent too.