I couldn’t bear to let these sit in the linkblog; they’re the fucking funniest thing I’ve seen all month.
YouTube user StSanders takes videos of famous “guitar gods” and overdubs them with his own instrumentation. The trick, though, is that he makes them sound terrible. His ability to perfectly synch his playing to the performer’s is what makes the effect so satisfying (and hilarious) — the videos trick the part of your brain that unconsciously associates motion and sound, and as a result you simply can’t imagine that Eric Clapton could be playing anything other than that dreadful noise you hear. And oh, the faces he makes while he’s doing it!
The videos are also a rare example of truly musical musical comedy, in which the jokes are made by instruments rather than language. The drums in the Clapton video act as a terrific background joke, and the entrance of the saxophone at a minute and half in is hilarious.
Below is my favorite: Jake E. Lee’s bizarre theatrics are funny enough, but Ozzy Osbourne’s constant, enthusiastic clapping is what pushes me over the edge here.
Here’s a link to the rest of StSander’s videos — this one, of Steve Vai playing a triple-(I’ll say that again, triple)-necked guitar is particularly good.
Stark Effect’s “We Like Repartee”, released in 2002 as part of the Dictionaraoke Project, isn’t the cleverest Internet gimmick song I’ve ever heard, nor is it the even the catchiest — it is, after all, based on a goddamn Venga Boys song. Yet somehow, I have become unaccountably obsessed with it. Why does something so silly give me so much pleasure?
As a professional comedian, my suspicion is that the rewritten lyrics make it seem almost plausible that the word-pronunciation voices from online dictionaries actually have, somehow, written and recorded a party song about how awesome the dictionary is. That, and the simple pleasure of hearing the stilted Encarta voice try to get his groove on. (”Hey. Now. Hey. Now. Here what I say. Now.”)
More from Stark Effect: The Mic In Track EP, a wonderful set of compositions based on found recordings collected from peer-to-peer filesharing networks.
I’ve always loved Raphael’s comic — it’s charming, well-written, and beautifully illustrated. However, I’ve often been bothered by Raphael’s tendency to dwell in self-pity, rather than express any one of the many positive aspects of his life. (See exhibit A; exhibit B.)
After making fun of him for the umpteenth time, the following conversation took place:
Me: “You know, if I wrote your comic, I would write about how your life is awesome and how you’re stupid for being such a big fucking baby all the time.” Raphael: “Ok. Want to?” Me: “Huh?” Raphael: “You have a week.”
A short two months later, I whipped up the following gem. Enjoy.