Best of YouTube - May '07

Ted Leo on The Human Giant 24 hr special
Ted's amplifier comes unplugged at one point during "Me and Mia". It's a great moment in live television - not to be missed.


Beirut [with Final Fantasy and other members of the Arcade Fire]: "The Gulag Orkestar"
Beirut and Final Fantasy performed Sunday, May 6th at New York's Bowery Ballroom and, not surprisingly, the bloggerati and seemingly every other indie musician in NYC was out for the show. As Brooklyn Vegan described it: "Final Fantasy (Owen Pallett) played first. Beirut came out to play with Final Fantasy for one song. Beirut played second. Final Fantasy played with Beirut for about half of their set. Four members of the Arcade Fire, Final Fantasy, and even more musicians who I didn't recognize, came out to play a song with Beirut during the encore. Sufjan Stevens, members of the National and Grizzly Bear were in the audience." [Pitchfork / Brooklyn Vegan]

Same performance (a little easier on the ears):

Clark and Michael: The Series - Preview
Internerd comedy series written and directed by-- and co-starring Michael Cera (George Michael from Arrested Development) with Clark Duke (Check IMDB if you care). The series debuted May 23rd on clarkandmichael.com it's pretty funny, but they definitely have room to grow. Some really great people are involved with the project (David Cross, Martin Starr, Tony Hale, Andy Richter, John Francis Daley, Patton Oswalt, Joe Lo Truglio), so I'm looking forward to see how this series progresses for these guys.

Arcade Fire 5/10/06

Right now I'm listening to the set that Arcade Fire played at TT the Bears Place [Cambridge, MA - 11/12/04] which you can find AND download for your listening enjoyment here: Bradley's Almanac

John and I just saw Arcade Fire the other night at the Orpheum Theater in Boston and it was easily one of the best live performances that I've seen in a very long. (I can only imagine how incredible it must've been to be at the TT's show back in 2004.) They played with so much enthusiasm and had a really fantastic stage set-up with about a dozen live feed cameras, 6 small projection screens, and they were projecting onto the velvet curtain behind them as well. Very fucking cool and completely worth every penny. The only thing that I found annoying about the show [besides how unbelievably hot it was inside the theater] was that the audience felt the need to clap along with almost EVERY song that Arcade Fire played. Normally I like clapping along with a band, but it made it difficult to hear the band a lot of the time, and these people were clapping along with songs which required 0% audience participation. A little annoying, but still nice be with a crowd that was exited about the band that they payed to see. (If you were there, and you were a constant-clapper, no offense!)

Video that John shot from where we were sitting [balcony seats]:

Video from MUCH better seats:

Here's a link to a good photo set from the show that I found on Flickr. Which were actually taken by Brad from the above mentioned blog, Bradley's Almanac: bradsearles