videos

Please enjoy (what has been retconned to be) jwz mixtape 084.

I understand (from cruel heresay) that when I make these video posts, some of you watch the first three, then get distracted and never watch the rest. I feel the need to point out that they are not sorted by quality. They tend to be vaguely (and only vaguely) sorted by style and musical similarity, which is not the same thing.

Tags: , , ,
Current Music: as noted

36 Responses:

  1. boyofish says:

    I've been far more complete with your video posts than with the mixtapes, because I can play/pause them and then let the videos finish downloading in the background. Since I don't regularly listen to music at the computer, however, I would play the mixtape stream, pause it about ten minutes in, forget about it for a few days, and then be unable to pick up where I left off.

    Please keep the video posts going!

  2. vordark says:

    Wow. That is a cruel heresy. These posts are one of my primary sources for new music and I watch every video religiously. Sure, your musical tastes are 90%...different...than mine, but the one or two things I seriously dig more than make up for the other...things. :)

    Maybe you can answer a question though. Is there some method/site/crystal ball you use to satisfy you when you say "Gee, I like this band. I'd like more of that sort of thing!", 'cause the related videos links on YouTube are strong with the fail in this regard for me.

    • jwz says:

      I find that the recommendation engine on the Amazon MP3 store does a pretty good job, and there are playable clips of all the tracks. The trick using that (or any) music recommendation engine is to never admit to owning any actually-popular album. ("You own something by The Police? Then you'll love Nickelback, they sold a lot of copies too!") If you only give it relatively obscure seeds, it makes moderately sensible suggestions.

      Another trick that sometimes works is to look at a band's tour history and see what other bands they have played with.

    • gniv says:

      pandora pandora pandora pandora

  3. lovingboth says:

    Call me lazy, but as I don't do YouTube via a browser, I tend not to watch any of them.

    If they had comments about who and what they were, I would look at more.

  4. candid says:

    I usually watch them in "hottest girl in representative screenshot" order. (But still I rarely watch more than 3 of them.)

  5. ultranurd says:

    I really like the third one... it's like the took the idea from the Hey Ya! video (retro costumes, clones), added androids, and made a much better song. Looks like Outkast's Big Boi was involved in promoting Monae, so probably not just coincidence.

    (And yes, I will watch the rest of the videos eventually.)

    • ultranurd says:

      The last video pretty much proves that for as many people who were scared by the raptors in Jurassic Park, there were a select few who developed a raptor fetish after watching it.

  6. bbot.org says:

    I never watch any of them, since I don't allow script execution on lj-toys.com, and would have to allow each embed.

    Indeed, they didn't even render the placeholder image in the RSS reader, and so I thought this post was just text.

  7. jered says:

    I tend to watch them all, or at least the ones I haven't seen before.

    The "Many Moons" video and song still blow me away, especially in comparison to the rest of Monae's work which feels lackluster.

    Probably a bit too nu-disco and less your style, but two tracks I've been enjoying recently, and that mix very well (ignore the videos):

    I like your last track from Marc Remillard along the lines of these two.

    One nit: do you have a good reason for not turning off "related videos" on your embeds? It is easily the most annoying YouTube feature ever... moving the mouse causes a bunch of garbage to pop up and obscure the video, and there's no way to dismiss the garbage other than waiting. UI designer needs shot.

    • jwz says:

      Huh, I'm not seeing that mouseover garbage pop up at all. When does it happen for you?

      These are the parameters I use:


      $url .= '&color1=0&color2=0x004400'; # green ui
      $url .= '&fs=1'; # enable full screen button
      $url .= '&showsearch=0'; # turn off search field
      $url .= '&showinfo=0'; # turn off title overlay
      $url .= '&iv_load_policy=3'; # turn off annotations
      $url .= '&ap=%2526fmt=18'; # higher quality, if available
      # $url .= '&ap=%2526fmt=22'; # HD, but only works if HD exists

      • thargol says:

        Uhhhh... whenever you mouseover any of the videos. Anywhere in the video seems to trigger it for me.

      • jered says:

        I'm not sure what the heuristics are, but this seems to work:
        1) Start a video playing,
        2) Pause it,
        3) Wait 5 seconds,
        4) Mouse over it (either paused or playing)

        Anyway, you want to add a '&rel=0' to your defaults and it will make many of us happier.

        • jwz says:

          Yeah that's totally not happening for me at all in Safari 4.0.4 and Flash 10.0 r42.

          • jered says:

            Weird; I can reproduce 100% with Safari 4.0.4 / Flash 10.0.42. They don't pop up the first time a movie plays as long as you don't pause it, but will always pop up after.

            Mind adding the "rel=0" argument for the rest of us?

    • ionan says:

      These are great, thanks for posting them. You might enjoy this, if you haven't already heard it:

  8. phoenixredux says:

    I always intend to watch more of them. I watched he first one on this list with the girls and the cake, and who could not love that? But I'm at work, and can't watch videos all day. So I tell myself that I'll watch them later. And maybe I will. Because it would suck to miss these high quality things due to sheer laziness on my part. Please keep posting them, though. You have excellent taste.

    • discogravy says:

      And this is my biggest hurdle as well. the mixtapes I could hit play on and do other stuff while they ran in the background. as a bonus, whenever a song would pull me out of whatever work I was doing, that's how i knew it was unbelievably awesome and I had to find out more about that artist. videos demand my eyes as well as ears, so i can't really work and enjoy them.

    • pavel_lishin says:

      I just open them in another browser window on my second monitor, and don't really bother watching the videos too attentively. I love these posts for discovering new music, so if something has a great video but shitty music, I don't really care.

  9. vimsig says:

    I watch them all and look forward to your selections.

  10. ladykalessia says:

    Watching that first one is like being hit in the face with a brick wrapped in 80's country kitsch fabric, Martha Stewart magazines covers and unicorn shit over and over and over.

  11. azul_ros says:

    It has far more to do with time available to sit & watch all the vids posted, rather than discerning quality or styles.

  12. Chris C says:

    Aussie-French kink is a new genre to me, but one which I may investigate further in future.

    - Chris

  13. spendocrat says:

    Man, the phrase "What you gonna do when the come for you" rips me right out of hot Australian/French land and drops me in the middle of COPS. I think this is a permanent condition.

  14. takeapeek says:

    I usually watch all the videos you post, because you never know what you may find :-) plus it always introduces me to new music i have not heard yet..so thank you :-)

  15. adam_0oo says:

    Took a week or so, but I finally got through them.

  16. dougo says:

    Clearly you should just post one video. Per day.