Yay for New Zealand Music Month, and yay for live performances, and for hearing new musicians and old favourites! On TV! On the radio! In libraries! But also yay for the particular brand of musical insanity that can be found on the internet.
A friend and I recently spent a few nights emailing each other bizarre and fantastic music clips from YouTube. It was so much fun, not to mention distracting – every clip we found led to dozens more. Which is the coolest thing about the internet; it just seems to go on forever.
Much like me, in fact. Because what I really wanted to share with you today is a wee project I discovered through Twitter. It’s called the 8in8 project, and was organised by a few of my favourite people.
Superstar author (and my ultimate superhero) Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer (of Dresden Dolls fame) recently got together with Ben Folds and Damian Kulash (from OK Go), and attempted to write and record 8 songs in 8 hours, as part of Boston’s Berklee College Rethink Music event. Described by Gaiman on his blog as being the ‘world’s least super supergroup’, they were initially inspired by Kulash’s question:
“Can the album cycle actually be reduced to a single day? If the recording industry is supposed to be a means of connecting musicians to music listeners, well, then, here it is – spontaneous and circular.”
They nearly managed it – 6 in 6 being the eventual output, all presented on an album called NightyNight, which you can buy online, with all proceeds going to charity.
The songs are crazy and funny and charming, and witty and sad and clever, and get stuck in your head like the best kind of earworm. And the icing on the cake? Because they ran the whole project through Twitter, hundreds of people online got to have a say on possible song titles, AND THEN hundreds more went straight off and made music videos for all the tracks. My favourite so far? The Problem with Saints, I think, but I also loved I’ll Be My Mirror. Ooh, and Nikola Tesla and …
So while you’re waiting for the next New Zealand Music Month performance at your local library, jump on our free internet computers and search Twitter or YouTube for “8in8”, then sit back and enjoy, and then tell me your favourite!
Christchurch City Libraries Blog 