Music Monday

"The Comedians," from Roy Orbison's last album, Mystery Girl. The song was written for Orbison by Elvis Costello. This performance is from Orbison's "Black and White Night" concert, a star-studded tribute/comeback special: Costello, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Waits, K.D. Lang, and Bonnie Raitt, among others, played in the backing band.



Historical Footnote: At the time of this performance, Orbison was experiencing a career resurgence, sparked when his song "In Dreams" was used in the David Lynch movie Blue Velvet. Twenty years later, Lynch used a cover of Orbison's "Crying" as the centerpiece of his movie Mulholland Drive, resulting in one of the strangest, most powerful scenes I've ever watched. I won't post it here, because it's not nearly as effective on its own, but I highly recommend watching the whole movie (if only because it's Lynch's best, and if you don't like it you can safely avoid the rest of his stuff).

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I needed to get good and drunk after this one. Enjoy!

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Amateur Team East, Round 1

As usual, annotation will appear in the text box beneath the board as you play through the game.

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Guitar Hero World Tour

My friends G and R just bought the latest Guitar Hero, which features two new instruments to go with all the usual fun. Naturally, we have spent many, many hours testing it out. Verdict: thumbs up! The playlist is quite diverse, with songs from a nice mix of genres including country, pop, and heavy metal. The guitar and bass parts are largely the same as in previous games, but the drum kit is a fun addition, and the learning curve for it isn't too steep. World Tour also comes with a microphone for covering the vocals, which means that we all had plenty of chances to make fools of ourselves (always a good thing).

Have you tried the game yourself? Any songs you would like to see included in the next installment?