Return of the Blog--Music Videos

I'm slacking on posting photos from both my solo trip cross-country and my triumphant return to beautiful San Francisco. I blame it on the fact that my apartment isn't heated and the blood has slowed in my veins to a state of hibernation.

Photos coming soon...

In the meantime, I wanted to share some of the official and consumer-generated videos I've been watching on Youtube. Reid inspired me as he uses Youtube as free background music by navigating to the artist's videos, but I've been intrigued by the visuals themselves.

Music videos have been dying a long and painful death ever since MTV canned them in favor of crap reality shows and then even the spinoff meant just for videos, MTV2, succumbed. The videos are no longer helpful to the companies, which is probably why all of them appear pretty low-budget. But sometimes there's nothing else than a tiny budget that can inspire creativity and reduce the conservativism that can come with a company shelling out a huge wad of cash for something they're banking on to make them money (like Jay-Z's million dollar video for "Big Pimpin'". http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plUy7Me_fZQ

Could Youtube be a perfect showcase for music videos that otherwise wouldn't be seen? It's already proven itself as a go-to for popular ads.

Some creative videos... Of Montreal's video for "Gronlandic Edit"



...Architecture in Helsinki's puppet costume video for "Heart it Races"


and Arcade Fire's live video for Neon Bible, shot with the whole band in an elevator (side note--there are two "official" videos for this song, one of which is designed to be web-only and interactive, make sure to click around--http://www.beonlineb.com/click_around.html )


Of course, there are still some awesome songs with terrible videos, like MIA's "Paper Planes" (what is with the damn cash register?)


There are also a lot of user-generated takes on songs on Youtube, and many great ones, like this spaghetti-western take on Arcade Fire's "My Body is a Cage":


or this take on Soulja Boy's "Crank That"... better than the real video which shows Myspace, haha.


What will happen to the music video? I love the idea of an interactive video. Arcade Fire's is not polished, but the idea is so new... it could be taken to much greater lengths and this is a peek. Consumer-generated is also great.

I leave you with this visually disconnected techno remix of Soulja Boy's "Crank That" just cuz I like the remix (thanks, Reid)




* As a side note, I fully admit that my taste in music is heavily influenced by Reid and the Jo-tel (jo-tel.com) :) Without you guys, I'd be stuck with my current iTunes library.