If I Was Incompetent, Would I Feel This Bad?
I can still remember the first time I caught this episode of Taxi. In this episode Jim’s father passes away but his family tries to have him declared incompetent so he won’t have control over the sizable inheritance his father left him.
I don’t think I was even old enough to completely relate to the emotion expressed in this clip at the time, but the message, along with the great use of “You Are The Sunshine of My Life,” tore through whatever emotional ignorance my youth afforded me. The heartbreak brilliance of Stevie Wonder alone is enough to make me misty these days, and the decision to use this song in this scene was a brilliant one. It’s the uplifting, in moments of sadness, that hit you more squarely.
For full context, here’s Part 1 and Part 2 of the episode. If you have time, watch those two first, then the clip embedded above.
NOTE: It certainly doesn’t hurt my appreciation of this episode that this particular recording is buried under a blanket of VHS glitch and tracking adjustments. Viva la nostalgia!
Everything Is Terrible: The Movie
Harbingers of bizarre vintage video Everything Is Terrible have just released a full-length DVD Everything Is Terrible: The Movie which compiles the best from their archives along with a few new clips.
Here it is, the real deal, our first ever DVD of mind scanning, facercizing, terribleness. Packed full of boner inducing content, including: our non-stop feature length movie, our greatest hits from the web in their original form, music videos, 3-minute movies, and tons of unseen footage!
I’m pretty new to the phenomenon that is EIT, but so far I’ve gotten a chuckle out of this, this, this and this. They’re pricing the DVD at $.01 and the shipping charge is $20 (get the picture?). I just ordered mine, I advise you do the same.
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Endless Numbered Mixtape #24: Neil Young “Birds (Full Band Version)”
Here’s a gorgeous alternate version of Neil Young’s “Birds,” ultimately released on After The Gold Rush. This early version comes from Neil Young’s new Archives Vol. 1 set and contrasts the official stripped-down version with a full band and an almost pop tempo. I particularly love the weird time signature coming out of the chorus and how it stumbles around within the instrumentation.
I’m also including a great live solo version of Young’s early cut for Buffalo Springfield “On The Way Home,” just for the hell of it.
DOWNLOAD: Neil Young “Birds (Full Band Version)”
DOWNLOAD: Neil Young “On The Way Home (Live at the Riverboat 1969)”
Endless Numbered Mixtape #23: Eric Malmberg “Milda Döden Hämtar Oss Alla Till Slut”
Malmberg’s work often sounds like Gustav Holst’s The Planets being played solo on your great grandmother’s living room organ, with the percussion set to “rhumba.” But 2007’s Verklighet & Beat explores a more lush, green and orchestral territory.
Instead, “Milda Döden Hämtar Oss Alla Till Slut” sounds like someone let grandma sit in on the recording sessions for Talk Talk’s Spirit of Eden and the most amazing sounds in the history of the world were birthed (Hollis was apparently, too stunned to sing).
DOWNLOAD: Eric Malmberg “Milda Döden Hämtar Oss Alla Till Slut”
(NOTE: I don’t think I’ve ever heard Holst’s The Planets, that’s what I imagine it probably sounds like.)