What are you listening to?

I thought I'd shared this piece before. The first version from 1973 takes me back to my student days a few years later.
Focus - Hocus Pocus Live '73


The second version, the same piece half a century later, still live but sounding a little different (and longer!)
Focus - "Hocus Pocus" (Bush Hall, London, 20 April 2023)

These guys performed in Swindon not long before I moved to Sweden and I went to see them.  It was a great concert!

These guys performed in Swindon not long before I moved to Sweden and I went to see them.  It was a great concert!

Yeah, I've never seen them live, wish I had.

You can't unhear it.

I was watching a music video on youtube and noticed there was something creepy about it. I realized the problem was that the music was a studio recording while the video was of a live performance and all the ambient sounds that you should hear from what you were seeing were missing. It was noticeable because the music was not very loud - even though it was staged for a music video, and not really a live performance, you should have heard the other sounds in the environment. 

But now that I recognized this inconsistency, all music videos with that defect seem off. Even the ones with music loud enough to drown out much of the ambient noise seem some how creepy.

The video was a spoof of a better known one. I went back and looked at the original and now that seems weird too.

The videos are 









When I first watched this video I thought there was something different about the choreography, eventually I decided the best way to describe it is that they are dancing like chimpanzees. 

                                                                                                       
On another subject ... I often like to listen to different versions of a piece of music to compare them.
Here is what I think of as the original version of this song. One of the things I like about it is that in singing groups consisting of siblings the performers use very similar pronunciation so the harmony is more perfect than in groups of unrelated singers.




And there's this ...


The dancing in the Sing Sing Sing video reminds me of this scene of Carlo's gorilla act:
https://youtu.be/fiSjeLhg25w?t=2010

[Ninshub]

I think I understand that "creepy" feeling when sometimes I hear a live soundboard bootleg of a band with the audience mixed extremely low or absent.

That's intuitively true anyway about family harmony singing groups. I think of the 50s rock & roll or country team-ups like the Everly Brothers, or my favorites The Louvin Brothers. Heavenly.

[Ninshub]

It was even more "brotherly" when I recorded a cover of that song myself with me singing both voices! I'm not sharing that one though.

Speaking of vocal harmonies, I've always been moved by this sort of sound. I think I shared this previously but I haven't found where.

Dear Someone - Red Molly

[Ninshub]

On the topic of family vocal harmonies, I also thought of the McGarrigle sisters:





And of course there's the Beach Boys! Three Brothers, cousin Mike Love and childhood friend Al Jardine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2DCWfBkMSI

I like this much better, the sound quality is not that great but it is authentic and otherwise awesome in my opinion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyAUKU_ImNg

You can't unhear it.

I was watching a music video on youtube and noticed there was something creepy about it. I realized the problem was that the music was a studio recording while the video was of a live performance and all the ambient sounds that you should hear from what you were seeing were missing. It was noticeable because the music was not very loud - even though it was staged for a music video, and not really a live performance, you should have heard the other sounds in the environment. 

But now that I recognized this inconsistency, all music videos with that defect seem off. Even the ones with music loud enough to drown out much of the ambient noise seem some how creepy.

The video was a spoof of a better known one. I went back and looked at the original and now that seems weird too.

...




...

I just notice her guitar playing has such a special sound because she is playing the guitar left handed but the guitar is strung right handed. While most guitar pickers will play the base notes with their thumb she is playing the treble notes with her thumb and that gives her guitar playing a distinctive sound.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2DCWfBkMSI