Chartjackers - Jimmy, Charlie, Alex and Johnny

As I mentioned in our review of Disney’s A Christmas Carol yesterday, we bumped into 2 girls from Hat Trick at the Premiere, who were helping out the ChartJackers Project. 4 guys (Charlie, Alex, Johnny and Jimmy) who are trying to attempt the impossible: with no budget, and using only their charm and the internet, they are going to get a number one single for Children In Need.

In just ten weeks the guys must get a song written, find the musicians to perform it, blag a studio and persuade some of the biggest names on YouTube to come together, form a super group and sing it. Along the way they’ll be meeting one hit wonders, blagging recording time in a top studio, persuading DJs to play list their song. In short doing EVERYTHING THEY CAN TO GET TO NUMBER ONE!

It used to be you needed to sell truck loads of records to get to number one. Now on average a UK number one needs under 50, 000 units with Elvis getting to number one in 2005 with just over 20, 000 sales. The boys have a combined subscriber base on You tube of 200,000 people. Add on the halo effect of Children In Need, fans of other You tubers they may involve, and the BBC Switch audience, and they just might be in with a chance…

More info at ChartJackers Project.

Felica Day and the rest of the cast of The Guild have made this great music video as part a promo for their upcoming season 3. Catch up with The Guild here.

Spotted this over on BoingBoing, and thought it was suitably geeky to post. A pentatonic scale is a musical scale with 5 pitches per octave in contrast to a heptatonic (7 note) scale such as the standard major scale. What’s interesting about the pentatonic scale is it seems to be pretty much universally ingrained on the  brain, and is common across many many forms of music throughout the world. And Bobby McFerrin has an rather interesting way of demonstrating this to an audience.

World Science Festival 2009: Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale from World Science Festival.

Sharpwire's 'Johnnys Midnight Goggles'

Here in the ‘Stafford shires’, the city of Lichfield is currently in the middle of it’s annual celebration of music, dance, drama and comedy, the Lichfield Festival. This year, a show called  ‘Johnny’s Midnight Goggles‘ caught my eye, performed by a talented singer/actor/cellist Matthew Sharp and written by Peter M Wyer (SharpWire).

The programme described it as ‘Tim Burton meets John Adams, Arnold Schwarzenegger meets Edith Piaf, Philip Pullman meets Paganini. Witty, nail-biting and entrancing music theatre with goggles on!’ Well that’s gotta be worth a look!

I think due to the fact the show was on a Friday night at 9.45pm – not exactly the friendliest time to put on a show (the fault of the Lichfield Festival committee not the performer) – there was only a small audience of people in the Lichfield Garrick studio. However, it did make for a nice intimate atmosphere, and Matthew Sharp even came out and played some Bach on the cello while we were wait for people to arrive, telling us to ‘just relax and keep chatting – think of me as background music at a wedding’. Even though it was meant as a piece of light background music, it was difficult not to be impressed at his superb musicianship.

Matthew Sharp

Once the show proper started, Sharp starts to tell the wonderfully surreal story of his friend Johnny, a black camel, some magical goggles, and alternate universes. All done with aid of his booming bass-baritone voice, amazing cellist skill, a few lighting effects, and a nice lady with a Macbook Pro. I’ve been trying to think of a way explain the performance anymore than that… A one man opera with surrealism, comedy, and cello? A crazy adventure told through song & strings, and superb storytelling? Both statements are true, but really ‘Johnny’s Midnight Goggles‘ is something you need to experience for yourself to fully appreciate it’s genius and quality.

I enjoyed ‘Johnny’s Midnight Goggles‘ so much that last night i went to see ‘Finkelstein’s Castle’ a sequel of sorts, also performed Matthew Sharp and written by Peter M Wyer which was equally brilliant. If either show comes near to your town, they’re well worth going to see for an evening of wonderfully surreal adventure.

Barenaked Ladies - Ed, Kevin, Tyler and Jim

For those who don’t know Barenaked Ladies, they are a Canadian band who i’ve been a massive fan since about 1992 (read more about them here). They recently had an amicable split from Steven Page, one of their 2 frontmen.

They’ve decided to carry on as a band, and to show they can still rock it as 4 piece, they’ve released their first concert since the break as a free download until the 27th March 2009.

If your a fan, then it’s good, if a little weird, hearing all the songs you know sung by BNL, but a slightly different BNL. If you’ve never heard of BNL, download it and give them a try!

Click here to grab you copy while you can!

As i’ve mentioned before on the site, i’m quite a big BNL fan, and this brilliant parody of the old BNL song ‘One Week’ popped on CollegeHumor this week. Genius (Warning, some of the language nsfw).