Oh, how we laugh!

We here at Howls Of Owls love good comedy, heck sometimes we even love a bad comedy (I'm looking at you you Paula Poundstone!) The Kids In The Hall, Mr. Show, Zach Galifianakis, Todd Berry, Lewis Black...oh the list could go on and on; we love to laugh, it's just that simple. Or is it chortle? I think we love to chortle. So here are a few of my favorite comedy personalities via Youtube.

This first one here is from episode 20 of season 1 of the Kids In The Hall, and it might be one of my favorite Kids In The Hall sketches ever. Scott Thompson as Christ? Get outta here!



The next clip is from Mr. Show perhaps one of the most criminally funny sketch comedy shows ever. This clip is from episode #406. The taint is defined as the region...of the human body between the testicles...oh you know!



People have been listening for the death rattle of Saturday Night Live for a few years now but thanks to the hiring of the guys from The Lonely Island it's been postponed for another couple of years. First is a SNL Digital Short which might be the funniest thing I've seen on SNL in a few years. After that is a clip from The Lonely Island's hit show The 'Bu. Once you see episode one you might as well and go watch the other 7 episodes.





This next clip is of Zach Galifianakis, and he has a beard (maybe..who knows!) He also has that cool biting wit that modern kids seem to love. What does that mean? I'm not sure. Was this thing shot with a phone?



Stella is Michael Ian Black, Mikey Show, and David Wain from The State and that underrated Comedy Central show from a couple of years ago. It was funny. Shut up.



Eugene Mirman: "I can kill a dog in six ways. Five of them are throwing missiles at it."



Finally we get to the main reason I wrote this blog. I can't write enough words to describe it, but it sort of speaks for itself. Ladies and Gentleman: John Mayer, musician who wrote the hit song Your Body Is A Wonderland, has a comedy routine.

Unclassics

In 2004, Morgan Geist -- head of Environ records and one half of Metro Area -- organized a compilation of the best unheard synth and disco gems. The series began in single format. To quote the Stylus review of the record, "this is a collection of songs that haven’t been held to the scrutiny of canonization and therein sound refreshingly sweet." Endlessly playful and endlessly playable, the songs could melt even the coldest of hearts. Perfect for cocktails with friends or when the refrigerator needs a particularly good scrubbing. I'm only going to post two songs from this, as this record is still in print and is worth your money.

Victor -- Go On Do It (Radio Edit)
Purple Flash -- We Can Make It

CS-111

Paulette Goddard is a an Oscar-nominated American film and theatre actress who starred in films such as Modern Times and The Great Dictator.
Thanks to Co-Star Records we can all hear the beautiful Ms. Goddard act out one of her favorite novelettes, Peyton Place...but there is a catch! You have to act with her!
Co-Star Records sells itself as "The Record Acting Game" wherein you get a record with Ms. Goddard's lines recorded and a script with the lines you're suppose to act out.
This MP3 is the first two cuts from the record. In the first one you star as Allison. In the second part of this MP3 you star as the devilishly handsome Mike.
The script here isn't replicated. Sorry.

The Record Acting Game featuring Ms. Paulette Goddard

Musique Concrète

Like much experimental music, musique concrète falls victim to compartmentalizing and misunderstanding. Pioneered in the forties and fifties by Pierre Schaeffer -- a French composer whose work at the Office de Radiodiffusion Télévision Française gave him the time and facilities to experiment with manipulated tape -- musique concrète hoped to expand the palette of sounds available to a composer. The recorded medium allowed for non-musical phrases to be syncopated and altered in ways unforeseen by earlier composers. By this time, John Cage's 4'33" had appeared, which was similar in its deconstruction of traditional instrumentational and structural tropes, highlighting the dynamic ambient environments in which the pieces are recorded and performed. As Schaeffer's experiments became more well known, concrète passages began to appear in experimental compositions, most notably in Edgard Varèse's 1958 Poème Électronique, which was debuted in 1958 at a performance utilizing 425 (!) arranged loudspeakers. The piece is abstract and loose, full of church bells, crashes and unidentified whines. And the Flaming Lips get all the credit.

It's impossible to understate the importance of Schaeffer's work. In the sixties and seventies, artists like Pink Floyd and Frank Zappa utilized concrète in their studio work. By then, the genre was already a generation old, but was still regarded as revolutionary. From there, a straight line can be drawn through the evolution of modern analog and digital samplers. Terminator X of Public Enemy often employed concrète in his production. It Takes A Nation Millions To Hold Us Back opens with a wail of klaxons, and it's not uncommon to hear sampled helicopter and police sirens in hip-hop throughout the nineties.

Also posted is a song from Jean-Claude Vannier's L'Enfant Assassin des Mouches, the 1972 solo record by the Gainsbourg collaborator and arranger. While not straight concrète, it does incorporate recorded real-world samples in the song's second half, including creepy kids, ticking clocks, gunshots (?) and the crunching gravel of a man's gait.

Pierre Schaeffer -- Cinq Études de Bruit: Étude Violette
Edgard Varèse -- Poème Électronique
Jean-Claude Vannier -- Les Gardes Volent Au Secours Du Roi