Out-of-body experience: Master of illusion:
Out-of-body experiences are just part of Ehrsson's repertoire. He has convinced people that they have swapped bodies with another person, gained a third arm, shrunk to the size of a doll or grown to giant proportions.
[ . . . ]
But Ehrsson's unorthodox apparatus amount to more than cheap trickery. They are part of his quest to understand how people come to experience a sense of self, located within their own bodies. The feeling of body ownership is so ingrained that few people ever think about it — and those scientists and philosophers who do have assumed that it was unassailable.
[ . . . ]
Ehrsson's work also intrigues neuroscientists and philosophers because it turns a slippery, metaphysical construct — the self — into something that scientists can dissect.
posted by troll
on Jan 3, 2012 -
23 comments
New Year's Eve is fast approaching, and for lots of folks that means... drinking. Plenty of drinking. And since there's no shortage of singers and songwriters who've had a little something to say about that particular topic, maybe some of the following tunes can serve as an appropriate soundtrack to your own joyous (or not?) imbibing of spirits. For example, there's... Jimmy Liggins with his succinct rendition of
Drunk, and there's...
[more inside]
posted by flapjax at midnite
on Dec 30, 2011 -
67 comments
Back in May of this year,
Mayer Hawthorne put together
a free collection of covers and descriptions of the tracks. The collection includes covers of The Isley Brothers (
Work To Do,
1972), Chromeo (
Don't Turn The Lights On,
2010), The Festivals (
You’ve Got The Makings Of A Lover,
late 1960s), Shorty's Portion (Fantasy Girl or Child,
1975?),
Jon Brion (
Little Person,
2008), and Electric Light Orchestra (
Mr. Blue Sky,
1977). Chances are that you've heard of (or at least heard from) most of these artists, except
Shorty's Portion, a one-off band with a small-run album. The group was centered around Steve Salazar, who was born with a hole in his heart, and died just short of his 27th birthday.
[more inside]
posted by filthy light thief
on Sep 2, 2011 -
7 comments
Say, you wanna hear a sad song? Eddie Hinton was a guitar player, vocalist, and songwriter from Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Co-writer of one of the tenderest, sexiest hits of the late 60s, Dusty Springfield's
Breakfast in Bed, Hinton was a key member of the world-famous
Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section from 1967 to 1971 (turning down an invitation from Duane Allman to be a member of the Allman Brothers Band) who worked as a studio musician on albums by Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, Percy Sledge, the Staples Singers, and Toots Hibbert, but his early success was
sidetracked by mental problems, booze, and drugs.
[more inside]
posted by BitterOldPunk
on May 31, 2011 -
22 comments
How Soul Music Became "Soul Music."
A writer takes the occasion of the release of
Adele's new album,
21, to explore the popularity and implications of the young British soul singers.
"Because if we're truly living in an age that defies stereotypes and explodes clichés, where distances of all kinds have been virtually obliterated, then everything—timbre, blue notes, pronunciation, timing, diction—is available as stylistic options." [more inside]
posted by beisny
on Mar 6, 2011 -
36 comments
Swimming around in a mixture of language and matter, humans occupy a particular evolutionary niche mediated by something we call 'consciousness'. To Professor Nicholas Humphrey we're made up of "
soul dust": "a kind of theatre... an entertainment which we put on for ourselves inside our own heads." But just as that theatre is directed by the relationship between language and matter,
it is also undermined by it. It all depends how you think it.
posted by 0bvious
on Feb 4, 2011 -
17 comments
The new film
Blue Valentine (
trailer) features a damn fine 60's-era soul ballad called "
You and Me," of mysterious origin. The exposure has sparked
an effort to find out who sang it and where it came from. The archival label
Numero Group (
previously)
discovered the rehearsal tape, labeled only 'Penny and the Quarters', at an estate sale in Columbus, OH. Since then, "we have played this recording to over 100 movers and shakers from the time and no one has a clue."
posted by naju
on Jan 17, 2011 -
28 comments
It’s maybe a
little early yet for year’s end retrospectives, but who cares:
we’ve got 157 songs, 10.5 hours, 1.12 GB of “some of the best and most notable music from 2010... covering indie, pop, rock, punk, folk, rap, R&B, soul, dance, country, modern classical, ambient and electronic music, and in many cases, hard-to-classify genre hybrids.” —Curated by FluxBlog’s own Matthew Perpetua.
posted by kipmanley
on Dec 3, 2010 -
30 comments
As undeniably great as the golden age Motown studio
musicians were, and as indisputably funky and creative as the
arrangements were, you still have to think that maybe it would've been a good idea to release some of
The Temptations amazing vocal group artistry in unaccompanied form. Maybe as B-sides or something. Well, that never happened back in the day, as far as I know, but we are extremely fortunate now to be able to hear a capella versions of many of the Tempts biggest hits, in stunningly impressive and thoroughly enjoyable unaccompanied renditions:
Runaway Child Running Wild,
Just My Imagination,
Papa Was a Rolling Stone,
Ball of Confusion,
Get Ready and
Cloud Nine . And folks, there's more a capella from the Tempts and other Motown acts floating around on the Tubes out there, so feel free to link to them in the thread, cause, you know, I
Ain't Too Proud To Beg.
posted by flapjax at midnite
on Jun 1, 2010 -
39 comments
Janelle Monae has been busy since the release of
The Chase EP, the first of four "suites" that make up her genre-bending epic set in the distant future. She's been
"discovered" by Diddy, continued to find
inspiration in
unexpected places, founded an
artists' collective in her adopted hometown of Atlanta, and found time to
speak to Vogue about her singular sense of style. Somewhere in there, she's also recorded the next two parts of the Metropolis Suite, titled
The Archandroid (which is out today), put out a
teaser for the album, and also the video for the first single, Tightrope. [more inside]
posted by heeeraldo
on May 18, 2010 -
24 comments
Dennis Coffey was one of the most prolific Detroit session and solo guitarists. His revamped site features a couple phenomenal podcasts of his music and interviews.
posted by klangklangston
on Mar 25, 2010 -
8 comments
The man behind the classic sound of Al Green, Memphis producer and soulmeister supreme
Willie Mitchell has
passed on. Many of the Al Green sides are legendary, of course, and very well known (as is the fantastic "I Can't Stand the Rain, by Ann Peebles), but be sure and head over to the excellent
Funky 16 Corners where you can hear three of his lesser-known but
deeply grooving productions. Fat stuff. So long, Willie Mitchell, and thanks for the wonderful music.
posted by flapjax at midnite
on Jan 6, 2010 -
24 comments
Soul Train (
wiki) has a youtube channel. Lots of great performances here, but in particular I recommend
The O'Jays,
Sly and The Family Stone,
Stevie Wonder,
The Stairsteps, and the
Jackson 5. What really makes it worth watching though are the clips of the Soul Train Line dancing to hits of the day, artists like
The O'Jay,
Curtis Mayfield,
War, and
The JB's.
posted by phrontist
on Aug 31, 2009 -
25 comments
Timi Yuro, an Italian-American singer born in Chicago (where, the story goes, her nanny snuck her into clubs to watch singers like Dinah Washington and Mildred Bailey), was arguable the greatest
blue-eyed soul artist of the '60s.
[more inside]
posted by The Card Cheat
on Aug 22, 2009 -
8 comments
There was a historic music festival in the summer of 1969. But it's not the one that took place in Bethel, NY. The
Harlem Cultural Festival ran from
June 29 to August 24 that summer, presenting a concert every Sunday afternoon in
Mount Morris Park (known today as Marcus Garvey Park).
Three hundred thousand people turned out for the
six free concerts, hearing acts like
Nina Simone , Sly & the Family Stone (the only act to play both Woodstock and the "black Woodstock"), Stevie Wonder, Mahalia Jackson, The 5th Dimension, Moms Mabley and. Speakers included Jesse Jackson and "blue-eyed soul brother" Mayor John Lindsay. Security was courtesy of the
Black Panthers, since the NYC police refused to provide it. Filmmaker Hal Tulchin recorded
over 50 hours of concert footage, which has remained unreleased.
Historic Films seems to hold the footage; it was supposed to be made into a movie to
premiere at Sundance 2007, but its
release seems to be continually delayed for reasons unclear.
[more inside]
posted by Miko
on Aug 20, 2009 -
19 comments
Jackie Shane could rock the Sapphire Club. He was part of the
Toronto Sound of the sixties, and made his mark not only for his soulful voice, but also for his flamboyent, gender ambiguous appearance
(video). His song
Any Other Way went to Number Two on the Canadian Billboard chart in 1963, and was his biggest hit. While his
discography was short and he has faded into obscurity, he has been recognized by the
queer community and
music bloggers as a trail-blazing performer.
In My Tenement,
Comin Down,
You Are My Sunshine,
Stand Up Strait and Tall,
Don't Play That Song.
posted by kimdog
on Jul 27, 2009 -
8 comments
Greil Marcus writes
Real Life Top Ten for the Believer Magazine, in which he lists "anything that remotely has to do with music, a dress Bette Midler wore at an awards show or a great guitar solo in the middle of a song that otherwise wasn't very interesting." But he's been writing this
column online for just about
10 years. [more inside]
posted by Potomac Avenue
on Jun 25, 2009 -
4 comments
Soul! New York City PBS affiliate WNET have digitized 9 episodes of
Soul!, a early 1970's live music program, providing a groovy video interface with chapters to break down each hour long episode.
[more inside]
posted by myopicman
on Apr 23, 2009 -
20 comments
