Awesome Music

Craig J. Clark created this unofficial music video for Jonathan Coulton and John Roderick’s modern holiday classic One Christmas at a Time, using only footage from the hilariously awful 1978 show The Star Wars Holiday Special, which you must watch if you’ve never seen it before.

Musician Eric Case rises up, straight to the top with this exuberant arrangement of Survivor’s Eye of the Tiger, performed on grand piano. Case doesn’t pull any punches as his fingers fly across the ivories, adding lots of flourishes to the Rocky III hit track.

One of the most satisfying sounds on earth is that noise a cold can of beer makes when you pop it open. Musician Koji Kobura agrees, and decided to sample a bunch of sounds he could make with a beer can, ultimately turning them into a short EDM track.

The always amazing Sheryl Crow and her ensemble stopped by NPR Music’s studios to perform a true mini concert, playing seven tunes, including classics like All I Wanna Do, A Change Would Do You Good, and If It Makes You Happy, along with tracks off of her collaborative album Threads.

Published by Taschen, Michael Ochs’ hardcover 1,000 Record Covers showcases a thousand of the most beautiful and memorable vinyl record cover sleeves from the 1960’s to the 1990’s. Makes a great coffee table book for any music lover.

This amazing gadget for guitarists takes the analog sounds of your instrument and layers them with thick synthesized enhancements. The Boss Synth SY-1000 pedalboard gives guitars a whole new range of capability, with its sophisticated sound engine, and the ability to produce a mix of rich acoustic and electric tones.

A few years back, we learned about musician and artist Andy Thurlow’s collection of unique musical instruments, known as The Anarchestra. Documentarian Daniel Wolverton of Special Head returns to visit with Andy and check out some of the strange and wonderful noise makers he’s built in the past few years.

Now that Thanksgiving is over, we can officially play Christmas music without feeling too guilty about it. If you’re tired of traditional carols, then sit back and rock out to Leo Moracchioli’s very special edition of Jimmy Boyd’s jolly little ditty I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus.

You will be RickRoll’d by this video. But that’s okay, because the guy doing the RickRolling is none other than Rick Astley himself, with a great, stripped back performance of the track that everyone has accidentally heard at least once in their life, Never Gonna Give You Up. From BBC Music’s Radio 2 Piano Room.

Daft Punk are true maestros, but so much of what they’ve achieved wouldn’t have been possible if it weren’t for the funk, soul, and disco songs which provided sampling material for so many of their tunes. Tuneid compares some original tracks with Daft Punk’s remixes.

The members of Japan’s electro-pop band and dance crew World Order may have changed over the years, but they’ve still got amazing choreography, as is proven by their latest video, which includes some new moves, along with their crowd favorite robotic walk.

Punk Rock Factory has a knack for giving pop songs new life as pop-punk versions. Here, they take the 1997 Hanson mega-hit MMMBop and give the jibberish song an edge it previously lacked. From the album The Wurst Is Yet to Come, which packs 10 great covers.

The Smash Mouth track All Star has been covered in just about every possible way, but we can say with certainty that we’ve never heard it played on melons converted into wind instruments. Now, we can check that one off of the list, courtesy of improvised instrument maker Pupsi.

Artiphon’s Orba is a unique instrument that is sort of the musical equivalent of a fidget spinner. It combines a synthesizer, looper, and MIDI controller all in one, and is small enough to hold in the palm of your hand. It’s great for tinkering around with all kinds of sounds whether you’re bored or working on your next great composition.

Musicians Aaron Grooves and Snubby J teamed up for this lively cover version of the track Megalovania from the game Undertale, performing it on a Blue Man Group-inspired PVC pipe marimba, also known as RimbaTubes. We also spotted Snubby and Heather Freed’s great pipe and harp cover of Paint It Black.

The members of the jazz collective Snarky Puppy turned in a downright funky mix of keyboards, horns, bass, guitar, violin, and percussion during their appearance at the NPR Music offices. They performed their instrumental tracks Tarova and Xavi, the latter’s complex rhythms with the assistance of the audience.

We’ve all been there at one point or another. You’re feeling off, and you’ve got an unusual mix of symptoms that you can’t quite figure out. Swedish physician and novelty musician Henrik Widegren reminds us about the worst possible thing you can do when you’re sick. From the album Medical Melodies And Surgical Songs.

Expressive E’s keyboard gives musicians an incredible amount of expressiveness, with each key capturing subtle movements that influence pitch, loudness, and many other attributes. It works in concert with a robust sound engine by Haken Audio to produce amazingly warm and enveloping sounds. It also works as a MIDI controller.

The Flaming Lips’ ringleader Wayne Coyne loves Christmas, though it’s hard to tell from this surreal “Little Drummer Boy/Peace on Earth” video, an homage (sorta) to the famous David Bowie/Bing Crosby duet. The track was recorded live at Coyne’s Pink Floor Studios in Oklahoma City, and arrives as a single 11/29/19.

Thanks to the arcane copyright policing on YouTube, remixers like Jonny Wilson of Eclectic Method have found it harder to post content. His solution, keep the sound snippets so short that nobody can recognize them. His mashup of Red Hot Chili Peppers tracks maintains all of their texture, but none of their melodies.

While musician Lord Vinheteiro claims he bought the smallest piano in the world, we beg to differ. Still the idea of a normal height upright piano with just five keys is quite the oddity. While we admire the construction, it sounds quite horrible.

Men at Work’s Australian anthem Down Under is one of the most jangly and upbeat pop songs of all time. But in the interest of leaving no musical stone unturned, resident metalhead Leo Moracchioli still managed to turn it into an angry hard rock track.

We already know what it sounds like when 30 jew’s harp players perform a song together. Now hear how its unique and twangy sounds can be used to play techno music, courtesy of musician Ildar Gimadiev, who had us dancing to the beat by the end. (Thanks OrionFyre!)