Ever seen the Fett’s Vette vid? What about this part of AMV Hell 4?

Well, in case you haven’t, both “The Tussin” and “Fett’s Vette” are by MC Chris and he’s currently running a fan music video contest for his new song, “Nrrrd Grrrl”. (YouTube Results)

You may not know how to make a music video and, while I have the general idea, I don’t have time. Either way, I suggest you drop by his MySpace page and hit the download link in the music player. The song’s pretty catchy and I doubt it’ll be in the player forever.

Enjoy. I’ll be making more as I find the time and inspiration.

First, a little something I’ve been meaning to post for a couple of months and I keep forgetting about: Boku no Futatsu no Tsubasa

One of the myriad fetishes which can be found in adult comics in Japan is what I will call “full-function hermaphrodites” (people who appear to be women, but have both sets of genitals. This differs from the medical term “hermaphrodite” because it’s genetically impossible for a single mutation to produce two fully-functional reproductive systems in a single body)

Anyway, I suppose you can kind of understand how that would appeal to some people. The reason that this manga is sheer genius is that, instead of being some cheap excuse for naughty pics, the author managed to come up with a “why didn’t I think of that!?” plot concept… What would a female main character do if her (supposedly male) cousin was invited over to co-habitate, and the cousin turned out to not only be a fully-functioning hermaphrodite (and a real bombshell), but (instead of being a sex machine) is naive to the point of never even having had rudimentary sex education?

The answer: One of the funniest legal-for-teen-buyers comedies that I’ve ever seen as an average Japanese girl ends up having to provide a two-gender sex education for her cousin who has ZERO sex education. (doesn’t even know what words like “masturbation” mean “virgin”, or where babies come from)

Add to that, the fact that the characters don’t fall into the same tired old stereotypes you see throughout manga, and it makes for one of my newest all-time favorites. If you’d like to give it a try, the manga’s name once again is Boku no Futatsu no Tsubasa (Translation: My Two Wings) and you can get scanlations from DummyScan. I doubt you’ll be disappointed.

Now, you may be wondering, “How the heck is he going to connect a Japanese sitcom comic about a hermaphrodite to something from the U.S.?” Very easily…

Music by Stephen Lynch

If you’ve never seen this guy, you don’t know what you’re missing. For a first on my blog, I’ll embed a copy of the video to his song “Hermaphrodite”
(which, for the record, is the song that reminded me to make this post)

Interestingly, this is actually the third song I’ve heard by this guy. The first was If I Could Be A Superhero which I saw in a clip from AMV Hell 3 and the second was Lullaby, sometimes called “Why Mommy Left Us”.

A week or two ago, I started a Last.fm thread asking people to point me to music with unusual/uncommon lyrics. I didn’t really get much, but the list of examples I provided (which is still growing) is definitely something worth reading.

Finally, after nearly a decade, I got lucky and found a copy of some music I really liked after hearing it in a shareware game. (BrickLayer) The link is to it’s page on the creator’s official site so you can rest assured that it’s a completely legal download. There’s also two fan-made alternate versions (a MIDI version and a remix).

My apologies for being too busy to do any proper posting.

From “A Night at the Opera”, I recommend:
* Battlefield
* Under the Ice
* Sadly Sings Destiny
* The Maiden and the Minstrel Knight
* The Soulforged
* Age of False Innocence
* Punishment Divine
* And Then There Was Silence

Which leaves only three songs I wouldn’t have paid for if buying them individually. Add to that, the fact that “And Then There Was Silence” is 14 minutes long (I love long, good songs) and we have a winner. The average review for this CD on Amazon.com is 4.5/5 and I’m giving it 5/5. As one reviewer put it, if you like any Metallica or Iron Maiden song at all, you’ll probably like at at least a few Blind Guardian songs. As I put it, they’re metal fused with classical and ballads.

You can listen to song samples at Amazon.com

During the search I realized how little known a few facts are. For example, if you want to search for free MP3s, use AllTheWeb.com. They use a similar system to Google but they don’t overlap with Google as much as you would expect. In addition, their lower popularity means that fewer sites try to trick their ranking system.

If you just want to browse, here are a few sites that offer free mp3 downloads:
* DMusic.com
* OSMusic.net (OS = Open Source)
* OCRemix (OverClocked Remix. Source of amazing remixed video game music.)
* ModPlug Central (Has many formats.)
* mFiles
* Classic Cat (Classical music only)
* University of Quebec
* Canadian Music
* Baroque – Pages 1, 2, 3.
* Download.com Music (Make sure you get mp3s and not wma.)
* mp3.com.au
* SoundClick.com (Requires registration.)
* Amazon.com free music downloads (Requires registration.)
* MagnaTune (A “not evil” recording label that lets you try before you buy. If you can’t pay, you can geek the files out for free but come on. These guys deserve the money. They also offer easy licensing of their music.)
* WashingtonPost.com MP3 (Requires you to agree to a “no sharing and only one copy of the file” license agreement before you download.)
* emp3world (seemed OK. Let me know if I missed something)
* FreePlay Music (You can listen for free and license songs easily. The licensing terms don’t seem to be as not-evil as MagnaTune’s though.)

For sites which require free registration, you can save a lot of effort and thumb your nose at them by using a pre-existing login from BugMeNot.com or by giving them a DodgeIt.com e-mail address.

And finally, if you don’t mind your free music being in mod, xm, it, s3m, or another module tracker format, stop by The Mod Archive.

Addendum:
On a related note, John C. Dvorak wrote a good column which gives some nice examples of the counter-productive effects of lawsuits on the download of music and movies. You can read it at http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1736444,00.asp