"Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn. They teach you there's a boundary line to music. But, man, there's no boundary line to art."

- Charlie "YardBird" Parker

Archive for the ‘ Videos ’ Category

Lady Gaga and Beyoncé’s anxiously awaited video for their The Fame Monster collaboration “Telephone” has arrived as a nine-minute-and-thirty-second mash-up of lesbian prison porn, campy sexploitation flicks and insidery winks at the two divas’ public personas. If Quentin Tarantino and Russ Meyer remade Thelma & Louise as an orgy of product placement with fiercely choreographed interludes, this would be the result. The video was scheduled to premiere on E! at 11:30 p.m. tonight, but hit the Internet early via a leak.

The mini-movie opens in a women’s prison, where guards strip Gaga bare and mutter, “I told you she didn’t have a dick,” fanning the flames of one of the most persistent rumors about Stefani Germanotta’s gender identity. Almost immediately the self-referential nudges and brand names appear: the boom box in the exercise yard blasts Lady Gaga’s “Paper Gangsta,” a fellow inmate wears Monster earbuds, Gaga has a Virgin Mobile phone tucked in her pants and sports Chanel shades and Diet Coke cans in her hair as makeshift curlers (nice touch!).

The song kicks in just before the three-minute mark as Gaga (in a spiked bikini and what appears to be Karen O’s jacket from the “Zero” video) takes a call in jail and launches into the most appealing afternoon imaginable behind bars — a tightly choreographed routine that has Gaga and four tattooed backup dancers stamping through the cell block.

When Beyoncé’s scheduled interlude arrives, the song breaks for another dramatic sequence. A guard perusing dating Website Plenty of Fish on a Beats by Dre laptop informs Gaga she’s been bailed out. Beyoncé (nicknamed Honey Bee, a nod to Honey Bunny from Pulp Fiction) rolls up in the Pussy Wagon from Tarantino’s Kill Bill: Volume One, informs Gaga, “You’ve been a very bad girl” and feeds her a sticky treat. Simply being in Tarantino’s car inspires some Vincent Vega and Jules Winnfield banter (”You know Gaga, trust is like a mirror. You can fix it if it’s broke…” “But you can still see the crack in that motherfucker’s reflection”).

Beyoncé launches into the song’s bridge as Lady Gaga snaps photos of her with a Polaroid camera, then the pair pull up to a vintage diner where Beyoncé entertains a gentleman pal (played by Tyrese Gibson) and Gaga mans the kitchen, slipping poison into the food along with Miracle Whip and Wonder Bread (cue another awesome dance sequence, this time with cooks prancing around the stove in a moment that could have been borrowed from Madonna’s “Hung Up” clip). Beyoncé takes a moment to toy with her squeaky-clean image — busting out the line, “I knew you’d take all my honey, you selfish motherfucker” as Gibson keels over at the table — and another dance sequence begins, this time with Gaga and B in patriotic garb.

Queer Eye for the Straight Guy’s Jai Rodriguez arrives as a news reporter broadcasting word of the mass homicide (dubbed “The Telephone Effect”) as Gaga and Beyoncé speed away in the Pussy Wagon dressed in white and black veils. “We did it, Honey Bee, now let’s go far, far away from here,” Gaga says as the two clasp hands and hit the accelerator.

Fo Yo Sorrows VIDEO Big Boi Ft. Too Short and George Clinton from SNORT THIS TV on Vimeo.

A whole battalion of new music videos has made their way onto the Web and for your viewing pleasure Rolling Stone has corralled them into this post. First up is Big Boi’s latest single off his much-anticipated Sir Lucious Leftfoot: The Son of Chico Dusty, “Fo Yo Sorrows.” The OutKast rapper had previously promised vids for every track off his solo disc, so like the video above and Boi’s previous “Shine Blockas,” they’ll likely be low-key affairs. That isn’t stopping Big Boi from calling in guests George Clinton and Too $hort to appear in the clip. Any time George Clinton shows up in a music video, we get nostalgic for P.C.U., so definitely check out “Fo Yo Sorrows” above.

For “In the Sun,” She & Him’s first video off their upcoming Volume 2, Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward go the High School Musical/Glee route as Deschanel and her clique of peers and teachers go dancing around hallways and classrooms in pursuit of the object of her desire, played here by a way-too-old-to-be-in-high-school Ward. It’s sort of like Feist’s “1, 2, 3, 4″ video combined with Britney Spears’ “…Baby One More Time” clip. Adding authenticity to the sing-along is director Peyton Reed, who previously mastered the art of high school and dancing with his cheerleading flick Bring It On.

Finally, we have the official music video for the Runaways’ “Cherry Bomb” that combines the band’s classic track with a ton of new footage from the film The Runaways. In the video, we see Dakota Fanning completely morphing into her role of Cherie Currie, plus brief clips of the cinematic Runaways from their rise to their eventual crash. As Rolling Stone previously reported, both Fanning and Kristen Stewart, who plays Joan Jett, sing on the soundtrack, which is available for pre-order now.

Who: Pastoral rockers from Denton, Texas, who first broke through with their 2006 track “Roscoe,” on which the group’s classic-rock-loving frontman Tim Smith sang about life in the 1800s. “I don’t do too well in the present,” he says. “Not that old times were better, but I’m more romantic about the past.”

Sounds Like: The band’s latest disc, The Courage of Others, has a sound influenced by 1960s British acts like Fairport Convention and Pentangle, with Jethro Tull-style flutes and references to maidens and merchant ships.

Vital Stats:

• Smith was a John Coltrane devotee until he reluctantly picked up Radiohead’s OK Computer while at the North Texas College of Music. “I didn’t want to listen to it, because of the name,” he says. “I thought, ‘What’s this, some kind of radio-pop music?’ ”

• Before Midlake embraced chiming guitars and meticulous harmonies, the group was a jazz-funk act. Smith ditched his sax when he joined up with the Texas group, which featured current bandmembers Eric Pulido and Eric Nichelson (guitar), McKenzie Smith (drums) and Paul Alexander (bass).

• Like fellow bearded strummers Fleet Foxes and Bon Iver, Midlake recall CSNY and Fleetwood Mac. “You want your music to be ask great as those acts,” says Smith, “But I shouldn’t compare my work with everything that’s ever been done. I mean, you can only do so much before you die.”

Get It Now: Watch the band’s trailer for The Courage of Others up top.

This week Rolling Stone’s Daniel Kreps breaks down the Gorillaz’s Plastic Beach in our New Music Report. Kreps admits he didn’t immediately hear anything as instantly grabby as Demon Days‘ “DARE” or Gorillaz’s “Clint Eastwood” on their new disc — the closest relation here is the single “Stylo,” a catchy electro number that features Mos Def and Bobby Womack. But Plastic Beach is a real grower, and now he’s convinced it’s Damon Albarn’s most impressive work since Blur’s 13. With each listen, new highlights emerge, like the Think Tank-ish “Empire Ants” and his personal favorite, “To Binge,” which features the Swedish group Little Dragon. Snoop Dogg, Lou Reed, and members of the Clash and De La Soul all cameo on the disc, but the smaller artists — Little Dragon and U.K. rappers Bashy and Kano — make the biggest impact.

Catch up on all of Rolling Stone’s album reviews.

>>Watch every episode of our weekly New Music Report video podcast by subscribing via iTunes (when prompted, click “Launch application”). Every Tuesday, a new episode will be delivered to your iTunes. [If you don't have iTunes, download it here.]

Early peeks at The Runaways, music video vet Floria Sigismondi’s biopic about the rise and fall of the iconic Seventies girl-punk band, have provided fast-and-dirty looks at the drama surrounding Joan Jett (played by Twilight star Kristen Stewart) and Cherie Currie (Dakota Fanning). In Rolling Stone’s latest exclusive clip, Stella Maeve as Sandy West and Stewart bang out some raw rehearsal tunes as manager Kim Fowley (Michael Shannon) listens on the other end of the phone and offers a few words of encouragement when Stewart reports they’ve been busy practicing: “Well, get back to it, you bitches are going to be bigger than the Beatles!”

Watch the clip above and see another preview, plus click through all our photos from the set. And don’t forget to check out which songs Fanning and Stewart will be handling on the film’s official soundtrack. The movie hits theaters in limited cities March 19th and opens nationally April 9th.