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Pop Rock Nation

Tag: Elton John

  • 2Cellos … you’ve never heard the cello played like this before!

    2Cellos … you’ve never heard the cello played like this before!

    2Cellos combines classic instruments with classic rock with awesome results!

    The other day, my Facebook feed was inundated with videos by two handsome guys who play the cello. When I think of cello music, I think of soothing classical music by composers who have been dead for at least two hundred years. But these two guys were not playing classical music. They were playing classic rock. I was blown away as I watched them saw their strings playing a wicked version of AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck”.


    I have never heard “Thunderstruck” played quite like this.

    The men behind 2Cellos are Slovenian born Luka Šulić and Croatian born Stjepan Hauser and boy can they play! I had to know more about these guys, so I went to YouTube to see if there were any more videos of them. Sure enough, I discovered them playing “Welcome To The Jungle”. Yes, the very same song by Guns N’ Roses that featured Axl Rose and Slash trading vocal and guitar snarls was played by these two cellists.


    Here’s a pretty cool video of them jamming for the public. Notice how their bow strings get totally shredded when they play.

    Their version of Michael Jackson’s “Smooth Criminal” was apparently what landed them a record deal with Sony Masterworks in 2011.


    I like the little taste of “Billie Jean” in 2Cellos’ version of “Smooth Criminal”.

    Even Elton John is impressed by 2Cellos!


    Like so many others, Elton John discovers music on YouTube! He asked 2Cellos to join his band.

    Elton John says these two guys have a “homoerotic” way of playing together, though they aren’t gay. He compares them to himself and Bernie Taupin, when they compose songs together.

    Obviously 2Cellos has been around for awhile now. I’m kind of embarrassed that I’m just now discovering their music. I am certainly impressed, as obviously a lot of other people are. They’ve already made a huge name for themselves in Japan. Judging by the number of people sharing their “Thunderstruck” video over the weekend, many more people are making their first discovery of their music.


    A soothing 2Cellos version of Sting’s “Fields of Gold”.

    They do also play classical music, of course. Elton John invites everyone to listen to how these guys play Vivaldi.


    Just breathtaking!

    But I’m guessing most people are far more interested in their rock and roll stylings. Here they are playing “Smells Like Teen Spirit” by Nirvana.


    Not only do they play this classic song masterfully, but they do it with style and panache.

    I think I’m in love. I would put up a link to their CD, but I think these guys are the type of performers you need to see to believe. I would definitely buy their DVD over their CD.

  • We Break Easy: Ten Songs I Was Listening to on September 11, 2001

    10 years ago – y’know, before iPods and stuff – it was my general practice to keep a mix CD of my current favorite songs in my car to listen to on my way to and from work. And then, every week or so, I’d make a new CD, replacing the songs I was tired of with fresh new ones. I was listening to one such CD Tuesday morning, September 11, 2001. On my way home from work that day, I was struck by how eerie some of the songs felt in light of the day’s events – the same way the absolutely perfect blue sky of that day took a sinister cast once its perfection had become so abruptly purified of the usual air traffic.

    In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, radio programmers were purging their playlists of songs that, however popular before, suddenly felt insensitive or inappropriate. The nu-metal act Drowning Pool had scored a breakout hit that summer with a song called “Bodies”, a tribute to the joyful violence of a moshpit. The song had been ubiquitous on rock radio and MTV2 all summer, and suddenly it was gone. Similarly, Jimmy Eat World’s then just-released third album Bleed American was pulled from the market, only to reappear a couple months later, euphemistically retitled as Jimmy Eat World. In the place of those “troubling” songs, came Five For Fighting’s “Superman” (at the time, a 6-month old single that had previously fizzled at radio, like it’s superior – and more troubling – predecessor “Easy Tonight”), and a new version of Enya’s “Only Time”, tricked out with 9/11 audio verite.

    In the meantime, I kept my little mix CD, and while I already loved most of the songs on it, the fact is, they’d taken on a whole new dimension for me (in the same way that Five for Fighting song did for so many others). Even now, hearing any one of these songs in any context has a sort of time travel effect, and I’m back on that beautiful, horrible Tuesday morning.

    Eventually Bleed American got its original title back. And “Bodies” would eventually be revived, not only as theme music for professional wrestling, but also as an instrument of torture at Guantanamo. And eventually, my little CD got a little beat-up – CD burning was still a relatively new thing at that point, and my home made mix CDs had pretty short playable lives. But I kept the tracklist, and here are ten highlights, presented with no further comment, in the order in which they appeared on my CD.

    1. “Crystal” by New Order

    2. “Working Girls (Sunlight Shines)” by The Pernice Brothers

    3. “Sometimes” by Ours

    4. “We Need a Resolution” by Aaliyah

    5. “Packt Like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box” by Radiohead

    6. “Hellbent” by Kenna


    Kenna – Hell Bent by Kenna

    7. “Blizzard of ’78” by Ida

    Ida's ''The Braille Night''
    [no video available]
    “Fixing an eye on the hopeful in a heartless room / you’ll be done soon /
    Snow is falling down and the whole damn town / is covered in white”

    8. “Broke” by The Beta Band

    9. “Getting Away With It (All Messed Up)” by James

    10. “I Want Love” by Elton John

  • Paul’s Sunday Brunch Buffet: The Big Gay Superbowl LXIV Edition

    Tonight, it’s the 64th Annual Tony Awards! Can I get a huzzah up in here? Growing up in Paddock Lake, Wisconsin, the Tony Awards represented the very closest I ever got to seeing new Broadway shows. And, frankly, as someone who doesn’t really get out to New York all that much (umm, like, once… ever), it still is the very closest thing I ever get to seeing new Broadway shows. Moreover, in recent years, musicals seem to be making a comeback. It’s not necessarily a new golden age, but at least it’s not the like 90s when virtually every new musical that got produced got nominated – a nadir being the 94-95 season which only saw two new musicals hit Broadway, Andrew Lloyd Weber’s torpid adaptation of Sunset Boulevard, and a theme-park-calibre revue of Lieber & Stoller rock ‘n’ roll songs called Smokey Joe’s Cafe.

    Thankfully, things started looking up almost immediately when the late Jonathan Larson’s Rent opened the following year; and with the sleak, minimalist revival of Kander & Ebb’s Chicago. Musicals just feel cooler, more relevant, now than they did 20 years ago, and a new generation of musical composers – Jeanine Tesori, Adam Guettel, Andrew Lippa, Tom Kitt and Jason Robert Brown, to name a few – seem to finally be coming out of their predecessors’ long shadows, re-creating the musical in their own images. Meanwhile pop songwriters like Duncan Sheik and Elton John are taking more than a vanity interest in musical theater as a form, and both have been rewarded for their efforts. Sheik’s Spring Awakening won Best Musical in 2007, and Elton’s scored two Best Musicals in The Lion King and last year’s winner Billy Elliot.

    This year’s batch of nominees has a lot to offer fans of pop and rock music – most obviously, Green Day‘s American Idiot, a stage adaptation of the band’s 2004 masterpiece, which the band previewed with their performance of “21 Guns” at this year’s Grammy Awards.

    This isn’t the first time a rock album has been adapted as Broadway musical. In 1993, The Who’s Tommy became a huge hit. It’s general lack of coherent plotting not only didn’t hinder it – it actually became a sort of selling point. It was a colorful rock spectacle no-brainer. Here’s a performance from that year’s Tony Awards, introduced by (of course) Liza Minnelli – only slightly more coherent than Pete Townshend’s story.

    Another rocker who’s taken more than a passing interest in musical theater is Bon Jovi keyboardist David Bryan, who wrote the score for this year’s Best Musical nominee Memphis, which originated as an Off-Broadway show 8 years ago.

    Though the arrival of Memphis on Broadway has been a long time coming, Bryan continues to play in Bon Jovi and he’s most recently co-written another show, Toxic Avenger – The Musical, based on the horror film of the same name.

    This year’s top Tony contender is the musical Fela!, based on the life of Nigerian composer, bandleader, and activist Fela Kuti, and set to his music. The show coincides with the Knitting Factory label’s recent Fela Kuti reissue campaign, and is notable not only for its 11 nominations, but for the fact that it could very possibly make Jay-Z – along with Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith, one of the show’s producers – a Tony Award winner.

    Of course, Jay-Z signalled early on in his career that he might have a soft spot for Broadway musicals. Long before Gwen Stefani’s update on Fiddler on the Roof, Jay-Z was channeling the orphans from the 1977 Broadway musical Annie in “Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem)” – a sample which, for me, established him as one of the smartest and ballsiest rappers to come out of the 90s. All of which makes me wonder: How long until “The Blueprint Trilogy: The Musical” hits the stage?