There's a billion of Gillionaire!

​There's literally no better way to wake up than to an email from rapper Gillionaire telling you he's got a new song/video. I should know because that's exactly what happened to me his morning.

You see, since I've been writing about Gillionaire, I'd like to think we've grown close. Don't get me wrong -- he doesn't call me when his fish dies nor do I text him to tell him how my mom is dealing with chemotherapy, but still. In my mind, we're friends.

And what do friends do for one another? Two things. First, they tell each other when they post new videos on Youtube. Second, they give each other Valentine's Day love and I'm assuming Gillionaire's email to me this morning was no fluke. He's showing love (in that hip-hop way, yaknowwhatimsayin?) and because I consider every person who reads this blog a friend (sorry I haven't called you on your birthday), I'm now passing along the information so you can have an awesome Valentine's Day.


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The Illustrated Nail

Weezer's Pinkerton

​You've got all the band merch--the tees, the shoelaces, even the beer cozy. But we say you haven't shown true dedication until you've, well, nailed it.

MTV Style has put together a rad roundup of nail art inspired by famous album covers. The painstaking details are impressive. One artist shrinks the classic snow scene from Weezer's Pinkerton, while another paints the rainbow prism from Pink Floyd's iconic The Dark Side Of The Moon across her tips.
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​From the man who brought us "Rifles Burs" and "Snacks" comes a new song/video called "Imdabes." It's already blowing up Youtube, so I'm going to go head and call it now: It's an instant classic, the kind you don't take home to mother.

On the track, Gillionaire tells listeners that he "be the one that win Street Fighter tournaments," "got the highest score in the world on my SAT" and that he's in the best at "watching all them '90s videos -- Power Rangers, All That, Kenan & Kel."
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​Ulrich Krieger--a professor of composition at CalArts, a renowned saxophone player of both contemporary, improvised and classical music--is a third of Metal Machine Trio, a group that's spawned of Lou Reed's 1973 album Metal Machine Music.

Their work is going to be showcased at the Project Room at the University Art Museum in Cal State Long Beach tomorrow. In a phone interview, Krieger talked about how he met Lou Reed and got involved with the Metal Machine Trio.

 How Krieger and Lou Reed met:  I first met Lou when I still lived in Berlin. I wanted to do an orchestral arrangement of the 1975 album Metal Machine Music, which, if you've heard it, is made up of all guitar feedback. I got in touch with Lou, and at first he said it couldn't be done, and he said no.

Then we did another piece of his that he really liked, and he said "show me that you can do it, send me a demo," and we recorded a five minute rough demo and he really loved it and gave us the go ahead. So i did the whole hour arrangement and recorded it, played it live in Berlin.

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​The former Bauhaus lead singer is coming around on tour again in support of last year's excellent solo album Ninth; Peter Murphy will be appearing at the Observatory on March 16 for a one-off. It'll be his third OC appearance in a little over a year's time and the latest in a string of local dates both with Bauhaus and on his own over the years so he definitely knows where some of his long time fans are these days.More >>

The Diazes: Dennis, Annette and their daughter Lightning (yes, after "Ride the Lightning")

​Last May, my besties released a wedding video to top all other wedding videos. In it, the bride (a drummer) and groom (a multi-instrumentalist) performed Metallica's "Master of Puppets" in lieu of the first dance. After we wrote about it here, it went viral--and has since gotten more than 350,000 page views.

Dennis and Annette Ortiz-Diaz have since been featured all over the world as the "Metallicouple." The duo, who had formed a Metallica tribute band (made up of Asian-Americans) called Trapped Under Rice because they wanted to become better musicians, had been fans of the metal band ever since they could remember. So when Metallica announced that they were going to be playing four shows in San Francisco (December 5, 7, 9, and 10) for Metallica Club members only for their 30th anniversary, the Diazes knew they couldn't miss it.  They joined the lottery to win $6 tickets. Then the Metallica fan club sent out an email: the band wanted fans to send them audition videos for a chance to jam with the band onstage.
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​It's the most wonderful time of the year. The weather is crisp, everybody's slurping from that mug of good cheer, lights twinkle, and Christmas carols soothe your five o'clock drive.

Sick of all that, Scrooge? Good news. Your neighbor has set his holiday light show to Slayer.

"Slayer Bob," the SoCal mega metal fan, is back with another installment of his now-famous holiday decorations. After racking up over 2 million views on YouTube with his first show in 2009 -- which was set to Slayer's "Raining Blood" -- he came back last year with a Pantera-themed show.

This year, he's back to his roots with "South of Heaven," another Slayer song. We bet Santa stops here first.

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diylol.com

​As we circle the parking lots, wait in the never-ending lines, push through an ungodly amount of people, we might ask ourselves, "Why do we even have to give gifts for Christmas?" It's a fusion of several pre-Christmas winter traditions ranging from the Roman Saturnalia to the demanding poor in Colonial America, forcing richies to give them food and money.

Before the days of Nordy's and Toys R Us, people made gifts for each other. Creative types all over the world still are making unique and homemade gifts that are pretty darn amazing. Like, way better than knitted woolen socks or macaroni art (sorry, Son). We sifted through the crap on Etsy and handpicked some of the coolest music-themed items to gift.

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​If you're the kind of person who loves public parks and famous musicians who died at 27 of drug-related causes, Washington is about to become your favorite tourist destination.

The Jimi Hendrix Park is set to open in Seattle in 2012, the year the legendary guitarist would have turned 70.

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​In 2010, after returning from extensive travel in Mali and Mauritania, Chris Kirkley from Sahel Sounds presented Music from Saharan Cellphones, a collection of underground music from the Saharan region which was circulated almost exclusively from cellphone to cellphone via bluetooth bumps.

He found that in much of West Africa, cellphones are used as all purpose multimedia devices. Without access to personal computers and high speed Internet, music fans resorted to trading songs housed on the only portable music library available -- their cell phones.

The original cassette was put out by Mississippi Records and can be found as digital downloads: Volume 1 / Volume 2. A Kickstarter campaign was recently funded to raise enough money to press the songs to vinyl.

Says Kirkley:More >>