It's all about MEmes

What do you get if you mix Tay Zonday, Chris Crocker, Lauren Caitlin Upton, Eepybird, Mark Allen Hicks, Gary Brolsma, Judson Laipply, Liam Kyle Sullivan and dance duo Daft Bodies? The new Weezer video is what.

The video for their new single Pork and Beans includes a whole host of our favourite social media stars and internet memes. According to the stats, the video has already had over 4 million hits (probably more by now) and at just over 3 minutes in length, it manages to shoehorn in 30 memes. Perhaps the most exciting parts for fans of Zonday and the rest of the crew is that the video also includes some new performances



MyTake – Music videos have always drawn on quirky inspiration to get that edge in what is a highly competitive battle for eyeballs. In addition, the cameo appearance is also a mainstay of the music video genre, but bringing in social media stars does add a different dimension. For the first time, a piece of mainstream entertainment is incorporating and referencing people that are famous solely for their appearances on the net. Given, South Park have previously ventured into this territory, but this is more mainstream and thus is reliant on the fact that mainstream eyes will find it appealing – don’t be surprised if you see any of the above mentioned social media stars on the next episode of “how I met your Mother”.

iBand: Revisited

I posted about this a while ago, but I recently been seeing a few more articles on them so I’ve decided to revisit the phenomenon that is iBand. The trio are actually from Austria and decided to form the band based on a hunch and a whim, which I have decided to call a “whunch”. Like most people with an iPhone, they imported them as soon as they were released in the US and in their case, they have been tinkering around with them ever since.

The three musicians – Seb, Roger and Marina - have gone form a YouTube flavour of the day to being interviewed on TV and releasing a single. What next for these iphone-lovers on the bleeding edge of music? "We're not looking to make money off of our services," said Marina. Although not yet signed-up to a record label, the band writing a number of songs and plans some public performances that according to Seb "will not be conventional concerts.”



MyTake – Will we ever really see an act pawned by YouTube last the test of time? We’ve had people such as MC Lars that have had a fair bit of success and more recently Tay Zonday and his Chocolate Rain who, let’s face it, has been the butt of too many a joke. Will iBand last? Probably not, but what they have done is show the rest of the world what’s possible and maybe even set the tone of the next generation of musicians. After all, do you reckon the first bloke to pick up the guitar would have been any good next to Hendrix?