YouTube Finds

Besides Google and porn, is there anything on the internets (that's right, it's plural) better than YouTube? I don't think so. Check out some of these videos:

This first one is a clip from a one-off gig in Philly by John Medeski, Dave Fuiczynski, and Calvin Weston. All three, by the way, are frequent collaborators with our July tour-mates Club d'Elf. In fact, Calvin Weston will be sitting in d'Elf and holding down the drum chair all night at our Philly show on July 5th at World Cafe Live.


Some of you younger folk might only know the tune "La Di Da Di" as a Snoop Dogg jam, but the Snoop version is just a word-for-word cover of this old-school joint by Slick Rick and the original human beatbox Doug E. Fresh, performed live here.


To me, Brad Mehldau is the one for this generation that changes how jazz pianists approach the instrument in the future, just as Bud Powell, Bill Evans, Chick Corea, and Keith Jarrett did before him. In this clip, Mehldau and his trio perform an interesting cover of the Soundgarden tune "Black Hole Sun." This is just the middle section with Brad's ridiculous piano solo (part 2 of 3). If you want to check out the whole performance, parts 1 and 3 can be found here.


Coming back to the old-school hiphop, I always loved this classic joint by Nice and Smooth. The Tracy Chapman "Fast Car" sample gets me every time. Does anyone else think hiphop was way better back in the day? It's all gangster shit now. Hiphop used to have a message.