Thanks to the prevalence of webcams and the ease of use of youtube, there are now millions of videos of people sitting around with an acoustic guitar playing covers, or even their own work. Remarkably there are some real talents out there, and people (not very many) are actually getting discovered from the youtubes.
AJ Rafael is one of these artists. He has released the ‘Juicebox EP’ which is available on iTunes. One of his tracks ‘Showstopper’ appears on the EP in fully produced form, but was originally released as a solo acoustic video of AJ on a ukelele. AJ released an mp3 as well as lyrics and chords along with it, and it has become reasonably well covered by his fellow tubers.
The original track manages to be all kinds of infectious, which is unfortunately lost in production.
“This Too Shall Pass”, in true OK Go style, is a simple yet visually stimulating video. They filmed it with 200 kids from the Notre Dame Marching Band, as discussed in their apology video to youtube. The bright purple uniforms really pop in the green forest, and help mask the presence of the ‘other participants’, which is really quite fantastically done.
However, its not all sunshine and skipping, because I found out I couldn’t simply share these youtube videos as they have been blocked from being embedded. For what purpose, I’m not sure. Embedding only prevents you from visiting their generic youtube page which has no data that would help sales compared to an embed… Luckily OK Go’s Vimeo site is not so ridiculously restricted. Blah blah youtube sucks, go vimeo…
Here’s the video, and you can grab the track for free by signing up on their website.