But… I Saw It On YouTube!

OK, as we all know, I’m usually a bit late to the party (if I show up).  Every now and then someone directs me to something on YouTube that looks interesting.

Actually, people are directing me to YouTube all the time but I find very little of it interesting.

I am truly amazed at the depth and breadth of the things one can find on YouTube.  Sometimes if I have a favorite but little-known song from a group I’ll look it up and find not one but several versions there (but WAIT!!!!).

I know that people are posting their own videos.  I’m sure some are interesting and some are not but the ones I find truly shocking are the cover versions of certain songs.

Let’s say I just found a few versions of a short acoustic tune by a band that’s known for heavier stuff.  To my surprise I’ll find several versions of the song but the bonus is twenty more cover versions of the song from random folks who recorded and uploaded them.

I have seen some serious talent on YouTube.  And today I saw the Rest.

WHERE DO I START?

OK, I guess the winner for best combination of Attempted Accuracy and Hilarity goes to one fellow who fouled up the words so badly I could barely understand them.  It took me a while to figure out that this fellow is probably not a native English-speaking person and may just be singing phonetically.  This would definitely explain the accents and timing being in the wrong places.  I have heard stories about foreign bands doing this, especially in Japan.  They have Kiss tribute bands that do the songs note for note but can’t speak a word of English.  Bravo for trying!

Next up was the guy who absolutely nailed the chord progression of the intro.  I was waiting to see if he was going to sing or not and heard a familiar voice: he was playing along with the recording in the background.  So you got to watch this kid, in his parents’ basement, playing along to a song he likes.  No face, just most of the guitar in the shot.  If you looked carefully, you could see the washer, dryer, and heating system.  I was waiting for a dog to wander through the shot.

I wonder if there are any videos of people just sitting and listening to these songs.  No, I probably don’t want to know the answer to that.

The final contestant has everything going for himself: the hair, the look, the moves, and the complete intro.  As soon as he starts to (attempt to) sing, everything falls apart rapidly.  He’s chopping up the timing, adding bits in here and there, almost grooving to the point where he falls off his stool, and groaning some kind of words that don’t seem to have a lot of relevance to the original song.

I know in some cultures (especially recently) it’s very popular to videotape yourself being a complete idiot and mangling something but this is pretty far out.

Do these people know they suck?  Is this a joke that I’m somehow not getting?  Did their mothers always tell them everything they did was great, like Cyndi Lauper and Madonna’s, to the point where they honestly believed it?

Maybe it’s because I’m a musician that I won’t post a video of myself playing out of tune, out of key, and out of time, slurring like a drunk.  It doesn’t look cool.  It definitely doesn’t sound cool.  I don’t think there’s that great a difference between me and the next guy, in terms of knowing when something is so horrid it should be secreted away or just deleted like it never happened.

I promise you this will not degenerate into a rant about people who ’seriously’ play Guitar Hero vs people who can actually play the guitar.  But I’m willing to bet that there are many YouTube videos I haven’t seen yet that feature people ‘performing’ a Guitar Hero song, complete with hardware.  And no, I haven’t looked.

It just seems obvious.