Ah, spring is in the air, and for the Multimedia Department that means only one thing this year: new arrivals. That’s 
right, in keeping with the spring tradition of renewal we’ve brought to you a great number of new-to-us movies and music! It’s our hope that titles like The Social Network and Nacho Libre will be enough to pique your interest. And of course we can’t forget about our our new, more easily accessible Spanish section! Take a moment to peruse the hottest (or shall we say más caliente?) Spanish language films and CDs around. Whether it’s for class or recreation, we know you’ll find what you need!
Spring into New Arrivals
Warner Brothers Albums added to Naxos Jazz
Naxos Music Library recently announced the inclusion of
Warner Jazz to the Naxos Music Library-Jazz! The incredible catalog – including the recordings from Warner Bros., Atlantic, Elektra, and Reprise – of more than 2,000 albums will become available over the next few weeks as the Naxos team uploads them. These new titles are in addition to the complete Fantasy Jazz & Blue Note catalogs, as well as the 200 other labels in NML-Jazz!
Visit the library database page to start listening.
News from the music world
The music world has lost two of the greats this month.
Legendary jazz pianist Dave Brubeck died on December 5, just one day shy of his 92nd birthday. Brubeck was best known for Take Five, along with his West Coast cool jazz style. Visit his website at http://www.davebrubeck.com for bios, photos, and recordings and lots of great information.
Also, famed sitar virtuoso Ravi Shakar died on December 11, also at age 92. He traveled to the United States in the 1960s and played for American audiences, which sparked interest in Indian classical music. George Harrison was so impressed with the sound, he decided to use the sound in some of the Beatles’ recordings, which set off a trend of “raga rock.” Among those who adopted the style: The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Aerosmith, The Moody Blues, The Doors, The Chemical Brothers, and Red Hot Chili Peppers. Visit his website at http://www.ravishankar.org/
Dave Brubeck Quartet – from left: Joe Morello, Paul Desmond, Dave Brubeck, and Joe Benjamin
Ravi Shankar in the 1950s
The CD turns 30 years old today
It’s making the rounds of many news websites that the first CD was sold 30 years ago today. Billy Joel’s album 52nd Street first went on sale October 1, 1982. It was a vast improvement in sound quality over the dominant cassette format, and within just a few years, CD sales surpassed other available formats.
The format is now on the wane due to the popularity of online music. Check out this interesting NPR article on the subject.
New Piano in Multimedia
The Multimedia Center is excited to announce the addition of a digital piano to the library. It is located near the video collection on the 4th floor.
The School of Music has generously provided this digital piano, a Clavinova, for students to use in the library. While enrolled piano students will have priority access, it is available to anyone. Some examples:
- Try out a score before you check it out
- Blow off some steam during a quick study break
- Practice your chord progressions for Jazz Theory class
- Test compositional ideas
- Stop by and play for fun
Headphones are required. You can check out a set from the Multimedia desk.
What’s making the news this morning
This morning, The Chronicle of Higher Education posted a news item about a previously unknown work by Fanny Mendelssohn.
Duke Graduate Student Unlocks “Mystery of the Lost Sonata.”
The story reports that doctoral student Angela Mace was able to identify the composer through handwriting comparisons as well as primary sources such as a diary, letters, and a bound collection of other handwritten scores by the composer, who has been more widely known as the sister of composer Felix Mendelssohn than for her own work.
The video below explains the discovery and why the world isn’t more familiar with Fanny Mendelssohn’s compositions. Congratulations to Ms. Mace on her exciting discovery!
The Piano Guys
Have you seen The Piano Guys? If you haven’t, you should. If you don’t really listen to classical music, these guys take popular songs and make instrumental versions that definitely don’t sound like the “elevator music” of yesteryear. Check out Me and My Cello – Happy Together. And if it hurts you to watch a cello go skydiving, just hang in there, because no cellos were harmed in the making of the video (except maybe where cello gains weight at the all-you-can-eat buffet and becomes a bass).
If you are a classical music enthusiast, you’ll appreciate that these guys take a perfectly good piece of music and ramp it up. Like Rockelbel’s Canon – the answer to every cellist’s nightmare. If you aren’t a classical music enthusiast, this may change your mind.
And if you’re wondering where is the piano in all this, check out Code Name Vivaldi. Jason Bourne time travels back in time to Vienna in 1725. Ever seen a glass piano on a freight train? Wonder why? No? Just sit back and enjoy it.
The Piano Guys have a YouTube channel, a Facebook page, and an official website where you can see their performance schedule and buy downloads, sheet music, and other merchandise. And they’ve just announced their new CD will be released in October and distributed by Sony Masterworks, so you’ll be hearing more about them very soon.
Martial Arts Movies
Here are some of the Martial arts movies located on the feature shelf during the month of August.
36th Chambers of Shaolin – PN1995.9.H3T45x 1978a (DVD)
American Ninja – PN1995.9.H3A44 1985
Beverly Hills Ninja – PN1995.9.C55B48 1997
Brave Archer and His Mate – PN1995.9.H3S587x 2009 v.4 (DVD)
Brotherhood of the Wolf – PN1995.9.H6B76x 2001a (DVD)
Come and Drink With Me – PN1995.9.H3.C66x 1966a
Dora Heita – PN1995.9.S24D67x 2000a (DVD)
Enter the Dragon – PN1995.9.H3E58x 1973a
Kung Fu Hustle – PN1995.9.H3K85x 2004
Magnificent Butcher – PN1995.9.H3M34x 1979a
Missing In Action I,II, & III – PN1995.9.A3C48x 2006
Project A – PN1995.9.P49P76x 1995
Rebel – PN1995.9.H3R42x 2008 (DVD)
Tokyo Zombie – PN1995.9.Z63T65 2005a (DVD)
Way of the Dragon – PN1995.9.H3.W39x 1973a
Yellow River Fighter – PN1995.9.H3B43x 2005
Yojimbou – PN1995.9.S24Y64x 1961a (DVD)
Free Movies and Music on the Internet – that won’t turn you into a criminal
Check out this blog post about the Internet Archive. The Internet Archive is a little like a library/museum of online content. Basically, free books, music, videos, software, and websites that make you scream “what were they thinking?!” courtesy of the “Wayback Machine.”
According to their “About us” section:
The Internet Archive is a 501(c)(3) non-profit that was founded to build an Internet library. Its purposes include offering permanent access for researchers, historians, scholars, people with disabilities, and the general public to historical collections that exist in digital format. Founded in 1996 and located in San Francisco, the Archive has been receiving data donations from Alexa Internet and others. In late 1999, the organization started to grow to include more well-rounded collections. Now the Internet Archive includes texts, audio, moving images, and software as well as archived web pages in our collections, and provides specialized services for adaptive reading and information access for the blind and other persons with disabilities.
The best part of the Internet Archive, we think, is the free movies and music/audio. With categories like “Little Known Classics You NEED To Watch”, “Top 40 best free legal movies you can download right now”, and classic commercials that give you a peek into the mind of history, you’re bound to find something interesting to do without thinking about lawyers.
We’ll leave you with these links, from the early days of search engines:
Alta Vista, April 1997: http://web.archive.org/web/19970404002415/http://www.altavista.com/
Yahoo!, from it’s industry-leader days in 1996: http://web.archive.org/web/19961025030253/http://www10.yahoo.com/
and just for grins, Google Beta from 1998: http://web.archive.org/web/19981202230410/http://www.google.com/ (I wonder about that ! in the Google logo…)
Do your favorite bands make the cut?
Recently spotted on Facebook – Flavorwire put out a list of bands that make you undateable. That probably depends on exactly who you want to date. Or undateable=more study time=better grades and graduation? Drop us a comment – who would you add to the list – or remove?
http://www.flavorwire.com/305537/these-are-the-bands-that-make-you-totally-undateable?all=1
And while we’re on the subject, did you know your UCO library has CDs by several of the musicians on this list and that despite that, all your friends want to spend time with us? Maybe you should drop in and find out why.