Tonight’s amusement en route to the Tips comes in the form of a knife-throwing mom. It’s hard to say what’s more unsettling: the flying blades, or her facial expression.
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When it comes to music, nobody does sincerity like the Australians. Artists like Helen Reddy, Rolf Harris, Crowded House, and even the Bee Gees seem incapable of cynicism, and that applies double to The Seekers. When I was a kid, I fell in love with lead singer Judith Durham’s reassuringly earnest voice as it came through the radio beside my bed, and to this day I find the absence of (dis)affected posing, or of any attempt to project toughness or hipness in their music heartwarming and comforting. It’s music for everybody, and a fine antidote to the profound cynicism on display in – for example – that 10:10 video. Here, for your enjoyment, are The Seekers, at their farewell concert in London, England, performing I’ll Never Find Another You.
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Democrat Senator John Kerry:

“We have an electorate that doesn’t always pay that much attention to what’s going on so people are influenced by a simple slogan rather than the facts or the truth or what’s happening.”

Yeah. We noticed.

In tonight’s amusement en route to the Tips, Bjork takes apart her TV and expounds delightedly on its spooky workings. Have a pen and notepad ready.
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Tonight’s amusement en route to the Tips is a lovely song that was used to great emotional effect in Paul Thomas Anderson’s 1999 film Magnolia: Here’s Richmond, Virginia native Aimee Mann singing Save Me.
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A lot of recent hit songs are more the result of studio gimmickry than the talents of the performer. The most common – and cloying and dishonest – studio trick involves auto-tuning, a form of audio processing which makes even the most massively out of tune vocalist sound like he has perfect pitch. Tonight’s amusement en route to the Tips – and this one IS amusing – shows how auto-tuning — and editing — can turn a non-musical vocal performance into a catchy piece of ear-candy. It’s important that you watch the videos in order: first the original, unaltered vocal performance, and then the finished product, a catchy little number called Backin’ Up. See if you can hear the difference.
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Thinking of learning to play the accordion? A good way to get started is to play along with Ukrainian kid Alexander Hrustevich’s version of the Summer Movement from Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons. Once you are able to perform the exercise straight through without any mistakes, you can move on to more difficult material.
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Eddie Cochran was one of the great original rock ‘n’ rollers. A confident performer with a distinctive, percussive guitar style, he was also a first-rate songwriter (“Summertime Blues” and “C’mon Everybody”). He was only twenty-one years old when he was killed in a car crash on the way to the airport at the end of his 1960 tour of Britain, but his music, particularly his guitar playing, strongly influenced the music of other artists and bands, including the Beatles and The Who.
He was the real deal. From a live television appearance in 1958, here’s Eddie Cochran performing a good ol’ American rock ‘n’ roll song about – what else? – girls and cars, called Somethin’ Else. Pretty snappy, that.
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Okay, I’ve now seen a sufficient number of dancing parrots to convince me that they have a sense of rhythm, and that they enjoy music. Tonight, for your amusement en route to the Tips, fun-loving Frostie the Cockatoo obeys Ray Charles’ musical command to Shake Your Tail Feathers.
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On June 11, 2004, Margaret Thatcher attended the state funeral for Ronald Reagan. She had suffered a series of small strokes in recent years and was advised by her doctors to not engage in public speaking, so her pre-recorded eulogy was shown to the assembled mourners instead. Eloquent, dignified and touching, here’s Margaret Thatcher’s memorable tribute to Ronald Reagan.
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Tonight’s amusement en route to the Tips is an odd, catchy, and – by modern standards – politically incorrect single that reached #7 on the Billboard charts in 1962. Here’s Joanie Sommers singing Johnny Get Angry.
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Tonight’s amusement en route to the Tips comes in the form of some live blues music. Backed by English rock band Pink Floyd, here’s Russian Wolfhound Nobs singing the mournful self-tribute Mademoiselle Nobs.
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Lawrence Welk and his cast of performers were known for their safe, respectable, anodyne music. Occasionally, though, they would perform current hit songs in an attempt to attract younger viewers and keep the show up-to-date. In 1970, completely unaware of the meaning of one of the words in what he thought was a modern gospel song, he made a selection that created a bit of a controversy. Thirty years later, you can still hear the faint echoes of jaws dropping to the floor all across America: Here are Gail Farrell and Dick Dale singing One Toke Over The Line. Seriously.
(h/t exetaz)
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In tonight’s amusement Pinky the Stray looks for a loving home.
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Tonight’s amusement en route to the Tips is a pleasant, easy-listening song from the late seventies. Buoyed at one point by the plaintive, womanly, wailing vocals of slide-guitar whiz David Lindley, here’s Jackson Browne and his band performing a two song medley consisting of Browne’s Stay and Maurice Williams & the Zodiacs’ 1960 hit Stay (Just a Little Bit Longer).
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Our Friday night amusement en route to the Tips is a catchy original song made famous by the young Rolling Stones, who – you may notice – not only copied most of the instrumental arrangement but also closely mimicked the vocal inflections. From a 1963 recording, here are the song’s original performers (and writers) The Valentinos singing It’s All Over Now.
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Tonight’s amusement en route to the Tips is the classic, quintessentially American truck drivin’ song: here’s Dave Dudley singing his 1963 smash hit Six Days on the Road.
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Tonight’s amusement en route to the Tips is a bit of a rarity: a song that expresses a conservative viewpoint. It’s a bit corny, but here, by an SDA reader’s request, is Tea Party member and lifelong conservative Ray Stevens (most famous, perhaps, for his 1970 hit Everything Is Beautiful, and for novelty songs like Gitarzan and The Streak) singing Come to the USA.
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Residents of the prairie provinces, where temperatures have been pretty much autumnal for over a month now, may feel a need to pretend that summer isn’t over yet. Maybe this will help: here’s Andy Williams‘ 1962 recording of A Summer Place.
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Tonight’s amusement en route to the Tips is a scene from Young Frankenstein where Herr Doktor learns that he can dress his creation up, but he can’t take him out.
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