Sunday, February 10, 2008

The wonder of YouTube

This is my favourite recent find, something I turned up a week or so ago when searching for rock videos. I had heard a band here in Beijing do a cover of 'What's Up?' by the 4 Non-Blondes (terrible lyrics - perhaps deliberately so? - but awesome vocals from Linda Perry: one of those horribly catchy, classic singalongs), a song I hadn't heard in years; so, I decided to go YouTubing for it.... and found this.

The band was sadly short-lived - though Linda is still rocking - so there aren't too many clips of them: there's a performance on Letterman, and the original video (which is a bit drab). This is much the best video accompaniment to the song on there - but, for some reason, it's damned hard to find (I hadn't bookmarked it, and when I returned to the site to look for it today, it took me half an hour to unearth it). This is a young American guy with the username Xspazzx. His story is that he suffers from insomnia a lot, and sometimes whiles away the sleepless pre-dawn hours by making videos of himself lip-synching to his favourite songs; I suspect he's an actor or a musician, because he's phenomenally good at it. It takes a brave man to mime to Linda Perry, but he carries it off superbly.

I am particularly pleased to have happened upon this guy because I really think he could be 'the next big thing' on the Internet. So far, he doesn't seem to have got much attention. So, please, my readers, if you enjoy this performance as much as I did (and I think you will) - TELL ALL YOUR FRIENDS. Let's try to make this guy a star!

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