Made Underground - London

US band, the X Ambassadors, is searching for buskers. London was their first stop, a city that has made some incredible contributions to the global music catalogue.

Jamie N. Commons, a London native and former busker himself, guides Sam Harris through popular performance areas in the city, but also off the beaten path. They visit a houseboat on the canal, and a beach in the middle of town. They stumble across a Chapman Stick player, an unconventional ‘hand pan’ instrument, and some unexpected bluegrass vibes.

Facebook    Wikipedia

One year on... Brett Snelgrove

Brett Snelgrove is an Autralian writer/producer living in the UK, who is best known for the animated web series New Eden. 

We completed an interview with Brett back in August 2012, and dropped by recently to see how he has been getting along. 

____________________________________________________

• You’ve been based in the UK for a few years now. Have you managed to travel around Europe or elsewhere in the meantime?

Being in the UK has been great in the sense that it’s the gateway to Europe. Ssince being here five odd years, we’ve traveled more than we did in the five years previous in Australia. Even the US is closer. When the rest of the world isn’t a 25-hour-flight away, it suddenly becomes much more accessible.

Brett on the Brooklyn Bridge, with TJ, Lawrie and Amanda.
Pier 17 and the Fulton Fish Market shine in the background.

• Your series New Eden has been well received. You’ve been nominated for awards and even made an appearance recently at MCM London Comic Con / Vidfest. Tell us about that experience.

This year has been a fantastic experience for Freek, my New Eden co-creator, and I. It’s been a heck of a lot of work. Animation is not easy or quick, but damn rewarding. The experience of rolling out an entire series has been a great learning curve and a great opportunity for us to showcase our work. The London Comic Con was a bucketload of fun, and since then I’ve got to meet other great creators at Raindance Web Fest and via the international web series community at large.
 

• We’re coming up on Xmas. How does that differ in the UK? Is there anything Australian you especially miss around this time of year?

It’s strangely familiar, but also not, to have a cold and, if you’re lucky, a white Christmas. Summer happens at the middle of the year here, so July/August is when everyone goes away on holidays. You don’t get the same experience as having summer holidays and Christmas all rolled into one. But you do get great Christmas specials on the telly!

Christmas in London is all about figuring out where you are going to spend it because there is no public transport - none on Christmas day, so everyone is literally home for Christmas. And if you’re spending Christmas with family or mates then you have to plan to be there one or two nights. Here, a roast dinner at Christmas really makes sense, but I have to say I miss the Aussie tradition of a seafood Christmas, and the sunshine and outdoors, but I still get a buzz when I see the first snow fall in London.

• What does next year hold for Brett Snelgrove?

Right now, I’m focusing on developing more content, and helping others to do so as well. I’m developing some new projects and thanks to New Eden have some people to pitch to, so we’ll see how that goes. This year I also started working as partner manager at the BuzzMyVideos YouTube Network, which has been a fantastic experience and I can honestly say I’m learning something new everyday. 

New Eden is not over yet though, we’ve just released three brand new bigger, longer episodes and have a few more to go, so now is a great time to jump on board. 
_______________________________________________________________________

Here are a couple of opinion pieces by Brett on life in Europe:

1. Queues in Britain.



2. Water spouts in Switzerland.

Blog    Facebook    IMDb    Twitter    Vimio    Website    YouTube    

"Dance With Your City"

Remember the music video with the four guys dancing on a set of treadmills?

The song is called Here It Goes Again, and the name of the band is OK Go. (The name came from an art teacher always saying "Okay... go!" when a couple of them were kids at school, drawing).



What's interesting about OK Go is that they understand the way the world has changed, better than many filmmakers. In 2005, they placed a "stupid home video" of the band, dancing, on a website. This was before YouTube. The clip was downloaded 300,000 times, compared with 285,000 sales of their first album. The band's famous treadmill video attracted a million YouTube views within days. The record label failed to see the opportunity and they parted company with the band.

OK Go have sold more than 700,000 albums. Their videos have been viewed more than 150 million times online, and many more times in museums, galleries, classrooms, and at film, theater, and arts festivals. Recent projects include an interactive video made with the Pilobolus dance company; a live album chronicling 180 concerts played in a single year; performances at the Kennedy Center, the Glastonbury Festival, and Lollapalooza; and collaborations with the Muppets and Sesame Street.

Here is the lead singer, Damian Kulash, talking about their approach to the business.



The thing I really wanted to show you, though, is the following video. It documents the 8.5-mile parade OK Go and 100 friends took through Los Angeles. The point? To create a psycho-spatial-geo-musical-techno-sonic parade-party. They used Range Rover's Pulse of the City app to check in and spell out the words "OK GO" with the route.



Which reminded me of The Beatles' impromptu final gig in January 1969, played out on the rooftop of the headquarters of Apple Records, at 3 Savile Row, London. At the time, The Beatles were recording their album, Let It Be. They played various tracks from that, including “Get Back,” “Don’t Let Me Down,” “I’ve Got A Feeling,” “One After 909,” “Danny Boy,” “Dig A Pony” and another version of “Get Back.”

The session ended with the police shutting down the show (for noise violation). John Lennon closed with the famous sentence, “I’d like to say thank you on behalf of the group and ourselves, and I hope we passed the audition.”

Can't help wondering what The Beatles would have done with the internet.

Seeing we've come this far, here's the available footage of The Beatles' rooftop concert.