{"id":13036,"date":"2023-12-14T07:23:00","date_gmt":"2023-12-14T13:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/?p=13036"},"modified":"2024-06-29T15:34:20","modified_gmt":"2024-06-29T20:34:20","slug":"random-thursday-the-music-video-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/2023\/12\/14\/random-thursday-the-music-video-edition\/","title":{"rendered":"Random Thursday: The Music Video Edition"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Howdy, dear Gazetteers, and welcome to yet another Thursday edition of thematic randomnicity. Today is of course National Monkey Day<\/a>, not to be confused with National Sea Monkey Day<\/a>; I’m sure you’ve already got May 16th marked on your calendar for that big celebration. No, today we’re celebrating landlocked simians of all sorts, including but not limited to apes, tarsiers, and lemurs (but not Tarzan).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But enough monkeying around. I’ll bet you’re here to learn what terrific and strange music the Gazette’s horde of research drones stumbled across while looking for pictures of tarsiers (which are, frankly, a little creepy if not downright disturbing). So, let’s dance…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

First up, allow me to introduce you to an all-female Japanese groove\/funk band called Tokyo Groove Jyoshi<\/a>. Now, my Japanese is a bit rusty and in fact is limited to what I learned from watching Shogun<\/em> (the 1980 original, not the remake), so as best as I can tell, Jyoshi<\/em> is some kind of reference to girl or woman (joshi<\/em>). Regardless of their band’s name, these ladies can play.

If you’re wondering about the three-stringed instrument that leads off, it’s a shamisen<\/a>, a traditional Japanese instrument, and the huge pick — or plectrum, if you’re fancy — is called a bachi<\/a>. You might also notice that the electric bass is a bit different. It has six strings, so it falls into the category of extended-range basses<\/a>…or those with more than four strings. (If you read far enough into the Wikipedia article I just linked to, you’ll see that luthiers have made basses with fifteen strings or more. Nobody really knows why. But here’s a video of a dude attempting to play one<\/a>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n