If this video doesn't bring a tear to your eyes and makes you smile for the rest of the day, you are a cold hearted bastard. Watch it from beginning to end—you won't regret it.

This cover of Stand By Me was recorded by completely unknown artists in a street virtual studio all around the world. It all started with a base track—vocals and guitar—recorded on the streets of Santa Monica, California, by a street musician called Roger Ridley. The base track was then taken to New Orleans, Louisiana, where Grandpa Elliott—a blind singer from the French Quarter—added vocals and harmonica while listening to Ridley's base track on headphones. In the same city, Washboard Chaz's added some metal percussion to it.

And from there, it just gets rock 'n' rolling bananas: The producers took the resulting mix all through Europe, Africa, and South America, adding new tracks with multiple instruments and vocals that were assembled in the final version you are seeing in this video. All done with a simple laptop and some microphones.

I don't know about you, but it blew me away. Best version of Ben E. King's classic I've ever heard in my life. And I've probably heard between five and two billion of them.

Copyright - Gizmodo

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To see Anis Mojgani perform live is an exercise in jaw control. It's the classic "I laughed, I cried, I was transformed" experience. Imagine the perfect artistic expression of mans timeless struggle to understand God—to make sense of this life. Then watch Anis poetry. It's as if someone came into your dark, sleepy world of self and flung open the heavy velvet curtains to let the blinding light shine in. This performance, released exclusively today on SoulPancake, is just one example.

Anis is one of those rare people who can talk about life in a real, accessible way. No fuss. No frills. No airy-fairy embellishments. Just BOOM! Your humanity, on stage, speaking to you. Even people who think poetry is well, lame, become transfixed by what they witness. So it's no wonder he has been the World Poetry Slam Champion as well as National Poetry Slam Champion (twice). It's also no surprise that he had so much to offer when SoulPancake recently asked him some of Life's Big Questions.
On spirituality, God, and (gulp) religion

SP: Is spirituality a trend?
AM: Sometimes I think it is. Our society is weird: Its a non-secular society that pretends its secular and is filled with a people that want the benefits of religion without recognizing religion as being something beneficial. We have all these things that supply us with what we hunger for—new clothes, tasty food, hot kicks, movies, television, music—but there are aspects of our make-up that dont get fulfilled. Weve created a society where its not even kosher or cool to discuss the emptiness, the unexplainable longing that passes in and out of all our lives. I feel that is connected to the spirit. There are these moments in all of us when we are inexplicably joyous or sorrowful, but weve boxed ourselves up so as not to talk about this as freely as we may discuss 30 Rock or Seinfeld.

Thats why spirituality becomes trendy. There is a hunger that many of us have for some divine and spiritual connection, but there is no arena to have that without committing to a religion, which a good number of us hold zero interest for. So what to do? Well, heres this thing spirituality. And it allows me to feed my soul and commune with my spirit without having to deal with the connotation of organized religion.

SP: Chanting, chakras, and chopras aside, what does being "spiritual" really mean?
AM: I believe it to refers to maintaining a connection, a communication, a relationship, with the inner mechanics of the world—the same mechanics that power us.

SP: Where does God play into all of this?
AM: God is the builder of those inner mechanics.

SP:Then why is talking about God so awkward?
AM: Cuz its abstract! We want to be right in our thoughts and our beliefs, and for many of us, the thought of discussing that could mean that we are wrong. And that would be bigger than being wrong about a math problem—its being wrong about our entire structure of being.

SP: Have you ever had a moment when you felt God?
AM: I was riding a bicycle in Savannah, Ga., and something clicked. Things made sense. The blades of grass and the size of them and how small and how big they are, and it felt like I was in the lap of something bigger than all of this. I started crying—just bawling—and then I started laughing at what a sight I must have been, crying and biking in the middle of the day, and the tears came down even more and the laughs came out even harder, and the whole time, I felt him.

SP: Do we need religion?
AM: We need a new definition of religion. I think ours is outdated? Maybe too small. I need what religion actually is, which is a way to reveal to humanity how to exist as strongly and nobly as we can—and how to maintain that.

SP: What gives 'religion' such a bad name?
AM: People.

SP: Would the world be better off without religion?
AM: Based on the results of what we have done in the name of religion, yes. But based on what I feel religion actually is and has the potential to be, no.

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The song is "Inside Your Head"
By Eberg

First aired February 25, 2007 during the Oscars

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In the winter of 2006, Justin Vernon, a 25-year-old struggling indie
musician, retreated to his dads remote log cabin in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, to repair his broken heart.

While there he wrote nine songs, which became the album 'For Emma, Forever Ago'. This month it was voted the Observer Music Monthly's Album of the Year for 2008.

To read the full article go to: www.guardian.co.uk/music

Produced by POLITE COMPANY for the Observer Music Monthly.

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Cover by Local Natives. Performed from the courtyard of "gorilla manor," our humble dwelling.




http://www.myspace.com/localna tives

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Amazing song by matchbox twenty, intimate, acoustic and live version. well worth a look.

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