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This is from Owngig’s Weekly Newsletter. To recieve this in your inbox, simply register on site now.

A combination of the silly and the chinstroking make up this week’s newsletter. First we bring you a right bunch of muppets… literally. The Muppets have been popular for over thirty years and have already attracted 3 million views with their unique version of Bohemian Rhapsody. Check it out here.

Also involving silly dancing and music is this rather quirky Japanese video featuring the Helicopter Boyz (I don’t know who they are either). Attaching small personal projectors to themselves as they dance makes for a rather interesting spectacle.

Finally, Owngig brings you a first in this newsletter, an academic paper. Before you all stop reading, this is the first academic paper I’ve ever seen that has 80s video games referenced. This paper on the history of chiptunes (computer music – particularly those in video games) is both fascinating and fun. Check it out here.

This is from Owngig’s weekly newsletter. Register on site to recieve this in your inbox every Friday

Tonight in Britain is Children in Need – a famous annual telethon on behalf of good causes. This years has used a technique close to Owngig’s heart – crowdsourcing. Chartjackers aims to create a number one hit solely by using YouTube and the users of the site.

As they say, “The lyrics of the song are made up of YouTube comments, compiled into a song by another YouTuber. The lyrics were released and then YouTubers wrote a melody for the lyrics, and we picked our favourite. We held YouTube auditions via video response to pick the band, found the producer of the song through YouTube, and the music video is made up of literal interpretations of the lyrics, clapping and singing along, by YouTubers!” View the video here.

Also close to Owngig’s heart is, of course, live music, so naturally we loved the tour by Ash, which went round the UK in alphabetical order. There was a mild bit of (understandable) cheating – Exeter for X for example but the tour, done to celebrate the band’s plan to release 26 similarly themed alphabetical singles in a year is a great move.

Finally, it wouldn’t be an Owngig newsletter without something a bit sillier. Welcome to the world of manualism. This isn’t as rude as it sounds – it’s the art of making music with your hands. Perhaps this video explains it better – as well as being odd it’s also awesome. Sweet Child ‘o’ Mine, done with hands.

This is from the Owngig weekly newsletter. To recieve this in your inbox every week simply register on site

Keep a close eye on your inbox next week as some of you will be getting an email to give you first dibs on an Owngig concert that you’ve been bidding for quite a while. If there’s any tickets left after this first round, then details will appear on our site. There’s also a few other gigs that are getting quite close to that magic moment so as we always say in these emails, keep bidding.

This week on the web we’ve been loving…

This week’s round up is a mixture of the silly and the serious. As it’s Friday and the weekend is almost upon us, let’s start with a bit of fun. Christopher Walken is a scary man in many movies but he’s also great at using his scariness in the service of humour – a fact demonstrated by his star turn in a Fatboy Slim video a few years back. Well this time a straightfaced reading of Lady Gaga’s Poker Face song makes for similar straightfaced mirth.

In a similar silly vein, we found this video of dancing ferrets made us smile due to its pure charm. Plus the fact that they appear to be dancing to an easy listening version of Weezer’s Buddy Holly adds to the appeal. But don’t take our word for it click here.

Now we’ve made you smile we’d like to make you think. There’s been a lot of doom and gloom about what internet downloads have done to music in recent years has done to the artform, which is why this opinion piece by John Harris is a breath of fresh air. Are we living in the Golden Age of Infnite Music? Read for yourself.

Finally a link to bookmark and come back to. We’re almost at the end of the first decade of the millenium and one music blogger has started a ‘list of lists’ documenting all the inevitable best album/gig/single/video etc of the 2000s. Worth a look to see what you missed. See you next week.