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A few videos and and some news that could be either terrible or wonderful this week. First of all, lets get to a pair of rather talented if odd musicians. Firstly one of the most talented kids we’ve ever seen – and likely to never appear on X Factor, this five year old is an amazing drummer, performing the mean feat of drumming along to System of a Down’s Toxicity.

Now we’re not sure that this second performer is genuine or aware of their talent but it is funny. From the site that brought you Death Metal Puppy, we bring you Death Metal Rooster!

Finally, the news that Disney is remaking the Yellow Submarine fills us with a mixture of interest and trepidation. It could be brilliant or it could be awful. One piece of news that says it will be good is the casting of top funnyman Peter Serafinowicz as Paul MacCartney. He’s played The Beatles before as seen on this funny clip and this music video. Fingers crossed.

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This week we thought we bring you something useful. We’re not all about silly links and nutty videos (well mostly but we have to take a break now and then). For those of you planning musical Christmas gifts or just wanting to treat yourself, Tunechecker is a music price comparison sites for mp3s and albums. Handy for saving money this Christmas.

Want to know the link between Bony M and Lady Gaga or Queen and The Black Eyed Peas? The art of sampling and crate digging (searching through old records for those few seconds of audio dynamite) is a long standing musical tradition and Who Sampled is a new site seeking to document the art. So if you’re wondering what made up Paul’s Boutique or any other classic then check the site’s database out for enlightenment.

Finally, it wouldn’t be an Owngig newsletter without a silly video. The pink glove dance was done by staff at a US hospital in order to raise awareness of Breast Cancer and has been a global viral hit. It also brings a smile to your face.

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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 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.

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This week seems to be all about all about unorthodox musical instruments. There are some creative people out there and they’ve been making beautiful music out there. First is the world’s first subway station stairway piano. A very clever Swedish clip on YouTube shows how people can make beautiful music on their way to work.

Closer to home here in Britain, a few electronic musicians have teamed up to produce a solution to a problem that’s been a problem at many electronic gigs over the years – namely that they’re really boring. This writer from past experience can definitely testify to the dullness of watching someone hunched over a laptop. It just doesn’t compare well with a rock gig. So their Eigenharp looks to present a solution by creating an electronic instrument that is both versatile and fun to watch. Have they succeeded? Judge for yourself here.

Finally, and everywhere on the internet, this final video is an example of lip dubbing – where people combine lip syncing and audio dubbing to make a music video. This one – in time to the Black Eyed Peas’ I Gotta Feeling is certainly one of the most ambitious, using the whole of the campus of the University of Quebec.

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Ok, the title of this first link is a little sweary. But the idea – play two YouTube videos simultaneously and use a crossfader to make your own mini DJ mixes (and record the results) is genius. One for the why didn’t I think of that? file. Marvel at it here – and we apologise if the title of the site offends your sensibilities, just enjoy the music.

Also fitting into the why didn’t I think of that category is this rather simple time lapse video of the US festival Coachella. One weekend’s festival crammed into four minutes. Although if we’re honest we’d like to see this for Glastonbury – the way in the video the area is cleared is very efficient but we’d like to see some of the casualties still floating around as the sun came up.

Finally, fitting into the arty category is this rather crazy project that uses Mexican jumping beans to make music by triggering synth patterns. View this strangeness here, and of course, feel free to bid for him on Owngig.com. You never know…

This is from Owngig’s weekly newsletter. To recieve this in your inbox every Friday, simply register on site

This week we’ve been working behind the scenes on our new Polish version of the site to launch soon. We’ll be announcing full details of this next week but if you have any Polish friends, let them know – and gigs in Gdańsk, Kraków or Warsaw with their favourite artists could be coming soon.

This week on the web we’ve been loving…

OK, so they’re not going to win any awards for sound fidelity but these tiny iPod speakers in the shape of an 80s boombox will certainly win points for cuteness. Following on from the iPod dock that was similarly retro styled, this mini version is just too much. Buy here .

Some of you will have seen the small space invader tiles in various cities around the world, done by French artist, Invader. Well we liked this project that takes famous album sleeves and tiles them. Try to guess them all here …

Finally a link that’s being doing the rounds this week to a musician I think it’s safe to say won’t be doing an Owngig any time soon, this singer is more an exercise on how long you can stand to listen to his song. I got 49 seconds in before I could stand no more. See how you do here and if you make it all the way to the end then your aversion to pain is impressive.

Calvin Harris’s amazing human synthesiser.

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Want to spread the word about Owngig and help promote a one-off gig from your favourite artist? Remember that on site we have tools that allow you to make custom badges and banners you can use to place on forums, blogs and websites. They’re perfect for artists too. Check them out on our site here.

This week on the web we’ve been loving…

Well although he seems to have been having a bit of a melt down on Twitter today over a bad review in the Guardian, we’ve still been rather impressed with Calvin Harris’ amazing human synthesiser. Using fifteen models, conductive paint and markings on the floor, his new single can be ‘played’ by dancing. To be honest we can only explain this so well – check out the videos here. Then, in a similar and somewhat simpler vein, this remote controlled instrument allows you to play tunes automatically on your kettle when it boils. Very clever.

Finally we spent quite a while playing with this Lyrics visualiser. Simply put in the name of a song you like and it plots similarly lyriced themes on a nifty little chart. Great for preparing similarly themed mixtapes.

Back to 2001 with a great new mash up

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

So we’ve been away for a few weeks – on holiday and then away for work. Did you miss us? Well we’re jetlagged but we’re back from the New Music Seminar in New York and just want to say thanks to the organisers and everyone we met.  There were a lot of passionate and interesting people who care as much about music as we do and had a great time. If you want to know a bit more about what happened then this blog post gives a good flavour to the proceedings.

This week on the web we’ve been loving…

When we saw this musical mashup we just had to post it. OK, you’ve seen a lot of them and maybe you’re thinking that the whole concept is a bit 2001, but as it contains Owngig favourite, Rick Astley, it was a dead cert. So we bring you Never Gonna Give You Up vs Smells Like Teen Spirit. Impressive that the German DJ behind it managed to get the two songs to gel together.

On a similar remix/refit version we liked this gesture from David Bowie’s record label – providing an online mixing tool giving people the ability to remix the famous song – even on your iPhone. Of course, there’s nothing to stop you doing so with fancy software already but this site allows you to do so with nothing more than your browser.

Finally, we love a good tale of the little guy standing up against The Man, so the tale of musician Dave Carroll’s failure to get satisfaction from United Airlines after baggage handlers damaged his guitar definitely was worth bringing to your attention. The song he wrote – one of three he plans on writing has so far got over 3 million views and an official apology from the airline as well as offers of compensation from a very embarrassed company. Maybe we should all write songs over consumer rights. It would certainly make Watchdog more interesting.

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As we’ve said on numerous occasions, we’re heading off to spread the Owngig gospel at the New Music Seminar in New York in July. Well the organisers have very kindly given us invites to anyone who wants to attend. You’ll have to pay (and get to New York) but if you’re a budding musician, it’s worth stumping the cash up. To get hold of the invite, click here to download the PDF.

This week on the web we’ve been loving…

Unless you’ve been living in a shed with no access to any media or the internet (in which case, how are you reading this newsletter?), the news of the sad death of Michael Jackson can’t have escaped your attention. Rather than dwell on this sad fact, we’d rather celebrate some of the best of Michael Jackson’s life with a few quirky links.

Firstly, this has to be the best portrait ever. It’s from a sale of his stuff when Neverland was shut – there’s more interesting relics from the sale here. One of the things about Michael Jackson is how many artists he influenced. This is something hip hop DJ Yoda did in a set in 2003 was play 25 minutes of rap tracks sampling Michael Jackson. Check it out here…

Finally… it’s worth remembering that Michael’s own influences were wide and varied. From wanting to work with Kraftwerk (how we’d love to have heard that) to being influenced by Fred Astaire for Billy Jean. This classic mashup of Michael Jackson and Fred Astaire certainly proves the point.