People ask me for advice nearly every day of my life. And I’d say that 95% of the time I have to give vague answers like “…in most cases…”, or “…usually…”. But every once in a while I’m able to hand out some advice that I feel is absolute. This is the best kind of advice, and Baz Luhrmann dished out some of this advice back in 1999 with the release of Everybody’s Free to Wear Sunscreen.

“Wear Sunscreen” or the “Sunscreen Speech” are the common names of an essay actually called “Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young” written by Mary Schmich and published in the Chicago Tribune as a column in 1997.
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Man I love this song. George Thorogood is one of the greatest rockers of all time, and this is one of the greatest songs of all time!

I wish I was cool enough that the head nurse would have told the other nurses I was bad to the bone when I was born. Alas, I’m pretty sure that the only thing I got, was slapped on the ass!
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Thomas Dolby, Herbie Hancock, Howard Jones and Stevie Wonder teamed up to create this little bit of electronic genius back in 1985.

By the way, for the younger folks checking this video out, I’d just like to point out that back in the mid-1980s these synthesizers were state of the art! The world had really never heard or seen anything like this, but after these guys started rocking the house the music world was pretty much changed forever.
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This video, posted as Daft Hands – Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger, is exactly one year old and has now been viewed over 20 Million times. It took a lot of creativity and coordination to pull off this exhibition of manual dexterity.

While doing a little research for my recent Marc Cohn post I ran across the Harvard Radcliffe Veritones and was flat out impressed. I love acoustic singing troupes, and these guys are fantastic. If you keep in mind that these are some of wickedly smart people on top of being fantastic singers it makes it all the more impressive.

Enjoy.
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Years and years have passed. And I have a very wide musical taste. But after all this time my favorite artist is still Marc Cohn.

If I were ever to do anything worthy of having a superstar sing for me, I’d choose Marc.

For those of you who have not had the opportunity to listen to Marc, I’ve assembled a few videos for your listening pleasure. I hope you enjoy.
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I was perusing YouTube as a walk down Old Skool memory lane and decided to share some of my favorite Rap songs of all time. Yeah, that’s right. John P. loves rap music, so wacha gonna do? What? Don’t be a hater!

For all of you playas out there who loved the Yo! MTV Raps days, I’m gonna kick it for you old skool style – welcome to the new Yo! OMB Raps! With your host… Johnny P. This is a journey into sound.

Damn that Another Man! He scooped me on Poetic Prophet, the SEO Rapper!

Anyway, you know that lecture I gave on 45 Tips to Supercharge Your Blog back at WordCamp Dallas? Yeah, we’ll just imagine me doing that to a cool hip-hop beat with a gold chain and sneakers and you’ve got the Poetic Prophet!

Word.
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This is crazy! Thanks to Tom Barr once again for this fantastic find.

Here are a couple of guys in Australia who go around to clubs that are packed and act like they are the DJ coming to work. They were just trying to see how often this ploy would work. Check it out!
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I’m a big fan of Kansas and love the song Carry On Wayward Son. Obviously the song is a classic. It’s got some serious guitar work, drums, keyboard… well it’s got just about everything a good old rock band needs. Except, that is, a 10 year old girl!

Luckily I’ve got just the prescription for them.

I wish I knew something else about the little girl in the following video, but what I do know is that she pretty much plays every instrument in this song on a Yamaha keyboard all at the same time! At times while I’m watching it I seriously wonder if she is really playing it, but it’s far too good of an act not to be for real.
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Seriously, this has got to be the coolest flute player on the planet. I mean, this guy is actually beatboxing while he is playing the flute. I mean, he’s playing the Knight Rider theme song and at the very same time he’s… well, watch the video yourself and see what I’m talking about.

Now, I’d pay real money to get this guy together with the guy who played Smooth Criminal on the violin and Larry Wright the Famous Street Drummer. That would be one hell of a 3 man band!
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Reggie Watts is a musical genius. Seriously, watch what this guy does with a little digital recorder hooked up to an audio system. Is it just me or is there anyone else that thinks the phrase “he’s got more talent in his little finger than you do in your entire body” applies?

By the way, if you want to see more of Reggie, here is his MySpace page, and here are more of his videos on Vimeo or SuperDeluxe.
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