Now this is cute: New York City PS22 elementary school chorus singing "Landslide" by Fleetwood Mac. I'd say they did just as good a job as Stevie Nicks. Great job, PS22 kids and their music teacher Gregg "Mr. B" Breinberg!
Watch it before the goons from RIAA deliver a takedown notice for copyright violation (even though Stevie likes it): Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] - via Urlesque
More PS22 Chorus vids here: Link (including my current fave: their cover of Viva La Vida by Coldplay and Eye of the Tiger by Survivor)
Background story from the Brooklyn Rail by Sophie Gilbert:
In a school where more than three quarters of the students are eligible for free lunch, the lyrics of the song have resonance, and the performance is haunting, emotive, and delivered with far more soul than one might expect from a bunch of fifth-graders. As Breinberg plays, he makes eye contact with the kids, coaxing performances from them and letting them enjoy themselves. Later, Davoya, one of the chorus members, explains how he does it. “At first, when I sang, I had no emotion,” she says. “I didn’t move. But Mr. B taught me to sing with feeling. With feeling and heart.”
(I have a very bad memory associated with that song. It was playing for perhaps the 20th time one morning in a retail store where I was assembling office furniture. Just as I was thinking, "Geez, this woman needs to quit smoking and take some voice lessons," a board fell over behind me and shaved the skin off the backs of my ankles. There was blood all over the floor, and I finished the job with wads of paper towels taped to my legs. I still feel tingling down there every time I hear that terrible voice being piped in while standing in line somewhere.)
These kids at least practiced, God bless 'em. And now I know what the name of that godawful song is, and with what... (band? person? "Fleetwood Mac?" I can't tell) it is associated.
(And BTW, the song was apparently written (if I remember my limited 70s memories correctly) by Stevie about her dad.)
He's a piece of work. Awesome.
Alright Alex...time for you to get educated about the way the world works. The RIAA is a trade group representing the recorded music industry. The recorded music industry (e.g. "the labels") is interested in protecting their own master recordings.
In the case of the performance of "Landslide" in the YouTube clip, this is an original recording, so the record labels would have no interest in taking down this clip since they don't own the recording.
The only party who would have takedown rights to the clip would be the publisher of the song, which owns and oversees rights to the published music and lyrics. The publisher in this case is Welsh Witch Music, which is Stevie Nicks own publishing company. If a takedown notice was issued, it would have to come from Nick's own company.
I know it's quite fashionable and helps give you some easy cred when you bash the RIAA and record labels, but really... it's best if you try to refrain from comment when you don't know what you are talking about. Remember, try to shed light, not darkness.
That way all these kids will stop making the thousands of dollars that their making off of this tribute to teacher. Greedy children.
In all seriousness, this was really gorgeous.
Take for example, the case of Penn State's professor Peter Usher, who got a nastygram because his server contains files with the combination of "usher" (well, naturally, since that's his last name) and mp3 (the file turns out to be an a capella song performed by astronomers about the Swift gamma ray satellite.)
The bad rep of RIAA is not my doing. They got that all by themselves.