Why Did This Not Occur to Me Earlier?

[chomiji]

Guess what's on YouTube!

Sadly, they do not have a proper live version of Mr. Lehrer singing "Smut," which is what I really hoped to find. But a bunch of his other classics are there.

Comments

[nouvellebrielle.livejournal.com]

I've only been acquainted with his 'Poisoning the Pigeons in the Park'. But this is refreshing. XD And him looking all proper and posh in there.

[chomiji]

As far as Lehrer looking posh & proper: you have to remember, this was the mid-1960s, and he really was a math professor! Of course, the contrast between his buttoned-up appearance and the words he was singing was part of the shtick.

There are a pile of his other tunes on YouTube. I first encountered him when someone in 6th grade (1969-1970, for me) brought in his album That Was the Week That Was so that we could listen to "Pollution." I didn't hear "Poisoning the Pigeons in the Park"until much later!

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

I regularly lose hours at a stretch to YT; it truly is a trap par excellence on a line with TV Tropes if you ever start seriously exploring. (Beware reading video comments, though -- depending on the subject matter of the video, the mixture of inanity, lack of reading comprehension, and/or reprehensibly prejudiced attitudes displayed by some viewers can ruin whatever enjoyment you got from the video...)

[chomiji]

I sometimes look up videos (if available) for my favorite tunes on YouTube. The Young Lady has a fearsomely organized (of course) collection of bookmarks from YT, everything from Led Zeppelin to Celtic Women, that she sometimes shares with me. But precisely because she's usually got something playing that I can at least tolerate (and usually enjoy), I don't tend to look at YT much at home - and it's blocked at work.

Yeah, the comments most often suck. The ones on the fan videos of the Idan Raichel Project's concerts are especially yicky, because the politics bubbled to the top very quickly.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

The real trap-like aspects come in the more time you spend there puttering about -- the sidebar showing videos related to whatever you're currently watching can lead to endless clicky distraction following a chain of vague associations, plus if you actually have an account and start rating and favoriting stuff, there's another section where they'll recommend stuff based on your past history. I don't know how effective their recs are for more casual users, but I've been so obsessively active there that I have the engine very well-trained indeed: it pops up gloriously unexpected things like hip-hop shamisen that leave me purring OH BABY, YOU KNOW WHAT I LIKE.

And yeah, anyone who thinks Canada is some sort of liberal paradise of racial harmony should take a gander at the comments that come in on First Nations stuff. You get some ugly shit out of the blue even for music videos, never mind anything with actual directly political content...