Video a-go-go

It’s not the strangest thing in the world to have a high school assignment that bends the rules a little. Even something slightly strange, like “write a Blues song about American Theologian Jonathan Edwards’ famous sermon, ‘Sinners in the hands of an angry God’,” isn’t that weird, at least by Asheville standards. Most students probably get papers assigned for their American history class, but some get songs. No biggie. No, the really weird thing is that this song, performed by Asheville School seniors Sierra Shell and Jonathan Hopkins, turned out to be pretty good.

It can be an eye-opening experience to see the time, creativity and effort that goes into something seemingly as simple as recording a single song. Seen from the outside, the process looks a little awkward—tedious, even—and it’s not surprising that many bands tend to make their behind-the-scenes studio footage into montages. But, in this series of videos documenting the recording of the song “Bring The Walls” at Asheville’s Echo Mountain Recording Studio for the Moog Foundation, you can see just how much work can go into getting the sound right.

Given that most of the video uploads on any given week are of recent events, it’s a rare treat to run across videos from the more distant past. This week, we have a series of three videos documenting life at the Ben Lippen School in Asheville, circa 1961. (The school later moved to Columbia, SC, after a fire destoyed the main building.) It’s a revealing look at a very different time in Asheville’s history.

And just to illustrate how different things are when it comes to modern-day school culture, here we have a production by Erwin High School students poking fun at the obsession with that oh-so-sought-after title of Homecoming Queen. It’s called Homecoming Wars.

And, because it’s never a bad idea to end on a song, here’s Asheville based “absurdist, gypsy, metal, folk, funk, punk” group Sirius.B performing their version of the traditional Italian tune “Bella Ciao.”

Each week, dozens upon dozens of interesting local videos are uploaded to YouTube. It’s a lot to keep up with. Did we miss a particularly interesting, recently uploaded local video? Share it by leaving the videos URL (but not the embed code) in the comment fields below. Also, please mark it Not Work Safe if there’s any controversial content to the video.