Great Landings

To celebrate the new year I have a video for you all to see, and in my opinion it is nothing short of Amazing. I have cut and pasted the background story that goes with it below. But if you ask me it is a great message to start 2010 on. Happy New Year!

Stand By Me | Playing For Change | Song Around The World from Concord Music Group on Vimeo.

This cover of Stand By Me was recorded by completely unknown artists in a street virtual studio all around the world. It all started with a base track—vocals and guitar—recorded on the streets of Santa Monica, California, by a street musician called Roger Ridley. The base track was then taken to New Orleans, Louisiana, where Grandpa Elliott—a blind singer from the French Quarter—added vocals and harmonica while listening to Ridley’s base track on headphones. In the same city, Washboard Chaz’s added some metal percussion to it.

And from there, it just gets rock ‘n’ rolling bananas: The producers took the resulting mix all through Europe, Africa, and South America, adding new tracks with multiple instruments and vocals that were assembled in the final version you are seeing in this video. All done with a simple laptop and some microphones.

I don’t know about you, but it blew me away. Best version of Ben E. King’s classic I’ve ever heard in my life. And I’ve probably heard between five and two billion of them. [via Gizmodo and Playing for Change]

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