When I took charge of OKSee from Stephen Carradini (who’s currently crashing with me on his first vacation from graduate school at Auburn), the main change I instituted was posting a music video of the day, almost every day.

I’ve spent the last couple days going back through the archives to tabulate the VOTDs you noble OKSee readers watched the most, and the following are the results. Glad to see you all skewed heavily in favor of locals! So we’re going to celebrate by naming our Video of the Day of the Year (VOTDOTY)!

While digging around, I also found some of Stephen’s most-trafficked video posts from earlier in the year and selected a few choice clips from those, as well as a few of my own favorites I felt deserved some recognition, for better or worse. Somebody went to the trouble of re-imagining LCD Soundsystem's greatest song in Lego form, for crying out loud.

pictured, clip from The Nghiems' "Dum Dum Dah Dah"

2011, we’re gonna miss you dearly, so we’re celebrating you all week long with a commemorative series that counts down all the way to OKSee’s Favorite Albums of 2011, compiled by myself, Mr. Carradini and Gazette regular Joshua Boydston.

So stay tuned — tomorrow we’ll look back at the year in photos; Wednesday, we’ll be playing with playlists; and Thursday, we’ll have our list of OKSee Honorable Mention albums before the big reveal on Friday.

VOTDOTY #10: Broncho — “Pick a Fight”

The dudes at Delo Creative really nailed this one. Broncho’s pop-punk songs inspire crowds to act more like hardcore-punk freaks, as evidenced by this summer show at the Crystal Pistol in Tulsa. Funny story: I went to this show — suit, tie and all — after attending my freshman-year roommate’s wedding. Don’t regret it (the sartorial choice) in the slightest.




VOTDOTY #9: Jay-Z & Kanye West — “Otis”

Spoiler: Even after stripping down a Maybach and letting the sparks fly, the hip-hop superstars didn’t generate as much traffic as when a certain local singer/songwriter hopped in the back of a van and covered Otis Redding truer. More on that later.




VOTDOTY #8: The Boom Bang — “Jabroni Ramoney”

Who doesn’t like “Teen Wolf,” pizzas, cartoons, high jnks and chubby dudes with “BACON” tattooed on the gut? Not OKSee readers, nosiree!




VOTDOTY #7: Black Canyon (featuring Sherree Chamberlain) — “Bottles of Shine”

Sometimes when a song’s as simply good as this, all the video needs is a pretty gal and a scenic spot to go with it.




VOTDOTY #6: Paul Simon — “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard”

Y’all got really excited when Paul Simon came to town last month. So excited that you watched YouTube user OkieSully’s video of Rhymin’ Simon entertaining a Civic Center lobby-full of fans a couple hundred times.



VOTDOTY #5:  Magnificent Bird — “Nowhere to Hide

A bunch of the local videos I’ve seen this year eschewed narrative, but this spectacularly creepy, ivory-toned video from Nathan Lofties’ group, Magnificent Bird, tells a visually elegant story.




VOTDDOTY #4: Ol’ Savior — two unnamed songs

Tulsa’s Ol’ Savior hasn’t released an album, but thanks to your efforts, it may well soon. Drummer Nathan Price told me a few months ago that he and Ben King (his Broncho co-conspirator) planned to take a bunch more Ol’ Savior songs into the studio, thanks to all the positive feedback they heard when these two leaked. Huzzah!




VOTDOTY #3: The Nghiems — “Dum Dum Dah Dah”

The day this stop-motion gem premiered, I was afraid all my social-media platforms had been hijacked by Okie video guy Kyle Roberts — not that that’s a bad thing. Gah, re-watching this video just helps reinforce how eternally catchy and perfect this little song is.  




VOTDOTY #2: Ben Kilgore — “These Arms”

Technically, this one wasn’t even a VOTD. But I asked you if you preferred Tulsa singer Ben Kilgore’s Otis Redding cover to Hov and Ye’s “Try a Little Tenderness” sample, and you responded by clicking on this Nathan Poppe-shot video 500+ times. Good work, Oklahoma.

Also I think my favorite part of this video is how Kilgore, just after nearly bursting his awesome pipes on this classic, finishes it by declaring, “Sweet cheese!”




VOTDOTY #1: Girl Talk — “Girl Walk // All Day”

Everybody and their dogs’ imaginary friends absolutely freaked out when Axe Body Spray announced it was sponsoring a Girl Talk show inside Opolis earlier this month. You guys clicked on this ambitious bit of fan art more than any other video on this blog this year, and lucky for us, the fun’s far from over. “Girl Walk // All Day” is currently going strong on its sixth installment. Click through at risk to your work today.




8 videos I loved in 2011

LCD Soundsystem — “All My Friends (LEGO version)”

Carradini and I agree this is probably one of the best songs in the last 10 years. I’ve always loved the video that originally went with it, and this Lego rendition really just sends it over the top for me. The little yellow, face-painted James Murphy communicates all the song’s sentiment almost as well as the real guy.




Mastodon — “Deathbound”

Mastodon was really on a roll there for a while, what with completely absurd album and song titles, and this Muppets-from-hell video. It’s too bad I didn’t get a reviewer’s copy of the album, as I probably would really loved all the campiness.




Beastie Boys — “Make Some Noise”

This comedy star-studded clip for a new song celebrates everything the Beastie Boys were about … a decade and a half ago. Love how they actually got Ted Danson in a restaurant for the line about opening up a restaurant with Ted Danson.




Battles — “My Machines”

Innovative, funny, perfectly-executed. And it featured Gary Numan! Congratulations all around!




Beyoncé — “Countdown”

The best pop song of 2011, hands down, and quite possibly the very best video. Mrs. Carter hides her baby bump well.




Mister Heavenly — “Bronx Sniper”

W.

T.

F.




No Age — “Fever Dreaming”

This one rewards those who watch intently all the way to the finish.




St. Vincent — “Cruel”

Dear Annie: I will always love you and would never try to bury you alive.

2 local videos that probably never should’ve seen the light of day

Dr. Smith — “The Time Is Right”

This is literally the creepiest thing I’ve ever watched on the Internet. I was so weirded out. Thankfully, Gazette managing editor Rod Lott is unafraid of such things, and posted it over at Rod & Reel.




Thunderbird Casino — “Casino Lady”

Sorry. I really shouldn’t have put this here. Oklahoma, people!



OKS in 2011 — Monday: Your Most-Viewed Music Videos
OKS in 2011 — Tuesday: The Year in Photos
OKS in 2011 — Wednesday: By the numbers
OKS in 2011 — Thursday: OKSee's Honorable Mention Albums of the Year
OKS in 2011 — Friday: OKSee's 30 Favorite Albums of 2011

What with last week’s 2011 retrospective, the holiday season and all, I’ve recently lagged behind in posting local music videos. Important lesson learned: It’s dangerous falling back of OKC’s creative folk, as they just continue to pump new stuff out by the hour.

For starters, Delo Creative (the dudes behind Change Yr Life OKC) have a new series they’ve dubbed “Be Nice to Your Kids” (BNTYK, for short), which they christened with a pair of videos of The Boom Bang playing in a dirty men’s room. For whatever reason, it just makes sense. Watch “Vietnomnomnom” and “Sugar Ray Romano” below.





More exciting though are these two energetic vids from post-punk-rockers Chud, who cover themselves in glowing paint while they tear through “Handsome Vampires” and “Control, Alt, Complete.” Something shatters near the end of the latter song. What it is, who knows? Check back soon for a BNTYK session with Gentle Ghost.





Also, I’d be remiss to neglect this nutso Flaming Lips cover of John Lennon’s nutso classic “I Am the Walrus,” also shot by Delo. NYE is coming, folks, and rumors abound of Beatles covers for the visiting Mrs. Ono. Watch Steven Drozd completely lose his mind, below.



If you missed this ridiculous Zane LaRue-shot Chrome Pony video for “Christmas Babes,” his contribution to the Blackwatch Christmas album, then I pity you.

Also, Nathan Poppe snuck into Blackwatch Studios to do this simple, elegant one-shot of Beau Jennings covering Woody Guthrie’s lone Christmas song, assisted by the awesomely-bearded Daniel Foulks. This winsome beauty’s called “1913 Massacre” and it makes “Blue Christmas” sound about as happy as “Super Bass.”

Congratulations are in order for a handful of local bands named to the official South by Southwest festival schedule this week! They are:

• Jacob Abello
• The Boom Bang
• Defining Times
• Junebug Spade
• The Non (guitarist Zach Zeller pictured)
• Horse Thief

Looking forward to seeing and hearing you guys represent the north side of the Red River well! Feel free to check out the rest of the bands listed at the SXSW site.

Former OKSee skipper Stephen Carradini and I will in Austin, Texas, next month (next month, you guys!), possibly with regular Gazette contributor Joshua Boydston, whose press credentials we’re waiting to receive. We’ll be crawling all over town to bring you recaps and photos from these and other bands’ sets, so be sure to check back with OKSee and follow us on Twitter, too.

With the bevy of on-the-go, takeaway-style performances these days, it’s sometimes really refreshing to hear great musicians play in an actual recording studio. As opposed to, you know, a dirty bathroom, a tree, or a brand-new Chevy Sonic outfitted with pneumatic arms. Not that these locations are inherently bad, it’s just that too much of trying to find a funky place to play sometimes distracts from the pure, simple goodness of a richly written song.

“Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye” is such a song, and it gets a terrific treatment with a some beautiful cinematic video to match its rich traditional arrangement. A.C. Newman’s anecdote is pretty poignant, too.



 Leonard Cohen’s latest album, “Old Ideas,” is out now.

They may not be aiming, high, but The Boom Bang are sure realistic.

Singer James Smith announced to The Buffalo Lounge earlier this evening that the garage-housed four-piece were “probably the worst band to play here all night.” He was kinda right, but that didn’t make their set any less fun. 

Smith mumbled his way through their usual schtick: noisy, propulsive rock styled after The Ramones’ sonic blitz and Andrew W.K.’s intentionally stupid revelry. It was a tie-loosening; a rowdy break in between two much headier bands — The Defining Times and The Non — that brokered the evening’s bill of rock acts nicely.

The show ended with a brief episode involving the sound guy, who chased a fan off the stage when the latter yelled “Fuck you!” into a microphone, shortly after McKenzie and drummer Brian Whetstone traded places for a final, scuzzy jam. If ever there was a better end to a Boom Bang show, I wasn’t there for it.