8ball Tshirts Blog

We hugely appreciate a good music video, here at 8Ball. Sometimes, the video can actually have more of an impact on the audience than the song itself. Unfortunately, it seems that truly great music videos come along few and far between, but when one does come along, we stand up and take notice.

We have absolutely no time for some of the mass-produced drivel that the music industry churns out every day. In our opinion, Justin Bieber staring dreamily into the camera and performing ridiculous dance routines does not constitute worthwhile viewing. Often the video is just an after thought, and in this case, we’d rather they just didn’t bother. They can hardly blame a rubbish video on a tight budget, as there are some awesome examples out there, where masterpieces have been created for next to nothing. It just shows a complete lack of imagination and a completely half-arsed attitude. So why should we even bother wasting our time watching them?

So, let’s focus our attention on the videos that were created with real imagination and creativity. We’ve selected 5 of our favourites to share with you this evening. In these examples, the videos truly enhance the music and add a completely new dimension to the tracks. So, in no particular order, here’s 8Ball’s Top 5 Music Videos of All Time.

Unkle – Rabbit in Your Headlight (Directed by Jonathan Glazer)

OK Go – This Too Shall Pass (Directed by James Frost)

Radiohead – Just (Directed by Jamie Thraves)

Bjork – All is Full of Love (Directed by Chris Cunningham)

The Pharcyde – Drop (Directed by Spike Jonze)

Once again, it was an incredibly difficult task to choose just 5 videos to share with you. There are so many other great videos out there that we haven’t had chance to mention. Let us know what your favourite music videos are 8Ballers – we want to hear from you!

Also, make sure you head over to the 8Ball store. We’re always adding new t-shirt designs – so check ‘em out!

It’s Saturday night 8Ballers, and we’re well and truly feeling the party vibes. As you’re probably well aware, we love music here at 8Ball and there’s nothing better than music to get you into the party spirit. Whatever you end up doing this evening, make sure you have a listen to our (rather short but bloody good) ‘Essential Saturday Night Playlist’.

Whether you’re heading out to paint the town red or you’re simply having a quiet night in, we’re sure you’ll find something that tickles your pickle and puts you in party mode. Be prepared for some oldies, some newbies and some somewhere inbetweenies.

It’s been an incredibly hard task to whittle this list down to just 10, but we gave it a bloody good go! Ladies and gentleman, introducing 8Ball’s Essential Saturday Night Playlist.

Oh, and we recommend that you crank up the volume!

A Guy Called Gerald – Voodoo Ray

Franz Ferdinand – Take Me Out

Primal Scream – Loaded

Prodigy – Smack My Bitch Up

Daft Punk – Around the World

Basement Jaxx – Red Alert

Chemical Brothers – Galvanize

The Gossip – Standing in the Way of Control

M – Pop Muzik

And of course…

Prince – 1999

Enjoy your evening 8Ballers!

That’s right folks – Simon Cowell is set to launch an X Factor-style search for a ‘DJ superstar’, bringing the irreversible lobotomisation of society one step closer.

If you’re a regular reader on the 8Ball blog, you’ll be familiar with our views on Simon Cowell and his unyielding quest to destroy everything that’s good about the music industry and civilisation as we know it.

How did a man with the oddest centre-parting in showbiz and an obsession with nipple-hugging trousers ever become so powerful? We can only conclude Cowell has made some diabolical Faustian pact with the devil himself, damning himself for all eternity.

Whilst that is of course a comforting thought, it doesn’t make Cowell’s latest psychotic scheme any less disturbing.

The project will be a joint venture between SYCO Entertainment and Overbrook Entertainment (Will & Jada Pinkett-Smith’s company). A joint press release published earlier this week states that the show will attempt to “capture the incredible rise of the DJ phenomena”.

Translation: “We are shameless leeches. Our greed knows no bounds. We will feed on the misguided hopes and dreams of an entire generation. We are demons hungry for your souls.”

There’s no question there’s plenty of money to be made here. Acts like Pendulum went from being minor drum & bass producers to global megastars in a few years (alienating the vast majority of their original fanbase in the process), and the success of DJs like David Guetta and Skrillex bears testament to the fact that electronic music has become a massive global business.

DJ and producer Deadmau5 has given his backing to the show, suggesting that an injection of underground talent will force the established names up their game.

But how the hell will ‘DJ Factor’ actually work? What are they supposed to do in a 4-minute audition? Will it be geared more towards turntablism and knob-twiddling antics? Will they be sent off to boot camps in Detroit and Berlin? Will there be definitely-not-scripted-honest gaffes involving dusty needles and warped vinyl? Will humanity ever recover from this whole sordid episode?

Only time will tell. We suggest you dust down your decks, spin some tunes, and enjoy it whilst it’s still cool!

We love being baffled, here at 8Ball. We are huge fans of illusions of any kind, none more so than optical illusions. We stumbled upon a couple of basic illusions in a magazine recently, but we wanted more.

In true 8Ball fashion, we went on the hunt to find some of the best optical illusions out there. And of course, we wouldn’t keep them to ourselves! So 8Ballers, be prepared to be amazed by a few of our favourite optical illusions.

AFTER READING THE INSTRUCTIONS, CLICK ON AN IMAGE TO VIEW A LARGER VERSION.

Life’s never simple

At first glance, the letters in the image below clearly spell out ‘LIFE’.

Now take another look at the outline of the letters. Suddenly, the letters become not so clear!

Can you read this fine mess?

Read the words out loud and all will become clear.

The power of the human mind strikes again!

Bring a bit of colour to this otherwise dull picture

Follow the instructions and trick yourself into seeing a colour picture.

Is that picture alive?

Stare at the image below and the dots will appear to move around. This is a static image – not an animation.

The second coming!

Stare at the image below for between 20-30 seconds. Then look away at a blank wall or a piece of paper. What do you see?

You spin me right round, baby right round…

The lady is spinning anti-clockwise, right? Keep watching and she’ll appear to switch direction.

This may take a while, but it works….honest!

Brilliant animated illusions

These are genius!

Stare at the red dot

Here’s a great illusion that’s doing the rounds at the moment. Stare at the red dot for around 30 seconds. Quickly turn to look at a blank surface and blink repeatedly.

Shocking!

Get up close to your screen and stare at the red dot for approximately 30 seconds. Try not to blink. Then stare at a blank wall and prepare to see something pretty shocking….

Ok, just kidding on that one! There’s no illusion, it’s just plain weird.

We hope these illusions haven’t given you too much of a headache, 8Ballers. There are so many brilliant optical illusions out there, but we simply couldn’t include them all. Let us know if there’s one in particular that you think we need to see. Share the love!

When your eyes have returned to normal, make sure you head over to the 8Ball store and check out our awesome tees.

Director Tim Burton has paved the way for a sequel to his classic 1988 comedy horror Beetlejuice.

It had already been confirmed that writing and production duo Seth Grahame-Smith and David Katzenberg were working on ideas for a follow-up to the film, but, in an interview with MTV, Burton has admitted for the first time that he may get involved with the project, and hinted that Michael Keaton may reprise his role as the freelance bio-exorcist Beetlejuice.

Burton said: “I love that character, and Michael [Keaton] is so great in it. I always think about how great and fun that character was, so I just said to Seth, ‘If you have some idea about it, go for it, and then I’ll look at it freshly.’”

He added: “Michael was so great in it. I’m sure he’d strangely tap right back into it.”

Speaking to Moviehole.net in 2010, Keaton himself said “I’d do that in a heartbeat – absolutely, that’s the one thing I’d love to do again.”

Tim Burton is currently working on 2 films – Dark Shadows (a gothic opera scripted by Seth Grahame-Smith) and Frankenweenie (a 3D black and white stop-motion remake of Burton’s own 1984 short film of the same name).

Grahame-Smith is also adapting his book, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, for the screen; Tim Burton and Timur Bekmambetov are producing the film.

As for Michael Keaton, he’s currently filming the Joseph Ruben thriller Penthouse North, in which he plays a charming but sadistic criminal.

Do you think a Beetlejuice sequel is a good idea? Let us know!

And if you haven’t seen our Beetlejuice t-shirts, be sure to check ‘em out…

Fittingly, these Twitter Glitter fireworks come with a clear warning.

It has been all over Twitter for the last couple of days that convicted paedophile, Gary Glitter, had supposedly set up his own Twitter account and was tweeting away to thousands of fans. Apparently, this was to support a forthcoming album, tour and autobiography.

Naturally, this caused uproar amongst the Twitter community, and his name was soon a trending topic. There were a mixture of responses; some of disgust, some expressing forgiveness, some excited about the prospect of a comeback and of course, thousands upon thousands of jokes directed at the disgraced glam rock star.

We very much doubt that the vast majority of those jokes were in any way making light of the unspeakable crimes committed by Glitter, but a way of voicing opinions in a very ‘social media kind of way’. Besides, however wrong you may think it is to crack jokes about serious issues, there’s absolutely no getting away from them in this day and age.

One response that caught our eye in particular, came from comedian Peter Serafinowicz. Here’s what he tweeted directly to @OfficialGlitter:

Serafinowicz had suspected that it was a fake account, but couldn’t resist posting his gibe at Glitter.

Anyway, it has since been revealed that the account was in fact a fake, and the creator, who goes by the name of Ben, claims that it was all just a social media experiment. Late last night, the account’s 15,000 followers were directed to a tumblr. page for a full explanation of the hoax. The page no longer exists, but here’s a brief quote:

‘I set this Twitter account up as a social experiment to highlight the dangers and safety of children using the social networking sites and to discover and question public morality.’

At present, unlike Facebook and various other social media sites, Twitter doesn’t have restrictions in place to prohibit sex offenders from opening accounts. Perhaps this is the issue that ‘Ben’ wanted to raise, but did he go about it in the right way? Well, he certainly made his voice heard.

At least we can rest assured that, for now, there won’t be a new album, tour or a book.

On hearing the news about the account being a fake, here’s what Wynne Evans, the infinitely annoying opera singer from the GoCompare adverts, had to say:

So what’s your view on the whole matter? Was it a legitimate social experiment or nothing short of a tasteless joke? We’ll leave that for you to decide.

Sarah Burke, one of the world’s top freestyle skiers, died yesterday aged 29 after suffering cardiac arrest and irreversible brain damage. She sustained her injuries when she crashed in a freak accident during a training run on a half-pipe in Park City, Utah, 9 days ago.

Burke was a pioneer in the world of superpipe skiing. In 2001, she came 1st in the half-pipe event at the US Freeskiing Open, and she became the first world half-pipe champion after the event debuted at the FIS Freestyle World Ski Championships in 2005. She also won 4 gold medals in freestyle skiing at the Winter X Games, and was the first woman to successfully land a 1080 jump.

She was even responsible for getting the superpipe event added to the 2014 Winter Olympics, but, tragically, she won’t be around to take part in the event she was strong favourite to win.

Peter Judge, CEO of Canada’s freestyle team, said:

“Sarah, in many ways, defines the sport… She’s been involved since the very, very early days as one of the first people to bring skis into the pipe.”

David Mirota, the team’s high performance director, added:

“She was a great, positive person for the whole team, the whole sport.”

Burke will be sadly missed by her fellow athletes, her fans and her family, but also the man she married in 2010, fellow freestyle skier Rory Bushfield.

Whether you’re into skiing or not, there’s no question that Sarah Burke was someone who lived life to the full and a great example to many people.

We dug out a couple of clips as a reminder of exactly what she was all about…