Ryan Gosling - Ryan's Music #2: Listen In The Room Where You Sleep!

-Bianca- · 11-24-2009, 08:08 PM

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-Bianca- · 11-24-2009, 08:26 PM

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As well as being a member of the choir backing up Dead Man’s Bones in Vancouver last month, Jane Ag�*yeman was picked to perform a solo, a cover of Cher’s Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down). Fully aware of who the packed house had paid to see – the band is fronted by Academy Award-nominated actor Ryan Gosling – Agyeman wasn’t expecting much more than a polite response, like at an elementary school concert, she says, when “the crowd claps because it’s mandatory.” So it came as a bit of a shock when the club erupted with applause following her four minutes alone in the spotlight. And the Georgia Straight’s review of the show, while generous to Gosling, credited the Grade 11 student at North Vancouver’s Carson Graham secondary school with having “turned in the night’s most killer performance.”

Being upstaged by a kid from the choir is something Gosling has been setting himself up for this fall. On the band’s self-titled debut, which came out last month, Dead Man’s Bones is joined by the Silverlake Conservatory of Music’s children’s choir. And at every tour stop, the band selected a local chorus, painted the members’ faces like ghosts, and took them on stage as backup. When asked by a journalist from Pitchfork what they hoped to achieve by including the kids, Gosling offered a rambling, but poignant response: “You know when you’re a kid and you get crayons and papers and just draw whatever you want and it’s just a bunch of messy lines, but to you it makes sense, and then they put it on the fridge? From that point on, you’re always trying to get back on the fridge. We wanted to get back to that place before we were trying to make the fridge. We wanted to work with people who hadn’t been affected in that way yet.”

Quote:

These days, perfect pitch isn’t necessarily the top priority when a band enlists the services of a kids’ choir for hire. In many cases, the less polished the technique, the better. Gosling, for instance, wasn’t looking for a classical choir vibe at all. “We had to make it sound like we had been dead for a million years so our voices were very scratchy,” says Matthew Tissi, a 14-year-old at the Etobicoke School of the Arts, and a member of the choir that backed Gosling’s band at Toronto’s Opera House last month. Gosling “didn’t want us just standing there with our hands by our side—we were dancing on stage.” While striving for an equally authentic sound, Where the Wild Things Are director Spike Jonze, in a YouTube clip of the recording session, worries that a music teacher is over-warming-up the kids.

Singing with glee - Arts & Culture - Macleans.ca

***heaven85*** · 11-24-2009, 11:40 PM

Awww thanks for posting. Jane was awesome in the concert!

-Bianca- · 11-27-2009, 09:16 PM

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Ryan Gosling’s Diary of the Dead
By Ryan Gosling
November 27, 2009

Actors Ryan Gosling and Zach Shields of Dead Man’s Bones recently ended a monthlong residency at the historic Bob Baker Marionette Theater in Los Angeles. In this exclusive behind-the-scenes journal chronicling the making of their spooky, puppet-ridden stage show, the ghoulish folk duo dishes on their life-after-death-changing experience. Photography by Hama Sanders.

1. (Above) I would only allow a picture to be taken of me if I could do 15 push-ups right before. Unfortunately, I can only do 30 push-ups each day, so there are only two pictures of me. Also, all this paint was seeping through the canvas onto the floor. We had to paint the whole floor black again before we left. Also, our friend who owned this space was pissed. Also, we’re never allowed to darken the doors here again. —Ryan

2. This is the only view of the theater we’ll ever get because apparently we’re never allowed to “darken the doors” there again, said the dragon in the office. But we two adventurers understood—every treasure needs a dragon to guard it.

3. This is Sophia. She rules with an iron fist made of friendship and dreams. She’s cooler than us. This is her right after she got her makeup done. Every night the kids would come two hours early to get their makeup done and practice the set. They would get pizza and soda pop, and sometimes they’d try to sneak in some Red Bull or Colt 45. But we wouldn’t let them… until after the show.

4. Hey, Wu-Tang. Suck it. West side!

5. This picture is actually upside down. I am painting on the ceiling. And I am painting in my own blood. —Zach

6. We both had an affair with the lady on the left. At different times, so… We also had the privilege of working with five puppeteers who are very talented—and our kind of crazy. The first time we saw a show at the theater, we knew we had to do something here. But it wasn’t as easy as we thought it would be. The doors to Bob Baker are difficult to open. No outside production has been put up in the theater before, and it took some heavy lifting and real sweet-talking to make it possible.

7. We don’t really know what to say about this except that it’s us playing one of our songs. And this is what that looks like in blue lighting.

8. This is a portrait of two guys who have no idea what they are doing. Good thing a bunch of our friends were there to help. We spent two weekends painting through the night with them. When we finished the set, we cut out the sky and a friend sewed a bunch of Christmas lights into a sheet to make stars. After we used it at the Bob Baker shows, we took it on the road with us.

Ryan Gosling’s Diary of the Dead - BlackBook

***heaven85*** · 11-27-2009, 10:11 PM

Awesome. Thanks for posting it B!

-Bianca- · 11-29-2009, 04:27 PM

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>Dead Man's Bones. Dead Man's Bones. Anti- Records.

Four stars (out of five)

This side project for A-list actor Ryan Gosling and friend Zach Shields is a deliciously creepy celebration of the pair's youthful fascination with zombies, ghouls and graveyards.

First intending to develop the theme for a stage show, they eventually settled on employing a DIY ethic to record an album only, bringing in Los Angeles chorus the Silverlake Conservatory Children's Choir to add an air of corrupted innocence to proceedings.

From cinematic dirge to doo-wop for the damned, there are a handful of tracks here that border on brilliance, making this more than just a Halloween novelty.

Single download: Pa Pa Power

For those who like: Beirut, Chad Van Gaalen

- Jeff Harford

CD Reviews | Otago Daily Times Online News

tooty · 11-30-2009, 03:35 AM

Thanks for posting all of that! I especially like the diary, the pictures are cool.

***heaven85*** · 11-30-2009, 11:59 PM

Awesome. Loving the reviews.

tooty · 12-06-2009, 12:35 PM

^ Me too. They've been getting some really good reviews!

***heaven85*** · 12-06-2009, 09:39 PM

They have and I'm so happy for him and Zach!!

tooty · 12-07-2009, 11:09 AM

Me too. I'm glad the music thing is going really well for the both of them

***heaven85*** · 12-08-2009, 11:27 PM

Its good and bad at the same time cause I still want to see Ryan in movies lol.

tooty · 12-10-2009, 09:54 AM

I'm happy for him and all but i want to see him back on big screen!

***heaven85*** · 12-11-2009, 10:32 PM

Same here. I'm happy yet I want a movie.

-Bianca- · 12-24-2009, 04:52 AM

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Another CD I love is the one by Dead Man's Bones. It's a band comprised of two actors—Ryan Gosling and Zach Shields—as well as some guest musicians. The record really grew on me. They also have children singing on the album and it's really good. It has a bit of Tom Waits percussion about it, too.

Interview: An Exclusive Preview of Largo at the Coronet's 2010 Schedule - LAist


Fan Forum > Male Celebrities > Ryan Gosling > Ryan's Music #2: Listen In The Room Where You Sleep!