Record of the Day: Playing for Change - Stand By Me

My housemate sent me this video after we heard the honestly quite appalling song Gary Barlow wrote for the Jubilee, in which he went around the world recording excepts to then put together to create a song. I'm a MASSIVE Take That fan, and Gary fan for that matter, but I really don't think it worked. It sounds like a mediocre school choir, which is a shame because both me and my housemate were hoping for something more epic/Never Forget style... Anyways, after hearing Gary's song she told me about this project called 'Playing for Change' that began a few years ago and that our company had released some records for. It started in 2004 with their goal to "inspire, connect, and bring peace to the world through music" and the creators of the project, Mark Johnson and Enzo Buono, travelled around the world using mobile recording equipment to record local musicians performing the same songs in their own style. Their first single, the video I've chosen today, began in Santa Monica with a street performer called Roger Ridley. The video includes performances by musicians in the US, Spain, Africa, Italy and others, and has so far had over 42 million hits on YouTube! It really is quite lovely to watch and reminds me what a universal language music is :)

Record of the Day: Playing for Change - Stand By Me (from Playing For Change: Songs Around The World, 2009 - Concord Music Group)