Jenny O: "Happiest Days Of Our Lives/Another Brick In The Wall Pt. 2" (Pink Floyd)

[Video Link]

I saw singer-songwriter Jenny O. [Twitter] perform in Los Angeles last night, during this awesome benefit at Largo for Ryuichi Sakamoto's project to replace school musical instruments lost in Japan's 3/11 quake and tsunami. Her performance was incredible, and she's an awfully nice person. Boing Boing's music curator Amy Seidenwurm posted about Jenny O. recently, and she's right: you gotta check her out.

When I got home last night, I got to googling all the artists who performed, including Jenny. This track above, Happiest Days/Another Brick In the Wall Part 2, was just released on the "Cool for School" compilation album for another benefit project: this to provide school lunches in South African schools.

Listening to it just before bed, skimming the Twitter feeds about Occupy protests planned at universities today and fears of more harsh crackdowns on those students by police, I felt like this song was a good anthem for the day.

MP3s here: Gift Horse Project presents: Cool for School (Amazon)

You can download Jenny O.'s new EP "Home" here (Amazon).

• [NefariousNewt]

  Gorgeous. I mean… I never thought I’d apply that adjective to a Pink Floyd tune, but she just made it gorgeous.

• [Maverick]

  I think plenty of ‘Floyd is gorgeous! But this certainly is, too. And it’s great to hear something from “The Wall” without Waters’ often excessively heavy (in my opinion) bitterness.

• [Doug Nelson]

  Waters’ bitterness is the reason I love his work (I also like Sumatra coffee and 90% cacao chocolate).

  I didn’t care for the dissonance between Ms. O’s lovely voice and the lyrics.

  FWIW, this is my favorite cover of a PF song:
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqQFWXWVBNA

  • [Xeni Jardin]

    That dissonance is exactly what I love about it.

• [xenphilos]

  Listening to this while reading BoingBoing and it’s near telepathically fitting.