Geoff Castellucci - Sixteen Tons: A Pro DJ Reacts!
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- Опубликовано: 7 янв 2025
- He really is just showing off at this point.
Original video: • SIXTEEN TONS | Low Bas...
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I like the way the scene doesn't *shudder* until the Third Geoff from the Left thumps *his* pickaxe on the floor. :D Oh, (Nerd Alert) here's the you tube link to: Big Daddy's cover of Money for Nothin' for anyone who'd like to hear it. :D I liked it! ruclips.net/video/bfsLV-OLJNo/видео.html
Check out Geoff's version of the Beatles' Blackbird. He goes both higher and lower than in 16 Tons, and the arrangement is just beautiful.
I love that song!
@@DJSwitchPDX then you will be impressed with Geoff's version of it
The craziest thing about this cover is he stays in his chest voice THE ENTIRE TIME. Absolutely Amazing!
Sixteen Tons was first recorded in 1947 by country singer Merle Travis, who wrote the song. He sang it at a faster pace and in a higher register than Tennessee Ernie Ford. The problem he ran into was that in a spoken interlude he explained what it meant to owe your soul to the company store.
In coal mining towns, it was common to pay employees in company issued scrip instead of cash. The only place in town that accepted scrip was the company store, which sold just about everything. The miners were not really paid enough to live on much less raise a family. But the company store offered generous credit. What this amounted to was slavery. You could not quit because you would have to pay off your sizeable debt on the spot. This was a legal debt and you could lose everything you had and even go to jail.
Nobody played the song on the radio. Why? Because J. Edgar Hoover decided this song was communist because it criticized ‘capitalism’. Playing it would mean a visit from the FBI. (This was also the threat held over the head of anyone who criticized FDR too much during the war.) Hoover’s hot button before that was mainly Nazi spies and sympathizers, But the war was over and Soviet Russia was the home of the new bad guys.
Not until Tennessee Ernie ‘liberated’ the song by recording it and singing it on his TV show in 1956 did radio stations pick it up and everybody and his brother was recording their own versions. None of them had any explanatory interlude though. This was after the censure and downfall of Senator Joe McCarthy, who had become kingpin of ‘a communist under every bed’ demagoguery. There really were Soviet spies around but the real ones only sometimes got caught. The great majority of those accused were simply easy targets that could be used to generate political publicity.
I lived through this and remember it well.
Thank you for the insight! That's fantastic!
Thanks for that interesting history lesson. More people should know that.
as well as your own neighbors I believe
@mikenolan8044 Thank you so much for this! I sat my grandchildren down and played them this video and then read them what you wrote. I believe it's critically important for our kids and grandkids to know our history. The good and the bad. They even had some great questions (Thank the Goddess for Google) which I was able to research and get them some hopefully adequate answers.
Geoff knocked it out of the park with this one --- the arrangement is genius! He's worked hard and it shows. Everything that he does with this is on point .... and it fits -- perfectly!!!
Not a music nerd. Just a HUGE fan of Geoff and VoicePlay. I’ve always thought of Sixteen Tons as country swing rather than rock.
My bass-singer loving heart will always belong to Tim Foust, but man...this rendition is amazing!
I like both of their styles. Geoff is a bit more flexible with his vocal range, whereas, Tim is a walking bass guitar. Tim actually trained Geoff to sing lower; Tim also trained Avi Kaplan, too.
i love all bass singers (Geoff Avi Tim Matt) but in my opinion in this performance Geoff proved to be the best singer among them and perhaps also the one with the fullest voice
@@johndeeregreen4592 Yeah Geoff's voice is phenomenal - so smooth and silky unless he get's into the really low octaves... there he starts to sounds like "strained acting" it does not sound "natural" anymore but more "opera-acting" which is about the only thing in his performances that pushes me off a little bit. Tim and especially Avi sound more natural in those low passages - somehow even when they growl... Getting back to Geoff - he really has a great range - although I am not sure if he really get's higher than Tim. Tim had some higher notes from time to time - but the high singing he shows all throughout Mayday is really great.
But this is not to take anything away from Geoff - he is a great great singer and voice-actor and I absolutely enjoy his performances.
@@s.b.8496, most of those super lower notes are studio tricks. For example, unamplified, in a choir setting, I am not singing below an A1. Now, with a microphone, my lowest chest note is an E1 and can push to C1 with a subharmonics. Most people do not sing loud enough to do a subharmonic in a choir setting. I mean, yeah, some do, but not most.
Your reaction to this song is my favourite. The "Nope", "Not even once" edit had me laughing. You were the only one I've heard talk about the hammer and anvil as well. "He's just showing off at this point" had me rewatch because it was entertaining.
Thanks! I like to pretend the me that's editing is just sitting in constant judgement of the me that's recording, and the two are just always at odds with each other.
Is it weird for a series of reaction videos to have their own lore?
Loved your reaction. The headless horseman from him is also great
You are so right with the Gospel comment cuz he totally took me to church!
My favorite Geoff song is The Headless Horseman. In the notes below the video he says, "Side note: I filmed this at my folks house... IS ANYONE ELSE TERRIFIED THAT THEY JUST HAD ALL THIS STUFF LYING AROUND?! I mean... i thought I knew those people. My life is a lie...
I appreciate how much you appreciate what Geoff does with this cover. I'm also a big Ernie Ford fan. Geoff pays tribute to the original model but puts his own unique signature on it! Great reaction!
Thank you for watching! I'm so glad you enjoyed it! 🙂
What he does with it: he makes it his own.
I just came back from Spotify... THANK YOU for the Big Daddy discovery!!!! It's awesome (I did not listen to everything obv, just a few tracks, but, I mean, Ice ice baby/Johnny B. Goode !!!!! 😂). Ok, back to the video....
AWESOME! I'm so glad you liked them!
I stumbled on them a few years ago and they're such a weird and specific vibe that I don't get to reference them very often. This seemed like a place I totally could do that.
Sixteen Tons was the first video of Geoff's that I saw. Super impressed. Love his cover of The Headless Horseman as well. Always fun to watch reactions to his videos (especially from those who hadn't heard him sing before).
You mentioned hip-hop. Specifically modern hip-hop. Are you familiar with Suga (from BTS)? I'd love to see a reaction video of Daechwita!
I'm not familiar! I'll have to check it out!
I watched numerous reactions of this Geoff Castellucci video and not one of them mentions that Geoff's inspiration for this song was the rendition by Thurl Ravenscroft. Tennesee Ernie Ford's rendition doesn't even enter into it.
Interesting! I can't seem to find it on a cursory search. Do you happen to have a link to Thurl's version?
@@DJSwitchPDX I am sorry I got that mixed up with The Headless Horseman.
@@quigleyd Great song!
It's actually inspired by the Rockapella version.
If it hasn't been mentioned yet, Lane and Geoff did the production together on this! Lane is, imo, an awesome production artist!
That's so cool! Definitely a great video concept. I think they nailed it!
I can always rely on you to feed my music nerdiness. :) Not only do I get a great breakdown of a song that I have been listening to nearly non-stop since he released it, BUT I also get a recommendation that sounds amazing! Excited to check out Big Daddy's Money for Nothing, which I'm going to do as soon as I'm done watching this video. Thanks for taking your time to make these and really pay attention to all of it. Always enjoy your stuff!
Thanks! I really think you'll enjoy Big Daddy. They have a really wide range of great cover and mashup songs 🙂
It may not be necessary but it is still super super amazingly impressive.
Very true 😂
@@DJSwitchPDX this is by far the best version of this song i ever heard..a true masterpiece in my opinion
the hammer and anvil thing you were thinking of might have been from Johnny Cash's version. After the first verse, it has what sounds like drum sticks hitting each other but kinda resembles a hammer and anvil
There is another from that era by Jimmy Dean - Big Bad John. He also did one recently from WW2 and the Mills Brothers called Til Then told from the perspective of a soldier going off to war and asking his love to wait "Til Then" for his return.
Probably it has been mentioned, but the song is by legendary guitarist Merle Travis, who wrote a lot about the mines where his family made a living.Tennessee Ernie Ford made a cover famous some times after Merle debuted it...
It was mentioned a couple times, yeah. Definitely one of those times I wish I had done some homework ahead of time, but if I do that it wouldn't be a real reaction in my mind.
I'd like to find a way to balance being able to react to a song without sounding like an idiot ... 😂
Funniest thing is he isnt even going subharmonic or dropping into chest voice... Hes just that deep lmao
He's singing the whole piece in his chest voice.
But I get what you mean about his subharmonic notes. Being able to sing that low while staying in his chest voice comes down to genetics and an EXTREMELY well trained diaphragm so that he can hold that without losing control of it.
Geoff is extremely well trained. I think that's part of what keeps me coming back.
@@DJSwitchPDX, yep, all chest voice. Geoff does use subharmonics for notes like that, but normally only when dropping an octave really quick. His lowest chest note is an E1, which is insane. I am a trained basso profondo and even my lowest chest note is ONLY an A1, lol.
@@johndeeregreen4592 it's F#1 sung, he doesn't count his E1 slide in cheerleader, and his lowest is also Eb1 spoken in this song
@@lurecyyy F1*. Was told by geoff himself
@@grantburgess1422 when
I love your reviews. Been binge watching you for a good while now. To add a bit of an Easter egg, turn on the captions and watch again.
They had a bunch of hammer and other metallic sounds in a version used in the movie Joe Versus The Volcano, sung by Eric Burdon.
Sort of a gritty country rock version.
You know you're working at a baaaaaad place if they pick 16 Tons to be the theme song in a movie.
I would love to see Geoff do a cover of Big John.
@Koowluh Yes it has. Do you think he should do the sequel songs?
👋New sub here & thought I'd throw in my (very, very late) 2 cents... not that you'll see this anyway.. lol. Geoff does all his arrangements & uses his production thoughts when coming up with ideas for sets & filming. Also, when he's in VoicePlay, it's just the guys doing all the work together, with Geoff's wife (now that's 1 lucky lady... I'm super jelly😄) doing their makeup. They're so down to earth, it's amazing! You should watch Geoff's version of "Misty Mountains Cold"... it's similar to this. As well as "Take Me Home Country Roads" , "Blackbird" & "Bare Necessities" (which is super fun). And he wasn't necessarily showing off at the end... us fans literally expect & wait for him to do it!😄
BTW, u should DEF check out the "Oogie Boogie Song" (you'll need to pick ur jaw up off the floor at the end tho😆) & " This Is Halloween" by VoicePlay... both are from Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas movie & are freakin awesome!
Also not sure if you've listened to any PTX but their versions of Bohemian Rhapsody as well as Hallelujah are amazing too. Mitch is freakin phenomenal!
EDIT: And pls cut me some slack... I legit found ur channel only moments ago, so haven't had a chance to look at ur playlists/vids. Thanks tons🥰
Thanks so much for watching, and welcome to the channel!
I LOVE his versions of Blackbird and Bare Necessities! I've done several PTX videos as well, including Hallelujah. I've seen Bohemian Rhapsody, and I want to drive a remote control couch SO BAD! 😂
I've got more videos coming as soon as I can reign in some other side projects, but in the meantime thanks for stopping by!
If you turn on the captions he says when he does the last an overly dramatic slide
Lol I LOVE how you call your own bullshit with stuff like "nope" and "not even once" when talking about the "original version".
Gotta respect the self-deprecating honesty.
Haha thanks! I want to keep these reactions "real," so I do absolutely zero homework ahead of time. It usually means correcting myself in the edit later 😂
Geoff's version of "high and dry" is soooo good. Love your reactions.
You’re super cool man. Enjoying listening to the song and your comments about all the parts. I subscribed 👏🏽
Thanks! Welcome to the channel!
Great react vid DJ Switch! I had previously heard the song an fell in love with it. I still have the original by Tennessee Ernie Ford on 8-Track and I believe on vinyl too! It's on I sing regularly for Karaoke too. Wish I could hit the low notes like him but I am cursed to a tenor. I do have a 2 1/2 octave range, over 3 with falsetto, but sadly A2 is the lowest I can hit most days. I hit puberty and my voice went the opposite way! I did watch that other video by Big Daddy. That was really cool! Was not expecting that Big Band Swing feel to it thou! Very cool thou! You should do a react video to Sound of Silence by disturbed if you have not already. Maybe even video comparing all of the remakes. There are alot! Even more than I realized! Might be fun! Keep up the good work bro!
Geoff has the nerve to complain about his "spaghetti arms" in this. Sheesh. For a more country sound try Country Roads. For showing off, The Headless Horseman. :)
DJ, you have a decent sense of humor. Bootlegger will check your channel out some more 😅👍
Johnny Cash's "Legend of John Henry's Hammer" starts off with that ringing hammer sound, and you might have been conflating with that song, or "Big Bad John" as someone ele mentioned already. It's one of those touches that sounds like it should have already been there, though, which is the best sort of addition.
The Big Daddy mashup starts with a hammer strike too.
Speaking of mashups, Home Free has an older video with their original founder (Chris Rupp - he’ll be in the cowboy hat in the video) did a Country Fried Pop Medley that is so good! It’s from 2014/2015. It has a little funny stuff, but listen to what they do with it. Being that you’re a DJ, you should really like it!! Love Geoff very much! I also love his cover of the Beatles’ “Blackbird”!!
I love your reaction to what's become one of my favorites sung by a new favorite but the overmost thought in my brain is "Dude, it that an ankh on his cap?! Where can I get one like that?!" Is that an ankh, and where did you get it? I want one.
Thanks! It's actually the symbol of Hyrule, which is the fictional country that you have to save from evil in the Legend of Zelda video game franchise.
I found it on Amazon 🙂
...won’t hear me complaining about the tank tops...
I'm straight and even I'm kinda wishing I could rock a tank top like that ... 😂
@@DJSwitchPDX Not the first time I’ve seen a comment like that about Geoff!
I know you must have caught it in editing, but I believe that the song you were thinking of that had the hammer to anvil sound right at the outset could have been "Big Bad John" by Jimmy Dean
Go back and watch with captions on. He regularly adds comments in the captions... Like "epic slide to an E1" here.
Will do!
I came here for Geoff Castellucci... and found Big Daddy. Thanks mate
I love how women go thirsty and men go angry, so primal! Nice production commentary. Most focus only in his vocals!
I'm only angry cause I'm jealous I don't look like that in a tank top 😂
About the sledgehammer that's not really in the Ernie Ford version... were you thinking of Jimmy Dean's Big John?
Very possible, but that's why I corrected myself with the big "NOPE" titles. I didn't wanna reshoot the whole thing, and I'm no stranger to sounding like an idiot 😂
: )
Anyway... glad I discovered your channel.
@@DougRayPhillips Me too! Welcome!
This had his lowest SPEAKING VOICE chest note, which was Eb1, but his lowest SANG chest note is an F#1
It’s still not an Eb1 mate its an F#1
@@Marcell0Bass oh ok
Geoff recently released
You NEED to hear this one....
You should react to Voiceplay's "My Mother Told me.." Its.. quite the piece of Showing off...
For a great mash up check out Pentatonix Wizard of Ahhs and Evolution of Music. Both of those are really interesting
Love the Big Daddy recommendation. That's an odd rabbit hole.
If you have the ability to hit & hold that note, it absolutely *is* necessary :p
If I ever find myself in the position to be able to do that, I'd probably show off too 😂
I personally enjoy your views on this one. You actually seem like you know what you are talking about in your analysis lol. I'm sure you have already heard it, but the oogie boogie song is fun. Geoff really shows off his range in that song, but the whole group just looks like they are having a blast making the video. There are a LOT of little subtle things in that particular video to watch out for so you would have to really be on your toes lol
That one is on my short list 😉
@@DJSwitchPDX cool beans 😎. Perhaps listen to it and react to it in real time, then go back and pick up on some very subtle things that may otherwise go unnoticed. My bad, I don't mean to be telling you how to do your thing lol
@@bootlegger8818 All good! Someone in my Discord community has been patiently waiting for me to do Oogie Boogie. I've been taking a little break to work on something, but I should be getting back to the reacts soon. 🙂
@@DJSwitchPDX good deal. I'll turn on notifications on your channel so if you get the chance, I can see it
@@bootlegger8818 Awesome! Thanks!
Half time switch it was kinda like a dub step or somethin no? Geoff is and absolute freak of nature. Check out more of his solo stuff its all amazing. Like awestruck kinda shit!
Billy Gibbons and Jeff Beck have an amazing cover of this song.
Might not be necessary...but it sure is fun...lol. Great breakdown and I'm gonna check out Big Daddy as well. I'm old enough to remember when Money for Nothing was on the "top 40"
I'm glad you liked it! I think you'll like Big Daddy as well.
Thank you for watching! 🙂
went and checked out that song by Big Daddy, that was pretty cool
I would love to hear Geoff do Big Bad John. BTW those are his dad or grandfather's tools.
VoicePlay has a great mashup with Kurt Hugo Schneider (on KHS' channel) of Twenty One Pilots. Would you please react to that? I would love to hear your take on it. I learn so much from your reaction videos. VoicePlay also covered "Ride" by TØP separately, but the mashup is fabulous.
If you had a voice like that, you'd show off too!
TRUE FACTS 😂😂😂
This song hides a lot of pain behind the lyrics... If you look into the history behind the company store.
I remember the first time I really listened to what the song was about. It feels a lot like an old work song from the days of plantations and field hands. There's a lot of soul here, which I think is why Geoff sings it more like an R&B song than a country song (notice the runs and accents he adds in to personalize the performance ... that style is very R&B/soul)
And the "company store" is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to mistreatment of miners. The American Mine Workers union, formed in the 1860s (iirc), was the first big union in the US and really kicked off unionization of workers in all fields in the US. Over the years, mine union bosses were bribed, threatened, and even assassinated. The Pinkertons were brought in to break up strikes. At one point, 20 miners were hanged after being accused of having ties to a labor union in Ireland they had nothing to do with. Coal mining has a long, bloody, criminal history attached to it.
That sound is supposed to the sound of the hammer on the tools to break up the Coal down in the mine. As to Tennessee Ernie Ford, he was a classic Baritone. THESE GUYS ARE 👍 GOOD, BUT THIS SONG BELONG TO OUR GOOD OLD COUSIN ERN.
Not necessary but how many people do you know that can belt out a E#1?
I've met a couple over the years, but I can count them on one hand. Definitely not many.
Wait, did you say LEGO?
Yeah, I posted a link to the Millennium Falcon Microfighter in my Discord and a bunch of us bought them for a group LEGO build. I'll stream a build whenever I can, but it's not a regular part of my streaming schedule.
Usually involves some chill music and just hanging out in chat while I'm working through a build. 🙂
Not necessary?! My view is that if you *can* hit it, you *must* hit it.
I checked with the judges, and your counterpoint is valid. 😂
i would say swing
Jimmy Dean wrote two sequels to this as well.
ruclips.net/video/4ukE3jwmOcA/видео.html
cant believe super star destroyer is about 2k
Who?
So.... is it a good set, or a green screen? 'Cause you're kinda contradicting yourself by saying both.
Not at all. The set includes all of the lighting and props used.
The green screen is used to duplicate Geoff into multiple singers. It's possible they also used a technique called "stitching" or "masking" where they layer multiple videos and then "hide" the sections that don't include Geoff on each layer, but it's more likely that they used a combination of all three techniques to make it look like he's seamlessly interacting with himself.
I dont think Ernie Ford can get that low........
Wait for it.
The original was written and performed by Merle Travis in 1947. Tennessee Ernie Ford was the second person to sing Merle’s song in 1956. Please check your facts before talking faults.
To be fair, Geoff has it wrong in his description too (though this cover is far more like Ford's than Travis'). Travis may have written it, but Ford's is the version everyone remembers.
@@maeco7 obviously so because everyone who ever mentioned this song immediately said Ford. Merle Travis sung this in a different way. He used a guitar and had a much higher voice than anyone who has sang it since him.
I appreciate and acknowledge that I was mistaken about Ford, but I purposely don't research these before sitting down to record because it wouldn't be a "reaction."
If I'm being completely honest, I won't be doing additional research in the future, because I'm perfectly fine with making a mistake now and then. If you are unable to retain any value from this experience as a result, there are many other RUclips channels that approach music differently than I do, and I wouldn't be offended if you decided my channel wasn't of interest to you. Thank you for stopping by! 🙂