Well see, there's lots of recent library stuff that I haven't yet mentioned. So here are some mini-reviews of a bunch of stuff.
Fiona Apple-The Extraordinary Machine. This is a good album, Apple's most recent. It has an interesting back story considering it almost didn't get released after a bunch of unreleased material was leaked to the web. But it did come out, and it's good. It has a more polished and orchestrated sound than her previous album, "When the Pawn..." (the really long titled one), and doesn't quite feel as edgy.
The Clash-London Calling. This is a classic British punk album, often considered one of the best punk rock albums of all time. It's just a great rock album in general. Listen and enjoy.
The Band-Greatest Hits (or something like that). This is a great folk-rock band that doens't have much recognition nowadays. But they were really influential in their day and actually pretty popular. In their early days they were the backing band for Bob Dylan. Then they started recording on their own. If you heard one of their songs, "The Weight", I bet you'd recognize it. Yeah, that's the band. Great American music right here.
Duran Duran- Pop Trash. I really wasn't into this one. I guess I've just been curious about Duran Duran from my reading, but I haven't yet been able to find any of their early work from the days when they became known in the 80's. This is a really recent album, and it's nothing special. I won't say with a wry grin on my face that it is "just so much pop trash" because I've been finding that excessively punny reviews irk me (half of the stuff on Rotten Tomatoes is like that- ie if you're reviewing a pirate movie, you have to make some snarky or ironic comment using pirate language/imagery- it gets overdone really quickly!). I also recently got "Thank You" by them which was kind of an odd compilation of covers of songs they like- also a recent album. Yes, there actually is music that I don't like!
www.indiefeed.com (redirects somewhere). This is a great site that has amazing indie music podcasts. They have several channels which you subscribe to (using iTunes or some other podcast player), and you basically get a new song each day or so. Completely free and legal independent music. Joel, if you read this, I'm going to send you a disc loaded with some of this stuff.
And if you're new to "Podcasts" (also sometimes called Netcasts), they're basically normal audio or video files that are set up to be downloaded to your computer (using a program like iTunes) on a recurring basis. It's kind of like radio, except you have complete control over what you get. The popular thing to do is download podcasts and then put them on your portable mp3 player (like an iPod, thus the name "podcast"), but you can listen to them on any computer or any device that can play mp3 files (for audio podcasts).
Okay, well that's all for now- time to head out to OIT...
Tuesday, October 24, 2006
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
New Pandora Stations
Well this post is going to be short, since I'm about to leave the library. But I wanted to give an update on some new Pandora stations. If you listen to these, keep this in mind: I steer these stations by starting them based on a particular band or song, and then Pandora plays songs that it thinks are similar. I then rate whether I like the songs or not, and it continues to refine the station based on those ratings. Thus you never really know what its going to play, and most of what you hear I've probably not heard before.
Proto-Indie delves into early indie rock and its roots and influences. As I got into music in the mid-90's and into the new millenium, I never really heard much about all of the bands that had directly preceded the indie and alternative rock I was hooked on (ie Pedro the Lion and eventually Pavement/Stephen Malkmus, Seam, etc etc). All I knew was that a few bands I liked, eg Yo La Tengo, had been around since the late 80's, but I thought of them as an anomaly. In general, I thought of 80's music as all of the cheesy metal and pop (think "Whip It") I heard as a kid when Joel would sneak on MTV. And then of course about 2 years ago or so, I started going back to the 60's to see what I could find there, starting with Simon & Garfunkel I guess. And the 60's and early 70's definitely had their influence on the turn of the millenium. But over the past few months, I've been discovering all of the great music from mainly the 80's and very early 90's that constitutes the immediate parents of Indie Rock and Alternative Rock. This station is built from the starting point of bands like My Bloody Valentine, the Pixies, REM, the Smiths, the Jesus and Mary Chain, Sonic Youth, and a bunch of other stuff. Every once in a while I'll add something older that seems to have a direct influence, like the Velvet Undergound or some new-wave/post-punk from the late 70's. But of course who knows what Pandora will decide to play.
Gazing at your shoes is sort of a showcase of Pandora's weakness. I meant this to be a station of "shoegazer" rock, which I really can't even describe for those of you unfamiliar with that term (basically, everyone besides Joel). You'd have to just hear. Thus what I hoped this station would do. However as hard as I try to stear it in the right direction with songs by Starflyer 59, My Bloody Valentine, and Lush, it continually delivers all sorts of rock that have nothing to do with shoegazer. So really, I wouldn't recommend this one until I can improve it some more.
Epic Space Melodramatica stays true to its verbose title. Starting with Muse and it's recent grandiloquent space opera of an album, "Black Holes and Revelations," this station generally plays music with delusions of grandeur and a 2001: A Space Odyssey twist. This is the very station Luke Skywalker was listening to when he launched those two fateful proton-torpedos that destroyed the first Death Star.
Instumental Indie serves up continual enjoyment in the form of lush indie rock that verges on orchestral. This is one long soundtrack for the independent film that could be your life (how is that for lame advertising?). The heavy-hitters here are Godspeed You Black Emporer! (yes, that's actually the title of a band, a Canadian band no less), Explosions in the Sky (that harkens back to the days of "Top Secret Tomorrow" and other fun band names; this band actually did the soundtrack for a very unlikely film: Friday Night Lights), and some Tortoise. I can't remember what else I based this one on.
Well I think that's all for now. Enjoy! Jon
p.s. I think one of my next stations will be a folk-rock one. I already have my broad "All Folk" station, but I want something more focused on the Byrds, CSNY, and some Damien Jurado on the modern end.
p.p.s. Today is library day.
Proto-Indie delves into early indie rock and its roots and influences. As I got into music in the mid-90's and into the new millenium, I never really heard much about all of the bands that had directly preceded the indie and alternative rock I was hooked on (ie Pedro the Lion and eventually Pavement/Stephen Malkmus, Seam, etc etc). All I knew was that a few bands I liked, eg Yo La Tengo, had been around since the late 80's, but I thought of them as an anomaly. In general, I thought of 80's music as all of the cheesy metal and pop (think "Whip It") I heard as a kid when Joel would sneak on MTV. And then of course about 2 years ago or so, I started going back to the 60's to see what I could find there, starting with Simon & Garfunkel I guess. And the 60's and early 70's definitely had their influence on the turn of the millenium. But over the past few months, I've been discovering all of the great music from mainly the 80's and very early 90's that constitutes the immediate parents of Indie Rock and Alternative Rock. This station is built from the starting point of bands like My Bloody Valentine, the Pixies, REM, the Smiths, the Jesus and Mary Chain, Sonic Youth, and a bunch of other stuff. Every once in a while I'll add something older that seems to have a direct influence, like the Velvet Undergound or some new-wave/post-punk from the late 70's. But of course who knows what Pandora will decide to play.
Gazing at your shoes is sort of a showcase of Pandora's weakness. I meant this to be a station of "shoegazer" rock, which I really can't even describe for those of you unfamiliar with that term (basically, everyone besides Joel). You'd have to just hear. Thus what I hoped this station would do. However as hard as I try to stear it in the right direction with songs by Starflyer 59, My Bloody Valentine, and Lush, it continually delivers all sorts of rock that have nothing to do with shoegazer. So really, I wouldn't recommend this one until I can improve it some more.
Epic Space Melodramatica stays true to its verbose title. Starting with Muse and it's recent grandiloquent space opera of an album, "Black Holes and Revelations," this station generally plays music with delusions of grandeur and a 2001: A Space Odyssey twist. This is the very station Luke Skywalker was listening to when he launched those two fateful proton-torpedos that destroyed the first Death Star.
Instumental Indie serves up continual enjoyment in the form of lush indie rock that verges on orchestral. This is one long soundtrack for the independent film that could be your life (how is that for lame advertising?). The heavy-hitters here are Godspeed You Black Emporer! (yes, that's actually the title of a band, a Canadian band no less), Explosions in the Sky (that harkens back to the days of "Top Secret Tomorrow" and other fun band names; this band actually did the soundtrack for a very unlikely film: Friday Night Lights), and some Tortoise. I can't remember what else I based this one on.
Well I think that's all for now. Enjoy! Jon
p.s. I think one of my next stations will be a folk-rock one. I already have my broad "All Folk" station, but I want something more focused on the Byrds, CSNY, and some Damien Jurado on the modern end.
p.p.s. Today is library day.
Wednesday, October 11, 2006
Back to Simpler Days
Well today I'm returning back to the sixties from my recent journeys into the 70's, 80's etc. The two bands I'm listening to today follow the early rock n' roll naming tradition of "the somethings." So at this moment I'm listening to the Hollies (another greatest hits sort of thing), and in a bit, I'll pop in the Monkees. So today it's all about fun harmonic pop-rock.
So far I like the Hollies. Having listened so much to the Beatles, it's hard not to compare them. Yet I think they should really be viewed simply as contemporaries rather than imitators of the Beatles. Also, they mostly stuck with their polished mid-sixties sound when the Beatles and everyone else started getting more experimental and into the psychedelic sound. So they are lots of fun. One interesting tid-bit is that one of their main members and songwriters, Graham Nash, went on to join David Crosby, of the Byrds, and Stephen Stills, of Buffalo Springfield to form the very uninspiringly named and great sounding group "CSN", which became CSNY when Neil Young (also formerly of Buffalo Springfield) joined for a few albums. Mom, do you remember CSN?
Well anyway, I like the Hollies so far. Oh, another interesting thing. The reason I checked out the Hollies was partly because of the CSNY connection, but mostly because of Scott Barger, the pastor of the church I've been going to. In one of his sermons, he mentioned a bunch of different classic groups from the old days (the sermon was about our unhealthy tendency to obligate ourselves to religious rules, and the example was that when he was a kid, he went to a strict Christian school which told him all of the music his parents liked was evil), so I chatted with him a little about it afterwards. I told him how much I liked the Beatles, while he said he was always more of a Hollies fan. So I thought I should check them out.
Well I just listened to the Monkees, and they are a lot of fun as well. After some reading, I really want to watch the show- it sounds like a lot of fun.
Well that's all for now...
So far I like the Hollies. Having listened so much to the Beatles, it's hard not to compare them. Yet I think they should really be viewed simply as contemporaries rather than imitators of the Beatles. Also, they mostly stuck with their polished mid-sixties sound when the Beatles and everyone else started getting more experimental and into the psychedelic sound. So they are lots of fun. One interesting tid-bit is that one of their main members and songwriters, Graham Nash, went on to join David Crosby, of the Byrds, and Stephen Stills, of Buffalo Springfield to form the very uninspiringly named and great sounding group "CSN", which became CSNY when Neil Young (also formerly of Buffalo Springfield) joined for a few albums. Mom, do you remember CSN?
Well anyway, I like the Hollies so far. Oh, another interesting thing. The reason I checked out the Hollies was partly because of the CSNY connection, but mostly because of Scott Barger, the pastor of the church I've been going to. In one of his sermons, he mentioned a bunch of different classic groups from the old days (the sermon was about our unhealthy tendency to obligate ourselves to religious rules, and the example was that when he was a kid, he went to a strict Christian school which told him all of the music his parents liked was evil), so I chatted with him a little about it afterwards. I told him how much I liked the Beatles, while he said he was always more of a Hollies fan. So I thought I should check them out.
Well I just listened to the Monkees, and they are a lot of fun as well. After some reading, I really want to watch the show- it sounds like a lot of fun.
Well that's all for now...
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