chong vs punk, 20 years later

better late than never.



in just 10 minutes i got:
It's a Mistake - Men At Work
People are Strange - Echo & The Bunnymen
Baby's Got Rockets - Dancing Hoods
A Gentle Sound - The Railway Children
Wrong (Todd Terry Club Mix) - Everything But The Girl

a great selection, one i would play on my iPod.

go look for your favorite (dead) station on Live365.com. sadly, 99.5 RT isn't among the carcasses. and skipping the ads will set you back $8 a month. ah, hell, what's radio without ads?

rev it up

Accelerate, R.E.M. (WB)

what? R.E.M.? these old codgers are still making albums? and its not for free? never fear. why are you reading about this then, considering i'm not a member of the select few who are given advance copies? (wink, wink)

Michael Stipe has long abandoned the mumbled vocals of his early days, and going down that way as well is the band's habit of playing slow funeral rock. it's like nobody wanted to rock on since Bill Berry retired. enter ex-Ministry drummer Bill Reiflin. however, this newfound rhythm, which in turn galvanized Peter Buck to let loose with his guitars, threatens to drown out Stipe anyway.

Accelerate is a great and apt title for the graybeards' kind of desperate stab back at the glory days of the Document/Green/Out of Time era. only a couple of songs make it past the 4 minute mark, and 4 of them are actually below three. its almost like a punk record. as Time Magazine's Josh Tyrangiel puts it, " ... it sounds less like a recent R.E.M. album than three men fleeing the scene of a recent R.E.M. album."

despite distractions like these, R.E.M. seems to be ready to go back to the fun days and hopefully retire at the top of their game. they know this, but they want it to be on their terms. like Mike sings on the closing song, I'm Gonna DJ (a post-modern Shiny Happy People of sorts):

hey steady steady
hey steady steady
i don't wanna go until i'm good and ready

cause if heaven does exist
with a kicking playlist
i don't wanna miss it at the end of the world

this record merits a lot more attention than their last three albums combined. my iPod says so.

she ain't messin' with no broke nigga

i have no love for McCartney, but this really sucks. i hope she spends those millions quickly within a few years then become a forgotten peg-legged drug-addicted hag. or here's a thought, Sir Paul: hire a Hitman.

cue in that Kanye song.

r.i.p., jeff healey

hunting the lost pt. 5

PM, Piece of Paradise



may have been a one-hit wonder, but that works out for you, you only need one file to give me.

wet

yes, they're a boy band, they dance like doofuses, and most of the time i can't understand what they're singing.

but Greatest Hits: End of Part One was one of the records that kept me sane in Nanjing, China back in 1998. so am giving Wet Wet Wet their due.











go look for Love is All Around yourself.

hunting the lost pt. 4

when you want to dance, you only need one record - Bomb the Bass' Enter the Dragon. my college classmates used to make funny faces at me whenever they saw this cassette tape in my collection.










spread the LOVE! (and give me this album)

hunting the lost pt. 3

Michelle D's 'last call' song during the end of her hours at DZBM. ah, the late 80s.



and the rest from the Sea of Love album ...



... wait, that's it? no more on YouTube? pity. i like almost all the songs.

so any givers? happy valentine's to all!

hunting the lost pt. 2

Max Q, Way of the World

hard to imagine i bought the album years ago. and now i don't even have it in my library. oh sure, i have it in MiniDisc, but i don't wanna go through the hassle of converting everything from that format to Windows media. unless you have some kind of IDE/ATA or USB MiniDisc drive. do you?



R.I.P. Mike

hunting the lost pt. 1

if anyone can give me the full "How Green is Your Valley" album in MP3 format ...



... you'll be my BFF forever.

oink is dead

long live free music!

this article kind of sums up how i feel.

since the early days of recording tapes off FM radio stations, using up my college allowance to buy cassettes, discovering CDs (and pirated ones), discovering Napster and MP3s, a flirtation with MiniDiscs, to the current fall of the music industry expressed through two iPods (and maybe more), i barely download anymore, much less buy CDs. i guess am stuck with the music i grew up with, but being around with a younger set does leave you sometimes with cases of the infamous 'Last Song Syndrome' ("you can stand under my umbrella ... ella ... ella ... ella").

it is interesting to see what business model comes out of this crash, if Rick Rubin and other progressives make the suits see the light. in the meantime, you have to excuse me, because i gotta go babysit my file copying from my Netgear SAN drives to a newer Western Digital MyBook before the former dies on me again. building that huge music collection ain't easy, you know.

thumbing my nose

new iPod entries:

Joss Stone
Introducing Joss Stone


LCD Soundsystem
Sound of Silver


Arcade Fire
Neon Bible


Bloc Party
A Weekend in the City



The Brand New Heavies
Get Used To It


Sugababes
Overloaded: The Singles