I'm going to go way over the requested top 10 80's albums here as there is simply no way I could whittle this down. 16 at the beginning of the decade and 26 by the end this was when for me the formula became music=life. Any spare money I could scrounge up went on purchasing primarily vinyl and much of it imported from Europe. Probably drove my parents round the bend with some of the stuff I listened to (ie Big Black, Einsturzende Neubaten, Test Department) but that's what teenagers are for. Sorry for posting 40 picks but feel free to stop scrolling at any time.

Adam & the Ants - Kings of the Wild Frontier
The English Beat - Just Can't Stop It
Billy Bragg - Talking with the Taxman
Kate Bush - The Dreaming
The Chameleons - Strange Times
Cocteau Twins - Treasure
Lloyd Cole & the Commotions - Rattlesnakes
The Cult - Love
Depeche Mode - Some Great Reward
Echo & the Bunnymen - Ocean Rain
Eric B & Rakim - Paid in Full
Peter Gabriel - Peter Gabriel (3)
The Housemartins - London 0, Hull 4
Human League - Dare
The Jam - The Gift
Jazz Butcher - Bloody Nonsense
The Jesus & Mary Chain - Psychocandy
New Order - Power, Corruption & Lies
Orange Juice - In a Nutshell
OMD - Architecture & Morality
Pixies - Doolittle
Prince - 1999
Bill Pritchard - Three Months, Three Weeks & 2 Days
Public Enemy - A Nation of Millions
The Ramones - End of the Century
REM - Murmur
Roxy Music - Flesh and Blood
Simple Minds - New Gold Dream
Siouxsie & the Banshees - Once Upon a Time
The Smiths - The Smiths
The Stone Roses - Stone Roses
Teardrop Explodes - Kilimanjaro
Tears for Fears - The Hurting
That Petrol Emotion - Manic Pop Thrill
The The - Soul Mining
U2 - War
The Undertones - Hypnotised
The Waterboys - A Pagan Place
Woodentops - Giant
XTC - Black Sea

Thanks for the laugh Mike. Pachelbel's Canon is one classical piece that I have pretty much detested since I first heard it. Not sure why exactly as it's not as if I'm not a sucker for a "simple" classical hook like Barber's Adagio for strings for example.

For classical music with no hooks to speak of check out this column from the Guardian. Joe Queenan, the article's author, has more than 20 years of classical music listening over me and has seen 1500 concerts to my paltry 30 or 40 but he gets it right on the money with respect to new classical music. The key paragraph for me is the following:

I have tried to come to terms with the demands of modern music. I am no lover of Renaissance Muzak, and own tons of records by Berg, Varèse, Webern, Rihm, Schnittke, Adès, Wuorinen, Crumb, Carter, and Babbitt: I consider myself to be the kind of listener contemporary composers would need to reach if they had any hope of achieving a breakthrough. So far, this has not happened, and I doubt that it will.

I've never heard of Wuorinen and I've never listened to Crumb but I own discs or have listened to the rest of this crew and with the exception of Berg, who can hardly be considered new since he died in 1935, there's really not a whole lot to write home about. Like the author I should be the target market for modern composers but they're failing miserably. I'd like to hear how others have fared coming to terms with mid-late 20th and 21st century classical music.

I have some Holliger and Kurtag for anyone who'd like to give this sort of thing a listen.

I'll get around to posting my top discs of the 80's shortly.

As an aside, completely unrelated to any of the topics at hand, I stubmled across this clever, funny video rant that demonstrates how all of modern music derives from Pachelbel's Cannon.

My list, I realized almost immediately, is a complete travesty. Lacking Sonic Youth's Evol, The Chills Submarine Bells, Bill Bragg's Talking to the Taxman, Waterboys' This is the Sea, Steve Earle's Exit Zero / Copperhead Road. Many more. I'll post a top twenty shortly.

Kyle, thanks, that's very helpful. The tutorial was a little goofy, but the verbiage attached to the site should get me started.

I've been prevaricating on the 80's list, but have finally come up with a top 11. I based it on what I honestly listened to and loved at the time, not so much what now seems cool. No doubt missed some obvious ones.

I liked your list a lot, mostly because it's music I don't know intimately in some cases. You were, I guess, 9 - 18 years old in the eighties, so a very different thing from 16 - 25, plus you just have different musical tastes, and of course you grew up in Scarborough I think? (versus Kanata). All in all a good list to navigate through for me.

REM - Murmur / Reckoning (I'm cheating already)
Clash - London Calling (Dec 79 - more cheating, but this was really the first record of the 80's)
The Pretenders - Learning to Crawl
Tom Petty - Damn the Torpedoes (Nov 79)
Springsteen - Born in the USA (yes it's true)
Big Dipper - Heavens
That Petrol Emotion - Babble
Jazz Butcher - Fishcoteque
Midnight Oil - Diesel and Dust
The Church - Starfish
Paul Kelly - Gossip

New York in retrospect was mostly a 90's record for me

Making mp3s from vinyl...this site has a 3 minute video tutorial.

For those of you with time on your hands and the thirst for more new music, Wired magazine just did a feature on their '10 Hottest Digital Music Sites'.

Also, a little late to the game (hectic travel week late June + needed down time last week) but here is my contribution to the 80s album discussion:

The Queen is Dead – The Smiths
Music for the Masses – Depeche Mode
Disintegration – The Cure
The Unforgettable Fire – U2
Murmur - REM
Power, Corruption, Lies – New Order
Surfer Rosa – The Pixies
Love – The Cult
Closer – Joy Division
It’ll Take a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back – Public Enemy

Though 'Thriller' was great at the time (I was 11 when it was released) , I don't really look back on it with much fondness, and don't presently own a copy. I'd probably say 'Purple Rain' is important and I'm sure I'd enjoy listening to the soundtrack again but don't think I could play it more than once every few years. All of the albums listed above are ones I could still listen to at least a few times a year, and were important and interesting when they were released/became popular.

Anyhow, enjoy the links.

Oh right. Bittorrent.

I thought you were saying that you were creating mp3 files from albums, something I'm interested in doing....anyone know anything about that?

I've been downloading using Bit Torrent, primarily based on the advice and guidance of this fine group of bloggers. After a shaky start, it's been going pretty well, overall. At this point, I have attempted to find and download 164 albums. I have been successful with all but 18 of them. The ones I couldn't find are generally a little obscure or regional - like Andrew Cash, Scott Merritt and the Washington Squares.

I've got one more '80s song to add to my list of overlooked top ten candidates - Lou Reed's "New York". Pretty great album. You've gotta love the wailing feedback.

Yes, that was a great record (the WPA one). In a similar vein, Paul Kelly's first record "Gossip" was really strong...though I mentioned that before. Feel free to revise your list daily. 

How are you downloading albums?

I've been steadily moving through my cassette tapes and downloading albums, and since posting that list I've realized that I missed a couple of favorites that deserved consideration for my top 10 - Scott Merritt's "Gravity is Mutual" and Weddings Parties Anything's "Roaring Days". I'll probably continue to stumble across more as I move through my collection - it's very hard to compile a definitive list of anything!

Hey Mike, great list. We were obviously spending a lot of time together in the 80's; lots of common ground for me in there. Although some of them I'll admit didn't (and don;t) do much for me - Dire Straits, for example; Brothers in Arms felt like the end of a band I had once liked.

There were a few others that I was listening to a ton at that time that I'd forgotten about, and something about your post reminded me; World Party's Private Revolution; Guadalcanal Diary's Jamboree, Let's Active's Cypress.

I will put my thoughts together into a list this week. Kind of a fun exercise, because my impression of the eighties is that it hasn't aged well, and yet (a) it was a hugely defining period for all of us musically, and (b) it is (somewhat inevitably) coming back into vogue and so the only-recently kitschy sounding production / sensibilities are very popular again. Useful to go through ti, because I know it will warm me up to some music I once loved.

I find it's a bit pointless to attempt to compare the relative quality of albums from widely different genres. Including everything from bubblegum pop to grunge to country rock on a single list of "best tracks" only serves to offend everyone. So I'm responding instead to Brian's challenge to come up with my own personal top ten of the '80s. My list is:

This is the Sea, The Waterboys
The Joshua Tree, U2
Life’s Rich Pageant, R.E.M.
Graceland, Paul Simon
SwordfishTrombone, Tom Waits
Brothers in Arms, Dire Straits
Starfish, The Church
Live 1975-1985, Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band
Copperhead Road, Steve Earle
Amonia Avenue, Alan Parsons Project

This is based entirely on my own enjoyment of the music, rather than on my perception of its historical significance. I found it very hard to eliminate some of my other favorites, so for those who are interested in such things, I'll include the other albums that I originally listed before the painful sorting exercise began. These are partially sorted, but I gave up trying to complete that task.

Fisherman’s Blues, The Waterboys
Lyle Lovett, Lyle Lovett
Eastern Wind, Chris de Burgh
Reckoning, R.E.M.
Making Movies, Dire Straits
The River, Bruce Springsteen
Murmur, R.E.M.
Fleetwood Mac Live, Fleetwood Mac
Stop Making Sense, Talking Heads
Born in the USA, Bruce Springsteen
War, U2
In My Tribe, 10,000 Maniacs
The Unforgettable Fire, U2
If I Should Fall From Grace with God, The Pogues
Fables of the Reconstruction, R.E.M.
Diesel and Dust, Midnight Oil
Full Moon Fever, Tom Petty
The Game, Queen
The Lonesome Jubilee, John Mellencamp
The Rose of England, Nick Lowe
The Wishing Chair, 10,000 Maniacs
Crowded House, Crowded House
Suzanne Vega, Suzanne Vega
Rain Dogs, Tom Waits
Pontiac, Lyle Lovett
The Final Cut, Pink Floyd
Various Positions, Leonard Cohen
The Turn of a Friendly Card, Alan Parsons Project
Gossip, Paul Kelly & The Messengers
Eye in the Sky, Alan Parsons Project
Scarecrow, John Mellencamp
Exit 0, Steve Earle
Red Roses for Me, The Pogues
Love Over Gold, Dire Straits
Document, R.E.M.
Up to Here, The Tragically Hip
The Traveling Wilburys Vol. I, The Traveling Wilburys
Slow Turning, John Hiatt
So, Peter Gabriel

Ah lists. God love 'em. This one is fairly idiosyncratic in my view, with a number of esteemed records (pardon the old-fashioned expression) included but strangely out of place (Elliot Smith, Radiohead, Smashing Pumpkins, Pretenders, eg) and another big pile of great and important pop music (ie my personal favourites) not there at all. It's working on the extreeeeemely questionable assumption that top 40 albums deserve a place at the top. Not sure on what basis Mariah Carey, Britney Spears, Christina Ag, and Kelly Clarkson got there (to name a few).....but at least, I suppose, it's discussion provoking.

Most of my favourite eighties music is nowhere to be seen here, which would include That Petrol Emotion's "Babble", Husker Du's "New Day Rising" (or Zen Arcade), Midnight Oil's "Diesel and Dust", REM's "Murmur" or "Reckoning" (I mean, c'mon!), The Feelies' "Only Life", Waterboys "This is the Sea" or "Fisherman's Blues", Billy Bragg's "Talking with the Taxman about Poetry", Camper Van Beethoven's "Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart", Smithereens "Especially for You", Paul Kelly's "Gossip", The Church's "Starfish" (or Heyday or Remote Luxury), or The Jazz Butcher's "Fishcotheque" or "Bloody Nonsense".

In terms of nineties and oughts, I won't go on at length, but a few oversights like Nevermind (ridiculous to exclude), but for me also Eleventh Dream Day's "El Moodio" Sufjan Stevens "Illinoise", Sebadoh's "Bakesale" and a ton of others.


Not to discourage further discussion of this list, but my rantings above prompt me to ask for input (given that I'm back to downloading via Azureus) on everyone's Favourite Records of the 1980's. A top ten, ideally.

Wondering if I can get some input from the likes of Derek and Stuart and (dare I hope) Marc, on this, as well, of course, as the new regular threesome of me, Mike and Kyle.

Now that we're on a bit of a roll here, a 100 best albums list to keep the discussion moving. This one is courtesy of Entertainment Weekly, a fairly mainstream magazine that's probably worth perusing if you're stuck on a long flight but not a publication worth reading on a regular basis.

This is their 'Best Albums of the Past 25 Years', which takes us back to 1983 (can you believe I failed Grade 11 and 12 Math?). While there are some odd choices and the rankings are ridiculous, it's not an altogether horrid list. Not sure how Amy Winehouse cracks the top 10 or Nirvana's Unplugged disc makes the list while Nevermind is nowhere to be found....my guess is that they're being deliberately provocative.... I'm happy to see they've included 'Disintegration', 'Slanted & Enchanted', 'Surfer Rosa', 'Loveless', 'Low-life', 'Siamese Dream', 'The Queen is Dead', 'Play', 'Dummy', 'The Soft Bulletin', 'Yankee Hotel Foxtrot', among others but it's a weird list overall. The Bjork choice is 'Homogenic'...really? Kind of luck saying you like the third Strokes album the best.

Thoughts?

Billy Corgan is an interesting one....I'm mostly on the side of 'elevates' because I mostly like the way he alternates between an earnest falsetto and a more darker, more gravelly growl. I say mostly because sometimes it's great (the 'let me OUT' bit from "Cherub Rock", which ups the emotional ante and builds along with the revving guitar) and sometimes it's grating (the 'i used to be a little boy/what's a boy supposed to do' bit from "Disarm" which just sounds like a toddler throwing a temper tantrum). This commentary assumes you've excluded any release from Smashing Pumpkins and his side projects with release dates any later than 1995, all of which really really suck.

Admittedly, the Lightfoot thing was really just thrown out there to create a little controversy.  I've got no real problems with Gord-o, though certainly his singing was more full throated in his first few years than after the alcoholism took its toll.   

I've enjoyed this singer debate though.  Before I move off it, I'll toss out another for consideration - Billy Corgan; ruiner or elevator?  

I'm coming up with all of these older ref points because I'm working on the (very belated) 90's comps that we discussed bout a year and a half ago.   Will pass them on when we choose a date for the next CD club.

I have to add my voice to the crowd rejecting Brian’s (Victoria’s) preposterous inclusion of Gordon Lightfoot on the list of grating vocalists. His voice is distinctive and unique – instantly recognizable. He doesn’t have a problem with pitch, he sings with emotion and his voice suits his music. A criticism that I will lob at Lightfoot is that he is about the least dynamic performer I’ve ever seen. His band is good, but he just stands there and sings. He doesn’t interact with the audience well and he doesn’t look relaxed or comfortable. I’ve heard that he has terrible stage fright that he combats with booze. It’s probably all caused by insensitive people criticizing his voice.

Gordys voice? I grew up on it, so its part of me and I can't imagine Canada without him somehow....his voice just IS ......I cant distence myself enough to be critical one way or the other....for a great cover take on "If you could read my mind" go to Johnny Cashs last American series recordings (Five)....If rumours are correct the vocal was recorded 2 months before he died , prior to setting down any other instrument tracks for the song....

No love for Gordon Lightfoot?! Can't imagine his songs working with other vocalists. That godawful dance cover of 'You Could Read My Mind' from the equally poor 'Studio 54' film a decade ago is the first example that springs to mind but perhaps the duclet tones of Ray Coniff's version really shines.

Always thought Malkmus was a cross between Dave Lowry of Cracker and J. Mascis of Dinosaur Jr.. My evidence:







Total excuse to post youtube vids on a Friday. Happy weekend all.

More thoughts.....a couple of singers that can make a good song great (and sadly, more often, an average song very listenable) for me are Lou Barlow and Jeff Tweedy.

And Kyle, re Malkmus (from Pavement....Mike, I assume you know this but just in case) I think it is his voice that elevates the songs. It works so in tandem with the shambolic lo-fi-ness in their earlier records that it is hard to separate the two. But it's a remarkably expressive instrument in its own right.

And one more on behalf of Victoria, of voices that ruin songs (and I happen to agree, particularly on his mid 70's and later work) - Gordon Lightfoot.

Over to you Mike and Stu.

I've got to say that I am very pleased to see this sudden burst of activity at MetaBeats. It's been a pretty quiet place until recently. I've been thinking about Brian's challenge to list vocalists whose lack of technique somehow doesn't detract from their music. The first names that popped to mind for me were Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and Tom Waits. Then I thought of Randy Newman, Mark Knopfler and Lou Reed. When you get right down to it, this is a very large group. Most of the really good songwriters aren't actually really good singers. The other challenge is tougher - singers so good that they can elevate the music. The first one that I thought of here was Roy Orbisson. Although he generally had very solid material to work with, his voice was unbelievable. I think that Thom Yorke of Radiohead belongs on this list. Although he seems to have deliberately deemphasized it, his voice has wonderful dymanic range and he sings with a lot of passion when he wants to. One of my personal favorite voices in rock is Tim Booth from James - his voice has a very warm tone, and I think that band owes a lot of its success to his vocals. And then there was Johnny Cash - his voice was so deep and resonant that he could make pretty ordinary country songs into hits.

Is the harp person Joanna Newsom? Agree with you on that front, but disagree when it comes to Dave Gedge. Missed concert or no (yes, I'll go there) I kind of like his voice, with the harder, almost awkwardly angular vocal delivery underscoring the painful themes of lost or unrequited love in some of the Wedding Present's better songs (see: 'Skindiving', off 'Saturnalia')

As for your other questions, Neko Case always elevates a song for me...'soaring' seems to be the best, albeit clichéd way to describe her voice but there's a fullness to it that feels as though it were being carried across a landscape. Her songs are good to begin with though. An example of a bad singer who doesn't ruin a song might be Leonard Cohen, (see: 'Suzanne') . Do so many Pavement songs work in spite of or because of Malkmus' voice? [For sure, their videos suck].

Frank Sinatra certainly made an ordinary song sublime....'Fly me to the moon/Let me play among the stars' is no great poetry but the words sound golden when they come out of his mouth. Chet Baker also lifts many of the jazz standards.

For a more recent example, Sam Beam from Iron & Wine writes some very non-complex, stripped down acoustic songs but his voice envelops you in its warmth, even when the material has recorded on low-fi equipment in his own home, which I believe was the case with 'The Creek Drank the Cradle'. I'd argue that may qualify as lifing the material but I'm guessing what you're looking for are examples where the source material is bad in the first place.

Will keep pondering on that one.

Actually I'm in agreement with Stuart. Listing me as top 5 adds a level of grandeur and legitimacy to what I have in my more lucid moments considered to be simply piss poor singing.

Mike did a great job of feretting out singers that I've always disliked, but, in the case of Richard Thompson, had never admitted to myself that he ruined great songs for me. There are countless when you start to think about it - I've always disliked Adam Dortiz of Counting Crows (the update Van Morisson croon is deeply pretentious) and yes I believe he ruined a few really good songs; that annoying voice from the Wedding Present (Gedge, I think) also took an entire oeuvre off the rails for me; Antony (of the Johnsons is grating) beyond belief, and so was the lead falsetto singer for The Ass Ponys (looking back into the nineties); that singer (name escapes me) with the girly voice who plays the harp. Yes, all of the gravel-voiced morons who ruined grunge; even Bono is a caricature of himself most of the time these days. Neil Diamond of course became pretty ridiculous fairly quickly (sorry Mike and Stu), there are hundreds of others if you start to look back a bit.

Two other questions - how about some bad (technically) singers who strangely don't ruin songs, and even elevate them? What about the singer who, given the quality of his/her voice, makes an ordinary song sublime?

Thanks, Stuart! Now I'll have 'Winona Ryder' in my head all day! I figured you'd be all over Mike for the Richard Thompson selection. Why are you picking fights w/ Herr Doyle?

Mike, some great choices, imo. Not sure if Axel Rose or David Lee Roth annoy the shit out of me more...guess it comes down to whether the former's conscious warbling constitutes a greater crime than the latter's buffoonish yelping? Kudos for singling out Carol Pope, who thankfully hasn't had much airplay since the early 1980s. Derek, I think you've correctly identified 'Black Velvet' by Alannah Myles as the worst Canadian single ever but I think it's more the lyrics than than vocals on which this indictment is based.

Others that spring to mind: the lead singer from the band 'Cake' (at least Fred from the B52s has a sense of camp, this guy aims for ironic detachment while still trolling for gags and the result is that I'm bored and irritated at the same time), James Blunt (only time a human sound put to music prompts the question: is someone torturing or fellating that cat?) Hootie, frontman for Blowfish (no explanation required), the lead singers of nth generation retread grunge bands like Creed, Nickelback, Glueleg, etc., (falls under the category of shooting fish in a barrel) and finally, P.J. Harvey (perhaps some find the devolution into wailing that typifies most of her work to be emotionally powerful...i just find myself wondering why i'm listening to someone wailing).

Time to go back to work....'if you were/Winona Ryder...' damn!

thats a tough one.....
Brian Doyle of the Egolillys is the only one I can think of at the moment....

Great idea - I'm in! The first vocalist on my list is Brian Johnson of AC/DC. I think I'm a bit like a former heavy smoker who developed an intense aversion to cigarettes upon quitting. I used to listen to screaching high-pitched heavy metal vocalists almost exclusively, and now I find it extremely grating. Brian is the most prominent example for me because my son is now listening to a lot of AC/DC, but you could substitute Geddy Lee (in the early years) or any number of others from the genre. My second choice is Axyl Rose. In many ways he could be included in the first category, but I'm listing him separately because he is such an ass. Also, his voice has a certain muppety quality that I find particularly unpleasant. My third choice reminds me that this list is not in order of priority, because Johnny Rotten might be my all-time least favorite. His vocal style of spitting out the lyrics with little or no regard to melody and absolutely no dynamics spawned countless imitators and I detest all of them. I get the social dynamic of the band, and there is undeniable power and energy in the best punk music, but that vocal styling ruins it all for me. Bringing it closer to home, and switching genders for a moment, I'm going to name Carole Pope of Rough Trade as my fourth example of god-awful singers. Her musical footprint is much smaller, but she did invade my otherwise idyllic universtiy years by "smudging the air with her sound" as Leonard Cohen would say. My final choice is a bit different - Richard Thompson is an excellent guitar player and songwriter, and I would like to be a bigger fan, but there is a quality in his voice that puts me off. I can't put my finger on exactly what it is, but something in the timbre of his voice reacts badly with something in my ear.

Just finished reading, Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs, a collection of amusing articles about music and pop culture, which were fun to read even when I found myself disagreeing with some of the writer's opinions and observations.

In addition to pieces previously published in various magazines like Spin, The Believer, and NYTimes Magazine, are a few little additional side pieces, one of which poses the following hypothetical question:

"You meet your soul mate. However, there is a catch: Every three years, someone will break both of your soul mate's collarbones with a crescent wrench, and there is only one way you can stop this from happening: You must swallow a pill that will make every song you hear--for the rest of your life--sound as if it's being performed by the band Alice in Chains. When you hear Creedence Clearwater Revival on the radio, it will sound (to your ears) like it's being played by Alice in Chains. If you see Radiohead live, every one of their tunes will sound like it's being covered by Alice in Chains. When you hear a commercial jingle on TV, it will sound like Alice in Chains; if you sing to yourself in the shower, your voice will sound like deceased Alice vocalist Layne Staley performing a capella (but it will only sound this way to you).
Would you swallow the pill?"

Of course, I found this quite funny because I've always loathed Alice in Chains. But it gave me the idea to ask if you could come up with a list of at least 5 singers/bands whose vocal stylings so grate on your nerves that you'd consider consigning the love of your life to tri-annual random violence.

Several of you have expressed a distate for the lead singer of the National, which Stuart and I continue to find irrational to the point of idiocy, so I'll throw that one out to get you started.
We could also come up with a list of favourite vocalists if you really feel you must put a positive spin on things but let's 'go neg' first, shall we?

'Bus Stop' and 'Carrie-Anne' are the extent of my Hollies knowledge so I'll be interested in hearing some other songs at an upcoming meeting.

As for emusic suggestions, some I've downloaded over the last three months include:

• Ida - folky, pretty harmonies, perfect summer Sunday music
• Pete & the Pirates - bad band name but great jangly pop songs
• Headlights - kind of derivative but if you like Elliot Smith, Belle &Seb, similar music, you'll likely find this collection of songs enjoyable

Am contemplating getting the new My Morning Jacket disc, 'Evil Urges'. Reviews are all over the place and I'm not digging what I'm hearing on my first few listens of some sample tracks so I'm not sure. I'll likely get it anyway, given that on emusic, it will cost me all of $3.

Any other emusic folks out there have any recent download suggestions? Or shall I assume you're hitting the refresh button on the Taylor Swift album which, inexplicably, has yet to appear any lower than #3 on the emusic charts for the past year and a half.

Hey Kylie, Azureus is fantastic.  I had tried it a few weeks back based on some feedback I had read, but was unable to get past the "Vuze" front end, until I read your article, which had some really clear steps on how o navigate through it.  So now I'm back in the torrent swing of things. 

I owe you one pal.

Just downloaded the entire 60's discography of the Hollies - not to everyone's tastes, likely, but a couple of real gems, which I will feature at our next CD Club.... which incidentally Marc has promised to host soon.

Any hot tips on filling out my emusic order for the month? I just picked up a couple of great old Clifford Jordan CDs (jazz sax) from the early 60's.

 

Vinyl sales up?

Azureus looks to be the best, based on a quick glance of reviews online. For a good laugh, read through the bullet pointed list of features and pretend to nod approvingly.

Kyle, impressive. ANy insight into a bit torrent lcient that works on a Mac OSX? They are mostly built for PCs, and I've had a hell of a time making one work on my Mac. I finally was able to have some success with a provider called Bit Rocket, but it's unstable and has to be re-launched multiple times every time I use it etc etc.

I'm not a network administrator so I'm not sure about all the terminology and advice listed here, but it might be a good start for torrent optimization.

As for discovering new stuff, I've added some a set of links to the right under the title of 'Streams & Downloads" which might help.

Hype Machine contains links to music blogs as well as daily playlists from contributors with a good mix of old and new tracks, as well as remixes and mashups. Stereogum offers a combination of free mp3s and mixed compilation downloads as well as streams, news and video.
Fingertips is a great website that features new mp3s and a service that will email you a weekly list of picks for the cost of zero. The previously spotted (kudos, Derek) Muxtape, which allows anybody to upload a weekly playlist; the list will only stay up for one week at a time, i guess due to copyright concerns.

Also, if anybody doesn't/hasn't listened to the most recent NPR All Songs Considered podcast, where a panel of music writers discuss the 'soundtracks' of different generations, I recommend that you do so. It's an interesting discussion and touches on some conversations that we've all had at one point, either here or offline.

Okay, no more links for today. Go back to watching Euro soccer updates.

I've gone as deep as I can go on the subject Mike. I'm so not technically minded. I generally just delete torrents that are taking too long and try for another source - it's not perfect though. I'd be interested in hearing more from anyone who's further on in the torrent evolution chain.

As a consolation, I have a CD of Andrew Cash's Hi which I can lend you.

Thanks for all of the helpful advice. I've completed the CD part of my digitization project, and embarked on the tapes. Of the first 10 or so albums I tried to find, the only one I have not yet located is Andrew Cash's "Hi". In some cases I was able to download an album or a set of albums in an evening, but in other cases the progress is extremely slow - several have yet to complete. Does anybody have any good advice on how to locate faster sources, or otherwise optimize this lengthy process?

A good torrent client to download and use is utorrent. There are various torrent search sites that you can use to find the music but I find just typing in the name of the band with the word 'torrent' in google usually gets me to screens with enough options. You have to install the torrent client first before the downloads will work and they tend to be a little slower to start than limewire but you can set up a bunch of them, leave the computer on and they'll eventually all download. Unlike limewire or other file sharing programs, you have to wait until the download is 100% complete....if it craps out, those song files you see on your computer are only partial files and won't be playable (unless incoherent mixed up versions of your favourite songs do it for you). Hope this helps.

Hi Mike, a number of us over here have been downloading (illegally) using "bit torrent", which enables you to grab full albums, and often full discographies of artists, with relative ease.   Honestly, I'm pretty surprised that a web savvy guy like you is hearing this from a webmoron like myself.

Basically to use bit torrent you have to download some bit torrent software into your PC, of which there are numerous available 0n the web (I use one called bit lord), and then visit one or more of the plethora of download sites (again, many many available, I tend to use isohunt, torrentz - which is a compendium of a bunch of sites), and start finding music.  You'll figure it out in about ten minutes max.

I've been using the sites for a couple of years, after Derek let me know about it, and it has kind of changed my life in terms of finding old music.  Personally I don't use it for new music but everyone has different degrees of morality about these things, and I would never suggest that mine is right or wrong.

 

Thanks Kyle. Disappointing, but not surprising. Let me turn to the group here for advice. What I'm trying to do is go all-digital with my music. I just put hardwood flooring in my living room, so I had to move all the furniture out. At the moment, that includes a TV with surround sound system as well as a stereo with CD, cassette, tuner, amp and speakers. It seems wasteful to have 2 different amps and speakers in the same room - and the CDs and tapes take up a ton of space as well. So I bought a Squeezebox Duet, which allows me to stream music from my computer through the surround sound system, and I can avoid putting the CDs, tapes and stereo back in the room. I'm almost finished ripping all of my CDs, but I don't want to try to capture my 500 or so tapes - the sound would not be as good, and the process would be prohibitively manual and clumsy. Since I already have all of this music on tape, I don't have any ethical problem downloading it for free if I can find it, but a quick test with Limewire makes me leery - it seems quite difficult to find entire albums, and even in my brief test I downloaded 2 viruses. That's why I was excited to find a site that sells songs for 15 cents each, but I'm now leery of that option as well. Any suggestions?


Thanks,


Mike

re: soudike....this appears to be one of many russian mp3 websites that are able to sell music so low because they're not really legit, in the sense that none of the money they rake in goes to the artists. i've never used any of these sites myself, mostly for fears of what could be done to my credit card but i do have a friend who has used sites like these in the past and she hasn't had any problems with overcharging or fraud. here's a review of soudike at mp3victim, a site which reviews these types of mp3 sites. they're recommending avoidance, given the lack of email response from the customer service department. hope this helps.

Do any of you have any experience with soundike.com? I stumbled across it today. It seems to be a commerical site for buying and downloading music at very reasonable rates. For example, here is Sgt. Pepper for $1.56 or $0.15 per song. It appears to be mp3 format at a bitrate of 320 (which is reasonably good quality, I think). They seem to have a relatively extensive catalog - more targetted at the mainstream than emusic.com.

My "if it seems to good to be true then it probably is" sense is tingling. Anybody have any information about the service?

Going back to the discussion abotu the changes in the music industry, I recently read an article that had a different take on the record company woes (actually it was an ebook, and a very interesting one, I thought. It's free, and you can get it here). It said that the real reason the record companies are struggling isn't the loss of sales to downloading, but rather the increased competition due to the disappearance of scarcity. The basic argument is that under the old business model, there was limited shelf space and so consumers had a limited range of choice when it came to spending their music budget. On the Internet, however, no such scarcity exists. So the field of choices for consumers is expanding exponentially, including not only the traditional major label stuff, but also the entire historical catelog of major label stuff as well as a huge array of indepent label material. On the web, it is never necessary to take something off the shelf to make room for something else. So the big releases by the major lables will still sell well, but they are now competing with a much larger selection of current and historical choices, and so their sales naturally decline. I'm about half way through this book, and I'm finding it extremely interesting, and full of cool websites that I should probably have already known about. It's just one more of an increasing number of things that make me feel old!

I finally had time to read that article "the soundtracking of America" and I agree in general with most of the criticism raised by you all, although I think if there was an effective means of communicating with Afica and Asia from Europe in Beethovens era, i am sure there would not have been cross fertilization of ideas... It would likely just have been the Europeans force feeding their own culture to the rest....as they still try to do today..

His main thrust for me is interesting....- music creates moods and induces merely feelings and emotions, rather then intellectual substance..( at least thats his gist)...he then goes on to argue that even here, music fails .... " we recognise that music claims to unleash emotion at its most primitive, (but) we understand it never will", which in turn has created the rise of irony or "musical ironists" of us all....

1) I agree with most of the first point, in that music of itself , though it can contain intellectual musical thought and ideas, there is no purely non musical intellectual thought dirctly given, ...much like his chess analagy.
2) Most of us can easily dismiss his second theme about it failing to unleash emotion at its most primitive form... Personally , I have been emotionally wiped after seeing a concert such as Arcade Fire at Lees Palace...it is a trancendental primal experience, not to mention musics emotive power in the bedroom, particularly in ones younger years....Clearly Bottum needs to be on the bottom more often.....ok that was bad....

However my beef is this:
If music is emotive rather then intellectual, that does not mean the two things are unrelated...
I think Bottum misses the whole point which is that music, like good film, like good literature supports intellectual thought. It is not in competition with it!

Anne Michaels novel Fuitive Pieces gives insight into todays situation in the middle east that makes literature just as essential a component in the intellectual developement of a perspective on that topic as a non fiction book provides.. Intellectual thought is developed through multiple means and literature and music and film are just some of them...
Who hasen't pondered the death of a friend without music putting you in the right frame of mind to think about mans realtionship to earth, religion , atheism, existentialism, etc... The music is perhaps only a soundtrack to intellectual thought, but without it would the big questions be raised to the surface so effectively? Its support role cannot be underestimated....

He is correct in that lesser music can make us imagine that we must be "having a deep thought because we feel it so". I put this under the guilty pleasure songs that I like... Not all music is significant, some is bubble gum no doubt....but he misses Alan Bloom's (The Closing Of The American Mind) point when he dismissively states that " it turned out to be only rock music that Bloom objected too...he even ended up mildly praising the effects of classical music")

Bloom's point was that a lot of pop music is mindless yet still capable of emotionally moving people easily ...so easily that it leads to a lack of drive for intellectual learning...but some music he correctly notes can be helpfull towards supporting intellectual thought, ie I read it as dont through out the baby with the bathwater...( I read the book decades ago so apologies to Bloom for bastardising his treatise to one badly written sentence, but I thing I have the essence of it.
Bloom is also of a generation that the concept of substantive pop music is beyond him)

Bottums' complaint regarding song lyrics has some merit but again he throws the baby out with the bathwater ...One only needs to hear The Band Played Waltzing Matilda once to get the ESSENCE of the tragic event....Reading newspaper accounts cannot get this close to the event, and hearing it, ( even almost a century after the event occurred, you are immediately there with the troops) , certainly affects ones intellectual position on war and human nature....

Finally I would say that although he raises an intersting topic, he is certainly not thorough and convincing . At one point Bottum states that " music stands fairly low on the traditional list of devices by which we try to understand human experience" ....so who's list is that???? To start an argument with such unsubstantialed bunk is weak at best....

ouch! still smarting from the smackdown, bri, so i put together one of those muxtapes from the site derek discovered. hope you enjoy. i imagine the site will be taken down in days for copyright infringement but enjoy for now.

Kyle, poppycock, hoohaa, and jiminy crickets. Moreover, harumph.

Myopic goof? Oh, snap! That J. Bottum just got served!

My take? Well, I found the first half of the article pretty compelling, largely because I'm more easily bothered by crappy pop music that I can't escape. I can't visit a movie theatre without bringing along an ipod to drown out the treacle foisted on the pre-screening captive audience.

Yes, he was a little selective in his choice of lyrics, Mike, but aren't compelling lyrics in music more the exception than the rule? While we could probably point out countless examples on the good and bad side of the equation, wouldn't you concede that really good lyrics in music are more of a rarity than the norm?

Agree w/ you both that ultimately I didn't think he proved his thesis that music is a secondary art. It's decadent? Irony is expressed? Shocking! So is most contemporary visual art, film, and literature. His conclusions are weak but I did enjoy some of the tangents, particularly the passage describing the 8-year old alternating between different versions of 'Ob-la-di Ob-la-da'.

As for your 30 emusic track suggestions, Brian, I notice that My Morning Jacket's last two discs are now finally available on emusic. Given our discussion on Friday and Derek's glowing reviews of same, which seem to become more pronounced with every listen, or at least every beer, I'd say they're a solid use of your downloads. I'm still not quite over the fact that I failed to use my last 20 downloads before they refreshed yesterday, thus costing me at least three to five jazz albums, or 3/4 of an Apples in Stereo disc. Arrgh!

I was going to write my impression of the article as well, but Mike, you have summed it up damned well. While some of his points were well made, and did prompt introspection on my part on the nature and role of music, the overriding theme, not to mention the didactic tone in creating very tenuous conclusions, were bloody annoying. The man is a myopic goof. The history and importance of music cannot be summed up by comparing Beethoven (the way he is thought of today) to Kurt Cobain....the article moved quickly from the provocative to the puerile. Kyle, your thoughts?

So I have 30 songs left in my monthly e-music batch, and would welcome some suggestions.

I read the article that Kyle posted, and like Derek, I had to take some time to consider it before commenting. It started off with a notion that it is easy to accept - the fact that we are bombarded with music on a near-continual basis. Fair enough, although it's not something that particularly bothers me. My particular pet peeve is not being forced to listen to snippets of songs that I don't particularly like, but rather being forced to listen to the same song repeatedly, whether I like it or not. But from there, the author expands his rant into something much more fundamental - the primary theme seems to be that the lack of a shared world and spiritual view diminishes everything, and music is simply the example that he's holding up. In this, I disagree wholeheartedly. The only reason that there was a shared world view in Beethoven's time was because they lacked any means of communicating with all of those people in Africa, Asia and the Americas who had decidedly different perspectives. But why should the variety and complexity of philosophical and theological viewpoints (even including apathy and agnosticism) damage music? Given his premise that music evokes emotions directly, rather than through any process of rational thought or meaning, why does the fact that you and I appreciate the same piece of music from fundamentally different perspectives somehow cause that enjoyment to become decadent instead of transcendent? And I must also say that I don't agree with his contention that music and message don't work well together. I don't think Leonard Cohen would agree that his poetry of a "lower class" simply because he put it to music. Nor do I think that the Ostrich song is the best example of a Lou Reed lyric. I've always gravitated to the lyric content in music, and the ability to intertwine meaningful words with evocative melodies and harmonies is what satisfies me the most. I think that the author is indulging in the all-too-common bemoaning of the present state of society as compared with some illusory ideal past. He's only using music as an example so that he can show off his admitedly impressive knowledge of pop culture and musical history.

Mike, I had heard that about the Verve song. Do Mick and Keith really need the extra royalty dosh? Kinda sad for them because it definitely improves upon the original riff from the Stones song. I'd forgotten that Eminem had 're-interpretted' the McClaren lyrics, but methinks Malcolm stole his lyrics from Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed.

Derek, the muxtape link looks like it could be a really fun waste of time. Am presently enjoying this mix, which could well have been crafted by you or Brian, given the artists and track choices. Methinks I'll have to play around w/ it soon.

Could be a cool weekly feature where we take turns uploading a 10-song mix? Any takers?

Don't have much to comment on at the moment although I would like to put something down on that 8 year old article from Atlantic but I still need some time to get my head around it.

Regardless I think this site, Muxtape, is pretty cool and makes for some fun leisure time listening. Also love that retro 1995 Internet look. Who among us will be the first to post their own block rockin beats?

Thanks for stepping up to the challenge of presenting some seminal dance tracks, Kyle. I've listened to all of those that you cited, and I don't recall hearing any of them before. However, I have heard some Eminem because my son has a couple of his discs, and I've seen "Eight Mile". What struck me when I was listening to "Buffalo Gals" was the "round the outside" hook that Eminem later applied to trailer park girls. It's interesting to me how these hooks work - I haven't paid great attention to Eminem, but I've heard a fair bit playing in the background as my son listens to it, and that phrase has somehow stood out and registered with me. When I heard Buffalo Gals, it jumped right out again, and I was able to make the connection. I guess identifying hooks from other songs and re-integrating them in new ways is a central part of the dance music culture, but I wonder what it is that makes some lyrical or musical phrase work as a hook. I suppose if I understood that better, I'd be a better songwriter!

Another example I recently came across was "Bittersweet Symphony" by The Verve - the whole thing is built around a very catchy phrase on the strings which was apparently lifted from some obscure orchestrial version of "The Last Time" by the Rolling Stones. Despite the fact that the two songs don't sound at all alike, because the string bit was from a licensed rendition of the Stones song, the publishing company that owns the Rolling Stones catalog (ABKCO Music) was able to successfully sue for 100% of the publishing rights to the song. Apparently the Verve reached out to Jagger and Richards personally, but those two refused to get involved, and so they lost what was by far the biggest revenue-generating hit that the band ever released.

For a late Sunday afternoon or early Monday morning read, a case against the omnipresence of music in contemporary culture.

Not sure if it was growing up in close proximity to Ontario housing or the lack of an older sibling with a penchant for Ozzy, but my formative music discovery years (from age 8 to 14) were more about funk, top 40 pop, disco and early rap than hard rock/metal. Don't think it's worthwhile listing any disco tracks, for obvious reasons (I'm not doing cardio, dancing at a wedding, or doing lines off Truman Capote's ass at Studio 54). If I were to list the top 5 seminal hip-hop recordings of this period (1978-84), to the forementioned Sugar Hill Gang track, I'd add:

• "Buffalo Gals" - Malcolm Mclaren (1983)
• "Planet Rock" - Afrika Bambaataa (1982)
• "The Message" - Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five (1982)
• "Beat Box" - The Art of Noise (1984)

The Malcolm McLaren video was not only the first video I recall ever seeing on tv, but also was the first breakdancing I'd ever seen. The use of scratching, loops, and samples are pretty much the building blocks of all future hip hop tracks. The Afrika Bombaata and Art of Noise tracks owe more to Kraftwerk and 70s German synth/electronica than they do perhaps to the music coming out of the emerging urban (black, inner city) American music scene but again, the sampling, and in the case of the former, the emphasis on black consciousness, mark the significance of their contributions to this genre. Grandmaster Flash's 'The Message', on the other hand, continues the trend of bringing the diy, rhyming over beats live performances and cassette recordings of the northeastern US 'street' into the mainstream, or at least mainstream enough for a late pre-teen, early teen in Scarborough, ON to catch wind of it.

Hope you enjoy the clips and sorry for not posting sooner. Three back-to-back west coast business trips, followed by catchup and prep for a mini vacay next week has left me w/ little spare time for posts. Will try to be a little more active here. Thanks to Mike and Bri for picking up the slack.

When I was in those formative headbanger years, I was attending an American high school overseas. There was also a strong contingent of Southern rock bands that I didn't mention because they weren't my particular favorites. These included Lynyrd Skynyrd, Molly Hatchet, REO Speedwagon (yes, they were a hard rock band before they turned into a bubblegum pop band) and .38 Special. The other large music camp was the disco camp, which was into things like The Commodores, Earth Wind and Fire and the Bee Gees. As I recall, the first rap song to make it big came out at that time - "Rappers Delight" by the Sugarhill Gang. And as Brian has admitted to discounting the heavy metal genre, I must admit that I have been guilty of doing the same with the disco/dance/rap/house/ genre(s). So perhaps somebody who has been tracking aqnd appreciating that music over the years can come up with the top 5 albums of that genre...

Wow, what a moribund blog we have these days. Mike, thanks for your input. I was always more into sixties music as a kid, so the "rock" was never as "hard" (though I could put together a pretty good list of acid/psych rock records), but you couldn't live in the 70's without hearing a lot of big assed rock. The two (OK three) that stick with me as absolutely essential aren't on your list, so I'll add them in there. (1) Led Zeppelin 2 was the one that I went back to time and again, learned all of the riffs on, postured to, etc...and in a lesser way (2) Led Zeppelin 4. (3) the other one that got a lot of air time was Deep Purple's Machine Head, you know, with Smoke on the Water, Highway Star, Lazy, Space Truckin' (OK, I have to go home and download this one now)....great record. I would probably add Black Sabbath's Paranoid in there as a fourth.

Interestingly, these are all British bands, which I'd never really thought about before.

My choices for the best hard rock albums of all time would be different now than they were then, I expect, and given that I was deeply into the genre at the time, perhaps my teenaged choices would be more significant. Looking back, the albums that I was fondest of at the time were probably (roughly ordered by descending preference):
Led Zeppelin - Physical Graffiti
Pink Floyd - The Wall
Rush - 2112
Black Sabbath - Volume 4 or possibly Sabotage
Boston - Boston
Aerosmith - Toys in the Attic
Blue Oyster Cult - Some Enchanted Evening
Deep Purple - Made in Japan
Van Halen - Van Halen
Ted Nugent - Double Live Gonzo
AC/DC - Back in Black

As I grew older, some of these bands lost their appeal rapidly, while there are others that I can still listen to happily. Also, I discovered The Who rather late for some reason, so although I didn't listen to them in my early years, they became my favorite band in university. And although I did consider Pink Floyd to be hard rock in those days, I would not include them in that category now. If I had to list the top 5 today, I would go with:

Led Zeppelin - Physical Graffiti
The Who - Who's Next
Blue Oyster Cult - Some Enchanted Evening
Boston - Boston
Aerosmith - Toys in the Attic

By the way, I realize that I'm omitting some of the usual suspects - Jimi Hendrix and Cream for example. I'm deliberately skewing this list toward my own personal favorites, rather than the albums that I think were most significant.

A couple of other emusic pop recordings to check out are Venice is Sinking, a moody full blown pop band, and Throw Me the Statue, who offer more of a quirky lo fi approach, emphasis on lyrics and melody (whom I'm thinking of checking out tomorrow night at the El Mo).  Also, looking back at a month on at my recommendations from a few weeks ago, Headlights seems to be the one that is getting the most rotation chez DoylePod.  Pure effervescent pop of a very high quality....check out "Market Girl".

So Mike, what are your nominations for best hard rock / heavy metal albums of all time. Say, top five?

I cut my musical teeth on the "hard rock" of the 70's. At the top of my list was Led Zeppelin, with my favorite of their albums being Physical Graffiti. I was also into Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Aerosmith, AC/DC, Ted Nugent, Blue Oyster Cult and Rush to name a few. I expect that you are familiar with the releases of all of those bands. I was just getting into some newer hard rock such as Judas Priest when I moved to a new high school and fell in with a different group of friends. Under their influence, my tastes started to soften, so I never really became familiar with the next wave of heavy groups – Iron Maiden, Motley Crue, Metallica, etc. My older son is now listening to some of that stuff – his favorites seem to be the older groups. Specifically AC/DC and Kiss. I think that you’re right to classify this genre as puerile; the demographic to which it appeals is almost exclusively teenaged males. But I remember a few scattered scenes from my youthful days strolling down the street with friends while “Paranoid” or “Sweet Emotion” blared out of the speakers of the ridiculously large ghetto blasters that we used to drag around with us. My connection to that music at that time was probably more primal and powerful than any other musical connection I’ve experienced since.

Pretty quiet in the blog-o-sphere, boys. Stuart's laid up, Derek's MIA, everyone else is therefore (using the distributive property) urgently in need of a blog thread. Stu and Derek do too, using the communicative property.

So here it is.

I was scanning the Allmusic best of 07 list recently, and one of the numerous concerns expressed by readers was that Allmusic had ignored the "great" metal records of the year, focusing on softer pop, which undeniably is more in vogue these days. To which I thought, bloody right.

Partially this is me being 43 now and slowly losing my appreciation for LOUD, partially this is that I've always found metal (or heavy metal as it was once called) largely puerile, with few exceptions. I would say in my defense that I loved early period grunge, as well as a lot (though certainly not all) of punk. I would tend not to include these in a discussion of metal though.

So I'm throwing open the floor to the more open-minded among you to suggest great (heavy) metal records - current or classic - that I need to hear. Feel free to open up the discussion to include the more palatable 70's category of "hard rock", though I (smugly?) feel like I know most of those already.

Hey Mike, maybe you could look at doing "Roscoe", by Midlake - I know you like that album, and the song meets most of the criteria (relatively simple musically, features a harmony throughout), and is a fantastic song.  Not sure if is familiar enough to the Tech Rocks crowd though  :).  What do you think? 

My company has entered "Tech Rocks", the local battle of the bands for high tech companies. The rules stipulate that each band must play an original song, a Canadian song and a third song that is unconstrained. Based on previous experience with this contest, I believe that the song selection is crucial. I think that the ideal choices are familiar but somehow unusual or unexpected. I'd appreciate any suggestions that this group might have. Our band has a very solid drummer and a very capable lead guitarist, but also a couple of relatively inexperienced players - one on rhythm guitar player and one on bass. Two of us are doing the singing, and something with nice harmonies always goes over well.

Kyle - well done. I was a huge fan of the G/harvas at one point, probably saw them five times in a six month period. They always put on a great show....ah the early days of alt/grunge.

I've heard from our convalescing amigo Stuart, who has asked that I post the following question (the spelling mistakes are mine....:)):

"What 5 movies to rent while laid up. Turns out my local video store has a wide range of classics old and new . Anything goes S"

I will make one suggestion, a little known but I believe classic piece of mid-seventies cinema, Elia Kazan's (in his final turn as director) The Last Tycoon, well suited to lying about, given its languid pace, this is a gorgeously observed study of early Hollywood, based on Scott Fitzgerald's last, unfinished novel of the same name. A huge, star studded cast headed up by Rober DeNiro (long) before he started making a movie every six weeks in a wonderfully quiet performance as movie mogul Monroe Stahr.

For all you Gandharvas fans out there, and to commemorate today:

I'm always a sucker for a Radiohead cover so thanks for pointing me to Gillian Welch's take on 'Black Star', Mike. For those who haven't heard it, you can get it on emusic or check out the live clip on youtube.

Some of my favorite purchases and downloads from last year? What music fan could resist such an invitation? I don’t really have any theme or system to the music that I buy – I’m woefully ignorant of new artists, and so I rely on people like Brian to point me in the right direction (that’s one of the reasons that I was excited to join this blog). And the backlog of music that I expect I’d like but haven’t yet bought is so enormous that I don’t particularly focus on new music. Of the CDs I’ve recently bought, highlights would include Orphans by Tom Waits and Beauty and Crime by Suzanne Vega. I also bought We Shall Overcome by Bruce Springsteen last year and really enjoyed that. On the other hand, I bought Bone by Tim Booth (who was the vocalist in the band James), but it wasn’t as good as I’d hoped. Same great voice, but weaker songwriting. I’ve been a big Paul Simon fan for ages, and I bought his latest (Surprise). It was pretty good, I thought, with some nice lyrics, but it doesn’t match his best work. My downloading is almost entirely from emusic, which limits the field somewhat. Some of my favorites from there have been live albums - Near Truths and Hotel Rooms by Todd Snider, Karma to Burn by the Waterboys, Just an American Boy by Steve Earle and Live at the Bottom Line by Steve Forbert. I also really like Picaresque by the Decemberists and The Trials of Van Occupanther by Midlake (which was something Brian introduced me to). I’ve downloaded quite a lot of Janis Ian songs, some of which I like a lot, and others which don’t do much for me. I really like The Trumpet Child by Over the Rhine, which I’ve already mentioned once before. I also downloaded a cover of Radiohead’s Black Star by Gillian Welch and David Rawlings that I think is great.

A quick search of the metabeats blog for 2007 references yields no Do Make Say Think mention so you're the first. I didn't know they were still around....really liked their first two discs. Since it's available at emusic and is only 8 tracks, comes recommended by Brian, and has a great title, I'll have to pick it up.

New Destroyer disc out today....

Another great record from last year is/was Do Make Say Think's latest. I'm being lazy....did anybody peg it among their best of 07?

Hey Mike, any interest in rhyming off some of your favourite purchases/downloads from last year, since they will likely be pretty different from this incestuous bunch's?

Hey Stu, glad to hear you're re-visiting Mahler and enjoying it.    I don't know all of his symphonies, though I own recordings of many/most of them, but the ones I am drawn to are the 1st and the 5th (with the 6th coming next).    Incidentally, I do agree with you that he is a slow burn, and tries for many (many!) things in each of his symphonies.   If I said otherwise in the past, I must have been drunk.   

So, in the case of the 1st and 5th , my fondness is mostly for the grandness, the massive sweeping romanticism (which yes, could use a little reigning in at times), plus the integration of (what I've always assumed to be) traditional Austrian folk melodies into the slow and scherzo movements.   There are some pretty thrilling moments in both 1 and 5, so give them a try sometime if you haven't already....of course, it's Mahler, so allow appropriate time.    #1 isn't too long, but the fifth is more typically interminable at (I think) around 90 minutes.  

Derek, thoughts on the Big M?

Not Mahovlich.

i may have to eat my hat a little bit (once again ) brian.... I picked up a copy of mahlers 4th symphony as I was curious about there being a vocal component...(Rennie Fleming and Abbadio version)....am loving it....nothing like the typical Mahlerian everything and the kitchen sink about this symphony...very etherial, almost Sibelius like....do you know if there are any others in his file like this particular symphony?......
ps I am in to the hospital shortly and I cannot respond to blogs on my blackberry, but I can still read the posts....should I feel up for it, I will email (which i can do) to one of you yobs and perhaps you could clip and paste it for me...

I don't think artists ever did make money on the recordings - at least not most artists. I read an article on the Jayhawks at one point that made this claim - at that time, they had the biggest hit of their carreers with "Blue" and they were touring, but one of the band members commented that the roadies were making more money than they were. He said that all of the money that the record company had invested in creating and promoting their albums and videos had to be repaid from the band's share of the royalties before they would get any money from the recordings, and even with a big hit like "Blue", they couldn't forsee a time when that would happen. I heard a similar comment later on from one of the members of the Rheostatics (if memory serves). It was in response to a question about the impact of peer-to-peer downloading on his income, and he said that they didn't make any money from their recordings. They made money from playing shows.

I wonder if this is partly why the cost of concert tickets is so absurd now. I recall when I was in high school and even university, I could go to a major concert for a reasonable amount of money. The cost of an album was $12 or $13, and a concert ticket was 2-3 times as much. Now if you want to catch a major act, the cost of a ticket is 10x the cost of a CD or more. Maybe they're trying to recoup the cost of all that downloading with the concert tickets.

I cant see this monthly charge thing working for all of the reasons you all have mentioned.....in fact, I think its over for artists making money via album purchases in any form, at least for most artists, (perhaps Britney and the like will still add to their fortunes)... I think the future lies with alternate means of income, primarily touring.... This , may be a handicap to electronic bands and others more suited to the studio...

As we have pointed out in earlier blogs, many big bands have only a brief moment in the limelight, when they are young...Most bands (arguably) are focused not on saving money for your retirement, but , on the music itself, stardom, girls (or boys, whatever...), and having a good time, when they first start out, (and not necessarily in that order)..So......perhaps the future financial penalties won't affect things that much, in terms of emerging new young artists....

1) you still have the urges driving youth forward to create the music
2) you now have a wide market available online to have the artists get their message out
3) you still make decent money touring in an early career (at least enough that it seems like a lot to a typical teenager or early 20 something
4) you still get the girls, fame, party life

but it will mean you dont get to maintain the lifestyle for long because you dont have the serious money required to sustain it...

Mike, I knew you would fit right in. So all that being said, I think it's been a strange decade of music, in terms of pop history....I guess the major trend I'm hearing is the continuation and further development of lo-fi (which ties into fewer barriers to making music), and an even stronger return to melody and psych-pop and psych-folk music, often with an undercurrent of sixties song stylings.

And yes, I do fundamentally believe that pop (or folk-based rather than compositional) music is ephemeral. For me, if one is writing the history of music I think it gets a fairly brief chapter. Not to downplay its importance to us (obviously we adore the stuff) or its social power, which is where I think it is most meaningful.

Derek - where are you?

Kyle, re Pandora, you're right that I must have a US-based IP address at BMO. Strange indeed. And too bad for the rest of you, as it's a fantastic on-line service.

In terms of new (or newly discovered) music, I've found a few interesting items on emusic in recent weeks. On the indy-psych-folk front, I'm enjoying the Bo Iver disk (thanks Kyle), and also am liking Phoenix Foundation (from 06). More on the rock side, the Foundry Field Recordings, New Ruins (which Kyle - I think - put on a mix for me previously), The Whigs, and Maritime deserve a listen, and on the light side of pop, the Headlights, Liam Finn, and Oscar winner Glenn Hansard's record all sound worthwhile on the first couple of listens. On the jazz front, I unearthed a couple of great old George Wallington disks, plus a plethora of Joe Henderson (post Blue Note) which I'd never looked into before, and most intriguingly, a cool jazz fusion record by samba jazz guitarist Luiz Bonfa, who unexpectedly rocks out with a large group of fusion stars (Stanley Clarke, Randy Brecker, many others) on a 1973 record "Jacaranda". I guess I'm warming up to fusion, because I quite like this.

As to the role of the music critic, I've never spent too much time reading critic's reviews anyway. I like Abraham Lincoln's approach to reviewing, which was, "People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like". What I've always found more useful was a trusted source - somebody whose tastes I knew and respected who could point me in the right direction. I've had several such friends over the years, the most long-standing and prolific of which has been Brian. There is no question that the Internet makes it possible for such people to spread their advice more readily, but it also creates a real challenge in sorting out the good information from the bad (the good being those people with whom I generally agree, and the bad being everybody else).

As for the "next great thing", I don't see a problem there. There is a natural evolution that goes on all the time as artists inspire each other. You couldn't keep it static if you tried. The challenge from my perspective is to find the artists that are creating things that I like amidst the enormous volume of stuff that is out there. emusic.com is a great example - I've never heard of most of the bands there, and I don't have time to sample them all. I do believe that the big companies played a role in this with their enormous marketing budgets. They helped artists get exposure and find their audience, but their work was limited to a relatively small number of carefully chosen artists. And they won't go away - regardless of how technology empowers independent musicians to create and release music, it will still be profitable for companies with bigger budgets to create and promote pop stars.

I take umbrage at your suggestion that pop music is ephemeral. Going back to Kyle's point of the subjectivity of music, on what basis can you condemn such an enormous volume and variety of music? Within the banner of pop music there is stunning musicianship, deeply insightful commentary, innovative arrangement and production - and a whole lot of drivel, of course. But what makes music great? I have a friend who is into superb acoustic guitar playing, and who sends me links like this. Jaw-droppingly good playing, but I don't have any desire to sit and listen to a whole album of it. Is that superior in some fundamental way to "Don't Wait for Tom", which is the song that most recently really got me going? Some of this pop music is going to last for ever (or at least for as long as people are recording and saving music).

Finally, the value of the album. I think that a song in isolation is more limited than a song in the context of a larger work. Within the context of that larger work, the artist can explore musical and lyrical themes more effectively. It doesn't have to be an "album" of course, and I think that we'll see more experementation with form and structure in the future. And with that, I must go and cook dinner....

Mike - welcome to the blog! And look at you, already linking in web articles on your first post. That took Stuart and me seven years to learn.


Good articles on rev share and technology, and the shape shifting that's going on in the industry. Personally I think it's nonsense to think that the role of the music critic is on the wane; if anything, (to your point Kyle) with the dispersion of music that's happened with the veritable collapse and therefore influence of the traditional recording industry, and the availability of technology to record and distribute music, there is an enhanced role for someone to navigate you through all of the (inevitable) dreck. Let's not confuse the ability to post an opinion on the web with a compelling discussion of music's merits. If there is no value, then why the rise in popularity of Pitchfork. And let's face it, in the end the economics for this sort of endeavour justify themselves or they don't.

And in a way, this leads to my next point....it's interesting that we're all talking in negatives (ie what didn't happen this decade, what we don't see trend wise), as if that is a good thing. Playing the devil's advocate for the moment, where is the momentum to change music, move it forward, find the next great thing? And while I am as small a fan of traditional record company oligopolies as anybody you know, is there a case to be made that their tight-fisted control of the role of hitmaker helped pop music? They had programs to "develop" artists, push them for bigger and greater (mostly measured in sales, I grant you), and there was a holy grail (mostly measured in dollars) that successful artists could strive for. Many of these things are changing and will continue to change in the new world.

Keeping in mind that pop music is, in my view, a pretty ephemeral (read:minor) genre in any big scheme discussion of music (though we love it dearly), the question is, where are we headed? Is the impact of the collapsing music company infrastructure still playing out, and will it lead to better music, more excitement, through access on all fronts (to create, distribute, sample, buy), or will a "random" factor dominate and render the whole thing listless. I hear an element of this comment in all of your synopses of the decade so far, and crystal balls into the future.

This ties into the point about albums versus singles. Albums as an art form have only really existed since the fifties (and early on, serious albums were really only made in jazz music) and who's to say that it is a more exalted form of pop music? Surely with the breaking up of record labels there's an opportunity to re-consider the standard tried-and-ture packaging of songs as well? The next generation likely won't care as much, I can tell you that.

I'll lob this one out and write a bit more later.

Welcome, Mike. Believe it or not, your first of what I hope will be many posts already puts you at the top of the list of most frequent posters at this site. Well done!

I'm not sure if the Canadian songwriters association thought through their proposal thoroughly (3 points for alliteration). I saw one of its members being interviewed on CTV a few days ago and he seemed pretty vague about the mechanisms for distributing revenue based on what's being traded/downloaded online. I'm guessing the pool of money will be large enough, given the number of internet subscriptions across the country but I'm not sure they're able to adequately address the other questions you've raised. Also, would we have to add another $5-10 per month to compensate artists from other countries? Would Sympatico/Rogers/Shaw etc. customers who don't download music be willing to fork out another $60+ annually for services they don't use?
Will be interesting to see if this proposal goes anywhere...I suspect it will die a quiet death, at least for the next year or so.

As for the trend towards single downloads...yeah I'm seeing that happening as well. I've kind of resisted it myself (90 emusic monthly downloads--older, grandfathered plan--makes it easy for me to just take the whole album) but cherry picking songs here and there seems to be the order of the day. I haven't noticed a shift on the part of artists to abandon the album concept, at least not yet, or not for the bands to whom I listen. But it may be coming....

I'm sensing you think this is a bad thing, Mike, and I agree. Even though I enjoy and use the shuffle feature, especially when on the go, there's nothing more satisfying than relaxing at home and listening to an album in its entirely. Often the in-between, non-hit tracks are more interesting than the big singles. With a lot of the albums from emusic, I don't even know what songs are the 'hits' until 3 or 4 listens. Case in point, the Bon Iver disc, which I heard the first time yesterday while reading the paper. Reminiscent of Sparklehorse and Baxter Drury, perhaps with a simpler, traditional folk-rock arrangement, each new track offers variations on a dreamy, intimate space, with gentle guitar strumming, sweet falsetto harmonies, the odd violin serving as constants. While I did sample a few tracks before getting the whole thing, I don't think a few tracks on their own would have been as enjoyable.

Another recently available disc on emusic, that I think I mentioned in a previous post, is Atlas Sound's Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel , which I previewed at Soundscapes on Friday. For those of you who like Panda Bear, this should scratch you where you itch.

Hello all. My good friend and perennial hockey pool adversary Brian invited me to join this group, and I’m delighted to be here. Kyle submitted a one-liner last week about the songwriter’s association proposal of a monthly music fee which I think bears further discussion – and which ties into the other theme of just-what-is-the-personality-of-the-decade. I think that one of the big trends in music at the turn of the century (“the aughts”?) is the trend away from album-oriented music consumption to singles-oriented music consumption. With so many people listening to music on mp3 players in shuffle mode, I think the notion of the album is in danger of disappearing. But back to the proposed fee - I currently pay $10 per month on emusic for 40 songs, which I consider to be good value. But I’m not willing to pay $1 per song in general – that strikes me as too much. $5 per month for all you can eat seems too little; how can that approach generate enough money to sufficiently compensate everyone involved? And which artists will be compensated? Will this cover only Canadian artists, with other additional fees later imposed for international artists? How about indie bands – will their music be tracked and compensated from the same pool of funds? The existing system for calculating and sharing revenues is pretty complicated, and not entirely equitable. It should be possible to create something simpler and fairer online, but it will probably also be hard to monitor and maintain it because the technology changes so rapidly.

An interesting essay that I came across last night, arguing for the end of pop music critics. Much food for thought. I actually should get some work done today so I'll add my comments next week but thought it would be an interesting read for you all since the essay touches on what we do here (blogging about music) and what we like to do elsewhere (read music reviews).

i agree with stuart agreeing with me. had also forgotten about the trend for bands like the white stripes and led zeppelin to return to rootsier fare, at least in collaboration w/ acclaimed country singers from years gone by (in the case of the loretta lynn project) and the present (allison kraus album). also hadn't considered the caribou disc, which was one of my faves from last year. hopefully no one tries to bandy about terms like 'folktronica'.

also, in an effort to spur more activity/posting here, i've decided to try to include regular (daily may be too much of a promise) links to free music. today's freebie is a complilation from the adult-cartoon network 'adult swim', featuring bands like tv on the radio, broken social scene, adobi seksu and (egads) les savy fav.

I agree w Kyle that its a little difficult and maybe "what its not" helps... I also think it is very difficult to describe a style or intellectual movement or direction, which one is actually in it...I find you really need to distence yourself from something to see it clearly, so this discussion is perhaps premature, however that said , I see there is a return to folk influences and analogue like realness in music (of course I may be reading "the rest is noise" to much) , but if you look at that whole folk sych movement and even Carabou returning to natural sounds and instrumentation... Fiest with a world music type of sound....also the simple rock realness of the strokes, the white stripes going back to rural blues influences, led zepplin returning to critical aclaim...etc,...

btw...interesting idea from the songwriter's association of canada on a monthly music fee....i'm on board....

first of all, how is it that you are listening to pandora? are RBC's server's located in the US? has a canadian version of the site been created (if so, pandora.ca is not the correct url, as it leads to an online fiction store)? when i try to connect to their site, i get this message.

as to your questions, hard to say how i'd define this decade, or even what i'd call it. the 'zeros' is slightly preferable to the 'two thousands', but both don't seem a little awkward. what's really defined the decade for me is the increasing number of releases each year, in an expanding number of genres and sub-genres, that make it extremely difficult to identify a broad trend. the popular music scene is diversifying more each week, it seems. there have been cross-over artists, as there always are, Feist and Kanye West are two that come to mind for this decade, but these seem fewer than in the past.

maybe the best way to proceed is to figure out what this decade definitely isn't about and that is 'modern rock' or any of the 'grunge'-like or -lite sound that typified the 1990s. musical acts that came to prominence during the last decade have forged a new sound with their releases of the last 8 years, either by embracing electronic sampling and collage (radiohead, the flaming lips) or by adopting a more acoustic singer-songwriting direction (beck). other than coldplay, i can't think of a really big name alt rock band of this decade, and i'd say they've pretty much faded from view over the last couple of years. does anybody give a shit about the red hot chili peppers or the latest chris cornell or billy corgan side project? hard to even find in in the mini-story ap/reuters section of arts pages these days (though to be fair, they may be getting bumped by important updates on the downward trajections of ladies winehouse and spears).

the only trends i'm noticing in my own music purchases over the last couple of years are:

-25% hip hop and electronica
-25% jazz and classical
-25% folk-influenced acoustic guitar based music
-25% all other electric guitar indie music

but i'm not sure that i'd be willing to extrapolate a trend from my own experiences.

as for your earlier question regarding 2008 releases, i've been enjoying:

-There Will Be Blood soundtrack
-Adele - 19 - bit too much of the same throughout but strong arrangements, vocals
-Dengue Fever - Venus on Earth - kind of growing on me

Has anybody purchased the new British Sea Power album? If so, is it worthy of the critical praise?

Update [2:50pm] For all you emusic subscribers out there, they have a pretty good feature on some of the albums that were released yesterday (February 19th), with some interesting sounding bands to whom I've yet to listen. Downloaded the Raveonettes but will have to wait until March and my download refresh to get the others. Atlas Sound, No Kids, Ben Benjamin, Pete & the Pirates, Headlights, and Bon Iver contain some interesting tracks.

And another thought, likely to spark an equal amount of activity:

It's 2008 now, less than two years from the end of the decade and the beginning of the next one. This one has gone by especially quickly, for me.

Musically we tend to group styles and memories into decades - one thinks of the 90's very differently from the 80's, for example - and the continuum of time is thus organized into discrete, framed periods. Partially this is due to writers, critics, historians, etc, partially this is just the way the human brain works.

And so my questions are these - how will we look back at the muic of the "0's" the "noughts"? How will it be summarized? What will be its top few defining musical moments? And who will emerge to lead music into the 10's?

As an aside, I'm listening to Pandora (I'm sure you all know this on-line "music genome" site, but if you don't it is amazing for programming music while you work...www.pandora.com), and I'm running a Hayden mix in honour of my question...since he's a guy who has straddled the last two decades, though still sounds very "90's" to me (which means what?). Anyway, I'm getting a nice mix of mid-late 90's sounds, and loving it in a largely nostalgiac way.

Hi!

Time for a new blog trail: What's been purchased or downloaded since 08 kicked off that you like or think you might like?

In my opinion it's a pretty consistent record.....I think the problem with music like this, so chock full of ideas - rhythmic, harmonic, structural, etc - is that the listener hits saturation pretty quickly. It's like, stop fucking around and play a normal beat, OK? And does each song have to have eighteen bloody separate parts!! For my two cents, I (think) I like the second half of the record more than the first. But each song is so epic in terms of pop craftsmanship that it's hard to say, I also find it hard to single out a particular number as a standout. It's an obvious comparison, but there's a lot of XTC in here. Just listened to songs 7 and 8 ("In Context" and "A Gap has Appeared") and they are both very strong.

On my top 10 albums of 2006 list I posted the following on this blog:

"Field Music - self-titled - another disc from 2005 that I came late to. Really the only true indie pop record that appears on my list. Fans of the Shins, High Llamas, Apples in Stero should give them a spin."

I purchased Field Music's first album on CD and then in short succession I went out and downloaded their "Tones of Town" album from e-music early in 2007 and perhaps it's just that they are a band that from song to song tends to keep things pretty similar I never did get in to their sophomore release with any great conviction. I just gave the record another spin tonight and granted tracks 1, 2 and 3 are pretty brilliant but the rest of the album falls off rather quickly for me after that early zenith.

Also, important Monday web-browsing here.

Never listened to their 2007 release. Downloaded and enjoyed their 2006 collection of b-sides but never thought to pick up their latest. An oversight on my part?

On a related note, did anyone buy The Field's much-ballyhooed 'From Here We Go Sublime'?

Hey did anyone mention Field Music in their best of 07?  I've been listening to it for a couple of days ("Tones of Town") and it is outstanding.

thanks for the input on peterson... I too have Night Train and have not listened to it for a while... i will dust it off... seems like we are all sort of on the same page here...
thnaks for the tiop on Andrew Bird.. I picked up his album "the mysterious production of eggs"
back a few years ago... it was critically raved about and it sounded interesting, but after repeated listens it just never really clicked home...since then I have steered clear of him, but I just sampled this new album and it sounded pretty good so i will pick it up...I wonder how many times I have stayed away from a band just because one album ( the first one I bought)never worked out for me, while they may have done 3 more after that one that I might have loved if I had tried them...

While equally unfamiliar with the work of Oscar Peterson, allow me to second the recommendation for downloading the Andrew Bird disc. Think I put 'Fiery Crash' on many a mixed disc last year and find that the songs on the album as a whole suit an evening of quiet reading, contemplation, and scotch consumption.

Like the two of you I've never had a great connection with Oscar Peterson, despite my inordinate fondness for jazz piano. For me the reasons are largely, but not entirely, around style; Peterson's remarkably light-fingered playing, inspired primarily by be-bop in terms of harmonic structuring, is not really in my wheelhouse - my stable of fave piano players starts with Bill Evans (and there couldn't be two more different players). OP was more from the Art Tatum school of flashy "look-at-me" stylists. And he was certainly incredibly skilled. Some would say the best ever.

So style is a big part of it, but not all. Because arguably some of my favourite pianists, Bud Powell for ex, come from the same school. But Bud Powell has an emotional connection with me that OP never has. He is a very different player, but he does have the same full-of-flourishes approach. Perhaps, as Derek says, it has to do with Bud being one of the all-time romantic jazz self-destructers which makes each note seem more imbued with pathos and melancholia. Whereas OP was seting aside the royalties for a bigger swimming pool. Yes, I may be that superficial, but I hope not.

I have a number of really nice recordings on which his trio is backing up a jazz great (Stan Getz, and Anita O'Day come to mind), and I don't think I'm taking any risks when I say that the OP trio was one of the great backing bands of all time. In terms of recording session as a leader, I only have a couple, and the better of them is "Night Train" from 1962. Not in the regular rotation though....probably overdue for a listen.

The sad truth is I can't really comment on whether I think Oscar Peterson deserves to be up there in the pantheon or not because I am woefully unacquainted with his body of work. I'm thinking that I haven't given his music the time it deserves for the following reasons:

1) He was Canadian. How easy it often it is to take for granted, at least where jazz is concerned, those that are in our own backyard. I'm sure if he was an American I would have at least a half dozen of his CDs in my collection.

2) I might be wrong on this count but I always had the feeling that Oscar was a man who played the standards and was not known for his own inspired jazz creations. Please set me straight if this isn't the case. As such my interest in him, an interpreter as opposed to an innovator, was significantly lessened.

3) Crazily enough Oscar led, what by jazz standards was, a pretty normal, controversy free life. And this actually makes him less appealing in a bizarre sort of way. Not as an individual because I've always enjoyed listening to the man speak but as an artist I feel the need to discover, it does somehow diminish the appeal.

Anyway if anyone has a particular album to recommend I'm ready to have my eyes and ears opened.

By the way Stuart if you're looking for a beautiful song from 2007 that falls right in the Kozelek/Red House Painters wheelhouse check out "Scythian Empires" on Andrew Bird's "Armchair Apocrypha" from last year. I've always been a fan of many of the man's songs but have yet to commit to an album but after hearing this I think it's time. It is available on e-music for those who subscribe.