apologies for the spelling this time , see below, but I think i prefer the name metabeast, what do you "louts" think. Clearly there is a greater chance girls will stumble onto the site with that name ......

Ivebeen checking out the picks from you lout from the last few weeks shown on metabeast and it occurs to me that seeing a new track for the first time as a youtube video is quite different from only hearing the audio. Not sure this is a good thing as it is a distraction from the music itself....
ok so I should just get over this, but still.....

In the spirit of Brian , I will now nominate a lesser known act that I think ranks up there.
Cody Chestnut- the headphone masterpiece This track is typical of about 1/4 of the album.. it ranges from R&B like( the artist formerly known as)Prince to hip hop with the lyrics ranging from love songs to very humourous takes on relationships to the very profane....the range is great. Derek will know one track that is on the soundtrack to You me and Everyone we know by Miranda July which would make my top 10 movies of the decade, but I digress ..Definately the cd is one of my top R&B / rap type albums....

Continuing with the endless saga/slow steady stream of decade faves, two more gem tracks for me are:

The Streets - Well Be In

Sweet little story, nice looped beat, and especially love the invocation of a documentary observation about human mating cues in the chorus.



Midlake - Roscoe

Everything I like about old America and Fleetwood Mac albums in one song.

not surprising....tramps like bruce...

sorry brian, i checked with bruce and he is too busy to accomdate us...

When i first looked through that list I thought it looked like a pretentious self laudatory music scholar walk through critically acclaimed americanna music ...until i realised that this is exactly the sort of music that i love and listen too.....

Pretty great list. I note the regular inclusion of the fave band of my youth The Byrds. Bruce and I should chat over a beer sometime. Stuart, maybe he could come out to a CD club?

On a new topic - a friend of mine sent me a link to an interesting list of songs. These are songs that Bruce Springsteen hand selected as the "walk-in" music for his latest concert tour. It's a list of 250 or so songs covering a large number of different rock, folk and blues artists. It includes lots of songs that I know, and more enticingly, lots of songs that I don't.

Since you ask, Brian:

Yes, my brother did give me KoB many years ago, and no, I didn't like it very much. At the risk of incurring the derision of all of my fellow metaBeaters, I will admit that I still don't find it compelling. I did read the article, and it was interesting - I didn't know anything about the history of jazz improvisation, and the inflection point that Miles and the boys caused, or at least exemplified with this record. But that is the whole problem with jazz from my perspective – to me it's an intellectual exercise rather than an emotional response. I can't really enjoy a solo just because I know that it represents a particularly clever application of a mixolydian mode. I find that I can't really connect with a piece of music if it is too freely structured. I don't want every song to have a “verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus” structure, but I have difficulty with the “establish a loose theme - wander off and jam as the mood takes you - briefly revisit the theme” approach. It all starts sounding the same to me. Part of the issue is that I'm not a huge fan of instrumental music to begin with. I don't like really long extended jams in rock music either. Nonetheless, having read the article, I did give KoB another listen to see if my newly enhanced knowledge of the history of jazz would help make me a convert. It didn't.

Mo' KoB. Plus, I saw an ad for this book in the Sunday paper. Perhaps something you could gift to Mr. Gaines, Bri.

Thanks Kyle. Kind of Blue, and the theory behind it, is something I've always found fascinating. It's not completely removed from the (generally much reviled) Schoenberg twelve-tone system of composition. I have a bunch of George Russell records, and while they are more difficult listens than KoB (almost all jazz is) they are very interesting, and come alive with careful listens. Honestly (it's a bit of an illness of mine) I get excited just reading about that music. Not excited excited, you know....just...never mind.

Mike, not to put you on the spot, but (and I appreciate that you are not a jazz fan) I recall you many years ago describing KoB as "mindless jamming", when your brother Brian foisted it upon you. Have you warmed up to it at all over the years? If no, will this article convince you to give 'er another try? (I think I know the answer to that one....:) )

Your Monday morning read: Kind of Blue.

That was so disappointing when you opened up the album, expecting to find some lyrics or pictures on the inner sleeve, and ended up with a white sleeve with clear plastic middle. Made me kind of hate the artist/band just a teensy little bit. I always used to like to buy those music mags with song lyrics so maybe I was just fixated on knowing what the artists were singing about.

You raise a good point about digital content and the fact that most of what would likely be compelling in a digital album--artist info, artwork, videos--is already widely available at the click of a mouse or the tap of a touch pad on a smart phone. Will be interesting to see what they come up with.

As for your emusic frustrations, Bri, I hear you. Emusic has been bad about surreptiously dropping previously downloaded stuff or even pretending they never offered them in the first place. This happened recently with the Dirty Projectors album, which i grabbed in early July but is now 'No longer available in my country (Canada)'. With the first Ladytron and Jose Gonzales albums, they don't even acknowledge that they ever sold them to me. Almost makes me want to cancel the service until I remember that I'm still getting approximately 7 albums per month from them for an average of $3 a pop.

I'll be surprised if the new digital album concept takes off. While it is true that downloading a track or an album offers less tactile pleasure than the old vinyl records did, the on-line experience is actually much richer and deeper. As I listen to a newly-downloaded album, I can easily access the band's bio, reviews of this and all previous releases, song lyrics, album artwork and anything else that is posted on the web. Any package that they put together is going to be a subset of all of that - probably nicely formatted and heavy on graphics, but all of that content will be posted and available for viewing very rapidly. Unless they find ways to protect it all, which will require cumbersome and irritating security devices that will raise the ire of music fans yet again.

I do remember the vinyl album experience fondly though. Whenever I bought a new record, there was always that moment of anticipation - would the inner sleeve be full of lyrics, photos and other interesting bits - or would it be a disappointing plain anti-static sleeve?

Well, admittedly, it's just possible that I got a bit edgy when Stu suggested I had to opine on why his choices weren't on my list.

Kyle, it's early, but I fear you have an insurmountable lead in the Wittiest Blogger Award again this year. Nice job on the levity.

Re digi albums, I'm much less troubled by it then I am by digi books...it's a far more obvious fit, for one. In my case, I'm about 95% digital these days anyway, and wouldn't know at this point whether I was buying "real" releases or not. In terms of rights, that's a whole different issue. For example, emusic has started eliminating some music that I purchased from the site a couple of years ago, so that if I haven't stored them all permanently (mea culpa), I can't go and download them again for free....which is one of the attractive features of the site. I have yet to figure out why they've eliminated the music, perhaps a break with the label in question.

OK, that's not really a rights issue, it's just annoying.

On another non-list related topic, but one I think I referenced a few weeks ago, what do you think about the idea of a digital album? Compelling or not really worth the extra dosh if you can't really touch or hold it in the same way as a real album or cd?

My concern, which extends to ebooks--especially in light of the recent controversy of the Amazon Kindle deleting content it no longer thinks you should have--is less about the attractiveness of the product offering than about the issue of who actually 'owns' the music once it has been bought. In the past, this has always been the consumer, more or less. There have always been copyright restrictions but no retailer has ever walked into my house and grabbed an album, claiming that I no longer owned it. Digital downloads make this intrusion possible. Just wondering if we're heading in that direction.

stuart, stop posting choices that don't speak to brian! though i must say, i'm simultaneously awed and disappointed by your blow the whole wad in one shebang (self-referential aside question: is this a mixed metaphor?) approach. impressed that you got all this out ahead of others, so you don't come across as a copycat later on but also wondering how you're going to make future posts relevant.

advance warning: there's a good chance radiohead and arcade fire will appear on my list as well, though i'll save their inclusion and rankings until the very end to limit the eye-rolling to one read.

also, i just googled eastern armenian mutes and stuart's post is the number one result. should it strike the fancy of any other human being on the planet to string these three words together and type them into a search engine, they will be brought to our website. well done, mr. watson.

Yes yes yess!!!

well the arcade fire will be top 5 , but I am actually choosing the chick corea box set of his IS Sessions sung by eastern armenian mutes.....including alternate versions....