Tunesday

[MasterCylinder]

Since I got this new car with XM radio, I have not been spinning any CeeDees.

But, I'm still interested in what you are discovering/spinning out there.

BTW, I have found some very good XM stations.......my most recent favorite is Channel 72......its called BEYOND JAZZ.......they use the "F" word.............fusion.

[nobody]

Went on a litle vinyl buying splurge...


Ryan Adams & the Cardinals - Cold Roses

My favorite of his that I've heard since Heartbreaker. Mostly mid-tempo country influenced rock stuff that is his forte. Could maybe use a bit more variation over the course of two records, but some really good stuff in there. Beautiful embossed cover as well and great sound on the vinyl, although there is some noise that pops up on the second record.


Gorillaz - Demon Days

The first time I heard this, I liked it but it didn't really have the singles that jumped out at me the way a couple tracks on the debut did. Still, this one seems like more of a grower. The more I listen, the more I wanna listen. It's darker and more angular, more rock oriented. Another excellent vinyl job too, great dynamic sound with plenty of bass and a great gatefold cover. Actually, considerig the noise problem on the Ryan Adams, I'll give it my vote as the better presssing of the two.


Prefuse 73 - Reading the Books

EP of Prefuse remixing tunes from the Books, and it works really well. If you like the sounds the Books use but wish they'd put those sounds to use in more traditional song formats, Prefuse 73 obliges by putting abeat to the chaos.


Nine Inch Nails - With Teeth

Sort of a return to form of sorts. Trent had begun droning on a bit much of late and forgetting to make actual songs. He tightens things up here. I've seen a bunch of reviews talking about this as the Nine Inch Nail pop album, talking about how he has never sounded poppier and such. I'm guessing those reviewers weren't listening when Pretty Hate Machine came out. Pretty Hate Machine is still my favorite, but this is his best in some time to my ears. Another nicely done 2 LP set.


The Bravey

This one seems to be getting mixed reviews. Some like its energy and some think its too derrivitive. Well, I'm a fan. I think its funny that the same people who think the Bravery are crap are still singing the praises of Franz Ferdinand and The Killers and so many other blatant 80s throw backs. To me, the Bravery are no worse about cribbing from the past, and they bring an energy that seems sometimes missing from some others. If you like the retro 80s thing, I'd think this would sound good to ya. IT's priced low too, only 10 bucks for the vinyl where I picked it up.



I also picked up a 12" single of Thievery Corporation's Richest Man in Babylon since I saw it for 2 bucks. It has the album version, along with an extended mix and a really interesting acoustic version that goers far to reveal the quality song that lies under the electronics.

[Mike]

Maximo Park - A Certain Trigger, a debut from the recent crop of UK indie/80s/punk bands around. This is high up on my listening pile at the moment, more punky than a lot of the new wave sounding stuff from similar bands.

Micah P Hinson - The Baby and the Satellite, latest release from Micah which I read there are a few fans round here. I don't think this is as strong as 'The Gospel' but it's early days yet.

Emilana Torrini - Fisherman's Woman, you might recognise the name she is the woman who sang the haunting Gollums Song from LOTR (which to my mind should have won an award not the Annie Lennox song) but on here she is very Bjorkish sounding with gentle folk sounds - think Nick Drake.

British Sea Power - Open Season, I think I've listened to this at least once a week since I picked it up, defintely in my top five for 2005.

Missy Higgins - The Sound Of White, In a similar vein to Emiliana but with one or two upbeat tracks, nice production too. One reviewer on Amazon says she sounds like Dick Van Dyke but I can't agree I think she has a great voice.

Bedouin Soundclash - Sounding A Mosaic. Think Marley meets The Police with great vocals and sound. It must be one of the best sounding albums I've picked up recently.

Others include Kaiserchiefs, Gorillaz, LCD Soundsystem, Radio 4, Bloc Party and...

Finally a suprise package from Slosh, his mid-summer mix. This is right up my street featuring lots of my favorite bands and sounds and a few I haven't heard before. Sometimes when I get a comp I'll cherry pick tracks to add to one of my own comps but this is too good to break up it's staying intact, thanks Sloshy

Cheers
Mike

[Troy]

I've been spinning a lot of new stuff received from posting reviews at a different site. I swear, post a bad review and bands send you their bad albums wanting bad reviews too. It's the damndedst thing . . .

Nah, some are good, actually. Well . . . a few . . .

Scott Jacks- You Should Know Me By Now. Imagine Brian Wilson if Todd Rundgren had a proghead love-child. Singer-songwritery. Comparable to Kevin Gilbert on many levels. Quite excellent.

Little Atlas- Wanderlust. Boring, but competant Rush copycats.

Carl Hupp Project- Hyperstatue. Stunningly boring and safe drummer based fusion. As interesting as the name of the band. A real snore.

Trance Lucid- The Colors of Darkness. Joe Satriani-like guitar based instrurock. Dark and moody. Similar to Marring's "Thonk" as well. Very good, but too short (25 minutes)

Frogg Cafe. Hybrid of Frank Zappa and Kansas sounds. Suffers from bad production and uninteresting writing.

Blueshift- Not the Future I ordered. From BarryL. I liked it, but need to play it more. The singer sounds too much like Jon Anderson.

Others:
Gak Omek- DIY mostly MIDI one man bad EP. Weird marches from other planets.
Grandaddy- Sumday. Stil love it, looking fwd to the next album.
Elton John- Caribou. Laugh all you want. "I've seen the Saucers" is totally cool.
Kino- Picture. My favorite 2005 release so far.
Musical Mayhem Vols 2 and 4. Mmmmmm, I am a retard.
The Yes Album. Again and again it goes around.
The Mermen- Amazing California . . . Brilliant, entirely genre-busting gem of a CD.
Echolyn- Cowboy Poems Free. More melodic than their first album. Some really great moments.
Frank Zappa- Sheik Yerbouti. 5 stars.
Calexico- Feast of Wire. Si, es muy bueno.

[newtrix1]

U2 - War
Neil Young - Freedom
Elton John - Honky Chateau
Beatles - White Album
White Stripes - Elephant
Sufjan Stevens - Illinois
Jurassic 5 - Power in Numbers


Comps:
mid-Summer - Slosh (thanks!)

[dean_martin]

At the risk of ridicule, here are some of my favorite songs of a couple of weeks now from a comp I call Outlaw Country - Various Scoundrels & Outcasts:

Waylon and Willie - Good Hearted Woman (Live)
Waylon and Willie - Luchenbach, TX
Willie Nelson - Red Headed Stranger Medley (Live)
Willie Nelson - Me and Paul - I can't get enough of this song
Waylon Jennings - Old Five and Dimers Like Me - a little slow for heavy play, but a great song
Waylon Jennings - Honky Tonk Heroes - a good sing-a-long if you're in the mood
Waylon Jennings - You Asked Me To - great country bounce
Billy Joe Shaver - Ride Me Down Easy - just discovered this great songwriter
Kris Kristofferson - Help Me Make it through the Night, Loving Her Was Easier and a couple of sappier unmentionables
Johnny Cash - Boy Named Sue (Live) and Orange Blossom Special

Each of these songs should be on the juke box at your local Waffle House.

[audiobill]

Stabbing Westward -- Whither Blister Burn and Peel & Darkest Days

Ugly Casanova -- Sharpen Your Teeth

Ed Harcourt -- Here Be Monsters

Bebel Gilberto -- Tantotempo

Hayden -- Live at Convocation Hall

The Jayhawks -- Hollywood Town Hall

Guided By Voices -- Do the Collapse

Galaxy 500 -- Today

Idlewild -- 100 Broken Windows

Giant Sand -- Chore of Enchantment

The The -- Soul Mining

Teenage Fanclub -- Grand Prix

Suede -- Headmusic

Kanye West -- The College Dropout

Tom Waits -- Rain Dogs

54-40 -- Radio Love Songs (singles)

The Boo Radleys -- Kingsize

Boards of Canada -- Music has the Right to Children

Richard Buckner -- The Hill


All-in-all a very satisfying week in music.

What an amazing summer (hot and sunny) we're having here.

Cheers,

Bill

[Stone]

Since I got this new car with XM radio, I have not been spinning any CeeDees.

But, I'm still interested in what you are discovering/spinning out there.

BTW, I have found some very good XM stations.......my most recent favorite is Channel 72......its called BEYOND JAZZ.......they use the "F" word.............fusion.

I have XM also, and I listen mostly to XMU and my latest favorite is FRED (channel 44 IIRC), which plays mostly older alternative/indie stuff.

I listened some to XM radio this week, some odds and ends, and this outstanding comp, put together by Mike Mills of R.E.M. (for Uncut magazine):

1. Green On Red - The Drifter
2. Big Star - Thirteen (live)
3. The Blasters - American Music (live)
4. The Jayhawks - Two Angels
5. Dream Syndicate - Medicine Show
6. The Replacements - I Will Dare
7. The Embarrassment - Death Travels West
8. Soul Asylum - Closer to the Stars
9. Pylon - Crazy
10. The Long Ryders - And She Rides
11. Miracle Legion - You're My Blessing
12. Love Tractor - Til Morning Comes
13. Jason & the Scorchers - Absolutely Sweet Marie (live)
14. R.E.M. - Boy In the Well (live)

[Dave_G]

Kino - Picture. A prog supergroup. Has not "hit" me yet but I hope it will. I remember when Pallas's "The Cross and the Crucible" hit me, after maybe 10-ish listens. Hoping that happens with this cd.

I made a Kansas komp with Audiovisions and Monolith as the sources, man some of those doggoned toons can hit ya.

Steve Hackett - Live Archive. 4 discs. Great live Hackett/Genesis stuff. Want the 5th cd that is available + the Nearfest set too. Ol Steve is pretty good, ya know.

Rick Wakeman - Return to the Centre of the Earth. I love this disc. It's chock full of orchestra/choir/Wakeman keys/narration by a British dude = a killer disc at least for my goofy ass preferences.

Kaipa - Mindrevolutions. If you like TFK you will like this stuff.

Porcupine Tree - the Sky Moves Sideways. New 2 cd version. I like this band.

Jethro Tull - Dot Com. A weird Tull release but I like it. Kinda sides 3 and 4 of Roots to Branches but not really.

Camel - A Nod and a Wink. This music can make me weep at times.

Wall of Voodoo - Dark Continent. Absolutely a must have album.

Regards,

Dave

[ForeverAutumn]

Hey Dave. Good to see you posting here on a regular basis again.

[Slosh]

Finally a suprise package from Slosh, his mid-summer mix. This is right up my street featuring lots of my favorite bands and sounds and a few I haven't heard before. Sometimes when I get a comp I'll cherry pick tracks to add to one of my own comps but this is too good to break up it's staying intact, thanks Sloshy

Cheers
Mike

Wow! Thanks Mike. Glad you like it. And just when I was thinking everyone thought my comps had the suck

Comps:
mid-Summer - Slosh (thanks!)

Rick (welcome!)

I'm leaving for vacation, err, um, holiday. Looks like I won't miss much when I'm gone.

[MindGoneHaywire]

Some new stuff--I like the Redwalls album quite a bit. There are a couple of songs that made me cringe a bit, but I like where they're coming from & they bring something to sounding like the Band...and after one listen I think I might like what they do better. But then I've never bought that the Band are or were supposed to be legends, or something. The Redwalls are derivative & (according to a friend who saw them the other night) super-young, but as I've said many times, I'd rather listen to something unoriginal that I like than something original than I don't.

Checking out some OLD recordings from a box set that a friend lent me...a more comprehensive kind of Harry Smith folk music anthology. It's called American Pop--An Audio History: From Minstrel to Mojo, 9 discs, with recordings going back to the 1890s. Lots of politically incorrect & very interesting stuff; and it goes up through jazz & stuff. Lots of stuff I'd never listen to often but like to hear to know it exists & try to figure out what I have heard that draws on the stuff; but there's plenty of stuff on here I do like quite a bit. This has kept me from getting to a few box sets that landed here recently--6 discs' worth of the reissue of Jeff Wayne's War Of The Worlds, and a 3-CD live Yes set. Gee, I can't wait to dig into these, huh? Actually I will try to give some of the earlier Yes stuff a spin. Whether or not I'll be successful in that quest is open for debate. But I do like to at least give a listen to this sort of thing every once in awhile so that when I talk about how much I dislike it I can at least know that I've accumulated the information necessary to make that determination. That said, I didn't bother with any of the Eagles & solo Eagles recs that have passed through here recently. That I don't need to listen to.

Decent soundtrack to a movie called Happy Endings, Calexico & Maggie Gyllenhaal, Black Heart Procession...pretty good. The Iggy Pop Anthology, great great great. New Juliana Hatfield album sounded pretty good, as did a compilation called Hearing Is Believing, featuring the work of Jack Nitzsche. Still trying to get something out of the Ry Cooder album, no luck yet. Interesting idea, a concept album about the neighborhood that was razed to build Dodger Stadium, but it hasn't hit me yet, really. One that sounded better on first listen was the Patterson Hood solo album, the guy from Drive-By Truckers. Anyone see their live DVD from the 40 Watt Club? Damn, they're good. The new live X album? Uh, not so good. I think the 1988 record might be better. John Doe's between-song patter is kinda lame. Not bad, but I thought would be better, the reissue of Stiv Bators' 1979 power pop-ish album. A better Bomp! release is a rec by a band called the Konks, probably the closest thing I've heard to the Little Killers in a long time. I heard a bit of the new Billy Corgan album & thought it sounded okay, unlike just about everything else I've ever heard him do. I threw on the Antigone Rising album, thinking I might like it as I've liked certain other Starbucks-approved recs, but it didn't do it. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised--although some of my favorites from this year, like Ray LaMontagne & especially Madeleine Peyroux are 'Starbuck's Albums.' I need to give Sufjan Stevens' Illinoise another listen, but my first impression through the first few--and I've seemingly been interrupted every time I've tried to go further--was sorta like Ben Folds doing a prog-influenced rec. Not my thing, but I've seen enough positive stuff about this to give it another chance. The new Son Volt? Sounds REAL good. That one I've got to try to make more time for. I'll have to swear to listen to that every time I want to reach for either Ryan Adams album I got recently (the new one, and Rock and Roll). But this is the first Son Volt album I've ever heard, and I've always known I would like them. A friend turned me on to Wilco when Being There was released, so it's not like I have an excuse. A couple of nice world music albums? Ana Laan, Oregano, very bossa nova flavored with just a hint of some beats, and a rec by Marta Topferova which is perhaps a bit more Latin, less Brazilian, but nevertheless very pleasant, and both recs have gotten more spins around here lately than any of the rock stuff I've very much wanted to listen to.

I gave that new Violent Femmes comp a listen, and I'm not sure why it's supposed to be so much better than that other comp that came out in the early 90s...but there are a couple of interesting things on it & my frame of reference to that other one is blurry anyway. I know the 2nd rec is real good & the 3rd is good also & I always thought the 4th was OK but the first rec is still all you really need. Another comp that I liked better, probably because I was less familiar with it, is the new Raspberries collection. This band I just never heard enough from...although a pal from Rocky Road was kind enough to hook me up with a homemade comp a couple of years ago. I never played it enough...but I'll have to revisit it as this flows pretty well &, well, I like. Amused by a post by someone who specifically doesn't amuse a few folks around here on another board, I threw on this new Pat Benatar collection briefly. She always had a good voice, and I think she thought she was rockin', but she always seemed to represent corporate rock & was therefore terminally uncool to underground snobs, myself included. Funny thing, though, when you get the posers like Alanis Morrissette, not that I hate all her music or anything, but in retrospect, she's everything I always disliked about Pat Benatar, in spades. But I digress. I'll be just as happy if I never hear another Pat Benatar song as long as I live, misplaced snobbery or not. The talent was certainly there, but she's just not my thing & really never was.

Anybody notice that there's a slew of expanded Gene Loves Jezebel reissues? Here's a band I heard a lot about, 20 years ago, & seemingly never heard a note of their music. I threw on one of the recs--Discover? Promise? Whatever the earlier one was. Not bad, but I don't feel like I missed out on anything, like I was discovering a lost gem like when I finally got the first Aztec Camera a couple of years ago. My love for Cure-ish/Siouxsie-ish goth-ish pop stuff has waned considerably & is limited to the occasional Echo & The Bunnymen listen, so, while pleasant, I can't see hitting this stuff all that much anytime soon. And while they're quite different, I'd probably say the same for the Trashcan Sinatras--decent, but not strong enough in any particular area for me to go back. On the other hand? the new Knitters album, wow! Very, very good. I think they could've done without a couple of the silly covers, but overall a lot better than I expected even though I'm not sure why.

A friend raved about Tsar, thinking I'd love the rec, but I don't. It rocks, I guess, and it's more to my style than, say, Franz Ferdinand, but I compare it to the Mooney Suzuki & it doesn't do it for me as much. Maybe I shouldn't be comparing them to a band like that, but...hell, I prefer the Kaiser Chiefs. Anyone listen to Howard Stern? Vinny Favale, a CBS/Viacom exec who's a regular guest who's really into music plugged 'I Predict A Riot' to Howard, who predictably hated it, not that he gave it a fair listen since he's programmed to knock anything Vinny plays for him. Still, Vinny was raving about the song like it was 'Won't Get Fooled Again,' or something. Geez.

Old stuff: James Brown--Star Time, Sonny Rollins--Saxophone Colossus, The Cardigans--Life, Green Day--American Idiot. I am determined to hit some of Jack70's Timasheen comps REAL SOON.