There are really two reason I bring this subject up.  One of which just happened Saturday night while the other that has happened about 5-10 times over the past few years.

On Saturday Night Live this week, the band Sleigh Bells was the musical guest.  I was super excited to watch them perform.  I’m not really big into twitter, but once and a while I log in to see what is trending, or to post a random comment.  (my blog always post updates there)  I was surprised to see that 95% of the comments were bad mouthing the performance.  I was actually hard to find comments that were good.  I went back today to watch the performance and I still think they did a great job.  I guess I can see with these guys how they wouldn’t really get to many mainstream followers.  They are what best be described as over powered pop rock.  The guitars are turned up to 11 (haha) and the locals are only at about 6.  Certainly one of the biggest complaints I heard was about the vocal mix, although I’m sure these same people weren’t aware that it was mixed that way on purpose.  In any case most people didn’t consider it music, or said it was just noise, while I was thinking man that FN rocked.

The other more long term example of this comes from my favorite band Radiohead.  I play music when ever and where ever I can.  My life doesn’t like to go long intervals with out music.  I have had the opportunity to play music while working at various jobs along the way.  I know I drive people with some of the stuff I listen to, since I do listen to such a varied style of music.  Well, of coarse Radiohead get played in one of these public forums from time to time, and it never fails that someone will come up and ask “How can you listen to that?  It sounds so sad.”  This comment is so absurd to me! Radiohead sad?  Really?  When I hear Radiohead I hear nothing but uplifting joy.  I have actually envisioned a beautiful sunrise rising above the ocean waves while listening to them.  I hear nothing but beauty.  Sadness? I still don’t get it, but there must be some sadness in the music, for at least 4 different people (some in different states even) have said these exact words.

So all it come down to is personal interpretation.  How one hears a song obviously varies from person to person.  I guess that what make the world interesting.  If we all heard the same thing there would be no need for art (or this blog).

What do you think about these above songs?

Today, on Sunday February 19th, 2012, this blog turns 100 posts old.  Yes, I know that it’s still just a baby, but it has started to grow and have a little direction.  So far I’ve started to uncover, my musical roots, as well as shown the music tastes that have developed from them.  I have just barely started to tell you about the large amount of concert I have seen, and the large girth music I really listen to.  What little you have seen from these are just “tips of the iceberg” territory.    I also have shared a small amount of good music coming out of the good old state on Maine, this is one I’d like to expand upon in the future!  We collectively have made a bunch of sweet mixtapes covering all sorts of themes exposing us both to new music.  You have seen me start to tackle the music challenge meme, however how embarrassing it has been for me.  You have even seen my opinions on a few topics such as religion, audio quality, and the future of music. (insert Spotify commendation here!)

What will the future bring?  That I do not know.   I know I will be making changes to the lay out to make it more user friendly.  I may even tackle creating my own layout as opposed to custom made ones.  I know I want to keep it personal, sharing my likes and hates and experiences.

Anyway, thank you to all who have visited me in this first 100 posts.  I hope to keep it going for many many more!

I just got package number five of the tax money mini spending spree.  This one is from Third Man Records as you can see above.  I also added my five new 45′s to my post titled Vinyl Haven.  I got these all for six bucks a piece!  I could easily spend a few hundred dollars at Third Man Records though.  One day I hope to own every single Jack White related vinyl.  I actually listened to all five of these while preparing this post.   It really is hard to to write, take pictures, upload, copy/paste, and flip and change records all the together.  It is worth it though, some great stuff!

My vinyl collection has been growing pretty quickly lately.  A combination of getting a new turntable for christmas and a small amount on extra money from taxes have helped out with this department.  I figured it was time to comment a little about vinyl and my collection.

So here is the answer to the question I have been getting a lot lately.  Why do you buy vinyl?

There really is two reasons for my love of vinyl.  The first reason is mentioned above, audio quality and the second is physical validations.  I don’t want to go to deep into these reason (since I have before in the past) but Let’s mention that I am an audiophile.  An audiophile is some one who has interest in high-fidelity music and recordings.  We are interested in hearing music at the highest of quality possible.  I have briefly mentioned this in my blog post about lossless audio titles XTC Vs. Adam Ant.  I also love to open up the packaging an artist has provided with the music, to read lyrics and linear notes about there recordings.  I also am a big fan of album art work.  Many times great art work can influence me into checking out something I have never heard before.  So the combination of wanting something in my hands physically eliminating Mp3s and the fidelity of audio eliminating CD’s, that only leaves me with vinyl records.  Mind you I still occasionally by CD’s (then rip to mps) and frequently buy Mp3′s (since I can’t carry my turntable everywhere withe me).  Many vinyl’s come with free Mp3 downloads of the album now!

Anyway the following is my current vinyl catalog.  It is still pretty small, but still obviously growing.

12″ Records or 33′s

• Grizzly Bear – Veckatimist
• Radiohead – TKOL RMX 2
• Radiohead – TKOL RMX 4
• Radiohead – TKOL RMX 7
• Radiohead – The Butcher/Supercollider
• Radiohead – My Iron Lung E.P. (45)
• Radiohead – Street Spirit E.P. (45)
• Fleet Foxes – Homelessness Blues
• Fleet Foxes – Fleet Foxes/Sun Giant E.P.
• Fleet Foxes – Helplessness Blues/Grown Ocean (Record Store Day 2011 Exclusive)
• Bon Iver – Bon Iver
• The Civil Wars- Barton Hollow
• The Fiery Furnaces – I’m Going Away
• The Decemberist – The Perfect Crime #2 E.P.
• Iron and Wine – Morning Become Electric (Limited Edition)
• Dropkick Murphys – Do or Die
• Dropkick Murphys – The Gangs All Here
• Dropkick Murphys – Sing Loud, Sing Proud!
• Dropkick Murphys/The Business – Mob Mentality Split
• Aerosmith – Toys in the Attic
• Creedence Clearwater Revival – Green River

10″ Records (45′s)

• Kings of Leon – Holy Roller Novocaine (Record Store Day 2011 Exclusive Red Vinyl)
• The Civil Wars – Track in the Snow (Record Store Day Black Friday 2011 Exclusive White Vinyl)
• Wilco – Speak Into The Rose (Record Store Day Black Friday 2011 Exclusive Red Vinyl)
• Radiohead – The King of Limbs (Newspaper Edition Clear Vinyl)

7″ Records or 45′s

• The White Stripes – Lafayette Blues/Sugar Never Tasted So Good
• The White Stripes – Hello Operator/Jolene
• Jack White – Fly Farm Blues
• Jack White – Love Interruption/Machine Gun Silhouette
• Becky & John – I’ll Be There If Ever You Want/I’m Making Plans
• John & Tom – Gonna Lay Down My Old Guitar/Lonesome Yodel Blues #2
• First Aid Kit – Universal Soldier/It Hurts Me Too
• First Aid Kit – Ghost Town/When I Grow Up
• The Black Keys – The Moan/Have Love Will Travel
• Pearl Jam/Frogs – Immortality/Rearviewmirror (Record Store Day 2011 Exclusive Split)
• Pearl Jam – Spin the Black Circle/Tremor Christ
• The Decemberist – December Hymn/Row Jimmy (Record Store Day Limited Edition)
• Lower Dens – Deer Knives/Tangiers (Record Store Day 2011 Exclusive)
• Danielson – Our Givest/Jokin’ At The Block Remix
• Broken Bells – The High Road/An Easy Life
• Xui Xui/Deerhoof – Almost Xui Xui, Almost Deerhoof/The Greg Saunier Retaliation (Record Store Day 2011 Exclusive Split)
• Foo Fighters – Learn to Fly/Have a Cigar
• Ramones/Red Hot Chili Peppers – Havana Affair Side By Side (Record Store Day 2011 Exclusive)
• Ramones – I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend/Judy is a Punk (1975 demo versions)
• Dropkick Murphys/Oxymoron Split – Irish Stout Vs. German Lager
• Dropkick Murphys/The Business Split – Mob Mentality
• Dropkick Murphys/Agnostic Front Split – Unity
• Dropkick Murphys – Curse of a Fallen Soul
• Anti-Heroes Vs. Dropkick Murphys Split
• Anti-Heroes – Election Day
• Oxymoron – Crisis Identity
• The Donnas – Rock N Roll Machine/Speeding Back to My Baby
• Michael Jackson – Ben/You Can Cry on my Shoulder
• Rob Zombie – Dragula (Limited Edition Promo)
• Matt and Kim – Cameras (Record Store Day 2011 Free Exclusive)
• Thomas Dybdahl/Laura Jansen Split – A Love Story/Single Girls (Record Store Day 2011 Free Exclusive)

My fellow blogger at You hear that?!? recently wrote a blog called Adjective Battleship. I’ll paraphrase what it was about here, but I highly recommend you go read his more detailed version.

So he and another fellow came up with a game for describing a song in just 5 words.  The goal to explain what the song makes you feel or how it sounds.  I thought it was a pretty fun and entertaining idea.

Here are the rule that they came up with:

1. Each player nominates 3 songs.
2. Each player provides a description comprised of up to 5 words, not all of which actually have to be adjectives, for all 6 songs.
3. There is no time limit on composing descriptions.
4. The player who compiles the descriptions for posting purposes cannot look at the other player’s descriptions before finalizing his or her own.
5. There is no winner, just congratulatory high-fives for a game well played.

As for listening strategies — that’s entirely up to you. Song then description, description then song, song then description then song… do whatever floats your boat.

I won’t spoil the game he has posted on his blog, but follow the link above and go play his game!  I am going to change the game a little, in my version I will post just one song.  Then the first person to listen to it will then post a comment with there 5 word description of my songs as well as a new song of there own.  Then the next person will listen and post a 5 word description of that new songs and there own new songs.  Our game will hopefully continue on into infinity. One added rule is that when you post a new song you need to also post a link to some public version of the song (I suggest YouTube for most) so that the next person can go listen to it in the case he or she hasn’t heard it before.   (Note: this a fun game, all descriptions should be in good nature, please no music bashing)

“Without further ado, let the battle commence!”

The first song will be Drive to Dallas by the Fiery Furnaces

http://youtu.be/SfLJpMrd_RM

*(I ran out of time before work I will re-read and edit this post tonight)*

So with a very small portion of my tax return I decided to buy some more music for my beloved vinyl collection. At this early stage in my collecting I am only picking up the albums and artist that are most near and dear to my heart.  Also the other night it suddenly hit me that I hadn’t heard an album I listened to all the time when in my late high school and early college day in a very very long time.  I decided I was going to compile a list of my personal favorite albums of all time.  Just so we are clear on this, I’m not saying these are the best albums of all time, just that they are “my favorites”.  In doing so I hope to have a place I can always go to remind me what music I might be missing both in a physical manner (AKA vinyl) and in a personal way (AKA listening).  It also give you the ability to maybe discover some new stuff.

Some of you have read a bit of my previous posts (and for thosesome of you know me personally),  so some of this list will not be a surprise to you at all.  This list is in no particular order at the moment.  I am going to list my top 50, which is a very small amount of the music I listen to.  I will try to put them in some semblance of order this weekend.  From time to time I may even add and subtract from this list as I discover new loves, or just change my tastes.

1. Radiohead – Kid A
2. Type O Negative – Bloody Kisses
3. Grizzly Bear – Veckatimist
4. Fleet Foxes – Fleet Foxes
5. Tiamat – Wildhoney
6. Pearl Jam – Vitology
7. The Decemberist – Hazards of Love
8. Radiohead – Hail to the Thief
9. Radiohead – Amnesiac
10. Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Show Your Bones
11. Juliette Lewis – Terra Incognita
12. Pink Floyd – Dark Side of the Moon
13. Pink Floyd – Animals
14. Radiohead – In Rainbows
15. The Raconteurs – Consolers of the Lonely
16. The White Stripes – Get Behind Me Satan
17. Bon Iver – Bon Iver
18. Counting Crow – August and Everything After
19. Arcade Fire – Funeral
20. The Black Keys – Brothers
21. The Black Key – Attack & Release
22. Anthrax – Stomp 442
23. The Civil Wars – Barton Hollow
24. Coldplay – Parachutes
25. Dropkick Murphy – Do or Die
26. Fleet Foxes – Helplessness Blues
27. Fire on Fire – The ORchard
28. First Aid Kit – The Big Black and the Blue
29. Fruit Bats – Ruminant Man
30. Hedwig and the Angry Inch Soundtrack
31. James Blake – James Blake
32. xx -
33. King Diamond – Give Me Your Soul…Please
34. King Diamond – The Spider’s Lullaby
35. Juliette Lewis – Your Speacking My Language
36. Larkin Grim – Harpoon
37. Misfits – Static Age
38. Nine In Nails – The Fragile
39. Modest Mouse – Good News for People Who Love Bad News
40. Pearl Jam – Vs.
41. Pearl Jam – Yield
42. Portishead – Third
43. Radiohead – The King of Limbs
44. The Shins – Wincing the Night Away
45. Sigur Ros – ()
46. Slayer – Seasons in the Abyss
47. Smashing Pumpkin – Siamese Dream
48. System of a Down – System of a Down
49. They Might Be Giants – Flood

First Bon Iver performed Holocene and Beth/Rest.   Both performances were amazing!  You can see them on the official Saturday Night Live page here and here.

I also got the chance to go back and watch the moments I missed of Wilco on Austin City Limits.  I was switching back and forth between the two.  I was pretty upset to have missed a portion of Art of Almost and was able to go back and watch the big guitar jam at the end of the track.  This is starting to become my favorite Wilco songs.  You can go watch the whole hour long set here.

Something extra for you. If you go to the Austin City Limits page here, you can see past performances by Florence + the Machine,  Lykke Li. Fleet Foxes, Joanna Newsom, Arcade Fire, The Head and the Heart, Coldplay, Tom Waits and many others.

Another show I wasn’t aware of was a show called live from the (((artist den))).  Last nights show was with Adele, are great vocalist and one of my fiances favorites.   It’s not very often I get to watch a music related show with Andrea that we both can appreciate.  If you want to see Adele or any of the past show you can go here.   (the past shows links are at the bottom of this page.)

Enjoy!  I did!

So an interesting topic was brought up recently.  I had made comments in reference to my high school days and Liz Phair’s Exile in Guyville on my blog post George W. Stearns High School.  In the comments Brian mentioned that this record was a song by song answer to the Rolling Stone Exile on Main St.  This was the first time I’d heard this and was very interested in looking into it more.

In a 1998 interview with NPR, Liz Phair says that she had this huge crush on this indie guy in the village she lived in.  His life in her eyes somewhat mirrored theme of Exile on Main St.  So she took those thoughts and loosely tried to recreate the mood of Main St. in writing Exile.   She also said she would often take the tempo and solo placement into considerations.

In doing my research I found a lot of those who think that I was not a song for song comparison.  They argue that a few of the tunes had been written (and even recorded) years earlier.  I guess we can only take her partially for her word.

So I took another step,  I combined the two records into one playlist on Spotify.  And then I listened.

Spotify playlist —>HERE

I have to start by saying that I really am not all that familiar with Exile on Main St. (Gasp!) I am a relatively new listener to the Stones.   I of coarse have heard their bigger hits, but never really dug any deeper than what was on the surface until recently.  Don’t worry Stones fans I am currently correcting that.  I am however pretty familiar with Exile in Guyville.

From what I hear, I see very little resemblance.  I can sometimes hear the tempo being similar but other than that, the songs don’t seem the same.  Lyrics seem to not be about the same things either.  Matter of fact listening to them together just make both albums seem very random.  Maybe I should listen to them separately?

I’ll be sure to give them both a few more listens, but from my determination this might just be a scheme by Liz Phair to drum up some publicity.  What do you think?

First off, Wilco will be on Austin City Limits on Saturday Night.  That on PBS for those who don’t know.  Here is a link to the promo for the program. I can’t wait to see this!

Also Saturday Night Live will be featuring Bon Iver.  I am glad to see SNL with some great musicians this year.  Here is a link to the promo for this weeks SNL.

Get your DVR’s ready!

Last year while touring in support of there first album, while passing through Nashville they got a call from Jack White.  He asked if they would come into the studio and record a couple songs.  They accepted,reco rded and released a 7″ as part of Jack’s Third Man Records Blue series.  They did a cover of Buffy Saint Marie’s Universal Soldier as well as a cover of of the old blues standard It Hurts Me Too originally recorded Tampa Red.  The following is a live performance of the first of these song.

First Aid Kit is made up of sisters Johanna and Klara Söderberg.  They are from Sweden. Supposedly a  friend introduced them to the music of Bright Eyes and they then decided they wanted to write music.  I want to thank that friend!!  They recently recorded a couple songs with Conor Oberst, a cover of the White Stripes We Are Gonna Be Friends as well as Conor contributing vocals to the last track on First Aid Kit’s new album The Lion’s Roar.  I’m sure it was a pretty amazing experience for them.  Another note, The Lion’s Roar is produced by Mike Mogis one of the current members of Bright Eyes.  The following is the title track from this new album.

If you like it go out and buy there albums, they are amazing!