What are you listening to (5)?

Oh good call Michelle! I love T.Rex.

 

Right now I'm listening to this amazing band from Argentina. Wow! These guys are just stunning musically. Psychedelica at it's best. 

Here is a link. Anyone interested please check them out. Full length tunes. 

Humo del Cairo

http://www.last.fm/music/Humo+del+Cairo

All Nightmare Long - Metallica - Studio Version, and then for a change of pace, Apologize by Timbaland.

Here is Pitchfork's annual 50 albums of the year:

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/feature/148001-the-50-best-albums-of-2008?page=1

 Any thoughts?

I need some new tunes, man. 

I have been rather unmusical of late.  Nothing new turns me on, and all my old stuff is too familiar.

 I have Micheal Franti's "Yell Fire!" in the cd player in the van right now, as an escape for when CBC radio inflicts some woefull example of music on it's listeners.

 

Are you calling me an esoteric hipster?

I'd have to say some of their picks are a little iffy, but I wholeheartedly agree with their number one.

Definitely. I'm a huge fan of Fleet Foxes, though I had tickets to one of their shows and they cancelled due to extreme hangovers. Not very rock star of them!

The Fleet Foxes album is great, but if it was the best of the year, we had a particularly poor vintage. That sucks about the show, jrose. How lame.

I simply don't listen to enough music any more to assert any kind of decent top ten, let alone top 50, but I really loved FF. I also loved El Perro del mar, From the Valley to the Stars as well, which I don't see on the Pitchfork top list.

My instinct is the usual criticism of pitchfork: deliberately 'esoteric', far too white, despite their feeble attempts to put some hiphop on there. I mean, was Erikah Badu the only worthy R&B album in the top 50 this year?

I used to be a huge portishead album, and when the new album came out, I was excited. It's got some great hype, but I have to say I was disappointed. Some good tracks, but like all reunion records, it's simply too late.

Q: Where is Q-Tip?
(A: On the dance floor)

Catchfire, I must admit that I was slightly happy that the Fleet Foxes were such anti-rock stars. They were opening for Stephen Malkmus, but I had a funeral to go to that day, so I couldn't make the show. I was devestated to have to miss it, so I was secretly happy to hear that I had only missed one great act that night instead of two.

Nothing so far this morning but the furnace, but yesterday was delving into Cream followed by individual Eric Clapton and Fleetwood Mac, and accompanying on the conga's. :D And a couple of days before that Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rf36v0epfmI

___________________________________________________________
"watching the tide roll away"

Catchfire wrote:

The Fleet Foxes album is great, but if it was the best of the year, we had a particularly poor vintage. ... I simply don't listen to enough music any more to assert any kind of decent top ten, let alone top 50....

My instinct is the usual criticism of pitchfork: deliberately 'esoteric', far too white, despite their feeble attempts to put some hiphop on there.

Yeah - I can understand the point of Pitchfork creating a top-50 list that highlights bands you might not hear about elsewhere, and I'm sure there's a lot of good music on that list. But it does feel like a bit of an exercise in "musical correctness" rather than a list of favourites.

My tastes these days tend to be relatively mainstream. It's not so much for me about groundbreaking artists as about people whose songs I keep coming back to, and I'm sure it's also a matter of when / where / how / why I first hear them.

So a top-ten list for me this year might include (in no particular order) Sia, the Fratellis, Adele, and Coldplay. (No, Chris Martin is neither a transcendently original songwriter nor a particularly inspired lyricist, and I have trouble believing that he's ever had so much as one of his perfectly tousled hairs out of place in his entire life, but there's a lot of room in my definition of rock'n'roll for his pompous decadent melodrama, all the more so with Brian Eno as producer to make things a bit less somnolent.)

And I can include two lesser-known Vancouver bands on that list without feeling like I'm tweaking it: the Clips and the Awkward Stage. Maybe also Supergrass, Aimee Mann, Radiohead, Kathleen Edwards and Beck - not the best album I've heard by each of them, but all decent efforts by good artists. (I guess that means my top ten list goes up to eleven....)

Finally, if I could include albums from 2007 that I heard this year, I'd include Nicole Atkins, Bruce Springsteen, and Jesca Hoop.

We've finally hooked up a record player at our apartment, letting me give all my old, and my partner's new, vinyls a play, so I've been listening to a lot of Simon and Garfunkel (Mine), Joanna Newsom (His) and Jim O'Rourke (His).

My better half got me the Chad Vangaalen LP for Christmas and it's fantastic! Also, we were just listening to latest Arts and Crafts release, The Happiness Project by Charles Spearin, of Broken Social Scene. The way he makes the music follow the voices embedded in his songs are brilliant! http://www.happiness-project.ca/#view558932

Resurrection Fern - Irom & Wine

Tokyo Police Club - Elephant Shell

On the first listen, I'm kind of underwhelmed. The songs are likeable enough, and I'd play it again, but after seeing it on critics' lists of their favourite albums from this year, I don't quite get all the fuss. What is it about music critics that makes them rave about arty, allusive, and lyrically clever but somewhat listless efforts as if they're the second coming of the Beatles?

I'm also thinking of Vampire Weekend, who I've admittedly heard even less by but of whom my overall first impression was "watered-down Paul Simon circa Graceland." Nothing wrong with that, and at least Vampire Weekend don't seem to be trying to be particularly "cool" or anything, but I'm left with the thought that music critics are easily impressed by apparent intelligence. Oooh - this band has a song called "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa." I mean, it's not every rock band that sings about Cape Cod, right? And they must be smarter than I am. Because they obviously know what "Kwassa Kwassa" means, and I don't. Guess I'd better put it on my top 10 list.

I could also get into the way that so many musicians these days come up with song titles that sound way cooler than the songs themselves, but maybe that's a separate topic....

ABBA, "Does your mother know that youre out?"  Seriously, it's a great high energy retro tune.

[IMG]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v697/rabblerabble/1r9lpy.gif[/IMG]

Just finished listening to the Stephen Stills album "Manassas". It's still very good, but somehow not as great as I remember it when it was released in 1972. Maybe I was stoned back then.

I love the first two CSN and CSN&Y albums, and their live LP.

 Ramones? Who they?

Kurt Cobain/Nirvana, all apologies and come as you are

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpRJkspkq0g

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOL5cpwTkes

___________________________________________________________ "watching the tide roll away"

Ashford & Simpson "Solid as Barack" 

Kid you not! I saw it on "ET".

"The future looooks hot- hot- hot- hot- hot...." 

Europa.

I get a big kick out of Prozzäk. 

"Another Brick in the Wall" by Pink Floyd on nostalgie.com, which reminds me of the first time I heard this tune, when CFMC used to play whole albums every night after midnight.  I first heard "The Wall" this way in 1980.  I also heard Elvis Costello's "Get Happy" (a wretched piece of garbage), "Argy Bargy" by The Squeeze, The Pretenters first album, and The Boomtown Rats' "The Fine Art of Surfacing" on this station late at night while writing essays for my university courses.

 

Now CFMC is called "All Hits C95" and is Satan's right hand.

The Austin Sessions by Kris Kristofferson, one of the best folk/country artists I've ever heard. It's a live recording of his 'greatest hits'. He's written a heck of a lot of stuff that has been recorded by other artists, especially his "Me and Bobby McGee". I have quite a few albums by Kristofferson - on vinyl, cassette, and CD; I started listening to him around 1972. Last night I saw him in the movie Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, one of his better acting efforts (which, admittedly, isn't saying much).

al-Qa'bong wrote:

"Another Brick in the Wall" by Pink Floyd on nostalgie.com, which reminds me of the first time I heard this tune, when CFMC used to play whole albums every night after midnight.  I first heard "The Wall" this way in 1980.  I also heard Elvis Costello's "Get Happy" (a wretched piece of garbage), "Argy Bargy" by The Squeeze, The Pretenters first album, and The Boomtown Rats' "The Fine Art of Surfacing" on this station late at night while writing essays for my university courses.

The worst tune on "Get Happy" (not Declan's most consistent work, admittedly) is better than anything on "The Wall", which is the most turgid tripe that Floyd ever produced.

Yeproc Records has an online sale on. I've ordered discs by Nick Lowe, Carlene Carter and Sloan at $5 U.S. each. Upon ordering, you immediately have access to the digital downloads (but actual CDs will still arrive by mail). It's rather a sweet deal. I'm listening to the MP3 version of Sloan's "Never Hear the End of It" as I type this.