Mosquito ringtones and the extremes of human hearing: Years of going to punk rock shows have wrecked my hearing; above 17,000 Hz, I can't -hear- anything, but it starts giving me a headache.
TypicalGirls: An interesting-sounding mailing list, devoted to the women of classic punk and New Wave bands. Keepin' it real with Poly Styrene and Faye Fife.
iDon't -- lame "guerilla" marketing for a Sandisk iPod knockoff: But hey, they like Pitchfork Media! Those -rebels-! Also, they probably know that the Shins will change your life.
The birth of Warren Zevon's "Werewolves of London": From a production point of view, but loads of details. I had no idea that Mick Fleetwood was ever involved with a song that good.
The A.V. Club interviews Neko Case: The inside baseball Anti/Mint/Bloodshot stuff is interesting, and I'm always up for reading an interview with the divine Ms. C.
Trio: The Musical: A Buffy fanfic -- the backstory to "Once More with Feeling" (if Sondheim had written it).
Steve Walters' Screwball Academy: I think my favorite rock-poster-guy, Jay Ryan, apprenticed with Screwball. If I lived in Chicago and had an ounce of artistic talent, I would kill to do this.
DCist: Post Gives Up Trying To Write Decent Copy: They're right -- this might be the worst thing I've read in the Post, even more impressive from a paper that publishes Fred Hiatt on a regular basis.
The Onion's Seven Songs With Factual Or Logical Mistakes In The Lyrics: Contra Ray Davies, the world still has steam-powered trains. (Via Waxy.org)
Companion Records, audio ephemera saved beyond its time: Canadian Christian hippies the New Creation, New Jersey truck driver/folk-singers, acid damaged outsider music, school choirs, and much more. Good stuff.
Very like St Paul: the London Review of Books on the Man in Black: "Cash’s reputation may be as a singer who sings about troubles and vexations, and tortured and twisted souls, but like a little plasticine mongrel he is in fact top-quality, all-round family entertainment; man’s best friend."
WFMU Marathon 2006: WFMU's annual fundraising drive, featuring some incredible prizes and Yo La Tengo's traditional all-requests all-covers performance. Help fund their (awesome) MP3 blog, etc.
What's -Your- Worst Memory of Playing with Yo La Tengo?: "The floor was spinning. The students were spinning. I was in an 'I hate men' phase. I lost my Riccola. I fell asleep next to the ham." I blame James.
The Wrens and Kathryn Yu interview: My friend HYRNKAT and her project are totally famous.
The Oxes/"Arab on Radar" split 7": A prank by the great Baltimore math-metal band goes awry: "We figured the best way to get into the mood to writing those songs was to get to a level approximating an AOR show, who we loved seeing every time they came to baltimore."
Baltimore's Marching Ravens: My hipster friend Lee has a very unhipsterish hobby.
The Incredibly Corporate Whorish Big Black Interview Album: SANTIAGO AND DAVE, HOW DO YOU LIKE BEING REFERRED TO IN THE MEDIA AS "THE TALENTLESS DRUNKEN ONES?"
Ulysses Speaks: Ulysses, Ulysses, little flower, beloved by all the youth.
A handful of Magnetic Fields covers: The Superchunk version of "100,000 Fireflies" is one of the great cover songs of all time.
"I blame Coach Snoop.": Snoop Dog's breakaway Pee Wee Football league overwhelms its competition.
"Biscuit" Turner dies at age 56: The singer for the Big Boys, the original and best-est skatepunk band, has passed away, apparently from cirrhosis complications.
How do you make sippin syrup? - Q&A: Today's "greatest page on the Internet".
The Haunted Cobblestones Sunset Concert Series: Live recordings from Cex, Jodi Buonano, and more, providing soundtracks to the Providence cityscape, served up by WBSR.
The complete NME C86 tape: The release that reinvented Britpop.
The Third Unheard: Connecticut Hip Hop 1979-1983: "'Fuck it, I’ll call him Pookey Blow. Maybe they’ll think he’s Kurtis Blow’s kid and run out and buy his god damn record.'"
Hatebeak/Caninus Split 7": Metal band with Waldo the parrot on vocals, b/w grindcore band with Budgie and Basil the pitbulls on vocals. "No more perfect a novelty 7" has ever existed."
Ruining famous album covers: A response to the recent Nike/Minor Threat dustup. (The Gang of Four one is shockingly good; "Spiderland" made me laugh.)
Are You a Corin Person or a Carrie Person?: It's a bad personality test if it can't account for people like my wife (a Janet person).
Vestax VRX-2000: Cut your own vinyl from tape, CD, or sound card. Wow.
Moe Tucker on New York, WalMart, women in music, and hating the South: "I much prefer the way things have been for us than if we had sold a million records and that was the end of it and nobody gave shit anymore."
appelstein.com: from the lou and proud: Mike Applestein's "Caught in Flux" was a really great music zine back in the day. Are all my high school heroes back on the web, and I didn't notice?
I succumb to a meme.: I feel unclean. And worse, now everyone will know my fatal Lightning Bolt weakness!
Kempa.com: Vinyl Video: Adam remains my hero. Wow, a huge and fascinating infodump about an abandoned byway of technology. (via Waxy)
Do the standing still: Nothing Nice's "The Politics of Dancing" is totally true.
Due Diligence: Rant: Abusing The Long Tail: Actually most interesting for the comments about Eastern European vacuum tubes as a Long Tail phenomenon
Strange Reaction - Our Blog Could Be Your Life: My new favorite MP3 blog rides that '78-'84 punk rock sweet spot.
indietits.com- these birds are hipper than you: Questionable Content branches out into a questionably named pair of Pitchfork-reading birdies.
The Big Picture: Dynamic Pricing: DVD versus CD Strategies: Or, why the MPAA is smarter than the RIAA.
"Cornell has Snoop Dogg -- why can't we get someone good like that?": Penn is officially the least hip school outside of Patrick Henry University. If only they could can Cat Power and get Limp Bizkit!
Insite: Listen: A multimedia project featuring video installations, my friend Jane dancing, the prolific Jason Huddo, and my friend Lee on typewriter.
Fear of Music: A Village Voice review of some late-90s Fort Thunder bands. Radio to Saturn and the Shotgun Flu!
Surefire Distribution, home of Load Records: I'm seeing Providence noise rock diaspora band Chinese Stars tonight. Good times, good (headache-inducing) times
The top-selling albums ever: Americans love best-of albums. (via Ask MeFi)
Michelle Malkin tells us about the dangers of Christina Ricci and emo: Oh, man alive. "Promoting the cutting culture" is the new "magic hat". This doesn't pass the high school term paper level of research.
The Uncle Liam Show: My uncle is awfully cool, but I never got a music video from him.
Touch and Go Records: The record label of Shellac, Naked Raygun, and the Mekons is now "internet savvy" (and blinding!).
Have Love, Will Travel: And two other indie Valentine's songs from Drew.
Bradley's Almanac posts some live Low MP3s: Because nothing says Valentine's Day like "I Remember"
The Greatest Band of All Time.: I think there should be a Battle of the Greatest Bands, possibly hosted by KISS.
Converting Real Audio files to MP3 on OS X: Using LAME, rather than simply running Wiretap and hoping the system doesn't beep.
Jay Ryan: Chicago's Poster Artist: I love Jay's work -- I have a Shellac poster of his framed on my wall. What's with the scare quotes around "artist"?
The golden horagrams of the scale tree: The theoretical works of Eric Wilson, microtonist.
Unconventional Weaponry: An interview with MF Doom: "Other galaxies is not really allowed to interfere, and other beings are not really allowed to interfere with what we're doin' in our development at this stage." (via Kingdom of Love)
Unconventional Weaponry: An interview with MF Doom: "Other galaxies is not really allowed to interfere, and other beings are not really allowed to interfere with what we're doin' in our development at this stage." (via Kingdom of Love)
Unconventional Weaponry: An interview with MF Doom: "Other galaxies is not really allowed to interfere, and other beings are not really allowed to interfere with what we're doin' in our development at this stage." (via Kingdom of Love)
Drew McDermott: Someone Call an Ambulance: America! 1994! A few old MP3s by the soon-to-be-reuniting Versus, who I must have seen a dozen times back in the day.
Unconventional Weaponry: An interview with MF Doom: "Other galaxies is not really allowed to interfere, and other beings are not really allowed to interfere with what we're doin' in our development at this stage." (via Kingdom of Love)
Yourmusic.com: BMG Music Club meets Netflix: Queue up a bunch of CDs you'd like to buy, and have one a month sent to you for $6. The catch? Forget to queue something and they charge you anyway.
Sir John Eliot Gardiner goes indie: The British composer starts his own label after a Bach cantina project gets dropped by his (major) label. (via Long Tail)
Unrest MP3s, courtesy of abusing Drew McDermott's bandwidth: Yes, she is my skinhead girl. Drew is gearing up for the big Teenbeat reunion, because in our heads, it's always 1995!
RIP, HFS: WHFS was the alt-rock station I listened to in high school; well before that, it was the DC area's version of WFMU. Now it's a Latino station.
Kayne West and the Limits of Aporia: I'm not even saying it's wrong. It's just amusing as hell.
The soundtrack to "Zabriskie Point": Don Hall's soundtrack went pear-shaped along with everything else associated with Antonioni's legendary disaster.
Scary Go Round's twenty best albums of the year: Reviewed by Shelley, fresh from not being eaten by a superintelligent man-o-war.
Exciting Christmas Stories featuring Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman: The voices are so dreadfully wrong.
Deck Us All With Boston Charlie: "Pogo"'s other great contribution to the English language. (and all the rest)
Deck Us All With Boston Charlie: "Pogo"'s other great contribution to the English language. (and all the rest)
Digital Press Sound Archives: WAVs, MP3s, and MIDI tracks representing my wasted youth. (Pitfall 2!)
Campaign of deception used to push patriotic song up charts: "Tell 'em your husband is a marine -- whatever it takes."
Teenbeat 20th anniversary shows: Featuring Eggs, Unrest, Tuscadero, and Versus, back together to remind me that in my head it's still '95.
Kempa plays with a working Japanese model gramaphone recorder: ...And then discovers that they make Edison cylinder kits as well.
John Peel, RIP: I had never been to England until this year, and I -still- have a handful of Peel sessions in my collection. Possibly the most influential DJ since the first wave of FM stations.
Slint reforms!: The most influential indie band of the '90s is curating and performing at one of next years' All Tommorow's Parties.
Fluxblog posts a Fiery Furnaces setlist: Their live show is great. (The live Wu-Tang MP3 is pretty great, too.)
Joy in Mudville: Julian Sanchez on Robert Nozick, Temporary Autonomous Zones, and (sigh) Phish.
Akin Fernandez writes in: With some clarifications about his Conet Project, the Jeff Tweedy settlement, and UK copyright law.
Brand-new Pixies song -- a Warren Zevon cover: From a forthcoming tribute album, and it sounds -fantastic-. (via)
"On that note, you can assume that the sh-- we are writing now is f---ing powerful and very emotionally laced with reality...": Fred Durst, my generation's Cole Porter.
Hey, Apple! Don't break my iPod!: Real Networks unleashes a mass movement in an attempt to cash in on their vast stores of goodwill among the internet-using peoples of the world. (Mysteriously, they no longer link to this site.)
The Conet Project: Recordings of the mysterious numbers -- coded messages to spies? -- transmitted over shortwave radio throughout Europe for forty years.
Low in Europe: Concert footage of Duluth's saddest band
Top 10 most ridiculous black metal pics: "The only reason why this photo didn't make #1 is because of the lack of taxidermy." (via)
Clubbo: Music to Believe In: Forty years of fictional failure, as told in words, pictures, and MP3s. (via)
Live Mountain Goats tracks: The morning comes to a stuttering halt / The cool breeze that blows is somebody's fault...
Six Degrees of Vin Novara: Connect the Crownhate Ruin to the Moody Blues, and other exercises in social networking fun. Lemmy to Jenny Toomey in seventeen steps! Mark Robinson to Judas Priest in fourteen steps! Kathleen Hannah to Stone Temple Pilots in ten steps (through Glenn Danzig, natch)!
Kill Your Idols: Not to be confused with the similarly-titled book of punk, hip-hop, and skater photography, it's a collection of contemporary music critics savaging the icons of rock and roll, from Brian Wilson to Wilco. (via)
Eppy analyzes the new Fiery Furnaces album: Song by song. In incredibly extensive detail. (I'm still not quite sure what I think about the album -- Gallowsbird's Bark was certainly more immediately accessible.)
Israeli MCs: This is fascinating, but you'd better have amazing flow to try to get off a line like "I feel like a desperado just like that song by the Eagles / While the peace process is taken apart just like Yoko did the Beatles."
You Have Bad Taste in Music: The best thing is the black-on-black text designed to suck in unwary search engines.
Douglas Wolk's Lacunae: Douglas Wolk (Fiery Furnaces fan, Slate music critic, and Dark Beloved Cloud proprietor) has jammed a MP3 blog into his personal blog and actually gone to the trouble of securing the bands' permission.
Trapped on a boat with Styx, REO Speedwagon, and Journey: Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it.
"There's just you, foisting your own ideal image of a black metal band onto us because you really liked our album.": John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats (an out of the closet metal fan) puts together an absolutely flawlessly clichéd fake interview with Kult of Azazel. (via)
The tale of a Shellac rarity: One ultra-rare album by the math rock supergroup produces discussion of the ethics of regifting, a testimonial to an amp supplier, Steve Albini weighing in on property rights, and proof that friends will always betray you. (via)
Congratulations, Kevin Britten!: I hope you make Steve Jobs give you an oversized novelty check. (here's why)
Tim Harrington gets married: The Les Savy Fav singer will rally up his friends and stand by his cute bride.
Rock and Roll McDonald's is no more: Cry a little tear for Wesley Willis, everybody. (see also) (via)
Gabba Gabba Hey, the Ramones musical: Ouch. That small scale tremor you felt was Joey spinning in his grave.
The Amazon kneejerk contrarian game: Find a classic that someone dissed. "I think about Kenny G., for instance. His rythmic session is much more regular, whereas Coltrane's session seems sometimes to loose the beat."
The 365 Days project lives!: 365 amateurish, offensive, ill-conceived, and just plain odd MP3s. The Louis Farrakhan calypso tune alone is worth the price of admission. (via)
Project Little Quill: a documentary about the Wrens: Blogger Kathryn Yu and friends are working on a documentary about New Jersey's very fine indie band the Wrens, and they're looking for support.
Things that don't exist: Your friends the classroom full of singing sock puppets wish to know whether the thought of a unicorn is a real thought. (Quicktime video) (via)
Pitchfork gets burned on a Beastie Boys review: Half the reviews they print are poorly disguised creative writing exercises to begin with.
Lollapalooza gets cancelled: Why doesn't anyone want to see the best lineup they've ever done? (Hint: Two days, and the String Cheese Incident.)
Libraries get screwed in the CD settlement: Have the big record companies ever dealt fairly with anyone? (via)
Indie rock goes mainstream: Which I'm totally fine with, except didn't Vagrant already do this by selling eight trillion Dashboard Confessional albums?
Gavin Bryars: During the set break at tonight's awesome Neko Case show, I got Tom Waits singing "Jesus' blood never failed me yet" stuck in my head, and I never knew what weirdo wrote that piece. Now I do.
DIRTY Mixes: Sets from Air, Matmos, DJ Spooky, and more (via)
Viva Morrissey!: Great piece on the gloomy Smiths' frontman's appeal to Latino audiences. (via)
"And the old men march slowly, old bones stiff and sore": Eric Bogle's "And the Band Played 'Waltzing Matilda'" (though you may know the Pogues version): Then in nineteen fifteen my country said: "Son, / It's time to stop ramblin', there's work to be done" / So they gave me a tin hat and they gave me a gun / And they sent me away to the war
The Ixion Burlesque Company: "Epic Burlesque Theatre based on Greek Mythology" -- no word if they have a spinning fiery wheel act. (via)
A million love songs: More like 28 so far, but who's counting? An... eclectic... mix.
Album covers that look like other album covers: It's visual pun-alicious.
Tom Lehrer's "The Elements": Includes elements that had yet to be discaavaard.
The New Creation: Sweet amateurish Jesus rock, commercially released after 30 years. And they're gettting back together! (see also)
"Since Yesterday": A dozen covers of the Strawberry Switchblade song, which wasn't even a hit in America. Yay Internet!
The music is God's, but the beat...: Personal hero Johnny Marr on the rise of the Christian anti-rock treatise.
IXI experimental music toys: "The idea was to try to use the 2 dimentional flat surface with boxes as parametre space for granular synthesis, rather than using sliders." And so forth. (via)
Forthcoming Low B-sides box set: I have the compilation with their cover of "Blue-Eyed Devil" on it, and it is spectacularly great. I want this badly.
Goodbye, Babylon: "Five cds of guitar evangelists, holiness string bands, jubilee gospel quartets, sacred harp choirs and sanctified jug music." Get ready for the judgment day!
Unleash the flying Coachella hype monkeys!: Two years ago, nobody at Newsweek would review an indie album, but today there's Vagrant records and a giant market for moany emo kids, so it's -vital- again.
The Two Brothers: "Johnson, Johnson is my name /Brooklyn is my station..." The Child Ballad that both John Darnielle and Alfred Bester borrowed.
Mission of Burma's Roger Miller writes a Slate diary: "I have been making my living in music since I moved to Boston in 1978. I am 52 years old."
Rakim arrested: [insert lousy "Paid in Full" joke here] (via)
Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy: The successful creation of the modern revolutionary Peking opera "Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy" is a splendid victory for Chairman Mao's revolutionary line on literature and art. (via)
John Cale by Dave McKean: So save yourselves for the hounds of hell / They can have you all to themselves /Since the fashion now is to give away / All the things you love so well
P-Funk mythology: Starchild's nemesis is "Sir Nose D Voidoffunk".... He is the master of the Placebo Syndrome, which causes unFunkiness.
20 live Fugazi CDs: I can't imagine getting all of these, but I'd love to hear how they sounded live back in '87.
"Laurence Olivier is immense!": Kempa's been on fire lately -- this covers Otto Preminger, Harry Nilsson, Saul Bass, and the Zombies. Free novelty MP3s inside! (via)
120 years of electronic musical instruments: From the Musical Telegraph to the Alesis Quadrasynth, with many, many steps in between.
Legal Weapon: Johnny 13 tells me their first two albums kick ass and take names.
Adorable North Korean xylophone prodigy: Her beautiful expression makes this an excellent performance. (via)
Liam Lynch gets famous(er): He's got laser eyes! He knows what you're thinking!
Mia Zapata's killer convicted: I hope he rots.
WFMU's annual Yo La Tengo show: This Saturday, Yo La Tengo plays your requests in exchange for tax-deductable pledges to WFMU
Too Old to Rock, Too Young to Die: Greg "Soundbitten.com" Beato on the rock and roll lifestyle of an aging metalhead roadie.
Yoshimi Battles the Hip-Hop Robots: So good, and I'm not even a big Flaming Lips fan.
One small step for Coco: One of my favorite photos taken by my friend Drew.
Preppy punks: The New York Times is always on the bleeding edge of teenage culture, isn't it?
DCRTV: Voluminous weblog and rantdump covering insider minutae about the radio industry in DC and Baltimore.
Cleveland punk: The Electric Eels, Rocket from the Tombs, the Dead Boys... Cleveland rocks.
DCShows.net: Maybe now I won't miss the next Beauty Pill show
Yo La Tengo sells out: The Who-style photo of Georgia is a riot.
The Big Boys: Austin's original skatepunk. (see also)
The I Love Music Rough Guides: Want to know where to start listening to Parliament, Jay-Z, or Steve Albini?
Useful Noise: A dandy music criticism project -- smart thoughts about top ten tracks (via)