Let's Run

My latest run mix

1. People - El Perro Del Mar
2. Sugar - The Concretes
3. The Holiday Song - Pixies
4. The World At Large - Modest Mouse
5. Dying Day - Brandi Carlile
6. Embrace - Low
7. Lay Your Head Down - Keren Ann
8. High Horses - The Swell Season
9. On Directing - Tegan and Sara
10. Handshakes - Metric
11. Everlong - Foo Fighters
12. Deceptacon - Robbie Williams
13. Chocolate - Snow Patrol
14. Set The Fire To The Third Bar featuring Martha Wainwright - Snow Patrol
15. Cartwheels - Reindeer Section
16. Run - Snow Patrol

Progressive Rock Update

OK so I've just listened to S.F. Sorrow by The Pretty Things and Autobahn by Kraftwerk. I had never heard of The Pretty Things until the piece on Sound Opinions. This was a pretty good album. We're talking 1968 so this is before progressive rock has even been labeled as such, but you can see they are stretching the boundaries of rock and still managing to construct an album full of interesting songs.

Kraftwerk on the other hand is a band I've heard of for a long time, but never listened to. I understand the importance of their influence, but I can't say I'll ever find myself putting on this album again. Unlike The Pretty Things who were constructing rock songs, this album is letting go of the short song rock premise and constructing electronic based music that can last for over 20 minutes. The surprising thing is it works because you find yourself drawn into the beat and the melody and time floats by. That said I would rather have the constructed rock song.

50 Most Important - O Brother, Where Art Thou?

I understand picking this album, though I have to say it seems the bluegrass craze was very short lived and the influences did not hold. I find it hard to believe there weren't more influential country or bluegrass albums that this album bumped out.

50 Most Important - College Dropout

Every decade seems to have its hip hop rejuvenators and certainly Kanye is the big one of this decade. Like others before him he turned hip hop in a new direction. Even if you don't like Kanye you would have to put this album in the 50 most important list. Now that we are getting ready to start a new decade we have to wonder who will be the next hip hop artist to renew the sound, and we have to assume that Kanye is past his prime peaking with his third album Graduation.

50 Most Important - White Blood Cells

Number 48 on this alphabetical list is The White Stripes' White Blood Cells. This is not my favorite band and this is not my favorite album of theirs. Personally I would have picked Elephant which I think is their most influential and was certainly their first major success getting down to number 6 on the Billboard Top 200 chart. Plus to me what makes Elephant so important is that it contains the song "Seven Nation Army". With this song Jack White was able to prove that he could write a solid pop song, which revolved around the Stripes basic sound. Experimentation is fun and being on the edge is fun, but writing a great pop song that doesn't compromise your musical vision is what it's all about.

50 Most Important - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

Number 49 is Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. I have a friend who was completely hooked on this album when it came out. Me I personally never understood the appeal. It's a solid album, but certainly not their best and a bit too experimental for me. I much prefer Wilco when they are hitting out the solid, well versed pop tunes. In the piece about this album the people that put this list together talk about how this album opened up a whole new sound for Wilco. I'm not sure how that qualifies it to be one of the top 50 albums of the decade.

50 Most Important - Back to Black

So number 50 on the NPR list is Amy Winehouse's Back to Black. This album is OK. For me it seems to hang in the air with no emotion. Her voice is great, the beats are great, but there is a soullessness to the music that keeps it flat. I think if I had been looking for soulful singing with trip hop beats I would have gone for Gnarls Barkley and St. Elsewhere.

The 50 Most Important Recordings of the Decade

I love lists. A friend of mine pointed me to this story at NPR. I'll be listening to as many of these as I can. I've already queued up the first five albums on Rhapsody. It should be noted that these albums are in alphabetical order and I'll be counting down from Z-A.

By the way I just want to note that I think it is very lame that they didn't actually make it a countdown from worst to best.

Progressive Rock

I've been thinking a lot about progressive rock lately and then Sound Opinions goes a does a show on it. In the show they made five recommendations for albums to listen to, so that's what I'm going to do. The albums are

Pretty Things, S.F. Sorrow, 1968
Kraftwerk, Autobahn, 1974
Yes, Close to the Edge, 1972
King Crimson, In the Court of the Crimson King, 1969
Yes, Going for the One, 1977

Luckily they have the first three on Rhapsody so I can listen to them there. Napster has Going for the One. I will probably try Grooveshark for the King Crimson album. If you don't know anything about Grooveshark it is essentially the YouTube of music.

Hopefully I'll be inspired to write about the albums. It's funny but I've never really thought of myself as a progressive rock person, but I was a huge Saga fan.

ConsumerSearch.com

Love this new web site I found. They take reviews from different sources and combine them to rank products. It's like Rotten Tomatoes for consumer goods a great idea.

Best Songs - In Another World - Watermelon Men

Like most of the "Best Songs" I write about this one is good no matter your mood. If you are down it's a downer song, if you are up it's an upbeat song. The key is it has a good melody, smart lyrics, and is pieced together very well. It's hard for me to imagine sometimes that these guys didn't make it big.

There is no lyrics sheet in the album and no one has written up lyrics for it out there so I'll try my hand at it.

Watermelon Men - In Another World

Have you ever been to Argentina
The burning sun will wake you up
Believe me

Will you find
I'm what you have
In another world

Three strangers on the way through
That's the plan
Like a child you see
But you don't understand

Will you find
I'm what you have
In another world

Open up the windows
Watch the clouds
Like dreams
They just pass you by

Listen to the wheels
As you are rolling
Thousands of miles
Left behind

Have you ever been to Argentina
The burning sun will wake you up
Believe me

Will you find
I'm what you have
In another world

Will you find
I'm what you have
In another world
In another world


In fact I couldn't even find a video for it on youtube.com so I made my own.