iTunes Store Gripe

I could expound on this to include bad metadata that has plagued digital music from the beginning. I won't - I'll keep this succinct for now.

iTunes (Apple) - why the hell do you feel it necessary to change the name of the album for your free songs each week? You have the song, you list the correct album it is from, but then you tack on " - single of the week" and label it as track 1 of 1. NO!

Actually, it's worse than that in some cases. Sometimes the real name of the album instead becomes "song title - single of the week". But, it's not an actual single, and the album art will still of course be for the full album.

This came from a real album, with a real title, and it had a specific track number. STOP CHANGING IT!

Genius!

I really didn't think I would find much use for the new "Genius" feature in iTunes 8. It seemed like a gimmick, and primarily to push more stuff from the iTunes store in my mind.

However, after playing with it for less than a night I'm pretty happy with it now. I was a bit concerned when my iTunes memory usage climbed to 800 MB while it was first compiling my genius information (and if you still care about privacy of your data it will disturb you as well). After that completed though, it was pretty cool seeing it group together songs from my library based on a given song.

After playing with that for a bit, I decided to turn on the sidebar and let it show songs from the store as well. The related songs portion is only mildly interesting to me -- what I really liked was the list of other songs I might be missing from that same artist.

It was while browsing an artist I happen to have nearly everything ever made, that I noticed something else that I found amusing. It claimed there was a song I didn't have, and that it was on an album that I physically own and had ripped to my library. After being thoroughly stumped for a bit (keep in mind it's the wee hours of the morning, and I have all sound muted), I realized that it was actually a hidden track. It turns out that if you buy the album from iTunes, the last song is broken into 2 separate songs, rather than one long track. Interesting. Also cool - because I now know the title to what was previously an untitled hidden track to me.

Digital Battlefield

It's too bad other companies did not have the foresight and unique position of Apple to make their online music stores truly succeed. I say this not because I don't like iTunes, I've said before how it is pretty much my primary source if at all possible. However, some other companies are starting to do some good things and it is just a nearly insurmountable obstacle for them to overcome, which I think limits some progress that we should be seeing.

Okay - that was a long run-on way of getting to my real point. Amazon continues to improve and add to their excellent MP3 download service - yet I still basically forget about them entirely unless something pokes me to remind me. This is especially weird given that for almost all of my other online shopping, I prefer to use them first.

I received an email pointing out that Amazon has weekly album deals that are really good. We're talking $5 or $7 full album, non-DRM downloads of some really good artists. I assumed these would be pop radio schlock, but they actually have a good assortment of some good music.

Then, on top of that, I find out that Amazon has weekly free songs, just like iTunes, except again they are DRM-free of course. These songs change weekly (and possibly daily, some that I saw yesterday are no longer featured). Here is a link where you can find some, or signup for their weekly newsletter if you're like me and need a poke to look outside the iTunes garden and see the other music all around.

iTunes is still the simplest path around for me, without question. Nobody else can yet pull off having a single app where I can search their store, manage my music, and drop it on my device all in a well-designed interface. Amazon's downloader does a decent job, but I still consider it somewhat of a hack. However, low-priced DRM-free music is a good way to at least get me looking at them.

Adding on quick - here's another link to 30 free hip-hop/R&B songs courtesy of AllHipHop.com. A bit of a pain, you have to get your iTunes code via email - but some pretty good songs.

Potpourri

It's been a while since I did a post with several interesting items, so here goes:

• Completely Missing the Point
  I'm to the point where I'm almost entirely paperless with my monthly bills. I think the city water bill is the sole holdout at this point; everything else is either delivered directly to my email (fantastic), or I download from the web (better, but still not the best). I can now use email tags or folders of PDFs to store all of this data very succinctly, and in a searchable and usable manner.
  
  Maybe the biggest benefit though was time savings and reduction of effort. Quite simply, especially with automatically tagged email, there is little to no interaction with these bills any longer. I check them over and archive them.
  
  So, I was highly disappointed to receive the following email after downloading my latest telephone statement from the local co-op:

  eLation@southslope.com

  Data concerning your account was recently made available offline.
  If you didn't download this data, it may indicate an unauthorized individual has accessed your account.
  
  A PDF version of invoice 10224020 was downloaded.
  
  In accordance with an FCC ruling, you are being notified that data from your online account was downloaded.
  The text of this ruling can be viewed at http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-07-22A1.pdf

  
  Needless to say, I was not "elated" about seeing this. What a pointless email. I can only hope they are taking this ruling too far, and that I won't start seeing this everywhere.
  
  
• Missing iTunes Feature
  Here's a sentence I'm pretty sure I've never said before: "Man, I wish iTunes had this feature I heard about in Windows Media Player." That changed after seeing a post on lifehacker today though.
  
  Basically, this is a way to put media player into a full screen mode and have it locked with a numeric password. So, the theory is that you can throw the player into party mode and go full screen with some cool visualizations. Now, somebody bumping or trying to use the computer won't kill the tunes. Simple, but cool.
  
  
• Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
  As always, this is a great mantra for living your life. Lately, near the holiday time especially, I have been very interested in the first. Looking at all of the pure excess and junk in the stores just leads me to believe we are wasting effort and resources on pointless junk.
  
  Without leaning too heavily into the preachy category, I thought I would share an interesting article about reducing the number of useless gifts given simply out of expectation and replacing them with things that are thoughtful and simple. In other words, something original and practical, not something overpriced and grabbed from an end cap.
  

Ringtones

The introduction by Apple of ringtones to its arsenal has prompted some discussion, and made me actually think a bit about something I generally just find to be a nuisance.

The general consensus when the iPhone first came out was that the lack of custom ringtones was something Apple needed to remedy. This has been a staple of all of the other phones and providers for some time now. They did just that with their most recent announcement. However, I think many were expecting more/different since it was Apple doing it.

First, some things that I think they did right. Being able to pick which 30 seconds of the song to use is good. This is something I would have always considered a must, but it isn't available directly from any of the cell providers. Next, they don't force you to just buy an overpriced ringtone (anywhere from $2 to $5 from what I can tell most places); they allow you to make them from your own music that you already own. Yes, I know there is a catch, we'll get there in a minute. Finally, it can all be done from the safe haven of iTunes. Pick the song, pick the musical selection, and get it loaded on the device is all possible and very simple. The last one is the type of thing I have come to expect from Apple, and may be the single largest benefit. As usual, most people miss the benefit of simplicity.

Now, the things I think were not done the way I would have hoped or expected. I need to preface this by saying I don't think any of the current providers or ringtone offerings have done anything positive; they have been nothing short of horrendous. Overpriced, a pain in the ass to get or use, lack of choice, and a general annoyance is how I would summarize all previous offerings. I can't understand personally why people pay anything for a ringtone, let alone more than I am willing or need to pay to purchase a full song from the iTunes store.

Although the 99 cent price sounds about right, you can't actually purchase any ringtone for that amount. You have to already have bought the song or buy it at that time, which means there is an additional 99 cents to include. Thus, the minimum for a ringtone is actually $2. However, you do also get a full copy of the song for listening as well.
Not all songs are available for making ringtones though, even if you have purchased them from the store. This one seems confusing. You would think if you bought it from Apple, they would let you pay them another $1 to make it a ringtone no matter what.

Now, these few downsides seem to be far overwhelmed by the positives. However, I wondered immediately why Apple would put restrictions such as these on the songs. It doesn't fit with some of their past policies and my expectations of them. Coupled with the recent news that found many of these issues could be easily circumvented in iTunes 7.4 (although they have since been "patched") it made me start to wonder if Apple had nothing to do with these. Were they in fact mandated by some other entity?

I did a (very) little research on this, and came up with some additional conclusions and thoughts. Since this post is fairly long though, I'm going to make like Back to the Future 2 and leave you with this...


SEE THE EXCITING(POSSIBLY) CONCLUSION IN TOMORROW'S POST: "Idiocies of Licensing"

5 of the Now - Long and Varied

Something different this time. 5 albums rather than songs (that's the long part), and in a progressively different range of music (that's the varied).

This will start with rock-influenced rap, to rap, to rap + orchestra, to folk. Dig? (I aplogize, I can't get iTunes to very elegantly link to just an album. I did try to link to my favorite songs on each of these.)

1. Lyrics Born - Overnite Encore: Lyrics Born Live!
It's no secret that this guy is hands down one of my favorite performers. This performance blows the doors off about anything else you might hear too. Find somebody else with more energy in their performance. Seriously, because I want to hear them if they exist.
I would suggest listening to some of his other stuff first though, as this is almost better as you hear him improvise with his existing material. Rock/rap cannot be combined better than this.

2. Dilated Peoples - Expansion Team LP
I discussed in a previous 5 of the now track how I found out about Dilated thanks to Evidence being on a track with Lyrics Born (check out that smooth segway..). Shortly after that, I actually bought all 4 of their albums, mostly unheard. I liked their stuff that much.
I'm actually recommending their initial release from 2000 as the one to get if you can get only one. Check out the final track, "War", especially. The 'Dubya should be required to have this as his bedtime music (or the asshole from Diebold...but I digress).

3. Nuttin But Stringz - Struggle from the Subway to the Charts
This stuff is crazy good. These brothers are equally adept at rapping or playing classical violin. I first saw them while watching Noggin with the kids, but it turns out they were recently in the movie "Step Up" which I watched as well. Fantastic stuff.

4. Phish - The Story of the Ghost
Time to chill. Most people would not be surprised in the slightest to see a Phish album pop up on the blog of somebody with some pretty obvious interest in Pink Floyd. However, I'm actually not a big Phish fan. This is one of the few exceptions. I recently found this CD buried in a box, and began listening to it again. Smooth, flowing tracks.

5. Patty Griffin - Flaming Red
Shannon was the one who found this, which makes sense because this is very much her style of music. A cross between Sheryl Crow and more folk-influenced singers such as Loreena McKennitt. Very mellow music. The track, "One Big Love" was the one I originally helped her track down, and is probably my favorite as well.


Let it never be said that I don't listen to a wide range of music...

The Missing iTunes Feature

I know I've posted about this in the past, but I'm far too lazy to find the reference. I'm guessing it was either in a five of the now post, or simply in a post about how to improve iTunes.

One thing that has annoyed me about iTunes in the past was that I couldn't export a playlist, smart or otherwise, in a standard playlist format (I'm calling m3u the de facto standard here). If for no other reason, than it would be nice to have the ability to backup my playlists should my library ever decide to crash.

So, I was very happy to find this morning that someone wrote the program that I had on my "to do" list. Here is the iTunes playlist exporter. It will allow you to export your playlists in .m3u format, just as I wanted. Sweet.

Fun Task for the Day

Music by color.

Go into your iTunes collection, type a color into the search box, and hit play.

Tonight's playlist for me: Green.

The Unholy Trinity

One of these things is not like the other...

The unholy trinity I speak of in the title is a combination I stumbled upon tonight with much glee on my part. Apple iTunes COM SDK + JavaScript + Windows Scripting Host. I know, you're probably wondering what the hell kind of medicine I am on, playing with Windows scripting. I had never touched it before tonight either. JavaScript and I have a longterm love/hate relationship as well. I love to swear at it endlessly for its annoyances and lack of ease of debugging, while hating how often it ends up getting the job done for me.

That all said, this combination has just allowed me to do some kick-ass things with iTunes. I had the SDK downloaded for some time, and I wrote some sample C++ apps when I first got it. However, after seeing the Apple JavaScript examples I decided to experiment with them a bit. I'm thoroughly impressed now, similar to Unix shell scripts (although orders of magnitude less powerful), I find that I can just get a task done very quickly, as opposed to writing a full application. Quick and dirty is the key here.

I currently have some scripts to perform some actions I had been meaning to do. Remove any dead tracks from my library, and cleanup bogus comments on some of my tracks. If anyone is interested, I can give them the scripts.

Now, for the challenge. Come up with some task/feature that you would like to do with your iTunes library that you can't quite seem to make happen with playlists. I'll see what I can do about getting it done in a script.

5 of the Now

Here you go, your first holiday five of the now...

Side Two - DJ Ese, Aesop Rock, and Babbletron - Side Two

This was actually a free track that I got somewhere. I don't recall it being the free song of the week from iTunes (go here for keeping track of that BTW), so I think it must have been from when the Apple group on Facebook gave away some songs each week.
Regardless, this has a fantastic hook that sticks in your head. With Aesop Rock on it, how can you go wrong?

Welcome to the Black Parade - My Chemical Romance - The Black Parade

At first my intense, burning hatred for Emo would not let me give this a listen. Thankfully, I like to at least give most music a chance. That, coupled with a resounding recommendation from the SO led me to listening and watching the video. These guys are not Emo. They just haven't quite realized that they just plain rock hard, and don't need the mascara.
This song just plain rocks. At times they evoke an image of Queen at their height in the late 70's. Coming from me, that's a resounding recommendation.

(Check out the video too, not as trippy balls as The Fountain, but cool nonetheless)

U + Ur Hand - P!nk - I'm Not Dead

Poor grammar aside, this songs kicks. I had found Pink a bit too mainstream for a while, but with this album, and this song especially, I think she is back in her own niche. This is way too raw and powerful to be classified as pop, but still a bit more polished than rock.
This is again a song where the video got me into the song as much as the music. It turns out having a bajillion channels can be good, MTV Hits actually plays music videos all of the time still.

Pack Up (Remix) - Lyrics Born with KRS-One and Evidence - Same !@#$, Different Day

Lyrics Born is almost too simple of a choice for a 5otn. The guy can do no wrong in my book. I have specifically been giving this track some additional listening lately though. Anyone interested in this better already know who KRS-One is, so I don't need to preach on that.
However, Evidence is the reason I have really included this track. I have picked up a few tracks from Dilated Peoples recently, and they are fantastic. "Neighborhood Watch" is the album I have been liking lately.

My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue) - Neil Young and Crazy Horse - Rust Never Sleeps

Reaching back to the classics here. Neil and Crazy Horse blurred the lines between folk and rock, birthing grunge in the process. I got back into this song as part of a pseudo-obsession with tracking down some obscure bootlegs a few weeks ago.
Specifically, there was a version of Daughter by Pearl Jam performed on Saturday Night Live back on April 16, 1994. This version was performed very shortly after the death of Kurt Cobain. Eddie Vedder segwayed from Daughter into "My My, Hey Hey", in a very cool performance (I would post it here, but unfortunately it isn't all that easy to find a live link for it).
Instead, I submit the original from Neil.
To really do this justice, make sure to follow it up with, "Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)" from the same album. The two songs represent one of the best "bookend" set of songs ever.

Apple - You Fail It

I've been sitting on this post for a while, but I needed to get something back out there after taking a little break.

I've talked before (although I can't easily seem to search for where) about how much I want a nicely integrated system update service. All applications could tie into it to update themselves. Very similar to how I think backup should work. Let the system control it all, but each application can register with it, since who better than the app to decide what to backup or update.

Ryan has also said several times how ridiculous it is that due to the lack of this, every app feels the need to bundle their own updater. Apple it turns out is no exception. When iTunes 7 rolled around, Apple created something called Apple Software Update, and included it with iTunes. I groaned, but I thought, "Hey, Apple stuff is generally simple and just works." So, I installed it.

Then, after fixing a ton of bugs in iTunes 7, they released an update. I thought, "awesome, I'll have it automatically thanks to that update package, right?" Wrong. Not even when I tried to use it to check for an updated manually. Check the screen shot. The software updater doesn't have a clue, but iTunes itself prompted me to do the update.




Yep, that was the end of Apple Software Update. Promptly uninstalled.

I hope the next operating system that convinces me it is worthy of being installed finds a way to integrate these services that I want.

Change of Perspective

Without getting too deep, I have been pondering lately how drastically one's perspective on something can change over time. I'll keep it simple with one example.

I used to love building computers. Everything about it. I kept up-to-date on all of the components that were out there, knew their specs by heart, and pretty much knew the best price on anything at any time.

Those days are long past. I no longer give a rip. I want my computer to work, I don't want to touch it, and I pretty much have one that is just "good enough." Until iTunes 7 came out that is, and suddenly I found my machine lacking.

Those who watch this blog saw me love iTunes 7, but also rant about it. However, I never even blogged about my biggest disappointment. After seeing how sweet cover flow looked, I couldn't wait to use it at home. However, I was instead greeted by this message when I enabled cover flow at home: "iTunes is unable to display artwork on this computer." Huh? Why? Talk about a worthless error message.

I immediately hypothesized that my last than fantastic Rage XL graphics card simply wasn't up to the task. A bit of searching on some forums pretty much proved me right. Thus, I was in need of a graphics card. I really didn't care though, and didn't want to spend time researching it. Once again, I really just wanted to be able to click the "good enough" graphics card button on Amazon or something. In the end, I went to eBay, narrowed the list by a few features I actually knew that I wanted, and bought one. Radeon 9250 it turns out, don't really care about the specs, they are good enough, and met the most important criteria, my price point of $30.

Now, I have cover flow goodness. Sweet. Now, lest I forget:

Hawks 24, Worthless Illini 7. Go Hawks.
I'll see all the cool folks under the lights at Kinnick next week.

Mellow

Okay, my last post may have come across harsh on iTunes 7. That is far from how I actually feel. I was impressed with this the second I saw it, and now I am thoroughly amazed. They hit nearly every feature we were hoping to get added.

1. Burn with CD-Text - Yes
2. Kick-ass view artwork display, similar to delicious library - Yes
3. Album art for all music, free - Yes
4. Backup music library to CD, full or incremental - Yes
5. Automatic ipod updating within iTunes, not a seperate app - Yes
6. Automatic iTunes updating (is this a good thing? Oh well.) - Yes

I don't like that you still can't export a playlist to M3U format, but oh well. Very cool overall Apple.

Battle Hymn

iTunes 7 came out today. It rocks hard, very cool all around, couple this with a lower priced iTV, and things are looking good on the Apple front. I don't think I need any more explanation of all of this, as the geek sites should have it more than covered. However, there is one little caveat, Apple has now phased out anything prior to 6.x buying from the music store.

This eliminates my current workaround for being locked into DRM, using iTunes 5 with Jhymn. Sucko. The only saving grace is that iTunes 6 recently had a workaround created, and iTunes 6 is still allowed to purchase songs, even if you use that account with iTunes 7. So, I do believe I will use iTunes 7 on my main machine because it rocks, and keep a virtual PC image with iTunes 6 and purchase/un-DRM over there. Cumbersome, but necessary for the time being.

Here is a quoted block from the forums over on the Jhymn site explaining this:

Ok, here are my final results of testing iTunes version. I have three machines:

1) XP with iTunes 5.0.1.4
2) XP with iTunes 6.0.5.20
3) Macbook with iTunes 7.0

When I tried to "purchase" (free song of the week) a song with iTunes 5 and an account created with itunes 5 it told me I need to upgrade. Apple must have phased out 5.0 completely with the changes made today.

I was able to download the free song using iTunes 6 no problem.

I created a new account on my macbook with iTunes 7.0. I was then able to use that account in the windows version of iTunes 6 to download the free song.

Conclusion: Thankfully, using iTunes 7.0 does not stop you from using iTunes 6 on another computer. However, I wouldn't recommend upgrading to iTunes 7 unless you know what you're doing. It may be hard to go back to iTunes 6 on the same machine once you've upgraded."

5 of the Beat

More music for you. This time, it's pretty much an assortment of rock with some kick to it, great stuff.

Dick Dale and His Del-Tones - Dick Dale and His Del-Tones: Greatest Hits 1961-1976 - Misirlou

Killer guitar line. Maybe one of the best ever. Probably the only song in my collection that started in the 30's as a middle-eastern wedding dance song. Dick Dale demonstrates that he can do more with one string of a guitar than most people do with 4-6. Yes, you probably know this best from "Pulp Fiction." I hope you don't only know it from the Black Eyed Peas song: "Push It."

The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Axis: Bold As Love - Little Wing
I actually wanted to give you the Stevie Ray Vaughn version of this here, but of course, iTunes doesn't have him in the catalog :-( Stevie gives it just a little bit more kick than even the original. In either case, your productivity will instantly change. You will either kick into high gear while grooving out to this, or you will stop everything as you sit back and chill to it.

Disturbed - Ten Thousand Fists - Land of Confusion

You wouldn't normally expect a Genesis song to make it onto an upbeat rock list (at least I wouldn't). I also wouldn't have expected to have liked so many rock covers of their songs in the past few years. First Nonpoint and now this. Great remake.

Kanye West - The College Dropout - Jesus Walks

I know, this is rap, not rock you're thinking. So? I've been grooving out to it lately and it had to make the list. I didn't like Kanye at first, but I really dig his stuff now. If you're looking for G's and Hustla's and Ho's, this ain't it. Check out his "Late Orchestration" CD for some really good live performances.

T.Rex - 20th Century Boy: The Ultimate Collection - 20th Century Boy

Once again, disappointed by the iTMS. This is one of the top guitar licks of all time, by a group that has been influencing rock bands since "The Who". Nowhere to be found. Amazon to the rescue.

Okay, I know that was 5, but I need to add a 6th. I just recently picked up a single that I saw as a kid. It is the "Ruined by Rick Rubin" remixes of Queen's "We are the Champions" and "We Will Rock You." Hard to come by this single anymore. I'm going to bring it to work and let Ryan have a listen.

Double Shots

A simple, silly post for the night. I was chilling out to channel 49 (Big Tracks) on XM radio today, which is good rock from the 70's and 80's, and they happened to be playing Queen - We Will Rock You. So, the second it is over, of course I my ears immediately expect to hear "We are the Champions", and as expected, they play it.

Since I was driving home and had plenty of time to think, I started trying to list in my head all of the other "double shots" that exist in rock music. Songs that radio has decided long ago will always be grouped and played together. I didn't come up with a huge list, but I decided to go ahead and make an iMix of them nonetheless.

iTunes did not have everything I needed however, so here is an XML export of the actual song list.

The mix itself lives here.

I went searching for more online information about doubled songs. The best I could do was this link from good old Snopes. It did point out a very obvious one of Foreplay/Long Time by Boston that I should have included. So, who out there has some others I should list?

What is old is new again

First, a quick update on my last post. I have IE7 installed. It looks a bit more like Firefox, I like the integrated RSS renderer and feed handling, and they did at least try to address some security concerns. However, it is still just IE. There is just no way I can go back anymore, I like my Firefox, and especially the customizations I can get courtesy of Extensions and Greasemonkey too much.

Moving on to music. Quick, when was the first rap song made? Okay, how about the first explicit rap song? No, n00bs, Kanye West and Jay-Z did not invent rap. However, I would have been way off base myself. I would not have guessed back in 1965 we had someone dropping the funky beats, in a very explicit manner, but it happened. Moreover, iTunes actually carries it: "Rap Dirty" by Blowfly. Give it a listen, I was amused/impressed.

More on music. I had heard of the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival in the past, and always showed no interest as it was primarily jam bands like Phish, who I like to listen to, but pretty much ignore. Who of all groups should happen to be at this year's event though? Blackalicious. That would have been awesome to see (especially if they had happened to bring along Lyrics Born...).

UPDATE: iTunes link fixed. I have also finished adding labels to all of my posts for 2006. Eventually I may tackle 2005 as well.

5 of the Eclectic

Some new tunes for you. In this case, most are not new at all. This is a very odd assortment, but it's what I have been enjoying so I thought I would share. Expand your horizons a bit.

Gary Allan - Tough All Over - Life Ain't Always Beautiful

Amazing song, and very obvious the tragedy he has gone through in the last year while listening to this.

Kenny Chesney - When the Sun Goes Down - Anything but Mine

I hate Kenny Chesney. So, why do I have one of his songs in here? Because he somehow got everything right on this one.

Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin 1 - Dazed and Confused
THE shit. You want to hear how Rock and Roll, true guitar rock was created? Check this out. Killer bass line, screaming guitars, Page, Plant, Bonham, and Jones. Nothing more needs to be said.

Harvey Danger - Where Have All The Merrymakers Gone? - Flagpole Sitta
A wacky fun song from back in my college days. Still good stuff even if he dropped off the face of the planet after this.

Alex Kapranos, Barrington Levy, Del Tha Funkee Homosapien & Handsome Boy Modeling School - White People - The World's Gone Mad

Automator, possibly at his finest. All of his work, especially that with Handsome Boy Modeling School is incredible. Throw in Del, and it's off the charts. Thanks to Ryan for hooking me up with this orginally.

As usual, I was annoyed when I found a song that wasn't available from iTunes when creating this post. I really want to go there for one-stop shopping. Harvey Danger, I can see maybe having a problem getting licensed. Zeppelin? Fix that now Apple, that's just sad. I'm assuming in that case it is a band issue, much like the Beatles and Radiohead, but Jobs and crew just need to work harder (IMO).

Best Buy It

Just in case Blogger decides to eat my post again, I'll keep this short.

While reading the Sunday edition of what passes for journalism, I thumbed through this week's Best Buy ad. There are some pretty sweet deals on CD's for this week. Several for $8, and other good ones for $10.

I would highly recommend that those with a rock tendancy go buy the Hinder CD for $8. I got it off iTunes just recently (not sure why I didn't have it before) and it rocks. The two hits thus far, "Get Stoned" and "Lips of an Angel" are fantastic, but the rest of the CD is good also.

Yes, some might classify this as Nu-Metal and run away. Bah. To Led Zeppelin, everything is Nu-Metal, so quit your preaching.

5 of the Weekend

Time for an update on tunes I have been listening to recently.

1. George Harrison - What Is Life: This song was stuck in my head ever since the Sheryl Crow concert I went to last week. It is the song she plays right before she begins, after the volume is cranked up, on this tour. Many thanks to the people on the forum for kicking me into remembering who sang it. Killer guitar riff if it doesn't do anything else for you.

2. Julien Civange and Louis Haeri - Lalala: This was actually one of the free iTunes tracks a while back, and I finally got to listen to it. Fantastic rock instrumental, I could have sworn I was listening to The Who.

3. Rascal Flatts - Life Is A Highway: This is from the Cars soundtrack. It also happens to be a remake of one of my absolute favorite tracks of all time, and a track that just so happened to be on the first CD I ever purchased. This is a spot-on remake, and it appears in a perfect portion of the movie.

4. Panic! At the Disco - I Write Sins Not Tragedies: Thanks to Blender and others, this group has become much more popular than I anticipated. I find this track very quirky and cool, just beware that it may become overplayed.

5. Handsome Boy Modeling School Feat. Del The Funky Homosapien, Barrington Levy & Alex Kapranos - The World's Gone Mad: This is off an album that Ryan let me listen to on Friday named White People. Fantastic stuff, and this immediately jumped to my short list since it was a Del track I hadn't heard before. Dan the Automator wrote and produced nearly every song on the album, so if you know who he is, that should be sufficient.

(Sorry, no iTunes links on any of these. My iTunes, although I can still purchase songs and listen to my library, will no longer let me search through the music store. It just dies. I'm not reinstalling though, so tough.