Metallica R.I.P.

Back in the late 80s I was a pretty big Metallica fan. I saw them in Germany during the And Justice For All… tour and it still remains one of the best I’ve ever seen.

And then…they turned on their fans.

After spending their youth making and trading bootleg tapes of their favorite bands Metallica hopped on the hypocrite train (in addition to totally misunderstanding the meaning of this new fangled ‘internet’ technology) and did their best to make sure their fans who shared songs on Napster would get in trouble with the law.

I haven’t listened to Metallica since and really haven’t thought much about them but saw this site with the following video which I thought was pretty good. Enjoy.

I know I should be doing homework, but…

Ok…brief procrastination break.

Normally, I have a deep distrust for Norwegians.  They celebrate their national day in another country.  They have tons of oil and know it (they’re the Texans of Scandivania).  And they have all those suspicious sounding fjords.

Despite that, they have some pretty good music.  Here’s one band I really dig.  Kaizers Orchestra. They sing in Norwegian (I guess, quite frankly they could be just talking goobly gook and I wouldn’t know) but it does sound so good I don’t mind not knowing what the hell they’re talking about.

Here, enjoy a video:

More music news

Wow, who knew early May was such a big music month.

Nine Inch Nails is releasing their new album online…for free!  (thanks Digital Detritus for the news).  Just a short while ago Trent Reznor (the person behind NiN) offered an instrumental (Ghosts I-IV) 4 CD set for download for only $5.

You gotta love this guy.  He’s expressed his extreme dislike for the recording industry for quite some time now and the fact that he doesn’t have to sweat rent gives him the freedom to experiment with alternative ways of getting his music out there to the public.

Absolutely brilliant.

The Golden Hour

I was checking my Amazon recommendations and I saw that Firewater is coming out with a new album tomorrow! Check out their stuff. No, really. Check it out. Great lyrics. Great sounds.

The album is called The Golden Hour.  Here’s a video of Tod A explaining the album a bit.

Yet another reason to love YouTube

A good remix of a cool song from the 80s, chicks dancing in bikinis, kids playing hooky, in other words all the elements you need for a great music video. Some may call this sexist but I’m sure you’ll forgive me for channeling my inner 15 year old.

Some music for the season…

If you’re tired of the “Monster Mash” and the “Purple People Eater” and want music that fits the mood of Halloween in a little more adult style, allow me to recommend Jill Tracy. She apparently has a new album coming out soon but her 1999 album has got a great sound. Check out a video for ‘The Fine Art of Poisoning’

If you like that, I’d recommend the Desden Dolls:

the song running through my head today is….

“Twilight Zone” by Golden Earring. I wasn’t a huge fan of the song or the video when it first came out in 1982 (except for the interrogator chicks still rate on the ‘hot chick-o-meter’) but now I love it.  I must have listened to this song ten times in a row yesterday…

“You’ll come to know, when the bullet hits the bone!”

allofMP3.com…R.I.P. Or, maybe not…

It was announced today that the Russian operated website allofMP3.com officially closed it’s doors today.  For those of you not familiar with it, allofMP3.com was a website which sold music, similar to iTunes  but at a fraction of the cost  (tracks were in the .10 cent range compared with .99 cents for iTunes).  Further, the tracks you purchased didn’t have any digital rights code buried in it so you could freely use those tracks in any number of devices (many tracks on iTunes only let you transfer the tracks a limited number of times.

The site claimed to be totally legit, saying that they paid royalties so some shadowy, semi-official Russian organization.  That may be true but I always suspected the cash was going into the hands of Russian mobsters.

Still, $1 an album is hard to argue with.  Especially since when you buy music legally you’re just funding another group of crooks.

Oh, wait.  It’s not dead, it just moved to Mp3Sparks.com

I’m a much bigger fan of sites where listeners can buy music directly from the artist, thereby circumventing the parasitical middleman.  Amie Street has a pretty cool business model where the price of music is determined by how popular the song it.

I know I’m supposed to  be outraged by digital ‘piracy’ but I can’t help feeling that the majority of the problem was brought on by the music industry itself in a futile attempt to hold back technology and continue to screw over consumers with outrageous markups for CDs.

More Holiday Mashups!

Santastic II is the second (hence the ‘II’ in the title) Christmas mash-up album compiled by DjBC.  This stuff (so far at least, I’m on track 6) is a bit more ‘out there’ than the first Santastic but it’s still good….check it out.

This ain’t your dad’s holiday music!

Here’s an album called Santastic! that is a collection of 18 mashups of holiday songs.  I’m listening to the album for the first time right now so can’t give it a complete review but track 2 “The Christmas Massacre of Charlie Brown”, is noteworthy and fun.

Besides, the thing is free and your mp3 player is just begging for some more Christmas music.

I’m thinking this is really good stuff to have an your Christmas party (although a couple of the songs are tagged NSFW so you might need to be a bit selective depending on your audience) since it’ll be familiar enough for people to recognize the tunes as holiday oriented but with enough of a twist that’ll get your recognized as being on the culteral cutting edge!