Here’s the track list and covered artist:

• Welcome To The Machine – Pink Floyd
• Heaven On Their Minds – Jesus Christ Superstar
• Almost Cut My Hair – CNY
• For What It’s Worth – Buffalo Springfield
• For The Love Of Money – O’Jays
• Innuendo – Queen
• Neon Knights – Black Sabbath
• Synchronicity II – Police
• Red Rain – Peter Gabriel
• Odissea – Carlo Marrale & Cheope
• Bullet The Blue Sky (Live) – U2

You may also enjoy the Wikipedia page for My Humps.

You can check out a jamming track from the album at Feed Me Good Tunes, one of my favorite music blogs. Here’s the direct mp3 link.

For the years in my life when I was seeing live shows on a weekly basis, MN was my favorite place to see a show. I dug the tiered floors that let you choose how you wanted to see the gig – down in the pit, sitting, standing near the bar, etc. I dug the bar. I don’t know why, but it was just a fun place to be. Tom was our favorite bartender – he’s been there for ever. I always thought it was just the perfect size venue to see the kind of shows that I love the best. You could get close but it’s big enough that the place can get really rocking and high energy.

The first show I ever saw there was Sass Jordan with the Arc Angels opening. The Arc Angels was basically the Stevie Ray Vaughn’s rhythm section after he died. And Sass Jordan was sort of a southern chick singer Nick and I were briefly enamored with. Nick and I went down to see that gig and we were young enough that we had to sit in the special minor “no drinky for you” area.

It’s hard for me to pick a favorite show I ever saw there. I remember seeing a ton of local acts there like Robynn Ragland, Vargas Swing, the Unconscious doing a reunion gig, Slapdash, Suede Chain, Savage St. Hubbins, Sarah Cloud, The Urge, 311. Also a bunch of more national acts like Barenaked Ladies, Medeski Martin and Wood, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, Cherry Popping Daddies, G Love, Paula Cole, Rollins spoken word, and many more.

The Barenaked Ladies gig was an awesome xmas show put on by one of the radio stations. They did a medley of Billy Joel covers at one point that was hilarious. Undoubtedly one of the best gigs I saw there was Medeski Martin and Wood, an acid jazz group. In fact, the show was so good that I went out and bought a kick-ass keyboard the next day and started studying jazz piano. And I think that same show was the impetus for Scott buying his first drum set.

Later, Mary and I saw at least one show there: John Spencer Blues Explosion. Mary actually saw her at the time estranged childhood best friend there (whom I had never met), which was weird. Turns out Mary has been going to Mississippi Nights even longer than I have and has seen all sorts of awesome stuff. She saw the Beastie Boys there at least twice. The first time they were completely drunk and couldn’t even play their instruments. The other was on a later tour and one of her favorite shows ever. Turns out her favorite bartender was Tom, too. Guess that guy was good.

The last show I saw there was (fittingly) with Nick seeing Primus last year with Drums and Tuba opening. D&T were really incredible (oddly I’ve seen them opening several times) and I would have gladly watched them do the whole night. Primus was lackluster – guess Les was sick and having an off night.

Nick, this one’s for you. I’ve seen more gigs than I can count with you and MN has always been a constant and special place. I’m glad you were with me on all those gigs, ready to share the music. I can remember so many detailed musical discussions, grooving, drinking, and just all around enjoyment we shared all those nights.

This feed is courtesy of last.fm which has a plugin for iTunes that scrapes your listening info and publishes it to the last.fm site. If you want to look at my most listened albums, artists, etc you can check out my user page.

They also announced a deal with Paramount for more movies. Passed their 2 billion songs downloaded mark. Selling 5 million songs a day. Moved up a spot over Amazon as 4th biggest music reseller.

But even better is the iPhone. It’s super thin and all touch screen. Multi-touch gestures to control it. 8 GB iPod built-in. 2 MP camera. Can show wide-screen. Proximity sensor, light sensor, accelerometer (can tell if you are showing portrait or landscape). Visual voicemail. Wifi and EDGE connectivity. Works with Cingular only I guess. I’m drooling – looks amazing. $500 for 4 GB and $600 for 8 GB. Available in June (still needs FCC approval).

I feel very happy with my decision to buy some AAPL stock last week (up 5% on the day right now). Wish I’d bought more…. :)

Pretty good coverage on the Engadget transcript although I’m sure all the Apple store stuff will be up later today as well.

Update: Here’s another post with a great pic of JB.

1. Breakestra – Hit the Floor (2005) – If you’ve got a thicker slice of funk this side of 2000, I’d like to hear it. You cannot listen to these guys without grooving. The album has some straight-ahead funk, the canonical hip-hop track with a pile of guests, and some more laid-back stuff and it is all worthy of your undivided and immediate attention.
2. Nada Surf – The Weight Is a Gift (2005) – This is a consistently great pop album and never fails to hook me within minutes. Oftentimes I catch a song on shuffle and end up listening to half the album. This album also contains one of my absolute favorite songs of the year, “Blankest Year”, which is two minutes of pure pop wonderment.
3. The Raconteurs – Broken Boy Soldiers (2006) – Jack White’s other band put together a great rock album this year. Hopefully this means rock is back! It also contains one of my favorite songs of the year, “Level”. They also have one of the best band web sites ever.
4. Ben Kweller – Ben Kweller (2006) – Ben put out a great pop record this year that I’ve found myself getting hooked back into over and over. My favorite track on the album is “Penny on a Train Track”.
5. Mike Doughty – Haughty Melodic (2005) – Mike is better known for his band Soul Coughing, although I guess even Soul Coughing is fairly unknown. Anyhow, he’s been doing solo work for a few years now and I think as a whole it’s better than his Soul Coughing stuff. It’s a lot more stripped down, less instrumentation, but that brings out his quirky lyrics and music more.
6. Imogen Heap – Speak for Yourself (2005) – For some reason I came across Imogen’s last album and it was just what I wanted to listen to for a while. Kind of pop/dance/electronic music. The track “Hide and Seek” was definitely one of my most-listened this year – it’s all vocals, with heavy electronic processing. Best heard loud.
7. Pearl Jam – Pearl Jam (2006) – PJ is back with the first album I’ve actually liked since Vs. Lot of good stuff on this and I certainly heard it a lot in the car and at home as it was one of Mary’s favorite CD’s of the year too.
8. Fall Out Boy – From Under the Cork Tree (2005) – probably my favorite power pop ear candy album of the year. Lots of fun stuff and ridiculous song titles. Another power pop honorable mention would be Panic! at the Disco.
9. Shout Out Out Out Out – Not Saying Just Saying (2006) – Two drummers + four bass players + two samplers + five synthesizers + five cowbells + two octapads + one vocoder = awesomeness. Dance electronic funk. Check out “Dude You Feel Electrical”.
10. Arctic Monkeys – Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not (2006) – Great unique stuff from these UK guys. They put out a couple other decent EPs this year too but my favorite stuff is all on the album. My favorite track is “Red Light Indicates Doors are Secured”.

I just ran across a link to a list of death metal bands in a festival (plus logos) that is equally as funny, perhaps more so as these are real actual band names. I think my favorite is probably “Nunwhore Commando 666″. If you scroll down, you’ll see a bigger list of past attendees at the bottom in small print.

And interestingly, there is at least one name on our made-up list that is also on the actual list: Catheter. There might be more too although nothing else I saw at a glance.

Places to buy music:

• emusic – Used to be very heavily indie but covers a lot higher percentage of mainstream stuff now. Lots of live stuff. Music i DRM-free. I like the subscription model – it’s a lot cheaper than something like iTunes if you get a subscription and actually download your tracks every month. Cost is probably around 20 cents / track.
• AllOfMP3 – Russian web site, currently at the center of a lot of copyright pressure. They pay the artists but not record companies, which you may or may not think is right. They operate under Russian law, but it looks like Russia may eventually buckle under pressure. I love the model though – tracks are DRM free, pick your format and compression level, pay per the byte. Cost is usually around 10 cents / track.
• iTunes – great selection, still a great place to find and buy music. 99 cents / track is simply too much though. Downloads also use Apple’s DRM and can only be played on up to 5 authorized computers.

Other things of interest:

• last.fm – Track your listening habits, get recommendations, listen to radio based on artist, recommendations, etc.
• iLike – sidebar for iTunes that suggests similar music to what you’re listening to and points you at free tracks by indie artists on garageband.com.
• G2P – Use Google to search for MP3’s on the net
• LibriVox – Audio books for books in the public domain
• LaLa – like BookMooch for CDs – peer to peer CD trading. Haven’t used it, but heard good things.
• Indy – music recommendation player, based on Pandora I think. I used this for a while about a year ago and thought it was ok.

One of the best things about it was that a bunch of guys were playing spoons in Clap Hands. And the other best thing was that he had marionettes off-stage that were mimicking the band (including said spoons). Awesome stuff.

Even odder was that Mary and I watched Team America: World Police that night as well, so it was like puppet night. Speaking of Team America, I enjoyed it. If you watch it, be sure to watch some of the extra stuff on the DVD about making of – pretty amazing.

They have a bunch of free live tracks available but I would urge you to check out Ghetto Queen in particular. It’s kinda funky and it has vocals and beat-boxing. If you like Debra by Beck (and you should), then you’ll probably dig it.

Prior posts if you’re interested:

• More loudness
• Overuse of compression in CDs

They were definitely Tower of Power-ish and indeed covered a couple TOP songs (tease of Shake Everything You’ve Got and something else I don’t remember). They also covered a JBs song and one or maybe two Stevie Wonder songs. Reminded me a lot of seeing the classic My Brother’s Keeper, a now defunct funk band I used to see in college. Although I think Mingo Fishtrap was probably better musically. Anyhow, they did 3 sets and we made it through 2.5 which is longer than I expected to last.

Before seeing this musical entree, we checked out Square One Brewery in Lafayette Park, which was great. It replaces the prior Lafayette Pub (Bar?) which was a great neighborhood joint with tremendous bugers. It is a worthy replacement. It’s a little brew-pub serving 12 beers made on the premise and what the evidence says is some yummy food.

I had the IPA (highly recommended) and tasted the Bavarian Weizen (ok wheat beer – not my thing usually) and the Grand Cru (definitely not my thing). But I’d drink the IPA all night. Wish I’d tried the ESB. I also had the House Smoked Flank Steak Nachos which were really flavorful: yummy flank steak, fresh sliced jalapenos, chips with just enough salt, and good salsa. Now I’m hungry. Anyhow, definitely recommended. I look forward to visiting again.

All in all, a really fun night. Many thanks to Chris for getting us all out of the house!

I pulled out Ben Folds Five’s Whatever and Ever Amen this week and gave it some attention. Forever and ever (amen) I will dig on this album. I clearly remember the exact moment that I found and fell for Ben Folds. I had been in Dayton for a year and a half and had a good job but was driving to St. Louis about once a month to hang out with friends. I was going to school at Wright State University, but not liking it. In general, I felt like I was in the wrong place. I had just scored a new job in St. Louis and was going to be moving home, working at a new gig, and going to school at a new place. It felt like the opening of a new chapter in my life and indeed it was.

On that fateful night, probably in August of 1997, I was up late packing and getting ready to move back to St. Louis. I was watching a music show on HBO called Reverb (no idea if it’s still on). Anyhow, BF5 was the featured artist and it was a mix of live stuff (which rocked) and interview stuff (which was really funny). By the end of the show, I was bouncing off the walls. I went out and bought their extensive 2 disc catalog the next day and listened to little else through the entire move process. I’m sure I called Nick and told him to do the same. That life transition and this album are forever linked for me.

I love the whole album but I’ll just highlight Kate as a song that I always turn to when I want to hear something that is just over the top happy. It’s a simple song about just being head over heels in love with a girl named Kate. Definitely in my top 5 “make me happy” songs. It helps a lot to listen to this in the car, maximum volume, windows down, singing at the top of your lungs. It captures muscially how I feel about Mary better than I ever could in words. Here’s the lyrics if you’re interested.

Not much else to report, just shuffled pretty much.

My new band of the week is Motion City Soundtrack. Not a great band, but kind of a fun power pop band, in the vein of Panic! at the Disco or Fallout Boy. I gather they did the soundtrack for the recent Superman Returns as well although I haven’t heard that yet.

Probably my favorite track right now is Level by The Raconteurs. I love the rhythms in this tune. You should check out their web site too as it is about the easiest web site I’ve ever used.

One interesting find of the week was The Bed’s Too Big Without You (by the Police) done by a jam/groove band called Skinjer (an offshoot of the Addison Groove Project).

Saw some other interesting covers of Gnarls Barkley’s Crazy on this blog by The Raconteurs and Ray LaMontagne. The Raconteurs version is more of a novelty but Ray’s version is pretty great.

Other miscellaneous bands I’ve been listening to lately but have been too lazy to blog about:

• The Postal Service – low-key electronic stuff, great in small doses
• Breakestra – funky awesomeness
• Imogen Heap – in particular, the song Hide and Seek
• Dandy Warhols – cool band from Portland
• Arctic Monkeys – refreshing pop rock from the UK. My fave is Red Light Indicates Door Are Secured

“Killing in the Name Of” by Rage Against the Machine ==> “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” by the Beatles

Anyway, here it is:

1) Sugar
2) Crucify
3) intro
4) ->Space Dog
5) Icicle
6) Precious Things
7) God
8) Leather
9) The Waitress
10) Bells for Her
11) Me and a Gun
12) Silent All These Years

encore 1:
13) Cornflake Girl
14) American Pie
15) ->Smells Like Teen Spirit

encore 2:
16) Cloud on my Tongue
17) When Sunny Gets Blue (an old jazz tune, absolutely incredible!!!)

encore 3:
18) Winter

All in all, a great show. Esp. Sugar and When Sonny…

The album is available from emusic.com. If you register for www.emusic.com, you get 25 free downloads in the first month, after which you can cancel if you want. In other words, this thick slice of funk is available to you, right now, for nothing. What are you waiting for?

PS. You might also be interested to know that emusic just added Funkadelic to their catalog.

Seems like everyone is just trying to use compression to make their CDs sound louder instead of taking advantage of the huge dynamic range offered by digital recording.

Seems to me like the advent of sound normalization on mp3 players, iTunes, etc would make this useless. Even on the radio, they do the same thing to normalize volume, so what’s the point? Record industry people are stupid.

You can also do chat and make groups and other stuff that seems pretty useless to me, but that’s just me. The recommendations and personal streaming radio are great ideas though.

Tags: last.fm, music, itunes

Anyhow this morning we went to a concert in this series by Turtle Island String Quartet, a jazz string quartet I’ve been following for maybe a decade. It was great, as expected, and the kids seemed to enjoy it, too.

They opened with a Brubeck tune (can’t remember which), then Mark, the cellist, did a lengthy intro and each member talked about how they got into music and their instrument. There were several breaks where they talked about how traditional classic music differed from rock/jazz music (beats on 1/3 vs the backbeat on 2/4).

Some of the stuff they played (what I can remember): jazz classics like “Stolen Moments”, and “Green Dolphin St”, an original “Skylife” from the first violinist, funky stuff like “Who Do You Think You Are?” by Tower of Power, couple pieces from Stephan Grappeli/Django Reinhardt – “Minor Blues” and something else I can’t remember.

They also did a section where they built up a “jazz sound” starting with the cellist, working through rhythm to simulate drums and guitar/piano, to soloing that was a Charlie Parker tune, can’t remember which.

The kids generally did well. These concerts are about 1/3 kids anyways and only an hour so they’re kind of geared to that. Ella was great except that she had to go to the bathroom halfway through. When she got back she said to me quite loudly “Daddy I pee-ed!” Given that we were in the second row and they were playing, that probably was not good concert etiquette. Truman was pretty good but real antsy and spent most of the time squirming in my lap, standing, or the chair but at least didn’t really affect anyone else’s experience (other than patting the nice guy in front of us on the back :).

If the idea of a jazz string quartet sounds cool to you, then you definitely check out Turtle Island as they are a lot of fun to listen to or watch.