My Hard Drive Ate My Music Collection #3: Why I Love The 90's

Has anyone ever heard that song, 'I Hate the 90's'? Probably on Rodney on the ROQ, or on the soundtrack for The Mayor of the Sunset Strip. I couldn't find it anywhere to let you listen to it here, but thats ok cause it sucks anyway. It was by this very short lived "musical project" thrown together by Rodney Bingenheimer called Rodney and the Tube Tops, which included none other than Mr. Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth, and Hole's Eric Erlandson. If your record collection includes one of those 7"s it's probably amassed the value of a small oil field, but truth is--it fucking sucks. I'm serious. I mean, I hated the 90's when it was the 90's, too, but that song is worse than about 40 songs that I can come up with right now. So here are my 90's picks, which are probably yours too.



My Top 5 (from this list):

1. Tripping Daisy - I Got A Girl
2. The Breeders - Cannonball
3. Smashing Pumpkins - Disarm
4. Elastica - Stutter
5. Nine Inch Nails - Closer

...the only reason why Tool isn't on this list is because imeem only had 3o second previews of nearly every track, and I didn't want to harsh your mellow.

Until tomorrow,
C4

Oh P.S. Here's to actually living in the 90's again, because my roommate forgot to pay our DSL bill so I don't have the internet. And my heater broke so I'm all about the candles and incense too. Kinda weird how that all happened at once--my room even smells like it did when I was 11 years old--but it's seriously getting fucking boring so please post some comments with some suggestions of shit that I should do. I forgot how to survive without the internet.

My Hard Drive Ate My Music Collection #2: Black Kids

I've practically been obsessing over it, I know, but better to freak out over things I can fix than to go ballistic over the fact that I invited a boy to Thanksgiving dinner and he cancelled on me 3 hours before we were scheduled to make our entrance. Considering the fact that this was the first boy who I had deemed worthy enough to subject to the wrath of my entire extended family in over 3 years, I'm pissed. And rightly so.

I stayed up all night, so sue me. At least I was productive. Here's what I have for you this time:

ContraStream.com--a new social music network with a Digg-like interface that actually has GOOD music on it. Users can submit indie albums to be "hyped" or "dropped" by other users, and can also discover new music through videos and audio tracks embedded on the site. In my first 10 minutes on the site I found the Crystal Castles/HEALTH record, Iron and Wine - The Shepherd's Dog, Battles - Tonto, and this:

The band is called Black Kids, and the track is called 'I'm Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How To Dance With You' off of their demo, Wizard of Ahhhs--which, according to Pitchfork, isn't available for purchase in stores but rather as a free download on their myspace page. I checked, and trust me, it isn't. All downloads on the Black Kids MySpace profile have been disabled, and as of November 14th they've been named one of Rolling Stone Magazine's Top 10 Artists to Watch.

Good news for you, though. You can download it here. Just right-click and select "Save Source As." Happy Black Friday.

MY BLOODY VALENTINE: Reunion rumors are TRUE!

According to The Daily Swarm, My Bloody Valentine has finally really recorded some new material. This news excites me. My Bloody Valentine is freaking awesome & before my hard drive crashed I'm pretty sure I owned everything that they ever released. As well as most of Kevin Shields' solo stuff. This would include the Lost In Translation soundtrack & some other weird bootlegs.

Not familiar with mbv? Sucks for you, but I'm willing to forgive you AND to give you a taste. Yea yea, I know. I'm too kind. Courtesy of imeem, here's 'Soft As Snow (But Warm Inside)' from their 1988 release Isn't Anything.



**The band is also expected to be included in the line-up for Coachella 2008. Stay tuned for more details.

REVIEW: Sunset Rubdown @ the El Rey (10.19.2007)

Thanks to Oh My Rockness! and Goldenvoice for hooking me up with Sunset Rubdown tickets to last Friday's show. For those of you who don’t know who/what Sunset Rubdown is: Wolf Parade's Spencer Krug (after 1 solo release under the same name in 2005) and Pony Up!’s Camilla Wynne Ingr, got together with two other dudes in 2006 and recorded, "Shut Up I Am Dreaming" which is a masterpiece of an album. click to view discography

***most listen-worthy track on the album***


But I will not hesitate to be honest here: While I really do think that Sunset Rubdown is one of the best recent groups I’ve heard in a very long time, if you hadn’t heard them before seeing Friday's show you will probably disagree with me forever. Why? BECAUSE THE SHOW WAS BORING! There’s just no way around it. I didn’t feel any positive energy or excitement from the band at all--In fact, I found myself more interested in trying to stab the olives at the bottom of my martini without spilling any of the drink, and in the venue's (really cool) light fixtures than I was in the show. To be truthful: I got the impression that the band was more bored than I was.

Seriously though, their recorded material is really good and I definitely recommend that you give it a listen. Just don't get too excited about seeing them live.

Monday's Top 3

Ok so I know I tend to get pretty enthusiastic about things, and I've probably said, "DUDE THIS IS LIKE THE COOLEST THING EVER!" about a bazillion times, but here are three things for you to add to the "Little Orphan Carrie's Picks" list I know you're keeping.

1. Sparrow house--Sparrow house is the (usually) solo project of Voxtrot's Jared Van Fleet. His first release under this name is OUTSTANDING. I think my friend and I accidentally put it on repeat one night and fell asleep. It was on for like 5 hours and I'm still not sick of it. Seriously.

2. Daytrotter.com--Daytrotter makes me feel cheated cause it's like one of the best music blogs out there and I didn't know about it until like 3 months ago. They've got [GOOD] free mp3's and recordings that're only available on their site. And the artwork is awesome too. In short: indie-folk-pop paradise.

3. imeem.com--Another social networking site. A mash-up of the greatest hits of YouTube.com, LinkedIn.com, Uber.com,and Pandora.com. And the video quality is better than youtube. I think I've signed up for every social networking site I've happened across in the past 2 weeks, so you should trust me when I say that this is (or, rather, WILL BE) the best one. hands down. imeem rules.

PROOF IN THE PUDDING: i leave you with a sparrow house track from a daytrotter session at SXSW, embedded using imeem.

You're welcome,
c4