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179 Lovebites - Clockwork Immortality 230802 https://lovebites.jp/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B70JsOpmUGE Rising - the first song from this album that showed up in my search with a real video. August is JPU month! JPU Records is a British company that specialises in bringing Japanese hard rock and metal to English audiences - they include English translations of most of the lyrics (though some songs by most JPU-associated bands are at least partially in English). I bought Polysics - Weeeeeeeeee! from JPU back in November of 2021 (I couldn't find the recommended We Ate The Machine for sale) and now I'm on their mailing list. A month or two ago JPU announced they were moving, and a sale to clear out some inventory. Two for one, and a randomly-selected free CD if you buy at least 4. So I bought 4, paid for 2 (though shipping for 5) and received 5 disks some time later. There are 5 Wednesdays in August 2023 so it's a month of Japanese metal.l Lovebites had the distinct advantage of being available on CD and available when I got around to shopping. An all-female metal band is certainly something I wanted to include in this project anyway.
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Aug 2, 2023 10:45
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180 Lovebites - Judgement Day 230809 WEEK 2 OF JPU MONTH https://lovebites.jp/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3uGjp-P7DI Judgement Day - featuring duelling guitars and plenty of wonderful imagery. Not much to say here. I haven't listened to these albums all the way through, yet, but I'm really digging what I've heard so far. ExecuDork fucked around with this message at 11:34 on Aug 16, 2023 |
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Aug 16, 2023 11:25
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181 Man With A Mission - Break and Cross the Walls I 230816 WEEK 3 OF JPU MONTH https://www.mwamjapan.info/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqjKjtb2TAs [yoake] - the first track on this album. Man With A Mission: come for the wolf masks, stay for the Japanese-Pop-Metal and fun videos. Also, they made this trailer for this album (and next week's, obviously). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_9zOjMLLjs
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Aug 16, 2023 11:35
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182 Man With A Mission - Break and Cross the Walls II 230823 WEEK 4 OF JPU MONTH https://www.mwamjapan.info/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDB3UjA3sa4 More Than Words - the first track from this second-half-album I could find a video for. I'm still really enjoying the gimmick here - those wolf masks bring something I like.
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Sep 7, 2023 08:36
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183 One Eye Closed - Adam & Eve 230830 WEEK 5 OF JPU MONTH https://oneeyeclosedjp.com/ JPU Records band page: https://jpurecords.com/collections/one-eye-closed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4BsPRVF3Oc With How I Feel - the first track on the album and the first video I found This was my free CD when I bought the previous 4 albums during JPU Record's moving sale. My first impression here is that they're intriguingly similar to Justin Bieber in terms of the singer's voice (including singing pace as well as just how he sounds to my ear). This is not a bad thing by any means.
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Sep 7, 2023 08:44
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184 The Notorious B.I.G. - Life After Death 230906 As before, his Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Notorious_B.I.G. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCyWFj0nLyk Here's the Official Full Album - I can find many versions, but this one comes with the markers of the King's retinue. I decided to split the pre/posthumous albums by Mr. Smalls across August. This is the album released not long after his death, with an appropriate title and the tracks he was either just finished or still finalising when he died. By way of apology for that, here's EP1 of a series about Iconic Albums, starting with this one. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsltWDlMbGE I listened to the end of the dice-rolling story (about the first 12 minutes) - fantastic.
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Sep 7, 2023 09:02
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185 Adam Nutter - Badlands on Fire 230913 https://adamnutter.tmstor.es/ - the merch page, I don't think he has a stand-alone musician page. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jON7VidZutk Dreamtwister - the first video from this album Adam Nutter was the lead guitarist for one of my favourite bands, The Music (great band, great music, terrible band name). The Music broke up in 2011, and their farewell-concert live double album is at #14 in this gift. The four band members mostly drifted away from music, though the singer, Rob Harvey, did some work with a few people in the past decade or so. I came across Adam's podcast, The Music and More Podcast somehow, and Adam talks about what he was up to since 2011 (Northern England accent "Workin' at t'vape shop... lots of gardenin' "). In the podcast, it is implied that the reminiscing and so forth in the podcast is what pushed Adam to start making music again. It's a great podcast if you're a fan of The Music, he has all of his former band-mates on as guests as well as other important people like the band's manager and the music promoter who discovered them. This album is all instrumentals, and to me it's very different from most of what The Music put out on their three albums in the noughties, but I can hear some similarities at times. I bought one of the paintings that goes with this album, it needs a frame because at the moment, it's peeling off of the wall next to me.
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Sep 28, 2023 12:24
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186 Alice in Chains - The Essential Alice in Chains 230920 https://aliceinchains.com/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JA25BIxgtk We Die Young - the first track on this double-album. Like other "The Essential" albums, this greatest-hits collection spans two CDs. I had been wanting some Alice in Chains for a while, and I actually bought this album (and the next one) from an alphabetised shelf in a music shop - I felt transported back in time, browsing shiny wrapped albums under fluorescent lights while some one-hit-wonder blasted from the store speakers. Only about a quarter of the Tamworth JB Hi-Fi is still devoted to physical media sales, and more than half of that is vinyl, but the rest of the store includes hi-fi equipment (including turntables that cost $5000, of course), DVDs, and class after class of ugly, ugly Alice in Chains were on regular rotation on the radio stations I listened to in high school and university (late 90's / early 2000's) and while I was browsing the racks I felt I had to buy something just so I could say I went to a CD store and bought a CD, in 2023.
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Sep 28, 2023 12:35
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187 The White Stripes - My Sister Thanks You and I Thank You 230927 https://www.whitestripes.com/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTH71AAxXmM Fell In Love With A Girl - because I like that the video is animated LEGO. The other 2-CD best-of collection I bought at the bricks-and-mortar music store (inside a mall!) a little while ago, in 2023. I quite like most of the songs here, and there's something in the music, lyrics, style... something that just says "Detroit" to me. That is by no means a bad thing.
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Sep 28, 2023 12:47
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188 Alex Quaglieri - Constructing Infinity 231004 https://www.instagram.com/alexquaglieri/?hl=en - Alex's Instagram - where I found him https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wNqUelV-SY Uproot - the first track on this album of slowly-accumulated singles I've clicked on enough band posts in Instagram that the algorithm now feeds me about 40% such "listen to my new song!" posts (40% by weight, not volume). Alex Quaglieri's pitch came with many promises to tell many stories about how and why he created these instrumental songs. The first week of daily emails from him after I bought this included offers to buy more and access things like guitar tabs for every song. He also promised me MP3 versions of the album, but I never saw those and ended up converting the WAV files. From what I've seen, WAV files are the opposite swing of the pendulum that is currently pushing hard on the vinyl side of recorded music. Y'know, the audiofile hyper-digital "nothing else can compare" purist argument. Anyway, this is a set of 11 instrumental tracks by someone who really likes playing his guitar. That's not a bad thing.
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Oct 4, 2023 09:42
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ExecuDork posted:188 Alex Quaglieri - Constructing Infinity 231004 Is that just background music to license for slideshows and promotional videos?
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Oct 4, 2023 10:00
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BigFactory posted:Is that just background music to license for slideshows and promotional videos? I don't know what he was intending the music to be used for. Maybe? His emails are all about the Story of writing these songs, and how meaningful it is to him to have finally achieved an album to launch out into the world.
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Oct 12, 2023 08:36
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189 Prince & The Revolution - Purple Rain 231011 https://www.prince.com/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvnYmWpD_T8 The official video for the title track - there's a minute and ten before the music starts. I'm most of the way through a book that's taking me way longer to read than pretty much any other book I've ever read: This is What it Sounds Like by Susan Rogers and Ogi Ogas. Susan Rogers used to be a record producer, and worked on this album. Some of her descriptions of various aspects of listening to music include examples from her time working with Prince. Often, she'll just throw in a little comment in the middle of a paragraph, to illustrate a point: "Prince called these soul claps." The reason it's taking me so long to read this book is that I have to stop reading and listen to a song for 3 or 5 or 8 minutes at least once per page. I went with Prince's (arguably) most famous album to start with. I think I'll pick up another Prince album for this project, sooner or later, but there are just so drat many to choose from. He was a ridiculously productive song writer, and he recorded at least a demo version of nearly everything he wrote. But I'll probably stick with the big, commercially-successful albums, unless my nephew decides we need to explore more deeply.
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Oct 12, 2023 08:48
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190 The Watchmen - Silent Radar (Super Deluxe) 231018 https://the-watchmen.com/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hlwcFGqVK0&t=3s Stereo - their biggest hit (I think). Original video, in surprisingly low resolution. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9_PdruIx4Q Same song, this time live from 10 years ago. This Super Deluxe 25-anniversary re-issue of The Watchmen's most successful album comes with five different versions of this song, so I think it's fitting to present two examples here. There's the original 1998 album version, the radio edit (the song doesn't have any swear words in it as far as I can tell but this is 10 seconds shorter than the album version), the live acoustic version, the Raw - The Unmixed Album version, and the Lost Album version. There are 44 tracks here, for an album that originally had 13 in 1998. It's a bit excessive and the actual new material - songs that have not been published in any version before - are just a handful of tracks, mostly on the Lost Album. This is a collection of songs and versions of songs that did not make it onto the 1998 release for various reasons, packaged with other versions that were not subject to much or perhaps any studio production ("Raw"), and a few live tracks from a particular show. I've been a fan of The Watchmen for many years, and they're among the small-but-very-significant number of bands from Winnipeg who have made it big across Canada (and in a few very rare cases, done quite well internationally, as well). I saw The Watchmen live when I lived in Waterloo, Ontario, in January 2016.  The Watchemen 28 January 28 by Martin Brummell, on FlickrOne of my personal favourites that I took that night. They're still touring, and they put on a great live show. Stereo is one they always play, and it comes with some great audience participation.
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Oct 22, 2023 07:05
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191 Hozier - Hozier (Deluxe) 231025 https://hozier.com/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVjiKRfKpPI The official video for Take Me To Church, the hit from this album. I first heard this song on a video of a ballet dancer dancing to it, but it's not the Sergei Polunin videos I can find today. The dancer in the video I saw 8 or 9 years ago was lying on the floor, horizontal for almost the entire performance. Anyway, Hozier is an interesting artist and there are plenty of songs on this deluxe re-issue I got from his Bandcamp page on a recent Bandcamp Friday.
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Nov 1, 2023 09:47
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192 The Sadies - Colder Streams 231101 https://www.thesadies.net/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67YE1zH8s4I&t=3s More Alone - I chose this video from this album because of the lyric about burying a friend. I bought this on the same Bandcamp Friday as Hozier, and the next two albums here. This album was the only one that I knew for sure I was going to buy, the others were more impulse-based. Dallas Good, one of the guitarists, died suddenly in February 2022, and this album was released a few months later. You can see Dallas in this video, he's standing on the right, closer to the drummer than his brother, Travis, who is playing his guitar near the bassist. I think the band had recorded most of the songs already at the time of Dallas' death, and this album was released as a tribute.  The Sadies at Ness Creek 2018-0026 by Martin Brummell, on FlickrRIP Dallas Good
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Nov 1, 2023 10:02
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193 Skye Wallace - Skye Wallace & Terribly Good https://www.skyewallace.com/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctu1tr35KnM Tooth and Nail - the first track from Terribly Good. I saw an ad on Instagram for Skye's recent single, Tough Kid, and I was impressed. She's on Bandcamp, so I added her to my list of possible purchases for the next Bandcamp Friday. After I bought four albums from four different artists (Skye is the third) and downloaded the files, I started listening to the music (and I continued drinking, always shop online while drinking. It makes it more exciting) and I discovered that I goddam love Skye Wallace. So I logged back in to Bandcamp and bought another album.
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Nov 15, 2023 09:16
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194 Compressorhead - Party Machine 231115 https://compressorhead.bandcamp.com/album/party-machine - I couldn't find a website specifically for this animatronic wonder, so here's the Bandcamp page https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gMX_hR-RoM Ace of Spades - now with 350kg Singer I saw a clip from Compressorhead's cover of the Motörhead classic on Instagram, found the Bandcamp page, had a few drinks, hit buy. What's not to love about a metal band that plays metal music? As a comment under the video on Youtube says, this is the band that won't break up but might break down. Anyone else here old enough to have had a childhood birthday party at a restaurant / games arcade that included animatronic musicians? I have vague memories of a birthday, probably my 7th or my 8th, at a Chuck-E-Cheese. Compressorhead is just one mad German's take on the idea, sans creepy uncanny-valley dressings and with better music. ExecuDork fucked around with this message at 08:23 on Dec 7, 2023 |
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Nov 15, 2023 10:34
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195 Taylor Swift - 1989 (Taylor's Version) 231122 https://storeau.taylorswift.com/ (the Australian store) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gp1MR2WAAXY Out of the Woods - the first video that showed up from Taylor's version of this album. My nephew mentioned Taylor Swift and declared that "we are all Swifties" when I spoke with him on Skype months ago. I finally got around to adding the reigning 'Queen of Pop' to this project after I took some time to listen to Taylor's music (I like it) and discovering the story beyond the Taylor's version album re-releases. 1989 was specifically mentioned in the "Where Do I Start With..." thread, and Taylor's version of this album was on pre-order on iTunes when I went looking. I decided to wait for this version.
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Dec 7, 2023 08:32
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196 Taylor Swift - Midnights (3am Edition) 231129 https://storeau.taylorswift.com/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8DLofLM7No Lavender Haze - the first track on this album. This is the second TS album I bought on iTunes when I bought 1989. Again, on the advice of goons, I went for the most recent album of hers I could find. I think at this point (early December 2023) there may be another album from 2023 (Midnights is from 2022) but I'm not sure and I'm not worried about it. My nephew now* has a solid sampling of Taylor Swift's work and he can tell me what direction to go in next. * "Now" is a slippery term in this project. I plan to send him the full set of music from Year 3 and Year 4 in March of 2024. Right now, we're most of the way through Year 4, which is full of musicians he specifically wished for, but he hasn't recieved anything after the end of Year 2, yet.
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Dec 7, 2023 08:40
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197 Miley Cyrus - Bangerz 231206 https://shop.mileycyrus.com/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrUvu1mlWco We Can't Stop - the first video from this album that showed up. It's a bit surprising to me that We Can't Stop showed up in my search for videos from this album well before her biggest hit at the time, Wrecking Ball - also on this album. Though they're not very different in views at this point - about 4 million for We Can't Stop vs about 7 million for Wrecking Ball. I like the sound of Miley Cyrus' voice. I discovered this when I was reading an excellent book, This is What It Sounds Like by Susan Rogers and Ogi Ogas. There's a paragraph about 4/5 of the way through the book about the differences between men and women singers, and how it's usually more difficult to lower the pitch of one's voice than to raise it, because lowering requires relaxing muscles. Trained singers, of course, learn how to do this and there are many women with very wide vocal ranges that extend to quite deep notes. There was a list of prominent women singers (of popular music, rather than opera or other genres) particularly noted by critics and fans for their strong vocal control and frequent use of deeper pitches when singing. Miley Cyrus was on the list, and I decided to make a back-to-back double-album set out of Taylor Swift and Miley Cyrus, for contrast and just because I can.
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Dec 7, 2023 08:54
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198 Miley Cyrus - Endless Summer Vacation 231213 https://www.mileycyrus.com - this url will probably blow up to some nonsense as soon as you land on the page. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZ3XMOdOdKM Used to be Young As I said last week, I encountered Miley through a book about listening to music. I quickly realized, watching the video for Used to be Young, that I really like Miley Cyrus' singing voice. One of the early chapters in This is What it Sounds Like is about Authenticity. If I can summarize, appreciating music for its authenticity is one of several ways each person may respond differently to a particular record (using "record" here the way Susan Rogers does - a single recording of a song, rather than the colloquial synonym for album or vinyl LP). To my surprise, Used to be Young struck my authenticity detector very hard. Miley's Southern accent (and vocabulary: "You tell me time has done changed me") is on full, unabashed display, and the lyrics speak clearly to the person (or perhaps persona) she was when she made Bangerz. I feel like between Bangerz and Endless Summer Vacation I've bookended Miley Cyrus' adult singing career to date. I'm hoping my nephew enjoys Miley as much as I do, and we can explore some of the stuff in between and whatever she comes up with next. She's only 31 years old, and she has role models (her father, her godmother, Dolly Parton) who have spent many decades as successful popular musicians so I'm feeling optimistic about her future.
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Dec 13, 2023 11:26
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199 Halflives - Empty Rooms and Reslience 231220 https://www.wehavehalflives.com/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_0i1mctMJw Rockstar Everyday, the first video for a track from this pair of short albums Another instagram-ad find, with the usual first-one-free followed by a series of want-to-add-this? steps on the way to paying. These albums are both short, 8 and 5 tracks, respectively, so I put them together. At this point, the algorithm knows I'm willing to grant those precious clicks on music, and this sales model of leading with free and following up with a tour through the back catalogue is something I'm willing to tolerate. So, I see a lot of ads like this, and I've decided to evaluate most of them on their own merits and decide if the music I hear is something I actually want for this project. Halflives fit the bill, and I've rejected a few outright. Plus one or two musicians who send me emails (with poetry and videos and offers to write a personalised song for hundreds of dollars) that I haven't committed to one way or the other, yet.
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Dec 27, 2023 07:52
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200 Sugar Ray - 14:59 231227 https://www.sugarray.com/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cqU1pFRqYE Every Morning, possibly the biggest hit for this band. This low-res video appears to date from around the time of this album, 1999, and ends with a suggestion to visit their website, on MySpace. I found this album at a thrift store. There were two copies, not together on the shelf. This one features a suspiciously-low-resolution version of the graphic on the back of the disk, but no visible scratches on the playing surface. The other CD had a much clearer image on the back but was badly scratched on the playing surface. This is an interesting album. I'd heard Every Morning and Fly many times in the late 90s-early 2000s, of course, but until I played this disk I hadn't realised how genre-defying Sugar Ray is. They jump from metal to pop to rock to punk from one track to the next on this album. And, I needed something for the 200th spot, and a broad sweep across genres seems to fit.
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Dec 27, 2023 08:04
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201 Jack Botts - Northern Rivers (EP) and Fenwick and the Futures - Open Your Wings 240103 https://www.jackbotts.com/ https://www.fenwickandthefutures.com/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAdPwUYuXc0 Gypsy, the first track on the EP and a live video that shows one of the rivers this EP is named for (with more wind noise than most official videos I've heard). I can't find a video for any of the Fenwick and the Futures tracks on this album, so you'll have to wait until next week to see his moustache. I bought Jack Botts' EP about the region of NSW he calls home (roughly, the coastal lowlands north of Coffs Harbour, where several of the largest rivers in eastern Australia descend to the sea) in May of 2022 at the second Armidale Big Chill festival. He played a good set there and, crucially, was pretty much the only festival muscian with any CDs for sale. I've been hanging on to this half-album since then, waiting to pair it with another less-than-full-length offering. Fenwick and The Futures are really one guy, Nate, who emails me every day since I followed the link through his Instagram and did the usual but-wait-there's-more decision-making to buy some of his music (first one free + shipping, but chances to buy additional albums, one at a time, pop up as obstacles on the way to the checkout). He's impressively ernest, with a kind of choose-your-own-adventure thing that he's written in which I went through a kind of spiritual/musical story over the course of 5 days and 5 emails. All of the music, except for the secret final song, I already own on this or the other albums I bought but the story wasn't poorly written and it's been mildly interesting to read such detailed descriptions of his song-writing process. F&TF is a little outside of my usual preferences, with slower and more heartfelt songs than I typically go for, but I'm also working to expand my preferences through this project as well as show my nephew some greater breadth.
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Jan 3, 2024 09:18
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202 Fenwick and the Futures - Visionaries Deluxe Edition and Mind Cycles 240110 https://www.fenwickandthefutures.com/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34exZsz7l8A I Am A Future - the first video that appears when I search for FatF videos. Mind Cycles is another EP (6 tracks) from FatF, so I paired it with the 12-track album Visionaries (11 tracks in normal edition, this one with a bonus acoustic track). I'm not sure what to say about these songs, I like them well enough, but something about the singing (and songwriting generally) is just a bit too ernest for my tastes. Maybe I'll catch myself singing along during some fun activity and I'll connect with these songs.
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Jan 10, 2024 06:58
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203 Various Artists - Punk-O-Rama Vol 5 240117 https://www.epitaph.com/artists/punk-o-rama/release/punk-o-rama-vol-5 - the link to this compilation at Epitaph Records https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdspORRrLSU Pump Up The Valium - the first track, by NOFX. This is a difficult song to search for because NOFX also released an album titled Pump Up The Valuum. Google does not want to pay attention to that u vs i difference. I think I've talked before about the CDs I've scored at the local Tip Shop, priced at something between free and spare change as part of a collection of things found on the dusty shelves. I bought this CD at the Tip Shop a while ago, shortly after somebody donated a large collection of punk and hard rock music. Many of the disks were badly scratched, but this one was in good shape. I like throwing the occassional compilation or soundtrack album into this project, to expose my nephew to a wider range of musicians. And I'm a fan already of NOFX and Fat Mike, so I'm willing to trust his opinions regarding worthwhile inclusions.
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Jan 17, 2024 07:51
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Long long ago I bought Punk-O-Rama 10 as an idiot 19yo and found some good poo poo off that. I hope the nephew finds does the same.
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Jan 17, 2024 10:08
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The Aardvark posted:Long long ago I bought Punk-O-Rama 10 as an idiot 19yo and found some good poo poo off that. I hope the nephew finds does the same. Thanks! Yeah, I think he'll find at least a couple of tracks / artists he likes. Bad news - the Tip Shop suddenly closed just before christmas, and the local council has zero plans to re-open. The announcement by the city is weird, mostly concerned with vague references to conspiracy theories that are not true. Something about a safety concern leading to the abrupt cancellation of the contract with the operators, but it's not at all clear what happened. I'm going to really miss that place, not just for the music, but the Tip Shop has been a big contributor to this project - besides the CDs, I have bought 6 stereo mini systems (a pair of speakers and a central unit containing an amp and at minimum a line-in connection, but most of them also have a CD player and a tape deck as well).
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Jan 26, 2024 06:42
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204 No Doubt - Push and Shove 240124 https://www.nodoubt.com/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hunha8UtqCk Push and Shove, the title track Many years ago, I acquired No Doubt's big hit album, Tragic Kindgom, by finding the CD on the ground. It was surprisingly un-scratched and for decades I've had the ripped mp3s kicking around on every phone and mp3-player I've owned. A few weeks ago I was browsing for a different artist and album when I ended up in the Clearance section of the website for JB Hi-Fi, Australian music store (that actually still sells music on disks (vinyl and CDs) in bricks-and-mortar stores that have that smell. You know the smell). That section is full of CDs for $2.99 or cheaper, and I ended up buying a bunch. I like No Doubt, and this album was worth the price, at least.
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Jan 26, 2024 06:56
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205 Tegan and Sara - The Con 240131 https://teganandsara.com/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IK7THPiRw8Q The Con - title track from this album. Another discounted on-clearance CD from JB Hi-Fi. I'm still pretty unaware of Tegan and Sara beyond a vague understanding that they exist, they're musicians and singers, and they occassionally show up in the news for something they've said. Listening to this album has been enjoyable, I like their voices.
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Feb 7, 2024 21:52
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206 Paul Kelly - Spring and Fall 240207 https://www.paulkelly.com.au/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1bvg-jsJlA New Found Year - first track on the album. I already have Paul Kelly's greatest-hits-type album in this project, Songs from the South, but nearly every Australian I've talked to has told me to get more Paul Kelly. So here's this odd little album with a theme. What, exactly, that theme is I'm not sure but I'm happy to keep listening to this. Fake Edit: LOL, the video - made by Paul Kelly - includes paintings of nude women so Youtube age restricts it.
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Feb 7, 2024 22:01
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207 Midnight Oil - Resist 240214 https://www.midnightoil.com/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckvDeD9spL0 We Resist - title track on this protest album I really like Midnight Oil. So it was not a hard decision at all to include this album when I was preparing a lecture for the second-year Ecology class I teach at this university. The lecture was about ecosystem services (benefits that ecosystems provide to humans and human societies, and threats to these services), and the reading I suggested (I don't assign readings very often, I suggest) was a report on Australia's position vis-a-vis ecosystem services prepared for and published by the Government of Australia a few years ago. The foreword was written by Peter Garrett, at the time the Minister of Environment, Heritage and Arts, a cabinet position in the Rudd (Labour party) government. So I also included the album as a suggestion to listen to. There isn't anything on the final exam for the class that comes from this album, but it's good music. The album cover is a take on the widespread image of rising temperatures - blue and below the middle line on the left, representing global average temperatures in the mid-20th century, red and increasingly above the middle line on the right, for temperatures from the 1980's to today. Most of the songs are about the effects of climate change and/or urging the listener to get more involved. I like to imagine that one day I'll find an excuse to invite Peter Garrett to give a presentation at my university.
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Feb 16, 2024 01:10
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208 Carly Rae Jepson - Kiss 240221 https://www.carlyraemusic.com/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWNaR-rxAic Call Me Maybe - the biggest hit from this album (and, probably at this point, Carly's biggest hit overall) Another of the clearance CDs I picked up a few weeks ago. Of course I recognised Carly Rae Jepson's name and immediately associated it with Call Me Maybe. I looked into her work (i.e, I read her Wikipedia page) and I decided I quite like this pop star and her music. A recent twist in this project has been my explorations of female singers, particularly in Pop. Carly seems to lean towards Disco in some of her more recent songs, which is another genre or sub-genre I feel like including a bit more of here.
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Feb 21, 2024 07:39
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209 Big Boi - Vicious Lies and Dangerous Rumors 240228 http://www.bigboi.com/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swWT2UcDv2c Apple of My Eye - because I like the video The last of my discount CDs from JB Hi-Fi (for now). I have Outkast's Stankonia ready to go for this project, but I forgot to include it when I bought it. I'm thinking I'll include both members of Outkast in both their collaborations and solo work, they're both fantastic rappers and are both very influential. Their style of working together is different from anything else I've seen, releasing double albums where each takes the lead on one half.
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Feb 28, 2024 09:22
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210 Outkast - Stankonia 240306 https://outkast.store/ - I can't find a website for the band, just their merch store. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVehcuJXe6I Bombs Over Baghdad - probably the only song from this album I'd heard before I bought it. Finishing Year 4 and continuing with Outkast, here's the album that probably did more than anything to make Outkast big. I really like the collaboration between these two. They're very distinct from each other, but work so well together.
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Mar 7, 2024 10:06
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211 Outkast - Speakerboxxx/The Love Below 240313 https://outkast.store/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWgvGjAhvIw Hey Ya! - the first Outkast track I ever heard, I think https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xI5NQ-0Ubfs The Way You Move - the first time I heard Sleepy Brown sing. You already know more about this album than I do, and I'm way behind on this project. The line about the 808 is what brought me to Big Boi - it's one of many details in the book I read about a year ago.
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Apr 5, 2024 13:20
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212 INXS - Kick 25th Anniversary Deluxe Edition 240320 https://www.inxs.com/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azfG5H-pCVg New Sensation - with the most 80's video I've ever seen. I heard INXS on regular rotation on the radio when I was growing up. As one of Australia's biggest-ever bands and icons of 80's pop/rock music, I obviously had to include them. Kick was the album that made the band world famous, so I think it's a good place to start.
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Apr 5, 2024 13:27
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213 The Rolling Stones - Jump Back, the Best of 1971-1993 240327 https://rollingstones.com/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGyOaCXr8Lw Start Me Up - 1981's hit that eventually ended up shilling for Microsoft I bought this for cheap as another discount-bin CD from JB Hi-Fi. It nicely partners with the previous date-defined album by the 'stones.
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Apr 5, 2024 13:34
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ExecuDork posted:212 INXS - Kick 25th Anniversary Deluxe Edition 240320 Oh man, if you think that's 1980s then you led a sheltered life. At least, one that was sheltered from Euro synth-pop.
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Apr 5, 2024 13:49
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