¡VIVA LA MAINSTREAM HAS MOVED TO A NEW LOCATION!Effective immediately, ¡Viva La Mainstream! can be found at the link above. This site will remain open for archiving and linking purposes, but all future entries will appear on the new site. Please update your RSS feeds, Google Readers, etc. to reflect this change. If you are a blogger and link to VLM on your site, please update your link so reade.
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Viva La Mainstream Has Moved!!!
Album A Day: Nine Inch Nails - The Slip
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[TJ's note: We're inching ever closer to the official move from this site to our new home on Wordpress. Any and all mp3s posted here will not longer be picked up by Hype Machine, as they have been given the new URL for the site. Odds are by the end of next week this site will be officially closed. Change your bookmarks, Google Readers, RSS feeds, etc. accordingly.]In honor of Nine Inch Nails' r...
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Album A Day: The Boxing Lesson - Wild Streaks and Windy Days
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Today's installment of Album A Day takes a trip to the underground with Texas space rock (their words, not mine) band The Boxing Lesson. I've received emails from The Boxing Lesson a couple times now, but as life goes, I'm only really giving a hard listen to and blogging about them now. The biggest problem with the entire psychedlic/progressive rock genre is that its almost too broad. In its at...
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Jay-Z and Radiohead Get the Mixtape Treatment
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I don't know how badly I missed the boat on this one, but from the looks of it, this isn't too moldy. Not too long ago Minty Fresh Beats dropped a new mixtape entitled Jaydiohead featuring mashups of, you guessed it, Jay-Z and Radiohead. Look, I get that the title makes it clear what they're doing, but would a little originality have killed 'em? How about Black Rainbows? Hell, Kid Jay! But I'm ...
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Album A Day: Death Cab For Cutie - Narrow Stairs
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Track:I Will Posess Your Heart
Decided I should probably devote some of the early days of this project to stuff for the Best Of 08 list (due late this week/early next). This seemed like a good place to start.Death Cab For Cutie always fell into the category of bands that people I know always liked, but I never got around to hearing them. I was passingly familiar with The Postal Service since their debut (I heard "The Distric...
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Album A Day: The Rules
Since I never did post the rules for the Album A Day project…here they are. You’d think I wouldn’t need to do so, but if they’re written here, then I have to stay honest about it and you get to call me on it if I screw up. THE RULES The basics are simple; there are 365 days in 2009.Between January 1 and December 31, I will listen to 365 albums.Things that count as an album: Albums, EPs (us
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Back In Action
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Album:Twilight Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
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Track:I Caught Myself
[Note: The new site is over in the sidebar, so if this or any other post gets taken down it can be recovered and seen in all its glory there. Just so you folks know.]Greetings, everyone!I'm happy to report I am back on the computer from which most of my bloggings (blogginz if you're Ray) will be coming for awhile. This means a number of things, most importantly that I can return to the posting ...
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Album A Day: Wicked: Original Broadway Cast Recording
I'm happy to report that work on the new site is very nearly complete, and I'm now able to show you what it looks like right now. The site is still very much in its early stages, and until I get my computer back tomorrow I'm still limited in what I can post, but it's up and alive and ready for you to see. This site is going to stay active for at least another week or two while I get some other ...
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Album A Day: The Smiths - The Sound of The Smiths
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For the record, I am deeming greatest hits records to be fair game for this project. Really the only thing that doesn’t count as an album is a homemade mix since, well…it’s a mix. A friend of mine wore a Morissey T-Shirt awhile back, sparking a conversation about music that lasted well over 2 hours. I stopped short of confessing that I had barely ever listened to The Smiths (or
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Album A Day (x2)
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So the rebooted Album A Day project stumbled out of the gate a bit, as yesterday came up blank. Luckily today had no serious plans in mind, so plenty of time to double up. First, the album that would have been posted yesterday; Panic! At The Disco's debut A Fever You Can't Sweat Out.Panic! At The Disco's debut record dropped around the same time Fall Out Boy saw their highest point of success t...
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Album A Day: Kings of Leon - Only By The Night
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Album A Day, 01-01-2009Every year as I work on my year end lists I end up stumbling across an album that I had bypassed earlier in the year for one reason or another (usually it gets lumped in with the indie stuff I ignore), and it ends up being incredible. Last year it was Jay-Z's American Gangster. This year it appears to be Kings of Leon and their 2008 release Only By The Night. Suffice it t...
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I Know I've Got One Thing I've Gotta Do...
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...RAMBLE ON! Yepp, time for some ramblings. (Cut me a break; that joke was only good once, figured I'd use it as best I could) Led Zeppelin - Ramble On [iTunes ] I forgot a track as I was doing the last post. MySpace has been marred by failures, corporate involvement and overall sucking over the last two years, and that coupled with going to college led me over to Facebook. But one of MySpac...
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Sorting Through My Inbox
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Artist:exile parade
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Track:heart into suicide
A guest blogger for PMA did a post a few weeks back about the adventures of a low-level music blogger and his email inbox, a story to which I could relate all too well. I, too, a couple dozen emails a week from promotions companies asking me to listen to their next big thing. More often than not it's either terrible or not worth the time (example: "indie dance pop fused with rock" = terrible. B...
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Fall Out Boy Show Madness, Yet There Is Method To It
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Did you know Fall Out Boy were releasing a new record on Tuesday? If you did, you seem to be in the minority. The once ubiquitous punk band have but one mild radio hit in play right now in "I Don't Care" (#22 on the Top 40 this week). It's true, Folie A Deux lacks the immediate gratification that previous FOB albums gave, but this album signals Fall Out Boy's graduation from the standard pop-pu...
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Pearl Jam Celebrating 18, 19, and 20 Years With Re-Issues
We now have Rolling Stone's first guaranteed five-star review of next year.Pearl Jam announced last week that they will be re-releasing their entire catalog between 2009 and 2011 in celebration of the band's 20th anniversary, starting with a remastered version of their debut classic Ten, set to be re-released March 24th. According to the band's website, there will be four different versions, wi...
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Coldplay Headed To Court Over "Viva La Vida"
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Album:Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends
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By now this story has circulated the internet fairly well, but I haven't had a chance to weigh in yet, so one more post won't kill anyone. Two weeks ago solo guitarist Joe Satriani sued Coldplay for plagiarism, claiming the grammy-nominated megahit "Viva La Vida" copies from Satriani's song "If I Could Fly". After initially remaining mum on the issue, Chris Martin and Coldplay issued a statemen...
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The Part Where My Roommate Gives Me A New Favorite Song - Updated
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A post that's apropos of absolutely nothing other than the fact that I heard and fell in love with this song last night, courtesy of one roommate and one good friend.The Veronicas - UntouchedThat opening string bit had me at 'hello'. Listen as needed. Love it ad nauseum.The Veronicas - Untouched [iTunes](Thanks Matt)
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The Part Where My Roommate Gives Me A New Favorite Song
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A post that's apropos of absolutely nothing other than the fact that I heard and fell in love with this song last night, courtesy of one roommate and one good friend. The Veronicas - Untouched That opening string bit had me at 'hello'. Listen as needed. Love it ad nauseum. I'll have an mp3 of it once I have a computer/someone puts up a copy better than FM radio quality.
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Breaking down the GRAMMY Nominations; 2008 edition
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A performance from the Foo Fighters still wasn't enough to get me to watch the Grammy Nomination show last week, but now that I've bothered to take a look at who the Recording Academy's children told their out-of-touch parents should be nominated, it's time a take a look at a couple categoriesALBUM OF THE YEARColdplay, Viva La Vida or Death and All His FriendsLil Wayne, Tha Carter IIINe-Yo, Yea...
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Ringleader, Celebrity or Queen, Britney's Back for Real This Time
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Finals week and a failing computer made blogging damn near impossible last week, but fear not. I plan to make up for it this week, with at least one post tonight, and more coming in the next few days. Now, to my much-delayed review of Circus, Britney Spears' much anticipated second comeback record in as many years.After leaving listeners scratching their heads with last years rushed, overproduc...
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