Queen was my first musical love and, re-listening to these tunes for this post, I remember why. Few dispute Freddie Mercury’s position as one of the greatest frontmen of all time, but Brian May’s absurd guitar playing and Roger Taylor’s rock-solid drumming helped propel these tunes to another dimension. As a kid I never went beyond the greatest hits, and I never needed to. They’re that
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Queen
Files Temporarily Unavailable
Edit: Should be fixed. Please let me know if you encounter any other difficulties.Apparently though I pay box.net for "unlimited bandwidth," my bandwidth has run out. Unfortunately, that means that all the files on this site are currently unavailable. I have emailed the support team to try to resolve the problem, and will hopefully have this problem resolved within 24 hours. If anyone has a...
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Instrumentals
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Track:Rumble
Lyrics are important, but it’s a shame the art of the hit instrumental seems to have been lost. Turn on oldies radio and from Booker T. to the Ventures, instrumental guitar jams pop up and now and again. The instrumental is on death’s door, but certain segments of the indie aesthetic are trying to revive it. Explosions in the Sky is an all-instrument post-rock band (whatever that means), an
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Cover Me Presents: James Eric's "Beautiful World" (Devo)
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Track:Beautiful World
Cover Commissions is a monthly series in which a featured artist produces a special cover for this blog. The song to be covered is usually chosen by blog readers via a poll or suggestions form. Any artists interested in participating in a future installment, please email me at the address on the right.A month back we debuted Cover Commissions here with a cover artist extraordinaire, James Eri...
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Double Negatives
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The grammar police will be on your back if you use a double negative, there ain't no doubt. But from my brief days a linguistics major, I learned that "grammatically incorrect" language like this, when used widely enough, takes over. It's how language evolves. So "whom" Nazis, give it up.The double negative is a unique "mistake" though, as it seems socioeconomically based, and racially some ...
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Full Albums: Fleetwood Mac's Rumours
Fleetwood Mac's songs sometimes get a bad rap from constant play in elevators, grocery stores, and on “lite rock” radio. Try to forget the soulless environments in which these tunes sometimes find themselves, and you’ll remember that each one is a pop gem, little nuggets from a band at their prime just as they were falling apart. Stevie Nicks hitting that bridge on “The Chain,” the mys
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Billy Joel
The voting for Cover Commissions: James Eric is over, and Devo's "Beautiful World" took it! Keep checking back here for the exclusive debut of James', and be sure to stop by next Thursday for more exciting cover news! (Not sure what I'm talking about? Catch up here.) For some reason, while the indie cover world has jumped on the singer-songwriter bandwagon, making supposed has-beens like Bob Dy
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Cover Commissions: James Eric
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Album:Cover Commissions
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The Uncoverable
I’ve heard a lot of covers, but every now and then a song comes along so bizarre I think, no way anyone could cover that. In every case, I turn out to be wrong. It seems musicians can take even the strangest, most idiosyncratic music and remake it in their own image. Let me present…the (not quite) uncoverable.Neil Cowley Trio - Revolution 9 (The Beatles)The ultimate in uncoverable (well, af
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The White Stripes
Don’t know why I didn’t do this earlier. The White Stripes have been one of my favorite bands ever since I saw a video of them performing "Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground" on MTV surrounded by inanely dancing candy cane “fans”(here it is). Since then I’ve seen them live four times, and hope they reunited this year for another go round. While we wait though, many others are keeping t
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Hope, Change and All That Jazz
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--Edit: Lots of posts disappearing from blogger. I'm reposting this one with links since it was so recent, but the others will be sadly link-less.-- An exciting day tomorrow. I don't even remember what it's like to have a government I trust, so it'll be nice to see old G-Dubs head back to Crawford. Here's hoping that Obama and co. can get this country back on the road to peace, justice, and...
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Hope, Change and All That Jazz
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--Edit: Lots of posts disappearing from blogger. I'm reposting this one with links since it was so recent, but the others will be sadly link-less.--An exciting day tomorrow. I don’t even remember what it’s like to have a government I trust, so it’ll be nice to see old G-Dubs head back to Crawford. Here’s hoping that Obama and co. can get this country back on the road to peace, justice,
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Best of 2008...Again
--Edit: Reposted, with the offending link removed.--Didn’t best of 2008 lists get played out in, oh, 2008? Yes. I even already had a post on the best covers of the year. So what is this? Well, I get a kick out of year-end lists, so I really enjoyed seeing the Hype Machine compile hundreds of them into one master list of the fifty most highly-rated albums on the blogosphere. You can read it.
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Best of 2008...Again
--Edit: Reposted, with the offending link removed.--Didn’t best of 2008 lists get played out in, oh, 2008? Yes. I even already had a post on the best covers of the year. So what is this? Well, I get a kick out of year-end lists, so I really enjoyed seeing the Hype Machine compile hundreds of them into one master list of the fifty most highly-rated albums on the blogosphere. You can read it.
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Best of 2008...Again
--Edit: Reposted, with the offending link removed.--Didn’t best of 2008 lists get played out in, oh, 2008? Yes. I even already had a post on the best covers of the year. So what is this? Well, I get a kick out of year-end lists, so I really enjoyed seeing the Hype Machine compile hundreds of them into one master list of the fifty most highly-rated albums on the blogosphere. You can read it.
More >
Best of 2008...Again
--Edit: Reposted, with the offending link removed.--Didn’t best of 2008 lists get played out in, oh, 2008? Yes. I even already had a post on the best covers of the year. So what is this? Well, I get a kick out of year-end lists, so I really enjoyed seeing the Hype Machine compile hundreds of them into one master list of the fifty most highly-rated albums on the blogosphere. You can read it.
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