I know some of us have talked about getting out of musical ruts this year. Pairubu had taken an Asian detour, and posted a thread awhile ago about what surprised us musically last year. Fintan has taken a sabbatical to listen to new stuff. I’m listening to ambient / electronica for a project, way out of my genre of preference / comfort zone. Still trying to figure out how to separate wheat from chaff on that one. Try to check in with Indie blogs when i can, but never really seem to have the time.
Sidebar surfing on youtube is where i seem to find new stuff. Ratio is probably 1:20. But still some neat stuff. Painkiller above is apparently a jazz /grindcore type outfit with saxophonist John Zorn (sounds familiar). Anyway Panther might like it, i kind of do. Stumbled on a clutch of some kind of weird stoner doom metal with names like Alabama Thunderpussy, Stoner Train, Atomic Bitchwax, Stoned Jesus, Belzebong, Purple Overdose, Weedeater…no, don’t bother. But wait – yes ! ! ! Spliff Riff ! ! ! Dedication folks, takes dedication, and your patience will be rewarded.
So, anyone found anything interesting sidebar surfing? Or on the likes of Amazon recommends? Clue us in.
I’ve been delving into the history of the Canadian music charts lately – specifically where they differed from the US charts.
Just like the land itself, they’re instantly familiar – and yet wonderfully different.
The general rule is that even in the era of Can Con requirements, the Canadian pop charts roughly paralleled the American charts with Canucks (and to a lesser extent, Brits) charting higher. Even with this similarity, this leaves a lot of exceptions and obscurities that either barely scraped the American charts, or missed it entirely.
Such is the following from 1972. An odd fusion of T-Rex, Led Zeppelin, Mountain, and lots of kazoos. (!)
Peaked at #38 in the Great White North, and got some cross-border airplay in Michigan too.
Ha! New to me. Love the little rhythm breaks.
There was a lot on the charts here that i missed. I turned 12 in late ’72, was listening to the Stones, Led Zep, Bowie, etc. Which was essentially FM radio at the time, later to be supplanted by college radio. I caught a lot of the inescapable stuff, and a lot on Soul Train.
I used to find a lot of newtome music on RR, and it’s still there, but i’m just not able to keep up with the blog anymore. My work and life schedule is heaviest over the weekend so i catch what i can between my teeth over there now.
SHA -
Have you sent Zala any earworms yet? You must have some great ones stashed.
I actually sent this one along with some others but this rubric just happened to fit perfectly.
Bill Durst has a reputation of being one of those guitar gods that only a few people have heard of.
I got obsessed with music charts at a young age – Joel Whitburn, Casey Kasem, and Bob Kingsley are like my Holy Trinity. (Just kidding, mum.)
In the pre-internet mid-1990s I spent a small fortune seeking out any buying the chart histories for other lands (UK, Canada, Australia, NZ, South Africa, Germany, NL, Sweden, and so on.) They looked nice on the bookshelf but except for comparing the US charts they were of little practical value until I could actually seek out a song on YT or Grooveshark to hear it for myself.
And I know that music charts are often a picture of musical landscape that’s distorted by methodology – especially so today – it’s still a useful starting point. Many of which are available on line here: http://www.lanet.lv/misc/charts/
I just had a look at your link. It made my head spin. Guessing that you must be an Excel jock.
This is a great idea for a thread, Amy. I did find some superb African music through the sidebar, it was when they had the call and response theme on RR – Mande Kalou:
Spent ages surfing and listening. Fabulous stuff.
Ali -
That was lovely. Leave out the vocals and it sounds sort of like CSNY’s Deja Vu. I want on an African sidebar safari myself from someone’s (glassarfempty? tempus?) Mande Variations song that they posted on my Chill Challenge a few months ago.
I’m really thinking that sidebar surfing is the way to roll. I know nothing about ambient electronica, but started out with some tunes posted by Mnemonic, Shoey, and Sakura on that same challenge, and just sidebar surfed it from there. I suppose i could have found blogs with reviews and such, but with the sidebars you can just click and listen without predjudice. It is a mystery though how i ended up on the more familiar turf of psychedelic stoner rock from ambient though.
A similar way to go is Shuffler.fm. It’s a site that aggregates thousands of music blogs. You pick a genre and it, well, shuffles, through relevant blogs. You can listen and/or read.
That’s not quite as random as your sidebar surfing, but at least eliminates the home videos of people lipsyncing and the phone videos from concerts.
That sounds interesting TIn, thanks. A lot easier than trying to check in on a million different music blogs separately.
Bother. Can’t find the track I was looking for. Back to the sidebar ..!!
that’s great stuff Amy, I do indeed like ‘em!
Painkiller are great and I think I read somewhere that Japanese underground drum hero Yoshida Tatsuya has something to do with them these days.
I hadn’t heard of Spliff Riffs, but I liked it a lot.
For some death metal with a weed obsession check out Cannabis Corpse. They are the a side project of Municipal Waste (proper white hi-tops and cut off denim jacket old school stoopid thrash metallers!)
Panth -
I’ve listened to that Painkiller at least 6 times, probably more, as well as some more of their stuff. It’s grown on me, and i’m starting to think that they’re totally the shit. Otoh, I think the Heads maybe smoked too much weed and kept going for 10 minutes longer than they should have on Spliff Riff. I listened to some more of their stuff, it’s ok, i think i don’t like the vocalist much. Still a lot better than most of the weed metal i found, as was your video. But if i was looking for top of the line psychedelic axe-wank stuff akin to Spliff Riff, I could always just listen to early Pumpkins.
Your post has sparked off some sludgy listening for me today.
If you want some sludgy, super-heavy psyche-metal with a slight stoner sound, I highly recommend Kylesa, whose LP I’ve just been listening to. To make it even better, they’ve got a kick-ass female guitarist and two drummers!
I liked that! It got better as it went on too.
This can be a good way find someone else who sounds like whoever.
http://www.musicplasma.com/
Last FM will recommend you stuff, but you might have to Scrobble (not quite as unpleasant as it sounds), loads of ‘Spillers over there, but don’t have much time for it these days. Looking up most played tracks for an artist can be a good way to get acquainted.
Hadn’t heard of music plasma but looks promising.
I got out of the habit of using last.fm and scrobbling because my laptop is our stereo and I use it play a lot of music for the kids. My scrobble was getting overwhelmed by Batman and Eensie Weensie Spider.
You’ve just reminded me that many years ago before my RR time i actually did have a Last.fm account. Can’t remember why i stopped bothering. Maybe because they seemed to be missing a lot of the actual songs on album tracklists that i could find elsewhere. Or didn’t have time to keep up with the social network type culture. Maybe it’s gotten better since.
I discovered Lotte Kestner like this recently – it was about half an hour between clicking on the YouTube sidebar and downloading the album.
I’ve made some great discoveries on LastFM, but haven’t really used it much recently.
Has anyone experienced MySpace radio? It’s awful. To be fair, MySpace seems to have been trying to get its act together recently – but once the tracks you’ve selected finish, it starts playing you random songs that seem to have no relation to what you’ve been listening to.
Only time i end up on MySpace now is via Google searches for songs or information about a band. Still haven’t really been tempted to join up again – i bailed out of there many years ago although i did get a fair amount of business from it back in the day. I was also a member of a really good photograpy group on there, i have no idea if it ended up somewhere else. I think Justin Timberlake is one of the owners now, it’s possible he may care enough to make it work at some point.
I’ve never been a MySpace member, but do end up there when searching for newtome bands – often from saneshane playlists. It’s no longer the graveyard it appeared to be a year or two ago.
Didn’t know Justin Timberlake was involved, but he has form, what with founding Napster and investing in Facebook… oh wait. That was in a film.
Anyway, I’ve discovered some nice new things surfing on from Lotte Kestner this afternoon – a very (un)productive way to spend a few hours…
Justin has to care about music more than Rupert Murdoch, who he bought it from.
And that Lotte Kestner was lovely.
This just popped into view while listening to Chris’ Jerry & the Monkees post. Always loved this remake of the Shirelles hit. Larry Moss’ organ work is terrific & this video has Gayle McCormack looking like one of H.G. Wells Eloi -Hollywood style that is. Didn’t realize but this was the highest charting version of the song. From 1969 with love & flowers.