SPIN magazine has released their 50 best bands of all time. While this is somewhat of a foolish exercise, I thought we could have a short and fruitless debate about it.

I’m not sure what Rage Against the Machine, Outkast, and Korn are doing in there. Other than that, I think they did as good a job as is possible. I would like to see the Smashing Pumpkins in there.

Here’s their list:

1. The Beatles
2. Ramones
3. Led Zeppelin
4. Bob Marley & The Wailers
5. Nirvana
6. Parliament/Funkadelic
7. The Clash
8. Public Enemy
9. The Rolling Stones
10. Beastie Boys
11. The Velvet Underground
12. Sly and The Family Stone
13. U2
14. Run-D.M.C.
15. Radiohead
16. The Jimi Hendrix Experience
17. Sonic Youth
18. Ac/Dc
19. The Stooges
20. Metallica
21. The Smiths
22. Patti Smith Group
23. N.W.A.
24. Kraftwerk
25. The Sex Pistols
26. Pearl Jam
27. Grateful Dead
28. R.E.M.
29. Black Sabbath
30. Pavement
31. Fugazi
32. Kiss
33. Pretenders
34. Rage Against The Machine
35. Fela Kuti & Afrika 70/Egypt 80
36. David Bowie And The Spiders From Mars
37. Blondie
38. Bad Brains
39. The Who
40. Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five
41. New Order
42. Husker Du
43. Guns N’ Roses
44. Outkast
45. The Beach Boys
46. Massive Attack
47. Lynyrd Skynyrd
48. Korn
49. Pink Floyd
50. Red Hot Chili Peppers

As is often the case, I have only now discovered something that was cool a year ago. In the music-journalist-speak the Canadian indie-rock Supergroup, The New Pornographers won a Juno for Best Alternative Album for their album Mass Romantic. Their name comes from a Jimmy Swaggart quote where he called music “the new pornography”.

The band includes indie-queen Neko Case and Kurt Dahle of Age of Electric (best. band. ever.) and Limblifter and brother of Ryan Dahle, possibly Canada’s best rock guitarist (Bruce Cockburn is not a rock guitarist).

I heard the buzz about the band last year, but didn’t get around to checking them out. Then, this week, my hard-rocking-kidney-stone-passing friend, co-worker, and early technology adopter, iZak mentioned them as one of his favourite releases of the past few years. As he is a wise man in many respects, I took his advice, checked them out, and I can highly recommend The New Pornographers.

Last week I told a heart-warming story about my family trip Disney World and the resulting discovery of Bad Religion and interesting radio. I also ask for some advice: where can I find good web radio? What resulted was a great thread about music, but few answers to my question (thanks to those few).

Failed by you, the reader, I set out to discover the truth myself. Where can I find good web radio? A few days later, I am pleased to report that Launch.com’s LAUNCHcast is a pretty good service.

The idea is brilliant. It works much like Amazon’s recommendations. Here is my synopsis of how their system works (in a bullet list to make it easier for your bite size brain to ingest – as digestion is too lofty a goal):

• I tell LAUNCHCast that I like radiohead
• LAUNCHcast knows that others who like radiohead also like Travis
• It plays Travis for me with out ever being told explicitly
• A new artist comes out that fans of music I currently listen to like, and it will play me the new artist

This simple concept is very powerful and overcomes the simple drawback of ‘on-demand’ media delivery – that you only find material you already know about (I’ve complained about this before).

In practical terms, the service has it’s flaws. It requires patience while it learns about your musical preferences. It takes a while for it to figure out that you know that you don’t like Mariah Carrey (btw, she it on my list of beautiful woman that are so skanky that they are not attractive – more on that later).

LAUNCHcast lets you rate song, album, and artist on a scale of 1 to 100. A rating above 50 means it will be more likely to be played. A rating of below 50 means it will be less likely to be played.

There is a nice ‘never play this again’ feature that stops the current songs, skips to the next and remembers never to play that piece again. This feature is particularly important for the first few days you use LAUNCHcast, as it will guess wrong a fair amount until it has more data about your musical preferences. I had to go through the Launch.com Top 100 and tell it that I hated most of the artists. This improved my playlist dramatically.

Another cool feature, LaunchCast asks “How much new music would you like to discover?”. Choose a low rating and it will play only music you have explicitly told it you like. Choose a high number and it will play more new music it thinks you will like, but that you haven’t explicitly asked for.

I did have some trouble with the music skipping occasionally or dropping (very frustrating). The playlist is usually quite good, but it still throws something really odd, like Winger, occasionally. The idea here is good. Remember search engines before Google? The sort-of worked. This sort-of works too. I eagerly await the Google of web radio.

I’ll never understand how, after I told it I like radiohead, it knew I’d like Lisa Loeb and Sweet Child O’Mine by Guns N’ Roses. Perhaps I’m not alone.

Second hand music recommendation from my friend Dennis via my friend Dan. Dennison Witmer may appeal to fans of Elliot Smith and Damien Jurado (btw, Damien has a new disc out).

Listen to Dennison Witmer’s single, The 80’s (2.63Mb MP3).

When I was about 16 years old, I went with my family on the quintessential trip to Disney World in Florida. For my two younger siblings it was great trip. For myself, however, it was not. I was at the age when what I wanted least of all in the world was to be with my family. I bought a refurbished Sony Walkman at a RadioShack on the trip down and buried myself in the headphones.

Having grown up on Prince Edward Island, I was not used to having interesting music on the radio. I was amazed at what I discovered with that little yellow walkman while travelling down the eastern seaboard of the states. Discovering Bad Religion’s album Stranger Than Fiction stuck with me for years after. What I’ve missed since then is that feeling of discovering new music. MuchMusic and local radio just don’t cut it (although I do have MuchMusic to thank my discovery of Copyright).

Now that audio has come of age online (as opposed to the sketchy low quality realaudio we had two years ago) I want some new music. I spend my day at in front of a computer with a good set of speakers and a very fast permanent internet connection. The trouble is, I can’t find the music! There are loads of streaming audio sites out there (including biggies such as WindowsMedia.com and Launch.com) but I have a very hard time finding something I can listen to for more than a few minutes.

I want music that fits my tastes, but I don’t want to hear the same music. I have access to a 10,000 song MP3 collection (collected legitimately, for the most part) but that doesn’t help me discover new music. I’m overwhelmed with choices and the blinking cursors has erased my mind (it doesn’t help that the internet fried my brain either).

So help me out. What do you listen to?

The value of random music picks on the web is directly proportional to the number of available gigabytes on Napster. The chances that you will go buy a CD based solely on my recommendation are slim so all you can do is take my word for it. Since Napster is starting to suck, so will this post.

The Watchmen have been touring Canada for years. In 1998 they released Silent Radar and I saw them at The Barn a year later. This is a fantastic album. The Watchmen walk that fine line between critically credible and radio friendly, ala Counting Crows. If you see the Silent Radar in bargain bin at a second hand music store buy it and listen to Brighter Hell in the dark with headphones.

“Sleep to Dream”

This is a very different song when you realize the line is actually:

I could swallow the seas to wash down all my pride.

That’s seas and not seed. A world of difference – but still a decent song, albeit certainly not the best on the album. Nice title though.

“Strange”

Sludge-punk meets psychedelic stoner-rock. Resulting sound is not unlike a body being dragged across gravel, but funky-like. Road trip ensues.

* For those not in the know:
Artist – Album – Label – Year and “Song”. Dig?

Ever since I first heard Jean Michel Jarre’s Oxygene, a seven year old sitting crosslegged in front of the record player, I had an appreciation for the sound of synths. Recently, that was rekindled by the synthpop (for lack of a better genre name) group Joy Electric. There’s something about the sterile, yet, emotional tones that come from classic analogue synths.

So, after some research and deliberation, I went onto eBay looking for that special something.

I found the one I wanted. A Korg DSS-1 Sampler/synth. It was great because it could sample stuff and regurgitate it and still could generate it’s own stuff too (or some kind of combination).

It cost me 300$ American dollars. But I figured “I haven’t bought anything in 7 months, I should treat myself after kicking Crohn’s Disease’s ass (on a temporary basis). So I placed my bid. And fought off a deadly eBay sniper who tried to uproot my bid at the last minute. I was bouncing off the walls. I made contact with the seller who sorted out the shipping.

The shipping was estimated at 120$ US. Ouch. But I thought “Well, you kicked Crohn’s Disease’s ass as best you could for the time being, you haven’t bought anything in 7 months, and with the ileostomy, you need material possesions like this to raise your personal self-image, you big special rock star with lots of fans you”. So we carried on with the transaction. Final shipping (misestimated) was 150$ US. But the great eBay seller (to use his words) ‘ate thier mistake’ for me and covered the difference.

So I waited a week and finally I got home after having a bangup dentist appointment to two boxes in my room. As I was excitedly setting everything up, my parents told me that there was another 150$ worth of customs on it.

I almost got upset at that, but then I thought “Well, I did, just spend seven months in a hospital, and absorbed about sixty 2L bags of vein-food and all kinds of other expensive vein beverages, and it didn’t cost that much to me, I shouldn’t complain about this little taxation of my goods”.

This is becoming a much longer post than I expected, I’m glad it’s sitting next to Steve‘s monstrous post. All that to say that I now own a vintage 1986 Korg DSS-1, and if you know how to use it (or have a manual) let me know, I am full of questions.

I was considering this the other evening. It’s easy and fun to jab at pop music and go on about how people only like it because the world seems to like it right now. I’m pretty sure I don’t enjoy what’s on the radio, but am I giving it a fair enough chance. I did like that (once) new Sky song.

I wonder this because one of my favorite tunes in the world is that lick from the pop sensation of the 1970ies, “Popcorn”. I wasn’t around in the 70ies, but my grade 1-3 gym teacher was, and she would make us do our silly elementary school gym exersizes with that blaring in on the PA back around 1987.

Now, that leads me to believe that pop music must have the same properties as wine, cheese, and fruitcake. It’s too sweet to be savoured and must be gobbled cheaply like a wad of supermarket cheddar or a cooler, but give it a few decades, and all of a sudden it’s refined to greatness and is well respected.

I wonder if i’d still like that lick if it had come out in 1995. I wonder if I will enjoy such tunes as “No Means No” and “The Thong Song” in 2010. If the internet still exists, I’ll get back to you.