I've gotten a lot of free legal downloads off the internet lately, and it friggin' rocks. I've posted about Amazon before, but I have to tell you: I'm surprised at how many bands not only have free songs on their website, but have their MOST popular song at the website. So anyway, checking around is good.

Also, I've found a whole webpage the Vagrant Records website that kicks ass. If you're a fan of emo*, this is the site for you! Because there is a lot of free emo there for me to love. So there you go.

____
* My personal favorite band on this label is Saves the Day, and I will defend them to the death if anyone talks smack about them. The label's most known band is probably Dashboard Confessional, which happens to be the sole emo band in the universe I don't happen to be fond of. Anyway, the majority of this stuff can get a bit homogenous at times, but there are some gems worth looking for. Also... if you just happen to be a hopeless emo addict, regardless of the quality of said emo, like me, that's another good reason to check it out.
posted by DJ Jazzy Phoe @ 11:41 PM  | 

 
So I've decided that not only have I started to like songs with bizarre and/or violent lyrics DESPITE the disturbingness, but because of it.

I remember that I never even used to sing along with songs that had curse words in them. And if anything was even slightly about sex it creeped me out. Then eventually I got into Everclear, and found out how fun it was to scream, "You make me feel like a whore!" or "Yes, I guess I fucked up again!" at the top of my lungs.

Then I started listening to Saves the Day, which I've mentioned before as particularly violent. There's this one line in my favorite song of theirs, "This is Not an Exit," that churned my stomach when I first listened to it that goes, "And if the hook sets in/the bottom of our lungs/we'll rip them out and lick the blood off with our tongues." Now, I don't know why I found this particularly disturbing as compared to other violent Saves the Day lyrics I had no problem with, including one song about nailing someone to a wall and killing them ("As Your Ghost Takes Flight," another awesome song of theirs) and multiple songs involving gauging out someone's eyes, but I did. And now that song is my favorite, and that line is my favorite part of that song!

Now I listen to Coheed & Cambria constantly, my favorite line of many bizarre/violent lines is "I will kill you all!" and "Die white girls!" is not too bad either.

I guess I just got onto this line of thought because I've really gotten into two weird songs in the last week or two, "Little Wet Head," by Minus Story, and "Alive With the Glory of Love" by Say Anything. The former is about being eaten. The later is about having a whole lot of sex while living through the holocaust.

So.... there you go.
posted by DJ Jazzy Phoe @ 4:51 PM  | 

 
So I'm beginning to think I have the musical taste of a middle aged man.

Today this old dude came up to the registers with Sufjan Stevens' Illinois, which you all know I love, and The Postal Service, which I grow to love more and more. I loved him. We talked for a long time (I used to banter quite a long time with most customers, but since I've burnt out on registers, I only usually bother to do it with people who seem cool anymore). Well, a long time for "strangers at registers" time. We discussed Death Cab for Cutie too, of course. It's very difficult, I've found, to have a discussion RE: the Postal Service without Death Cab for Cutie and/or Iron and Wine being brought into it. I also think there was another old dude not that long ago that got Sufjan I can count.

AND, about a week ago this middle aged guy brought up Rockin' The Suburbs, by Ben Folds. This is the best album ever, and I told him so. Or at least it's my favorite Ben Folds album, and Ben Folds is my favorite musical artist of all time so the proof goes.....

That guy, rather than discussing Ben Folds with me, seemed a little scared of my forceful pronouncement that he was buying the best album ever.

I also think (though this was long enough ago that I don't count it in the streak of middle aged men recently loving things I do) there was this middle aged guy (though he was on the youngish side of it) who got the new Coheed & Cambria while I was at register. He felt free to discuss as well, so hooray for him.

So anyway, thank you, middle aged men, for buying music I like.

Very rarely do any women get what I listen to. I think one chick my age got Brand New once, and this middle aged chick once got Lifehouse. Other than that, it's teenage boys or middle aged men that seem to share my taste most. Should I be worried?
posted by DJ Jazzy Phoe @ 7:18 PM  | 

 
Phoemeister: So have you ever seen or read High Fidelity?
Sui: I saw the movie
Sui: It was good
Sui: John Cusack = win
Phoemeister: haha you would say that
Phoemeister: you're an amateur Cusack impersonator!
Sui: haha
Phoemeister: anyway I was curious what you thought of that line from it where he asks whether he listened to popular music because he was sad, or if the music made him sad?
Sui: Hehe it's both!
Phoemeister: Well I've been cranky and listening to angry music a lot lately
Phoemeister: so I've been thinking about it
Sui: :Phoemeister: well Saves the Day is a band I really love
Phoemeister: and their new album is hella angry
Phoemeister: and I started all listening to Chevelle and Incubus and Everclear again
Phoemeister: and I was wondering if Saves the Day started me on that
Phoemeister: and back when I used to listen to Everclear and Incubus a lot I was a really angry person
Phoemeister: but I don't think I really am now for the most part

Seriously, though, the new Saves the Day is CRAZY angry. Like, they've always had a few violent songs, but all of them on the new one are. AND, he's just like screaming through it all. And for some reason his voice is higher. I'd been listening to this album a lot, and I went to listen to one of their old albums, and I seriously thought my tape player's batteries were going bad, because the voice was so much lower... until I realized I was listening to a CD player.

Also, I find it kind of hilarious: I went to their website, and the kind of press release-ish thing they have on the site about the band and the new album mostly focuses on how angry it is. And they keep promoting it like it's a good thing! Like the whole selling point is "angry"! Who buys something just because it's angry?

Okay, several people. But still.... if I had a band, and the first adjective that came to mind about my album for most people was angry, I'd be.... angry.

Anyway, I hope I'm not becoming angry again. Hopefully I won't. The last time I was really an angry person, I had health issues and having no friends, both inflaming the anger situation.
posted by DJ Jazzy Phoe @ 8:12 PM  | 

 
So I was among the first to own the new Saves the Day album today. And.... I ended up being impulsive and buying Queen's greatest hits and this Death Cab for Cutie DVD while I was at it.

Saves the Day: I dunno. I haven't listened to it enough. The first time I heard it, it seemed kind of screamy and whiney, which is kind of the stuff I'm trying to get away from lately. BUT, I've really gotten into one of the songs, "Delusional." You have to love a song about a paranoid guy who dreams all night that people are coming to kill everyone and hang him in the trees to die alone.

So... safe to say, the violent streak Saves the Day seems to indulge in is not absent on this album. Anyway, I really like the song, though by tomorrow, I might be "meh." I still love the chorus, though, and put it in the list of things that appear under the picture on my other blog, because it's so fitting. "All night I dream that they're really out to get me."

Queen: they had a new greatest hits come out today, that had all their best songs on one album, as opposed to how they've historically had all that vol 1, vol2 business where you have to buy multiple albums to get the ones you really want. I hope I actually listen to it. I like Queen, and buying them seemed like a good idea at the time, but so have a lot of greatest hits albums that I never listen to. If you're apathetic enough in the first place not to get the band's other albums, that causes problems sometimes.

Death Cab For Cutie: TOTAL impulse buy. I've been thinking of their new album for a long time but have been kind of "eh." I have transatlanticism, and it's actually grown on me some since I first got it, but it was kind of a disappointment. I like half the tracks, if that. But I really love the new song I've heard from the new album.... anyway, this DVD came out, it costs exactly as much as the CD and basically has videos for every song. So.. you're getting the music + the videos at the same price. So... I almost didn't get it, but then when I went to Best Buy the guy had to find it for me, because they didn't have it out on the floor yet, and I always feel like a jerk whenever I make a salesperson get something and don't buy it... so yes, I codependantly bought a death cab for cutie DVD, just like a codependantly do everything.

Anyway, only a couple of the videos are any good,a nd to listen to the songs I have to play it on the DVD player, which is kind of a crappy way to do things in my house, where there is never not at least one other TV blaring in the vicinity. But I'm moving out soon.... eh.

Now I have to wait for Stadium Arcadium to come out.
posted by DJ Jazzy Phoe @ 8:03 PM  | 

 
Phoemeister: do you like Built to Spill?
Sui: They are okay, yes
Sui: I think I've only heard a few songs by them
Phoemeister: I think they're overrated!
Phoemeister: I mean, I don't think they're horrible or anything
Phoemeister: but I don't get people who all love them and everything
Sui: "They have like.. fans, and sell albums and stuff.. They're not indie enough for me"
Phoemeister: shut up
Phoemeister: they're way indie
Phoemeister: that's why they annoy me
Phoemeister: they try to be all smart
Phoemeister: instead of just making the damn music
Phoemeister: anyway, I was just being bitchy, I don't hate them
Phoemeister: and actually I was listening to a built to spill album
Phoemeister: that I own
Sui: Hehe found some music you can listen to again?
Phoemeister: Well, I was actually going through some stuff I have had for awhile, and I was like, "Built to Spill, I haven't listened to you in awhile!" and then I was listening to it and was like, "NOW I REMEMBER WHY."
Sui: haha
Phoemeister: So not really. But sitting at the computer and not listening to music is weird, so I'll put something on anyway. Built to Spill has annoyed me enough that I went back to crappy emo for now.
Phoemeister: .........yes, it's Fall Out Boy
Sui: I heard their new album is good
Sui: my friend keeps bugging me to go get it
Phoemeister: I have it. If I had a computer that didn't suck I'd send you a couple songs
Sui: get a new computer
Phoemeister: Anyway, I'd say fallout boy is not going to change the world or anything
Phoemeister: but they annoy me 85% less than Built to Spill
Sui: haha
Sui: that's good
posted by DJ Jazzy Phoe @ 12:38 PM  | 

 
I swear I haven't forgotten about this blog!

I just haven't really had any musical musings of late. Half the problem is lately as soon as I like anything I get tired of it like, by the next day. There was this New Pornographers song, especially, that I was all like "YOU ARE AWESOME, NEW PORNOGRAPHER'S SONG!" (Broken Breads, if anyone's curious. How could anyone not like a song with lyrics such as, "yes there is a war/boys vs girls/clowns vs their curls"?) and then by the next day I was like, "You are still okay, but I could live without you, New Pornographer's song."

So... it's kind of not worth it to be like, "OH MY GOSH, ____ is awesome," if I can't stand by that statement the next day.

I think it might be because I have been getting so much new music lately, but who knows. And Mouse is going to hook me up with more, soon. He said he was going to burn me some Tool. Which, I have to say I've never really been a big fan of Tool, and if I absolutely had to pick something Tool-like, I would probably actually pick A Perfect Circle first. But, he says I'd love them, and I kind of trust his assessment, because he usually picks good things for me. So it might be one of those bands that takes longer for me to get into, but would have some real staying power.

I feel bad, though, he burns me so much stuff but I don't have a burner, so I can only lend back AND he has so much music that everything I have that he doesn't is probably because he didn't want it in the first place. Anyway, to see if there IS anything he'd want, I went ahead and compiled a massive chart of my music, which sadly I love to do and would probably do anyway. The only thing is I'm so anal, I had to include EVERYTHING, including things he'd never want, and I'm totally embarassed about and no doubt all my coworkers are going to be like, "SHE HAS A CREED CD? STONE HER TO DEATH?" (1. I didn't know any better back when I bought it! 2. It was like their first CD before they became as obnoxiously big 3. I never throw anything away, I'm a giant packrat. I'm sorry) Oh well. But it'll be nice to have a list, in case I want to do the bartering thing with anyone else too. I'm horrible at picking out music for other people, it's just best if they can pick on their own.

True story.
posted by DJ Jazzy Phoe @ 8:11 PM  |