the 2014 music collection project:

I've acquired over 4000 cd's over the years. Trying to listen to them all A-Z from Jan 1 - Dec 31st, 2014. Posting my thoughts on each disc. BTW feel free to ask me anything. Please follow if you like the blog!

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The state of the world...

Please forgive my rambling post, as my thoughts are all over the place right now.

In my faith, we just finished up a weekend that is typically very spiritual, where we get to hear from church leaders in several different sessions across multiple days, it's called General Conference. It happens twice a year. The talks are then printed in full in the following month's issue of the church magazine, and in the last several years the talks are also posted online, to be watched again on both the Church website, and youtube. For me, this past weekend, like so many of the recent past General Conferences, the weekend was inspiring, uplifting, faith building, peaceful, and overall a nice "reset" and "recharge" to my batteries. The last three years I felt many times between juggling work, school and two young kids and all that goes with it I was running faster than I could walk.

Then the tragedy of Sunday night hit, and it along with the aftermath and reactions on social media, the narratives, the finger pointing, the politicization of the event to fit certain agendas reminded me very quickly of, and brought me back crashing down into, the world we currently live in.

I'm just as guilty as everyone else of emotionally sharing items, just the other day I shared one that I should have researched a little more. Thankfully a good friend whom I respect put me in check on that particular item.

But to see everything on social media, Democrats hate Republicans, Republicans hate Democrats, Gun Control Advocates hate 2nd Amendment advocates and vice versa, Christians hate Atheists, Atheists hate Christians, everyone else is racist except the person writing at that moment, Women hate men, men are oppressive to women, everyone is offended by anything and everything. The media can't be trusted, the left hate the right, the right hate the left. The President is a terrible human being, the President is a man who's just misunderstood, and the left and the media are only making it worse. You're a terrible person if you're patriotic, you're a terrible person if you're NOT patriotic. We're headed to a civil war, our side will win because we have all the guns, we're headed to a civil war, our side will win because we'll take all the guns and only police and military will have them...

Stop the train, I wanna get off. I've said before Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, social media in general is turning into a GIANT ECHO-CHAMBER.

This morning while walking the dog, I resisted the urge to listen to music and instead just simply pondered. A twenty minute walk turned into 30, then into an hour. At the end of my walk, here is what I've decided to share, and if you're still with me, here is my point:

EVERYONE BACK AWAY FROM SOCIAL MEDIA. FROM TWITTER, FROM TEXTING. GO HAVE A FACE TO FACE CONVERSATION WITH A NEIGHBOR, A FAMILY MEMBER, A STRANGER. The world, is NOT as bad as it seems.

There are neighbors on my street that I do not align with politically, religiously, etc. On social media, we've disagreed on matters. YET, in person, we've had deep, meaningful conversations, there are many, many, things we DO agree on, and have common ground, and I KNOW that if I were in a crisis, and ran and knocked on their door, and said "I need your help," they would be there without hesitation, and I love them for that. And I do my best to make sure they know that if that role were reversed, I would be there for them.

I commented to a family member years ago, that I hated how everything was going to texting because we were seeing a decline in interpersonal communication skills, and it's getting worse than I imagined. I see people making comments on social media or the internet in general, about other individuals, other groups, that I have to believe with all my heart, that same person would never say in a real face to face conversation, because the person or people they were speaking with, would immediately look at them and wonder where the speaker's common sense went. Case in point: the exec from CBS who was fired on Monday for comments made about the tragedy in Las Vegas.

Believe in the good of other people. LISTEN to opposing views. You might learn something. You might even (wait for it) start to change your mind. Case in point, I was VERY against the protests going on in the NFL, I was very much in the camp of "You stand at attention, you respect the flag and the Anthem, protest another time, another way, etc." But I've heard some very compelling arguments and now I'm looking at that issue differently. Very differently.

Don't believe the echo-chamber of social media. There are good people out there. And they're Democrats, Republicans, gun owners, gun-control advocates, conservatives, liberals, Christians, Atheist, Gay, Straight...

but the most important label of all:

FELLOW HUMAN BEINGS.

We're all one human family. Let's take a moment to remember that.

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*Tap tap... “Uh, is this,” *squelching feedback* “Is this thing on?”

So, I’m not even sure when the last post was... early 2014... I had a rather ambitious project idea; listen to my entire CD collection A-Z, posting about each disc.

Shortly after starting that I decided to go back to school, shortly after making that decision we found out we were expecting our first child. My wife refused to let me change my mind about going back to school and so, in August of 2014, 2 days before my first semester back, our first daughter was born.

Three months later we bought a house. We moved in the Saturday before Thanksgiving and somehow hosted Thanksgiving for my wife’s family just five days later.

More school, oh hey! Another kid!, more school, a job change (still working full time on top of school full time), more school, another job change, and now finally

SCHOOL IS OVER...

Oh yeah, didn’t I have a blog at one point?

So between buying a friend’s CD collection because they’re getting rid of hard copies, and acquiring tons of other stuff through record store trips, and Amazon Prime (which is the devil, what with cheap CD’s, free shipping coupled with autorip and they incentivize you to choose longer shipping with free digital tunes) my collection has swelled a bit. (It doesn’t help that there’s been a lot of really cool re-issues, though I am starting to get re-issue overload...)

So many times I wanted to jump on and do a post, esp when we lost Cornell and Chester. Not sure if I have any followers left after such a long absence, but hopefully given time, we’ll see who we can get paying attention to, and contributing to the blog again.

I don’t think I’ll start all over at the letter A and redo what I’ve already blogged about, though I will go back to A and blog about what’s been acquired in the collection since the project started in 2014. Once I’m caught up we’ll move forward.

I’ve been building a private music server over the last several months. Started ripping CD’s into the machine back in October of 2016, barely got through the letter Z a couple of weeks ago, and now I’m working on soundtracks and compilations. Also with school off my plate have been watching a lot of great music documentaries lately. Hendrix, The Clash, A Tribe Called Quest, and great concert footage, as well seen some great shows, with a few more on the horizon.

Let’s have some fun...

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Coldplay - Magic (Official audio)

Here's the other new Coldplay Track... "Magic"

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Coldplay - Midnight

So after being really REALLY disappointed with Coldplay's last album Mylo Xyloto, it took me six days from getting the email about a new song to finally give it a listen. This gives me hope they are going in a radical direction. They did that for Viva La Vida which is my favorite album of theirs. Now I'm hearing there's another new track "Magic" to check out.

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Shelf 7

Music from Beck, Bjork, The Black Keys, Black Sabbath, Blink 182, and Blue October coming on this shelf...

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Finishing off Shelf 6

A handful of Promo Singles, and five albums in the last of shelf 6.

Two more tracks from Big Audio Dynamite, promo singles for "Looking for a Song" and "I Turned Out A Punk" which the singles were released not quite six months apart, and you'd think they were on the same albums, but alas. Mick Jones, is quite prolific when it comes to writing and recording, because the songs are from two different albums that came out on two different labels.

I saw Big Audio Dynamite in August of '95 at one of KPNT's many Pointfest concerts. They were amazing. They turned the whole place into a big party.

Speaking of big party, that's what I envisioned going to any show by any swing artist that was big back in the late 90's must have been. 

  Big Bad Voodoo Daddy had a number of hits, and even appeared in the movie "Swingers"with a young Jon Favreau and a thin Vince Vaughn. Listening to the album carries you back to the time of swing of the '30's and '40s.

Standout tracks: "Mr. Pinstripe Suit," "You And Me And The Bottle Makes 3 Tonight (Baby)" "Go Daddy-O" and their cover of "Minnie The Moocher"

  When working in radio you get a lot of CD's sent to you and sometimes (more than that actually) you get CD's sent to you that the record label honestly has no real intention of putting any weight behind. That was the case with this band. The single the label was trying to work was "Remember (I.O.U.)" but when the label rep called me about this album what he actually said was "Amy Lee sings backup on track six, just in case you want to play that one, other wise don't worry about it." Well, we were in Little Rock, Amy's home town, I was at the station that gave them their start, so I kept the disc for that reason only.

In 1993 Big Head Todd and the Monsters released their album Sister Sweetly. To this day I've never heard the entire album all the way through, but to this day I still love the single "Bittersweet" and pull the promo single off the shelf to listen to several times a year.

In 1988 after months of hearing about it from the likes of Mary Hart on "Entertainment Tonight"and the movie segment of my local news, I finally sat down in the movie theater across the street from the apartment my mother and I lived in above the Hallmark store and saw "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure." I distinctly remember two things about it: 1) my mother walked out of the movie about 35 minutes in, and 2) the opening song. Before the song was over I was making a mental note to watch through the end credits to see who sang it.

  Great Aussie rock, lots of percussion. Standout tracks include: "Breakaway" "Money God" "Hungry Town"

And the last two discs on shelf 6:

  The opening track is one very cool track. Listening through the disc I thought "Man, they sure do sound like Soundgarden" on their track "Look What I Found" and then after reading up on the album, found that front man Ian Thornley did that on purpose. (Thanks Wikipedia!)

In 2003 they released 

  Nothing from the album charted in the US and it did better in Canada than it did here in the States, but if you've heard of the band Thornley, that's the followup to this album, as Big Wreck themselves wouldn't release another album until 2012.

And that does it for shelf 6...

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Let's Finish Up Shelf Six Shall We?

*whew* Where does the time go?

I'm actually listening through the beginning stages of shelf 8, but it's been a crazy 10 days or so since my last update. Left off with The B-52's. Next up after them was Drive by Bic Runga

  We played her debut single "Sway" when I worked at KLAL in Little Rock back in '98-'99. Hadn't listened to the rest of the album since. She's a native of New Zealand and has since released more albums over there.

I left KLAL an adult alternative station in '99 and went "across the street" as they say to the competition, a full fledged alternative station, KLEC, which was where I wanted to be in the first place. There we played tracks from Bif Naked's Lava/Atlantic records debut I, Bificus

  which, when it came out in '98 was total "rebel girl with tattoos, alt rock" but listening to it today and the songs could be placed right next to tracks from the last couple of P!nk albums, and played on pop radio. Not a dis, just an observation. I really liked the track "Moment of Weakness" when it first came out and it was a nice moment of reminiscing when I played this CD. The girl who worked overnights and I used to jam that song in the on air studio when she played it.

Also, check out the tracks "Lucky," and "Spaceman"

Also, while it's not on this album, track down Bif Naked's cover of Metallica's "Nothing Else Matters." It's on her superbeautifulmonster album. Purists will cry blasphemy, but if you're open minded you'll dig it. Especially if you know the back story to things Bif (real name Beth) has been through in the last several years.

Next was Big Audio Dynamite II's The Globe.

  What a great album. "Rush" was featured predominantly in the movie "So I Married An Axe Murderer" and my friends and I would jam that soundtrack when it was new. (Yes, I'm now old...I get it...)

When listening to the album version of that song though, you have to wonder what they were on when they recorded it? 

Still a great song, and you wonder listening to the album, if it would or could be made today what with all the sampling that occurs. Not quite the neighborhood of Paul's Boutique by The Beastie Boys, but still pretty sample heavy. Heck Mick Jones even samples his song "Train in Vain" from his former bandmates The Clash on the title song.

Standout Tracks: "Rush," "The Globe," "I Don't Know,""Kool-Aid," "Innocent Child"

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Preview of Courtney Love's new Web Series

Info on the link after the jump, but basically it sounds like Courtney will have a web series soon, produced by the people who do Big Brother and Deal or No Deal.

Should be entertaining to say the least...

And yes, I'm posting something else of Alan's... he's got lots of good stuff on his site. Check it out won'tcha?

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Album Covers Reimagined With Emojis

Check out some classic album covers recreated with emojis.

Thanks to Alan Cross for posting this.

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What Happens To Your Digital Files After You Pass On?

You might be surprised...

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More people need to watch this video...

I'm just getting going with the Tumblr "thing" and have a handful of followers. There are several people I follow, simply because they post cool or funny things on their blog. Thing is, a lot of them are teenagers, and I see a lot of things on my dashboard that are talking about how alone they feel, how they want to commit suicide, or I see posts begging others not to commit suicide. I know most of those people that I follow don't follow me back, but if this video gives even one person the strength to keep going, like it did for me during a dark time of my life 4 years ago, and get through all the horribleness to the good times that ARE on the other side, then that's why I'm posting it.

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Every time someone downloads this song, Bank of America will donate $1 to help fight Aids.

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I really hope this is true and we only have to wait less than a year...

The worst thing about Sherlock's series 3 finale yesterday was wondering when the show would return. As it turns out, series 4 may not be too far away. The

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The B-52's

In 1987-88 I was in 6th grade. And I was in love. Oh sure, there was Carol Mueller, the girl I'd had a crush on since the first day I walked into my school, halfway through the second grade, but this time, it was different. Michelle Mario Sabo was gorgeous, she was funny, she had awesome taste in music...

She was my teacher...

I was 12. She was 24. I knew I didn't stand a chance...

It was her second year of teaching, and her second year of being at our school. All through fifth grade I just hoped I'd ended up in her class for 6th.

She had a record player in her classroom, and from time to time would play different records. She was the one who turned me on to U2, she loved that band. Would play us cuts off of War, Unforgettable Fire, and The Joshua Tree (which at the time was the newest U2 record). She would discuss the political backgrounds behind certain songs, and get us to realize the world was a much bigger place than we realized, and there were things going on that we needed to be aware of, and help put a stop to if they were still going on when we grew up.

She was the one who got me to appreciate the Police's Synchronicity. Sure, I'd already heard all the singles on it, but she would play it in class and chat about how it was their last album, and get us to see symbolism, and talk about different lyrics.

And she played The B-52's and I was hooked instantly.

  She played "Planet Claire" and "Rock Lobster" in class. I loved that guitar hook on PC, and love the fact that it still sounds ultra cool today, 34 years later. I can still see Miss Sabo lip synching to the song, and going all dramatic to the line "BUT SHE ISN'T!!!" 

That day during a break I asked her if she'd tape it for me. She agreed, so the next day I brought her a blank tape. The day after she returned it, putting in her words "The best five" of the 9 tracks on the cassette, basically, side 1 of the album. 

Later in the school year we were talking about volcanoes and she referenced the tape she'd made for me and the song "Lava" to the rest of the class, even quizzing me on some of the names of volcanoes in the song. I got them right, she complimented me to the class and I was on cloud 9. Aaahh school boy crushes right?

A couple of years later I was excited to see a new video on MTV for "Channel Z" and the announcement of a new B-52's album Cosmic Thing. That album seemed to be everywhere. I've never picked that one up, but I do have 

  ...and all the best stuff from Cosmic thing appears here.

To this day, still love this band. She's since married, and who knows where she is now, but Michelle Marie Sabo, where ever you are? Thanks for the education, both classroom and musically...

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It's been interesting to see...

which band or artist's fans like or reblog the posts that they are included in. Some have been surprising and unexpected. Alice in Chains fans like the pictures I posted of the Jar of Flies that came with flies, Courtney Love fans have given me a few notes about the link I posted when someone I knew testified in her trial, and the Bee Gee's have some fans on Tumblr.

It's like with anything I guess, everything you think is going to be a sure fire hit, isn't, and it's the things you least expect that gets the attention.

Just an observation. Curious to see how the rest of the collection goes.

So let's get back to it shall we?

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Shelf 6 continues

In 2003 Little Rock was a flurry of activity because this little band was making huge headlines. Evanescence was everywhere.

And so were the bands who sounded like them.

Including friends of the band.

Between the Second was one of the better sounding local bands. Band member Allen Robson was one of the nicest guys one could meet in the local scene at the time. He served as Evanescence guitarist John LeCompt's guitar tech for a while if memory serves me right. He was one of the people you wished would make it big, because the guy worked super hard, and had talent. Unfortunately with Evanescence getting big, if you sounded anything like them, you would get written off like a clone. Especially if you were from the same town.

  He gave me a copy of their EP Three Words Will Make Her back in '03, it's a 4 track, with the (at the time) innovative fifth song available through their website. The site is unfortunately no longer up. I'll have to see if any of my old Little Rock friends have a copy of that tune somewhere.

And that takes us from industrial alt/metal to Beyonce.

  It was only a matter of time before Beyonce' left Destiny's Child to do her own thang. I remember when this album came out the label was quick to say "She has NOT left the group... they are on hiatus," which was a nice plan B in case this solo album flopped, but it did just the opposite and it was pointless for her to go back to the group. She didn't need them anymore. The title of the next (and last) DC record said it all: Destiny Fulfilled...

Beyonce's solo destiny was just beginning.

Of course I'd heard "Crazy In Love," (I'll post Snow Patrol's fantastic cover of that) but I'd not listened to the rest of the album since it was released. Upon listening today, my ears perked up on the 2nd track "Naughty Girl" which DJ Earworm used in an awesome mash-up called "What's My Name"

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BTE Continued

After Deluxe is their '96 release Friction Baby and as I said in my last post today was the first time in five years I'd listened to BTE since they were my ex-wife's favorite band. When we divided CD's I gave her CD's that were actually mine when we got married, Closer and the rare Artifakt.

So today when I flipped over the back of Friction Baby there was my ex's maiden name up in the corner where she used to label her CD's.

Oops... guess I'll throw this in our daughter's backpack when she's here next.

  Stand Out Tracks on this one:

"King of New Orleans," "Desperately Wanting" which I also have a promo single for that included a live acoustic, and another live version.

In 1998 they released 

  Some of the tracks seemed to be experimental for them. For example the opening track "Je ne m'en Souviens pas." An interesting way to open an album.

I like when bands do something different to open their album. Whether it's Link Park opening Minutes To Midnight with the sound of a needle dropping down on a record, or Pink Floyd's "Pigs on the Wing" bookending Animals or when a band puts on an opening track that sounds nothing like the rest of the album, like the case BTE did here.

Other standout tracks: "At The Stars," "One More Murder" (love that track. It's also on the soundtrack to the first X Files movie, which is a killer soundtrack)

I guess it's time to replace my missing copies of Closer and Artifakt now...