Simalot and I both mentioned several music podcasts where we get a lot of free music. I found that since iTunes uses the name and artist given in the podcast feed rather than that which may or may not be set in the mp3 file itself, many of the tracks iTunes downloads have names such as '#nnn [Track Name] by [Artist Name]' rather than having Track Name as the track name and Artist Name as the artist. Also, by default, they're ignored in shuffle mode, and they remember where you're up to if you stop in the middle of a song, since that's what you'd want to happen if they were normal podcasts. So I made some AppleScripts to fix all these problems, and after making a few more for the podcasts @simalot mentioned, I finally decided it was worth making them public, in case there are other Mac iTunes users who subscribe to free music podcasts and like to have all the tags of their mp3s in order.
So anyway, there are links to the various scripts and podcasts in this blog post. If you're not using iTunes on a Mac, the AppleScripts won't be much use, but you still might find the list of podcasts useful. Feel free to suggest other music podcasts I could subscribe to and make scripts for.
As for new music, I mentioned in the other thread that I've discovered a lot of good music through Zunior samplers. One of those was Wax Mannequin, who I saw in concert a couple of weeks ago. It turned out we were in the same hotel, and we ended up on the same train and in the same Starbucks (I swear I wasn't stalking) talking about music and stuff. (He even brought up Gödel, Escher, Bach unprompted. Squee!) I mentioned JoCo and Paul and Storm a couple of times; in fact it was he who told me about Ween's fancy pants song. Anyway, one of the other singers he recommended to me was B. A. Johnston, and just looking at the tracklistings of his albums I knew he would be a good fit with JoCo fans. Zombies, nerds, pants, hobos, robos, video games, even a theme song for a TV show about a monkey butler, of all the ridiculously specific themes he could share with JoCo. And what's more, I believe he and Wax Mannequin are currently touring Canada together, so you can see two great artists in the same night. Check 'em out. By the way, I filmed the Wax Mannequin show (it's what I do!), but he's going to watch it first before I put it on the YouTubes.
Oh, also, after that I found an old EP of Wax Mannequin's on which there is a song about weird beards. We like beards, right?
I like so many artists across all genres I'll just touch upon some of my current favorites (they tend to rotate in and out of my head in trems of popularity). Many of the bands I love to see live are all part of an odd KevinBaconesque musical experience that all started with Da Vinci's Notebook back in the early 2000's.....
First and foremost is Girlyman and if you haven't heard them I highly recommend a youtube search for Kittery Tide or any of their songs (or go to girlyman.com and just listen). And on that note for the NoVA Sea Monkey contingent, they are playing at Wolftrap on Nov. 3- Anyone (other than Isildur42) going?
From 6 Degrees of Da Vinci's Notebook:
Paul & Storm (duh), Girlyman, Full Frontol Folk, JoCo, Po' Girl, Sean Altman, Eric Schwartz, Stephanie Corby, Micah Dalton, Eddie From Ohio, The Kennedys (and Stringbusters/Strangelings), Carsie Blanton, Cheryl Wheeler, Kenny White, Dar Williams, Mara Levi, Brianna Lane, Bill Kirchen, LEA, Adam Ezra Group, and most recently (like a week ago Sunday) Mike Lombardo (thanks for having him open for you Paul & Storm!)
Other stuff:
The Beatles, Tom Lehrer, Kingston Trio, Billy Joel, Simon and Garfunkel, TMBG, Wierd Al, Sting, Europe, Muse, Peter Gabriel, Genesis, Bare Naked Ladies, Sibelius, Dvorak, Hidemith, Nielsen, Bach, Telemann, The Cheiftans, IONA, Klezmer, Middle Eastern folk, Eastern European folk, Broadway shows (South Pacific and Me and My Girl at the top), movie soundtracks (A Mighty Wind, John Williams, Juno)m
@Obewan I'd never heard Girlyman so I followed your link and it turns out they'll be here in Philadelphia next week. I'm going to see if I can get tickets. So -- thanks!
@Obewan I'm surprised you don't include Indigo Girls on your list because I'm listening to Girlyman in preparation for seeing them for the first time next week and they remind me a lot of early Indigo Girls.
@librarian I'm kind of hit or miss with Indigo Girls... I enjoy some of their earlier songs but I've been soured by a performance at Wolf Trap where Girlyman opened for them- there were some major sound issues when Girlyman played (ie you couldn't hear them) and I just couldn't enjoy the rest of the concert
Let me join Obewan in recommending Girlyman -- just saw them for the first time (in Philadelphia) and they were awesome. Check out the songs "Easy Bake Ovens" "St. Peter's Bones" or "Joyful Sign."
So I was out at the Birchmere in VA on Saturday to hear Cheryl Wheeler (Awesome!) In light of our coming cruise and the recent Costa Concordia disaster (and before SOPA makes is wrong for me to do so) I thought I'd link to her tounge-in-cheek song about the Carnival Splendor incident of 2010......
Well I am sure there was something once, I mean we had loads on spotify but these days it seems broken and only plays JoCo. No seriously, I don't think its played anything else since I put all his playlist in the library. It's our goto music every day.
But I am really into music, we don't have a TV, we just listen to music.
So eclectisism? eclecticity (that sounds like an augmented reality game!) Eclection, ah First of May it, varied.
Well my favourite ever iTunes mix was Michael Jackson to Iron Maiden to Abba to Venom. Not everyone can manage that, when you throw in Harvey Andrew, Johnny Cash, Richard Thompson, Ed Guy, etc etc, you start to get the message.
I'm fairly certain @Angelastic mentioned in another thread about an interesting mix on her listening device of choice, I'm the same. I have the Wonderstuff, HIM, loads of classical from Rachmaninov to Dvorak.
My favourite band of all time are (is? isn't a band singular so it should be is? Let's go with is!) is the Doors (hang on doors is plural should it have been are? Aaargh synapses are melting...) and my duaghter even had the decency to be born on the anniversary of Jim's death, so I can forgive her for not being a boy so I could call her Jim (yeah I am one of those fans).
I listen to what I like at the time, and so much comes my way that I keep checking new stuff out, or at least try. Since I came to these forums I've lost count of how many bands/singers I want to check out and at the end of the day that eats into my JoCo time...
@Oboewan, I happened to mention a few years ago to someone that I liked size of a cow. Needless to say argument ensued about how that was a crap song and I should listen to there other stuff which I duly did. Discovered I like both never loved elvis and hup. However Size of a Cow is still ace!
Just thinking back to Spotify, not sure how many people here have spotify but if you do I suggest always listening to JoCo on it when you can. We just downloaded his full catalogue and listen to that where necessary but if the track is available on Spotify, then we put that on instead. I'm not advertising for Spotify here, but we pay for the service anyway so may as well use it and this way JoCo gets paid per listen. We must have bought him at least a new set of strings for his guitar by now.
@St_Trousers and @ReverendgB I loved RLStevenson's "My Shadow" when I was a kid so "Caught in My Shadow" is probably my favorite with Welcome to the Cheap Seats and Size of Cow closely behind. I am, alas, only familliar with Never Loved Elvis which I will shortly rectify :-)
Regarding Spotify: I've seen a number of complaints about the sliding scale that Spotify uses to remunerate artists. Last I heard, independent artists receive essentially nothing from the service. A 2010 infographic calculated that an independent artist would require over 4 million plays to accumulate $1000. (Will add link once I'm at a real computer.) That's not to say people shouldn't use Spotify, which I'm sure is a great service. It just doesn't benefit the artists I like quite as much as many people think.
To make this marginally on topic: one of my favourite artists in the past decade has been Ted Leo, a punk/indie rocker who appears to have many friends in common with JoCo. Have they ever performed together? I know they were both in Hodgman's recent book trailer.
@chicazul I agree 100% with the pay thing, but they do get exposure they wouldn't necessarily. My friends forever tell me about one band or another, and even things from the forums, it's my first port of call before I consider buying. My point was that he gets paid something while I listen to it, whereas if I put the CD on, yes I paid $80 but that would be where the finance stream would end.
JoCo is literally on every night in our house and typically once through everything that is on there. And 4000000 is only half the population of London playing 1 track. The numbers are stacked against the artist but it's an outlet.
Putting my Devil's Advocate hat aside though, as I started saying, I fully agree with you. The music industry sucks big style even for big name artists. I can think of more than one that made very little money. Think of Bat out of Hell for instance, one of the biggest albums of all time!
I pray on a daily basis that JoCo can be the saviour of the industry for artists whilst the labels crash and burn for years of abusing the system.
Much as I pray that Kick Ass will save the film industry from itself.
Who knows, stranger things have happened, I mean I heard there was this guy who made a living giving his stuff away...
@reverendgb it says something that before I spotted the little cloud in the corner I went to check the source code! This is what a forum full of nerds has done to me. Gotta love it.
Anyone here a Half Man Half Biscuit fan? They are very acerbic at times, very funny at others and very odd the rest of the time.
@librarian If I'd be in NYC I'd totally take you up on it since I'm missing them in DC. NYC vacinity Seamonkeys- don't let these go to waste! I guarantee you'll have a blast at the show!
@librarian my dilemma is that I'll be at GCOM Game Days north of Baltimore from the 26-29th. As much as I love them, I've seen Girlyman so many times I'm still debating if it's worth driving for 4 hours and missing gaming.
Other music, other music...hmm. Last.fm informs me my most-listened artists are They Might Be Giants, Elvis Costello & the Attractions, and Sparks (followed by XTC, The Kinks, and The Residents). My musical tastes are kind of all over the map though--as a teenager, when everybody else was getting into poppy emo-rock, I was almost exclusively listening to jazz and pop from the 1920s/30s.
For anybody here who hasn't heard of Sparks, I highly recommend you check them out, starting with their albums "Propaganda" and "Kimono My House". They have a pretty odd stage presence, but they write great songs. They've also written songs in virtually every musical genre known to man.
Unrelated, but is anybody else here a fan of song-poems? Now there's some truly strange music...
Comments
I like so many artists across all genres I'll just touch upon some of my current favorites (they tend to rotate in and out of my head in trems of popularity). Many of the bands I love to see live are all part of an odd KevinBaconesque musical experience that all started with Da Vinci's Notebook back in the early 2000's.....
First and foremost is Girlyman and if you haven't heard them I highly recommend a youtube search for Kittery Tide or any of their songs (or go to girlyman.com and just listen). And on that note for the NoVA Sea Monkey contingent, they are playing at Wolftrap on Nov. 3- Anyone (other than Isildur42) going?
From 6 Degrees of Da Vinci's Notebook:
Paul & Storm (duh), Girlyman, Full Frontol Folk, JoCo, Po' Girl, Sean Altman, Eric Schwartz, Stephanie Corby, Micah Dalton, Eddie From Ohio, The Kennedys (and Stringbusters/Strangelings), Carsie Blanton, Cheryl Wheeler, Kenny White, Dar Williams, Mara Levi, Brianna Lane, Bill Kirchen, LEA, Adam Ezra Group, and most recently (like a week ago Sunday) Mike Lombardo (thanks for having him open for you Paul & Storm!)
Other stuff:
The Beatles, Tom Lehrer, Kingston Trio, Billy Joel, Simon and Garfunkel, TMBG, Wierd Al, Sting, Europe, Muse, Peter Gabriel, Genesis, Bare Naked Ladies, Sibelius, Dvorak, Hidemith, Nielsen, Bach, Telemann, The Cheiftans, IONA, Klezmer, Middle Eastern folk, Eastern European folk, Broadway shows (South Pacific and Me and My Girl at the top), movie soundtracks (A Mighty Wind, John Williams, Juno)m
Yay! Off to see Eddie From Ohio at the Birchmere tonight!
http://eddiefromohio.com/index.php?page=video&display=554
So I was out at the Birchmere in VA on Saturday to hear Cheryl Wheeler (Awesome!) In light of our coming cruise and the recent Costa Concordia disaster (and before SOPA makes is wrong for me to do so) I thought I'd link to her tounge-in-cheek song about the Carnival Splendor incident of 2010......
@St_Trousers and @ReverendgB I loved RLStevenson's "My Shadow" when I was a kid so "Caught in My Shadow" is probably my favorite with Welcome to the Cheap Seats and Size of Cow closely behind. I am, alas, only familliar with Never Loved Elvis which I will shortly rectify :-)
Let us, like Him, hold up one shoe and let the other be upon our foot, for this is His sign, that all who follow Him shall do likewise!
@librarian If I'd be in NYC I'd totally take you up on it since I'm missing them in DC. NYC vacinity Seamonkeys- don't let these go to waste! I guarantee you'll have a blast at the show!
For anybody here who hasn't heard of Sparks, I highly recommend you check them out, starting with their albums "Propaganda" and "Kimono My House". They have a pretty odd stage presence, but they write great songs. They've also written songs in virtually every musical genre known to man.
Unrelated, but is anybody else here a fan of song-poems? Now there's some truly strange music...