Monthly Mix: Just Don't

In which we brusquely offer you all sorts of advice on what not to do, and then finally remember to say "Please" in the last song.

This mix is divided into several Acts.

Act I: The Beautiful:
Don't Be So Cynical - I've only heard this song and one other, but I think The Arrogants will be getting some more attention from me.

Don't Be Afraid to Sing - I like Stars. You will too.

Don't Be Afraid of Your Anger - The excellent alt-country sound that I've always enjoyed from Clem Snide.

Don't Stop Believin' - Normally I don't go for acapella covers, but this one's an exception. Instead, think of it as a license to do what you would do with any version of this song: sing along with the guitar part.

Act II: The Synth and their Contemporaries
Don't Forget Me (When I'm Gone) - and yet we did, Glass Tiger.

Don't Say Your Love is Killing Me - But it is! It is killing us, Erasure!

Don't Let Me Down Gently - Oh Wonder Stuff, we let you down rather hard I'm afraid.

Don't Go Back to Rockville - Seriously. Who would live in Rockville? (Rob, that's who. 'Nuff said)

Don't You (Forget About Me) - Sister song to the Glass Tiger one above. Same outcome.

Don't Go - You know I love Yaz. You know you do too.

Don't Change - But we did, INXS.

Don't Dream It's Over - But, I'm sorry to say this Crowded House, but it's pretty much over.

Don't Get Me Wrong - I was a teenager when I discovered I already knew most songs by The Pretenders just from hearing late 80s radio.

Don't Let's Start - Who could with a clear conscience omit TMBG?

Act III: The Rock Ballads
Don't Marry Her - This song is not OK for kiddos - omit it if you need to. I am a big The Beautiful South fan, which is why this is the only non-approved CD I bought and repeatedly listened to on my mission. (Well, that's not strictly true, I bought some Spanish rock too, but that was "language study")

Don't Let Me Get Me - I actually think this may be the only song by Pink that I like.

Don't Be Cruel - My Elvis-fan sister would be angry if this didn't make the list.

Don't Stop Me Now - You know you rock out to some Queen.

Don't Cry - I'm not a huge GNR fan, but I know some huge GNR fans and my friend Jeff married one of them, so this seemed appropriate.

Act IV: We Give Way to Anger (or at least Punk)
Don't Stop Living in the Red - I have a soft spot for Andrew W K.

Don't Drag Me Down - It's almost certainly the case that you don't have enough Social Distortion in your collection.

Don't Call Me White - NOFX's angry anti-rascism rant.

Please Don't Tease - See, I told you we'd remember our manners eventually.

Act V: A Bonus Track
Don't Touch Me - There was a time when friends and I would pull up at stoplights and blast this Brak classic just to watch the faces of the people around us. Try it sometime.

It's all here.

Monthly Mix: Vote!

So, dear readers/listeners, for April's Monthly Mix would you rather have:

1) "Just Don't.", a mix in which we brusquely offer you all sorts of advice on what not to do, and then finally remember to say "Please" in the last song. Lots of 80s goodness like "Dont Forget Me (When I'm Gone)", but some great songs you probably don't know as well.

or

2) "Midnight in Istanbul", which is a mix of Turkish rap, foreboding soundtrack scoring, and French-Algerian-Arabic electronica, and is intended as the soundtrack for an awesome Anatolian/Mahgreb gangster epic - Boyz in the Hood meets The Battle of Algiers meets The Long Good Friday.

Voting closes Saturday at 7PM EST/Midnight Harrogate time. The loser will probably feature as another month's mix.

Music Tagging App Search Update

Update:
Based on Rob's comments and the comments in the Lifehacker thread he pointed out, I'm going to try out SVanKruistum's iTunes Tagger (beta).

Advantages:

• Does most of what I want out of the box, and is free.


• Auto-tags selected songs in iTunes with top tags from last.fm, thereby taking advantage of that existing folksonomy (and its problems, too - see Disadvantages).


• Allows me to create my own smart playlists based on the tags it populates into the comment field.


• I don't use the Genre field very much, but this'll update that too


• It's possible I will discover new/better ways of classifying or tagging tracks


• Similar Songs playlist maker with slider bars! Initial tests look promising!

Disadvantages:

• No tag-based navigation, such as a tag cloud, to help me discover subpopulations of my music. - nevermind, there is a tag cloud feature but it isn't fast across a large library (but that's no surprise, how could it be?)


• Using the comments field means I can't select a bunch of songs in a playlist and just add a tag to them all without screwing up existing tags.


• Grabbing the most-popular tags from last.fm means I'll end up with almost all songs containing at least one of the following tags: rock, alternative, indie, or pop. These are not useful tags from my perspective.


• Automated tagging brings the disadvantages of folksonomy too, meaning I will get weird, non-useful tags on some songs (but that's still potentially better than having to do every song myself).


• I would have preferred open-source, in case I felt the need to tinker.


• Flow of tags is unidirectional; any custom tagging in the comments field I do won't automatically make the app better for everyone by uploading those tags to last.fm - I'd have to do that in a separate step, which means I almost never will. Update: this may not be true - He claims to have added a way of making doing what tweet does and allowing the tags to flow back to last.fm via a tagger in the system tray, but I haven't figured out yet how to access this feature.


• I've already come across several states that will crash the app, but these are feasibly avoidable once known, like the dangers of the Fireswamp.

I may also try out Tweet, a tagger that will sit in the system tray and allow me to easily edit tags as I listen (not clear at this point if Tweet is comma or space separated, which may or may not matter for interconnectivity with SVanKruistum's stuff, which uses comma separation).

Now what I need is an army of outsourced workers in India or somewhere who understand my musical classification scheme (no small feat), and who can tag the untagged songs and prepare the library for me to sweep in and make excellent Smart Playlists! After they're done with all the other data-entry and classification work I have in mind for them.

Really, has nobody done this yet?

OK, internet people, here's a challenge.

I want a way to attach arbitrary text tags to songs in my music library, and then retrieve all songs with a particular tag. Either simple one-word/string tags in the way that del.icio.us and flickr work, or more complex name-value pairs, as long as the name-value pairs are not required to have a unique-key name. For example, instrument:trumpets and instrument:banjo.

Unfortunately "tagging" with respect to .mp3s has the common connotation of populating the ID3 tags such as Artist, Genre, etc., and that's not what I'm talking about (although I would also want a way to auto-tag songs in my tagging scheme based on the information held in ID3 tags). This makes searching the internet for this capability quite difficult.

Last.fm does part of this, and would theoretically allow me to arbitrarily tag songs, but that information isn't integrated back into a music player/playlist editor to allow me to quickly find or play songs by tag, unless I want to use last.fm's limited internet-based player, which I do not. On the other hand, they do have the capability to tell me how other people have tagged a song, making it potentially useful as a way of harnessing aggregate social data to make tagging easier.

The ideal software would be a plug-in to either iTunes or winamp, as those are my favored music players.

Suggestions? Ideas? Questions?

Try the Veal: Bonus Tracks

Basking briefly in Kari's praise, I remembered that I had a few more such tracks squirreled away, and went looking for them - I'm glad I did. Here's three more tracks I would have included if I had found them a couple of days ago:

Okano Kaori - Town Called Malice (The Jam)


Pyeng Threadgill - Close to Me (The Cure) - at first I wasn't sure this one was "lounge" enough, but then I was like: "Oh wait! Xylophones! Oboe!"


Trash Pour 4 - Take on Me (Ah-ha)

Enjoy! (right-click & "Save Link As" to save)

Try the Veal.

Lounge Party!

Richard Cheese tux
Originally uploaded by DiscourseMarker

As a birthday gift for Kari, a set of 60s Lounge/Swing/Bossa Nova covers:

01 - Richard Cheese - Fight for Your Right (Beastie Boys)
02 - Paul Anka - Eye of the Tiger (Survivor)
03 - Nouvelle Vague - Just Can't Get Enough (Depeche Mode)
04 - The Beautiful South - Dont Fear the Reaper (Blue Oyster Cult)
05 - Pastel Vespa - Living On A Prayer (Bon Jovi)
06 - Ragnar Bjarnason - Smells Like Teen Spirit (Nirvana)
07 - Richard Cheese - Bust a Move (Young MC)
08 - Prozak for Lovers - London Calling (The Clash)
09 - Nouvelle Vague - I'll Melt With You (Modern English)
10 - Eldissa - Gimme Gimme Gimme (Abba)
11 - Richard Cheese - Rock the Casbah (The Clash)
12 - Groove da Praia - Used to Love Her (GNR)
13 - Ben Folds Five - She Dont Use Jelly (The Flaming Lips)
14 - Nouvelle Vague - Making Plans for Nigel (XTC)
15 - Prozak for Lovers - Love Will Tear Us Apart (Joy Division)
16 - Divine Comedy - There is a light that never goes out (The Smiths)
17 - Richard Cheese - Come Out and Play (The Offspring)
18 - Pastel Vespa - White wedding (Billy Idol)
19 - Eldissa - Stayin' Alive (Bee-Gees)
20 - Quincy Jones and his Orchestra - Soul Bossa Nova



Lounge Party.zip

Sometimes when I think of her name, and its only a game, and I need you...

I happened to mention in another internet medium that I was listening to covers of old Yaz/Yazoo songs. One of my sisters perked up and wanted copies. Here's a few versions of Only You:

Yazoo - Only You - the original, in case you were too young, too old, or didn't have older sisters whose music you could borrow.

Slut - Only You Unfortunately named band, great cover. Usually my favorite (see below)

Even in Blackouts - Only You Sometimes this one is my favorite. I like the female vocals, and the slightly folksy sound, and upbeat tempo.

Good Books - Only You - Brilliant, slow, almost goth-synth interpretation. Imagine an awesome 80s video made in Berlin in the rain with big hair and vinyl trenchcoats, and you're halfway there. My favorite if I'm in a certain 80s mood.

Freezepop - Only You - Not quite on the same level as the others, but worth including. The slight harmonization on the vocals is nice, though. Also, nice synth bridge, if you're into that sort of thing. And I know you are.

No guarantee on how long I'll keep these up, so get while the gettin's good.

Music Blogs Part 2: L-Z

For me, a good music blog posts mostly .mp3s, not too many videos, and groups posts into logical collections. Here's my L-Z and 0-9:

Lost in the 80's Unlike Born Again 80s, this is mostly songs I've never heard of - rarities and lesser hits of the decade.

Music for Kids Who Can't Read Good - He just posted his wedding mix, full of good lovesongs. I just subscribed this week, but it looks very promising.

Pimps of Gore - I've almost unsubscribed a few times, but then something good gets posted, so it's stayed on so far.

Pretty Much Amazing! - new this week; on probation. we'll see.

Retro Music Snob - very prolific, linking to other blogs where the actual songs reside, but that's OK; this has been how I've discovered several of the other blogs.

snuhthing/anything - Takes a theme and then posts a bunch of songs that go with it. I can handle that. Like it, even.

Star Maker Machine a group blog by several of the authors of other blogs on the list. Usually has a theme for the week, and posts songs throughout. Two weeks ago was Hell Week, last week was Heaven Week, this week is Sun Week. I wonder if Moon Week is next week? New, but already off probation and onto the keepers list.

The Lost Turntable purports to be "The Imported Out-of-Print 12" Extended Remix B-Side of MP3 Blogs". Sometimes vulgar, as in today's post, but once in while there's music I'm interested in there.

Who Needs Radio? new, on probation, but the 'London, Brighton, Rome, Paris' post a while back was an indicator that it's capable of excellent things.

17 Seconds new, on probation. But a ton of covers by Arcade Fire the other day is a good sign.

Note: I used to be subscribed to Stereogum but it was too prolific with news items and too "here's the new indie sound!" for me. For people with more patience, it might be another good source.

That's prettymuch it for me. Are you following any that I'm not, dear readers?

Music Blogs! Part 1: A-K

I love music. Not as much as some people. And not with a lot of pretension. Well, some I guess. Anyway, I'm in a finding mode where I've come across a bunch of new blogs that go in my "music" folder in Google Reader. Here's a selection:

*Benn loxo du taccu This world-music blog used to be exclusively African music, but lately there have been posts dealing with China, Syria, Argentina, Turkey, and so on. I don't download very much from here but I'm glad its there, and sometimes I like it.

Battle of the Midwestern Housewives - just found this one today, but it looks like a nice punk&ska source.

Born Again '80s - mostly remixes and 12" of old 80s songs. But that means sometimes a version I've never heard of a song I already know I like.

Copy, Right? - sadly defunct now; but Lobstar/Liza had some great posts, and her Blog Roll is worth mining for other music blogs you might like.

Cover Freak - A decent little cover blog. My only complaint is that only the summary shows in Google Reader, so I have to actually go there if I think it might be interesting. I know, poor Dave, he has to click once in a while... - No complaints! Steve hooked me up in the comments!

Cover Lay Down - a good folk covers blog; you've probably seen me sharing items from here. I download anything that looks halfway decent or that I've heard of before.

Covering the Mouse a covers blog (detecting a theme?) devoted entirely to Disney songs. Sadly, no links to download the songs, but a little digging through the "View Source" will get you there, if you need to.

Fong Songs - Another covers blog I share a lot from; this week was Muppet Week.

Good Rockin' Tonight - Fairly new to my Reader list, but proving productive so far.

I AM FUEL, YOU ARE FRIENDS - Added last week, but seems like a keeper. Still in probation though.

i rock i roll - just added today; still on probation.

That's all for part 1. In part 2: L-Z!

The 10-minute album cover meme

I first saw it here, but decided to do it after seeing it here. The rules:

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random

The first article title on the page is the name of your band.

2. http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3

The last four words of the very last quote is the title of your album.

3. http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/

The third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

Let's see 'em.

Oh, the shame

"Did you sing along to 'The Moody Blues Air Supply - Making Love Out of Nothing at All' yesterday on the way to work?"

Oh, I wish you hadn't asked me that. I was totally belting it out.

Playlist

Playing with what's available from last.fm, so I added a little playlist on the sidebar for you to play some of the songs I've been listening to lately. It said it would only play 30 second previews, but it seems to be playing the whole songs, for me at least.

It'll get updated from time to time, but not with any kind of regularity. Let me know if it plays the whole songs for you, and any thoughts you care to share about the feature or the music.

80s lyrics mania

Disco Mom has issued a challenge. I know most of you here read there too, but I though I'd mention it, as I'm currently in the lead and I know you people won't let THAT stand. I'll be looking for your scores in the comments there.

Focus your hate on Davey

Musicovery is amazing.

Via Davey, via Stephanie.

edit: ganked pic from The Technonaut as punishment for posting it there, too.