NIN is offering a free downloadable EP for the bands that are supporting them while they are on tour. The EP features some quality bands that I have enjoyed on MySpace lately, namely Crystal Castles and Does it Offend you, yeah?

Free is key.

http://dl.nin.com/lightsinthesky/signup

I just found this today but I'm sure it is relatively old (as the date on it is back in 2006). Regardless, it should be checked out as I found it beyond fascinating.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzqumbhfxRo

A lot of bands release special tracks on the internet for the holidays. Here's a list of the tracks that I think you should check out while they are up.
If you have any other additions, please let me know!

Chris Garneau - Almost Christmas

Brandi Carlile - The Heartache Can Wait

Belle & Sebastian - Are You Coming Over For Christmas?

Rachael Yamagata - River (Joni Mitchell cover)

Regina Spektor - my dear acquaintance (a happy new year) - available on iTunes

In the eternal words of LeVar Burton, don't take my word for it.

Check out this list on Largehearted Boy - it is a directory of pretty much any blog's top lists you can find!

Huge archive of Best of 2007 lists!

My fraternity brother Aaron Sawyer made a music video for fun while he was on vacation. It is set to the Barenaked Ladies song "Pinch Me" and it is a blast. Aaron, who is usually a behind the camera kind of guy, has a staring role in this one, as the guy being filmed! Ha! He's lookin' good in front of the camera too! Good job bro!

Which is the better band name:

Kiss the Anus of a Black Cat

or

Steaming Wolf Penis

A while ago, inspired by the concept of "Are You Dave Gorman?" I did a search for "Kyle Curry" on myspace. One fellow, a 19-year-old from Texas seemed very cool, with a great taste in music, so I friended him.

Then, I forgot about him. A while later I was going through my myspace friends and couldn't remember where in the world I knew him from.

Then I forgot about him again.

Then he posted a bulletin. And I didn't know who it was from, so I clicked on his profile and started reading through it. Someone had left a comment on his page using his name: "Kyle Curry." Ah. That is how I "knew" him.

Then, I had a dream about him. That's right, about someone I had never met or talked to. We were both sitting at a table and he told a joke. I can't remember the joke. But I commented "that was very funny, Kyle Curry" and he responded "thank you Kyle Curry."

Afterwards, wrote to him and told him about the dream, which he thought was amusing.

The other day I decided to do a search on youtube for Kyle Curry, and this came up -

Which Texas Kyle grudgingly admited was of him! I'm so happy that there are more Kyle Currys out there somewhere keeping it real Kyle Curry style.

Although I am disowning this Kyle Curry:

Check out the comments for his video. Wow. Glad I'm not that Kyle Curry.

When Ray LaMontagne released Trouble one of my first thoughts was "this guy has a bit of a Damien Rice" vibe. I suggested him to my Damo friends. I put them back to back on mix CDs. And now, they have come together and performed a duet of "To Love Somebody" by the Bee Gees for a French television show. It is like all is right with the world.

Click HERE to watch it.

Yesterday my pal Kev and I were heading down to Virgin Megastore to buy a butt ton of CDs and DVDs in the $10 sale, when we saw, randomly, a super ball bouncing down the street and onto the sidewalk. There was really no explination as to what it was doing there and how it got there.

Of course, my first thought was of the stellar Jose Gonzalez Bravia commercial for Heartbeats:

which is even more clever when looked at in conjunction with the original version/video from The Knife.

I just found out (Thanks Brian!) that one of my favorite videos (Bright Eyes - First Day Of My Life) was directed by Ms. Hedwig herself, John Cameron Mitchell. No WONDER I love it so much.

Apparently he also directed the Scissor Sisters video for Filthy Gorgeous with its sexy Jake kissing all kinds of hot men scenes. Thanks John!

My friend Ryan gave me the heads up on this. Both the English Major and the music lover in me are grateful. (P.S. No, I am not being DPed by an English Major and music lover. God, you are a perv.)

From CollegeHumor.com - http://collegehumor.com/update:1711139

Lines From Alanis Morissette's "Ironic," Modified to Actually Make them Ironic
Posted 3 days ago

An old man turned ninety-eight. He won the lottery and died the next day... of chronic emphysema from inhalation of the latex particles scratched off decades' worth of lottery tickets.

A black fly in your Chardonnay... poured to celebrate the successful fumigation of your recently purchased vineyard in southern France.

A death row pardon two minutes too late... because the governor was too busy watching Dead Man Walking to grant clemency any earlier.

Rain on your wedding day... to Ra, the Egyptian sun-god.

A free ride when you've already paid... all of your money to the good-natured cab driver when you mistook him for a mugger.

The good advice that you just didn't take... after reading Norman Vincent Peale's The Power of Positive Thinking and resolving that the key to success is making your own decisions.

Mr. Play-it-Safe was afraid to fly. He packed his suitcase and kissed his kids goodbye. He waited his whole damn life to take that flight. And as the plane crashed down, he thought, Well isn't this nice... now I'll never make it to the National Association of Aviophobics conference in Reno, NV.

A traffic jam when you're already late... to receive an award from the Municipal Planning Board for reducing the city's automobile congestion 80 percent.

A no-smoking sign on your cigarette break... at the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco corporate offices in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

Ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife... with which to kill your spouse for sleeping with the young soup chef who works at the Au Bon Pain.

Meeting the man of my dreams and then meeting his beautiful wife... who happens to be the psychiatrist I recently hired in hopes of improving my luck with the opposite sex.

Continue reading "Isn't It Ironic"

Did anyone else know that CTU's Nina was in one of the coolest commercials ever - the Jetta commercial "Synchronicity) from back in '99. In honor of tonights premiere of Season 6 of 24, I'm posting that here. You can read more about the commercial in this 1999 Dear Yahoo question response.

I also just finally downloaded the music from one of my favorite commercial's ever. The song: Alana Davis' cover of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young's "Carry On." The Commercial was "The Trip" which first aired on Super Bowl XXXVII, but I remember seeing it before a movie at the theater and being blown away by it. It is one of those rare commercials not for adult diapers or fiber that targets the older markets. In it an old guy trains and prepared and eventually goes to space and looks out on the Earth...something that is becoming a reality (for bajillionaires). It was an inspiration to little geeky nerdy young Kyle. If the video was on youtube it'd be an inspiration to bigger older geeky nerdy Kyle.

Ok, so I didn't REALLY get you an ohmibod. But I got you something even better! An actual post! And more to follow!

Expect to have a whole series of holiday updates in the next couple of days. And if you are really lucky, they might just vibrate between your legs in time with the music!

There are a lot off great videos out there that for one reason or another are shot in black and white. Just off the top of my head hear are some of my favorites (other than Kashmir's Rocket Brothers, which you already know is one of my favorites)

Continue reading "Video of the Week - Black and White"

Everyone loves a good food fight - including music video makers.

Here are two of my favorite music videos with food fights:

1) Travis - Sing

Travis crashes a fancy party and start a food fight during the banquet. Fran's mohawk is every bit of adorable (way better than his new "I'm bald so I am going to grow my hair really long and wear a hat" look). I love seeing all of the rich classy people get drawn into the cartoonish food fight and seing the one lady with the lobster on her head twirling the octopus around and launching it.

2) No Doubt - Sunday Morning

This video aired the day I took the ACT's in high school. It aired in the morning and I recorded it and watched it after the ACT. I blame thinking about the video throughout the test for making me get a 27 on the test (I retook the test awhile later and got a 29).

I love this video! I love the shopping. I love Eric laying in the driveway and Terry Hall on the swing! Okay, the cutting the finger/spilling of the spaghetti sauce scene is a little creepy. But then it ends with this heartwarming food fight segment - it just makes you want to be friends with the band.

I've decided to add a new addition to Music Bath for at least the month of October - Video of the Week. Music videos are fun, and I often forget that they are out there! A good video can add depth to a song and take it to a new level.

I'm starting by posting my top four favorite videos - I was going to do top 5, but I couldn't nail down what #5 would be. I've been thinking about it for the last month and decided to leave spot 5 open for now.

Continue reading "Video of the Week"

People ask me, "Kyle, where can I find live - not the band - music videos on the web?" And by people I mean no one. So I am here to answer no one's question!

My favorite place to find live - not the band - music videos on the net is Morning Becomes Eclectic. This is the website for the KCRW radio show hosted by Nic Harcourt, my personal hero. The site features videos of bands who have performed in the studio live for the show. Harcourt brings in the best artists to promote their new albums as well as the best emerging artists. I can't count how many times I have fallen in love with a band just to realize that Harcourt has featured those bands on his show months if not years earlier! Happily there is a great extensive archive so you can see some awesome older performances as well. They are all great, but stand outs include the recent Guillemots recording as well as old Damien Rice shows that I've watched so many times it is sick.

My second favorite place for some great live - not the band - videos is a site called fabchannel. Fabchannel is a site that offers videos of concerts at the Paradiso and Melkweg venues in Amsterdam. There are tons of videos so far, including many that are integral to me... The Frames, Damien Rice, Stars, Andrew Bird, Nada Surf and Kashmir, to name just a couple few. Not only do the videos have fantastic image and sound quality but the best part is that you can chose whatever song in the set you want to see! Say you are craving Neighborhood #3 (Power Out) from the Arcade Fire...bam, you skip to "track 9" and you are watching it. I love this freakin site. Can the Metro pleeeeeeease start doing this?

A distant third is You Tube. I remember way back in the day (circa 1996) there was a website that collected music videos for streaming. For the life of me the name of the site is alluding me, but I would go on there with the rickety dial up available at the time and watched stuttery, grainy music videos of some of my favorites songs, like Sublime, No Doubt (Spiderwebs), the Refreshments (Banditos) and even White Town ,for hours. How much things have changed! Not only does You Tube search for your favorite artists usually bring up thier music videos, it also often brings up tv performances (sometimes rare or from abroad), concert recordings, promotional footage and best of all...a wide array of people recording themselves covering the band (with varying degrees of success). You'll also find a lot of times people make videos of stuff like their vacations and edit it into a video with popular music and once in a while you'll even get something that makes you go...um...WTF???

So, now you know some great places for live - not the band - music on the web. Don't you wish you had asked sooner? Or at all.

Continue reading "Live (not the band)"

Have you ever thought to yourself why why why a band would choose a certain single off of their album when it is clearly the weakest song off the whole thing and then the band doesn't even play it live on a regular basis (*cough* young america *cough*). Well, now you have a chance to be a part of the decision-making process. The Format has clips of 5 new songs on their site and are asking people to listen to them and then mail them their choice for first single of their new album. Just go to their site and sign up for the Living Room to gain access.

My choice is Time Bomb, with The Compromise being a very close second.

Ok, so my friend Shannon posted this as a comment, but it was too great not to have its own post. Also, I didn't have anything for my on the web section yet!

This kind of reminds me of when I asked the Reckless Records workers in London if they had anything that was like Travis. They were not pleased.