It happened. This Is My Jam is no longer with us. But it died in the most beautiful way. Although This Is My Jam no longer accepts new submissions the site has been completely archived and remains for your listening pleasure. What a refreshing change from the usual “We’re deleting everything in a week because we got acquired/ran out of money.†thing we’ve heard so much of lately. No Jams were lost.
One really cool feature of the archive (here is my archive page) is the automatic generation of a Spotify playlist from your submitted jams. Though Spotify on had only 25 of my 37 jams you can listen to them all on the archived Wall O’ Jams. I’m sad to see This Is My Jam go but I’m glad they left with such dignity.
This was released released way back in 2007 on Wax Audio‘s Mashopolos. However, I heard it for the first time yesterday and it got my toes tapping and head banging so I wanted to post it here. It’s a seamless mashup of Metallica’s “The Four Horsemen” and Panjabi MC’s “Mundian To Bach Ke” and a ton of fun to listen to.
This demo recording of Stevie Nicks playing Rhiannon (also known as the Birds Rising Demo) is spectacular. The sweet voice mixed with the powerful piano playing is a joy. Open you ears to the music, your heart to the feels, and you’ll understand the magic that is Stevie.
This weekend I downloaded this new, and free, children’s album For Kids By Kids: Songs From Iowa Rock City from the Iowa City Public Library. The entire family enjoyed listening to it.
For Kids and By Kids mixes moods and musical styles—from roots music, for which Iowa City is known, to punk, polka, folk, hip-hop, and synth-pop. It not only crosses musical genres, but also generations … Dozens of youths appear on For Kids and By Kids, and we hope that the many more who hear this album will be inspired to pick up an instrument, form their own bands, or do something else creative.
All of the songs are original, spanning all types of genres and moods. The lyrics are not condescending, gratingly repetitive, or infantile. I’m sure we’ll be breaking this one out for listens all summer.
SXSWTorrent.com has music showcase torrents going all the way back to 2005 – 11 years worth of torrents with over 11,000 songs.
If you’re not interested in downloading/seeding but still want to listen to the music you might want to try this SXSW music page. Also, somebody has been trying to create a Spotify playlist of this years showcase artists as well.
In light of the recent events in Ferguson, Lauryn Hill released her powerful song “Black Rage” on SoundCloud last week. She has been performing the song live for years now but it is only recently that she has released a recording of the song. Lauren Hill describes the emotional song as an old sketch that was recorded in her living room (you can hear the voices of children in the background).
Modeled after “My Favorite Things” with with lyrics that cut deep, the piece bring to the forefront not just of the depth of Ferguson’s injustice, but its context. The lyrics can be found below.
BLACK RAGE is founded on two-thirds a person
Rapings and beatings and suffering that worsens,
Black human packages tied up in strings,
BLACK RAGE can come from all these kinds of things.
BLACK RAGE is founded on blatant denial
Squeezed economics, subsistence survival,
Deafening silence and social control.
BLACK RAGE is founded on wounds in the soul!
When the dogs bite
when the beatings
When I‘m feeling sad,
I simply remember all these kinds of things and then I don’t fear so bad!
BLACK RAGE is founded: who fed us self hatred,
Lies and abuse while we waited and waited?
Spiritual treason, this grid and its cages,
BLACK RAGE is founded on these kinds of things.
BLACK RAGE is founded on draining and draining,
Threatening your freedom to stop your complaining.
Poisoning your water while they say it’s raining,
Then call you mad for complaining, complaining.
Old time bureaucracy drugging the youth.
BLACK RAGE is founded on blocking the truth!
Murder and crime, compromise and distortion,
Sacrifice, sacriï¬ce who makes this fortune?
Greed, falsely called progress.
Such Human contortion.
BLACK RAGE is founded on these kinds of things.
So when the dogs bite
And when the ceilings
And when I’m feeling mad.
I simply remember all these kinds of things and then I don’t fear so bad!
Free enterprise, is it myth or illusion?
Forcing you back into purposed confusion.
Black human trafficking or blood transfusion?
BLACK RAGE is founded on these kinds of things.
Victims of violence both psyche and body
Life out of context IS living unGodly.
Politics. politics
Greed falsely called wealth
BLACK RAGE is founded on denial of self!
Black human packages tied in subsistence
Having to justify very existence
Try if you must but you can’t have my soul
BLACK RAGE is made by unGodly control!
So when the dogs bite
When the beatings
And when I‘m feeling sad,
I simply remember all these kinds of things and then I don’t fear so bad!
Brilliant! The funk band Vulfpeck made $20,000 in streaming revenues from Spotify for an album of complete silence. All ten tracks of the album, titled “Sleepify”, were streamed by fans on repeat all night while they slept. The tracks on “Sleepify†– cleverly titled “Z†through “Zzzzzzzzzz†– are all 31 or 32 seconds long. This is the minimum length a song must be played to be considered a payable ‘listen’ by spotify. The band earned somewhere between $3 and $4 dollars a night per fan.
“Sleepify” is by far Vulpeck’s most commercially successful album to date which is a bummer because these guys are really pretty good. Give it a listen if you like funky themes, TV anthems, and laid-back instrumentals. Then go buy their album.
Starting this year SXSW is replacing the sample tracks they have provided for years with links to Soundcloud pages. While there are certainly known ways to download those samples, Soundcloud goes through considerable trouble to prevent that from happening. Since these torrents have always been about providing easier access to otherwise readily downloadable samples instead of outright piracy, this regrettably means that, if SXSW sticks with this new design, we will be unable to provide torrents in the future.
Unofficial SXSW 2014 Music Showcase – over 1200 songs from 1200 different bands from the upcoming Annual music, film, and interactive conference and festival held in Austin, TX. More complete than www.sxswtorrent.com – contains rips from youtube, soundcloud, and the SXSW site itself.
There is lot of overlap between all these sources, however, each source also contains songs the others don’t. Hopefully next year we’ll have a single, comprehensive list once again.
UPDATE: The Pirate Bay torrent has a bunch of missing file information so @pronoiac gathered it all up and put it in a spreadsheet. Additionally NPR has put out a list of 100 downloadable songs from bands at this year’s SXSW.
“On our intermission break either go out to the entryway for cookies or stay and sit and watch Mister Bungle.”
This historic video must be the first known recording of a Mr. Bungle show. Mike Patton (acting like a young punk and actually playing the guitar), Trey Spruance, and Trevor Roy Dunn play at the Eureka High School Talent Show circa 1984. Although sound is not quite refined, you can see the band had already enjoyed mixing various genres together and were beginning to have a stage presence.
Highlights include a cover of the Monkees, a partial cover of Motley Crue’s “Shout At The Devil”, and lots of bad skateboarding.
I have been scrobbling my listening habits to last.fm for almost seven years now. Below I have listed the bands that I listened to most during 2013. Two of the bands in my top ten this year were also on last years list.
Ratatat
Ween
Songs: Ohia
Against Me!
Make Up
Built To Spill
Kanye West
10 Ft. Ganja Plant (6th last year)
Beastie Boys (4th last year)
Cloud Cult
Below is a wave graph of the top artists that I listened to over the last year (click for a larger image). It’s a great way to visualize the trends in my listening habits throughout the year.
Additionally, here is a list of my most listened to songs of 2013:
Ratatat – Wildcat
Ratatat – Tacobel Canon
Ratatat – Tropicana
Brassy – Who Stole the Show
Ratatat – Swisha
African Bush Doctor – Not for Sale
Ratatat – Nostrand
Cat Power – Good Woman
Ratatat – Loud Pipes
Junior Toots – This is Fire
Some of the best live shows I’ve seen this year included:
Dinosaur Jr.
Vampire Weekend
Of Monsters And Men
