Adventures in Scrobbling
So I started a Last.fm account, as some of you may have noticed. I have known of its existence for quite sometime, but I never really understood it or rather, took the time (miniscule as it may have been) to understand Last.fm or "Scrobbling" for that matter...
So it goes, I am logged in for full-time scrobbling. For those of you who are as archaic as me when it comes to the nets (the internets, not the NJ basketball team) scrobbling refers to the magical process of transferring your listening information from your iTunes (or other computer based music device) and even your iPod to the site and in turn keeps running totals of your listening habits. This translates to current listenings, weekly top artists and overall top artists.. I'm sure there is more to it. Oh, yeah, you can talk to your friends and loved ones, as a few of us meat heads have done already. You can look at your friends listening habits or the listening habits of total strangers if you like. You can have recommendations... all that shit, toughguy! You can even get a little widget like the ones on the left, or right depending on what mental hemisphere you reside in.
Enough! this isnt an ad. This is a totally self serving list of one of my adventures in Scrobbling.
I took the liberty of leap-frogging through my iTunes at work, skipping over every other album as I saw fit, playing a song from each one, or in some cases, a few in a row. So, for some reason, I am going to document this experience. It should be known that my library is currently arranged by when I ripped the songs to iTunes. So this list of bands covers a period of time at my job when I brought these in to listen to. What day to cover? I dont know. I planned on doing this on Wednesday, but then I did some more leap-froggin yesterday. Im going to focus on yesterday since its fresher in my head.
1. Bread and Circuits - Shameful Library: from the split with Former Members of Alfonsin. One of B&C's greatest song and one of Kirsch's best bands. Good way to start the morning.
2. The Mercury Program - The Secret to Quiet: from All the Suits Began to Fall Off. A seriously smooth instrumental track with Vibraphones galore and awesome DCish guitars that remind me of Hoover.
3. Shapes and Sizes - Head Movin': An indie band I know nothing about. But I really like this song. That is all.
4. Blonde Redhead - U.F.O.: From La Mia Vita Violenta. One of my favorite songs. Its go a sexy smokey sort of feeling with some good slacker vocals.
5. Absinthe - Head of Twine: amazing anti-christian hardcore from Brendan and Dave from Groundwork. This is some abrasive stuff, and supposedly will be re-released as part of a discography. This song has a sick ass breakdown towards the end.
6. Council of Five Nations - Ocean Girl on 5th: A 7" Ive had forever and a day that I know nothing about. Emo-ish screamy hardcore from CT. The song is from a split with In Vain who shared members with CoFN. Its a great song. Kinda Native Nod-ish. Let me know if you can find anything out about them.
7. Engine Down - Slingshot: Under the Pretense of Present Tense. Phenomenal song with awesome bass work. Its too bad they changed so much from their earlier DC twin guitar sound.
8. Guyver One - ΓΈ: from their 7". I didnt know a thing about this band when i bought this. Its was purely for the awesome artwork. Luckily the band turned out to be awesome. This song is great, when he screaming "Fucking Nothing, Fucking Nada, Fucking Zilch!"
9. Richard Hell and the Voidoids - Love Comes in Spurts: Richard Hell is awesome. I got into the Voidoids after readin Please Kill Me by Legs McNeil. You all should read that book. Its fantastic and even people that dont care for punk like it. It covers the burgeoning punk scene from VU up the British Invasion. It ends with Sid Vicious' death, which is kind of lame, but the stories from Iggy Pop and Dee Dee Ramone are worth the price alone. Plenty of other great stories about a time that will never happen again.
10. Econochrist - Withdrawal: You all know how good Econochrist is. They werent the first to do the crusty political punk thing, but damnit, they did it best.
11. Struggle - Red, White and You: Best lyric in a hardcore song. Ever. "I'm Officer Friendly now fucking lick my boots!!". Im not a big fan of Struggle other than this first 7", but the four songs on it get played often.
12. Toner Low - Evil Machinery on the Rise: It opens with a deep gutteral Ommmmmmmmm before laying into riffs so thick you are gasping for air. A long, plodder of a song, but one of the best Stoner/Doom bands going right now. From Amsterdam, no less...
13. Sufjan Stevens - For the Widows..: Damnit, this guy gets me all choked up. Its those fucking banjos. Why do banjos make me so soft?
14. Sufjan Stevens - Casimir Pulaski Day: Fucking...
15. Sufjan Stevens - Chicago (Acoustic Version): ... Banjos. (sniff!)
16. Please Inform the Captain This is A Hijack - Angry Sleepers: Great song. EVERYONE MUST GO! I dont really love this album, not as much as the self titled, but this is easily the best song they wrote.
17. Navio Forge - Weaponizing: This sounds like it could have been a Fuel song too. Which means its rad as fuck. I clearly had a Mike Kirsch moment for a few days...
18. Bread and Circuits - The End of History: Yep. Mike Kirsch Moment. Similar yet entirely different from my Sufjan moment right above this.
19. Goatsnake - Innocent: Fuck yes! What an awesome guitar sound this band has. When mentioning Greg Andersons previous bands people never seem to mention that he was in Engine Kid. I wonder why this is.
20. Current - Dial: I still have this record (Coliseum) and my freaking cat chewed the cover to shreds. Regardless, this record was my introduction to one of my long standing favorite bands of the genre.
21. Julia - Tongue Biting: This song sounds like it could be Bluetip song. I never appreciated them as much when I was younger. But this band has more than stood the test of time. I find myself wondering what I was thinking not giving this more play back then. If I want to ratchet up the tension ten notches I put on the Untitled last track.
22. Native Nod - Back to Mimsey: One of the best emo songs ever. Eerie and explosive. I have no idea what he is talking about in the song.
23. Union of Uranus - Panacea: Listening to these guys is like being flayed. Its a wonderful experience that you should try sometime. Aurally removing the flesh from your body with UoU. mmmm.
24. Orchid - Death of Modernist: See above description. I just hope people know that UoU was doing this in the early 90's. Orchid do a good job of it, but not as good as Ampere.
25. Life At These Speeds - Retina: It took me a while to like this album. To Your Health. I pretty much love every second of it now.
26. Converge - Divinity: "God Killer, Mind Cleaner". Those are awesome lyrics. "The shallower, the more I sink".
27. Life At These Speeds - Birds and Climates: This is one reason why it took me so long to get into the new album. The urgency is so ripe here. Compared to the poppy melodies of To Your Health this feels like death metal. Obviously its nothing like that, but its a track that only seems to build in intensity as it plays.
28. Pinback - From Nothing to Nowhere: First song from the new album, with Mario Rubalcaba playing drums. He played in 411, Clikatat Ikatowi and Black Heart Procession as well as Thingy and Hot Snakes. Pinback is one of my favorite bands because Three Mile Pilot os one of my favorite bands. This song is one of the least Pinback-ish songs in their catalog.
29. Crud is a Cult - Stance/Emotion: The gang vocals at the end are choice "Love Hate Life Death!". I also like the double tracked vocals on Seans voice.
30. Overcast: Then I got to Overcast and I had to give that a few plays. Overcast played some awesome fucking metal. They had some seriously good rhythms too. Brian Fair is one of the best metal vocalists, even to this day. Though I am not a huge Shadows Fall fan, as the bird flies.
ahhhh, well, that was fun. I listened to a few more things, distractedly I might add, and then listened to Underdog and Into Another for the rest of the day and my ride home. (Thanks Sven!)
Maybe this would have been fun with more graphics... who knows, not me. Its friday and I'm off. Its 2pm. Life rules, for today at least. I'll make my crucial death metal post later on and who knows, maybe I'll stay indoors for long enough to catch up on some of my other stuff..
Cheers!
So it goes, I am logged in for full-time scrobbling. For those of you who are as archaic as me when it comes to the nets (the internets, not the NJ basketball team) scrobbling refers to the magical process of transferring your listening information from your iTunes (or other computer based music device) and even your iPod to the site and in turn keeps running totals of your listening habits. This translates to current listenings, weekly top artists and overall top artists.. I'm sure there is more to it. Oh, yeah, you can talk to your friends and loved ones, as a few of us meat heads have done already. You can look at your friends listening habits or the listening habits of total strangers if you like. You can have recommendations... all that shit, toughguy! You can even get a little widget like the ones on the left, or right depending on what mental hemisphere you reside in.
Enough! this isnt an ad. This is a totally self serving list of one of my adventures in Scrobbling.
I took the liberty of leap-frogging through my iTunes at work, skipping over every other album as I saw fit, playing a song from each one, or in some cases, a few in a row. So, for some reason, I am going to document this experience. It should be known that my library is currently arranged by when I ripped the songs to iTunes. So this list of bands covers a period of time at my job when I brought these in to listen to. What day to cover? I dont know. I planned on doing this on Wednesday, but then I did some more leap-froggin yesterday. Im going to focus on yesterday since its fresher in my head.
1. Bread and Circuits - Shameful Library: from the split with Former Members of Alfonsin. One of B&C's greatest song and one of Kirsch's best bands. Good way to start the morning.
2. The Mercury Program - The Secret to Quiet: from All the Suits Began to Fall Off. A seriously smooth instrumental track with Vibraphones galore and awesome DCish guitars that remind me of Hoover.
3. Shapes and Sizes - Head Movin': An indie band I know nothing about. But I really like this song. That is all.
4. Blonde Redhead - U.F.O.: From La Mia Vita Violenta. One of my favorite songs. Its go a sexy smokey sort of feeling with some good slacker vocals.
5. Absinthe - Head of Twine: amazing anti-christian hardcore from Brendan and Dave from Groundwork. This is some abrasive stuff, and supposedly will be re-released as part of a discography. This song has a sick ass breakdown towards the end.
6. Council of Five Nations - Ocean Girl on 5th: A 7" Ive had forever and a day that I know nothing about. Emo-ish screamy hardcore from CT. The song is from a split with In Vain who shared members with CoFN. Its a great song. Kinda Native Nod-ish. Let me know if you can find anything out about them.
7. Engine Down - Slingshot: Under the Pretense of Present Tense. Phenomenal song with awesome bass work. Its too bad they changed so much from their earlier DC twin guitar sound.
8. Guyver One - ΓΈ: from their 7". I didnt know a thing about this band when i bought this. Its was purely for the awesome artwork. Luckily the band turned out to be awesome. This song is great, when he screaming "Fucking Nothing, Fucking Nada, Fucking Zilch!"
9. Richard Hell and the Voidoids - Love Comes in Spurts: Richard Hell is awesome. I got into the Voidoids after readin Please Kill Me by Legs McNeil. You all should read that book. Its fantastic and even people that dont care for punk like it. It covers the burgeoning punk scene from VU up the British Invasion. It ends with Sid Vicious' death, which is kind of lame, but the stories from Iggy Pop and Dee Dee Ramone are worth the price alone. Plenty of other great stories about a time that will never happen again.
10. Econochrist - Withdrawal: You all know how good Econochrist is. They werent the first to do the crusty political punk thing, but damnit, they did it best.
11. Struggle - Red, White and You: Best lyric in a hardcore song. Ever. "I'm Officer Friendly now fucking lick my boots!!". Im not a big fan of Struggle other than this first 7", but the four songs on it get played often.
12. Toner Low - Evil Machinery on the Rise: It opens with a deep gutteral Ommmmmmmmm before laying into riffs so thick you are gasping for air. A long, plodder of a song, but one of the best Stoner/Doom bands going right now. From Amsterdam, no less...
13. Sufjan Stevens - For the Widows..: Damnit, this guy gets me all choked up. Its those fucking banjos. Why do banjos make me so soft?
14. Sufjan Stevens - Casimir Pulaski Day: Fucking...
15. Sufjan Stevens - Chicago (Acoustic Version): ... Banjos. (sniff!)
16. Please Inform the Captain This is A Hijack - Angry Sleepers: Great song. EVERYONE MUST GO! I dont really love this album, not as much as the self titled, but this is easily the best song they wrote.
17. Navio Forge - Weaponizing: This sounds like it could have been a Fuel song too. Which means its rad as fuck. I clearly had a Mike Kirsch moment for a few days...
18. Bread and Circuits - The End of History: Yep. Mike Kirsch Moment. Similar yet entirely different from my Sufjan moment right above this.
19. Goatsnake - Innocent: Fuck yes! What an awesome guitar sound this band has. When mentioning Greg Andersons previous bands people never seem to mention that he was in Engine Kid. I wonder why this is.
20. Current - Dial: I still have this record (Coliseum) and my freaking cat chewed the cover to shreds. Regardless, this record was my introduction to one of my long standing favorite bands of the genre.
21. Julia - Tongue Biting: This song sounds like it could be Bluetip song. I never appreciated them as much when I was younger. But this band has more than stood the test of time. I find myself wondering what I was thinking not giving this more play back then. If I want to ratchet up the tension ten notches I put on the Untitled last track.
22. Native Nod - Back to Mimsey: One of the best emo songs ever. Eerie and explosive. I have no idea what he is talking about in the song.
23. Union of Uranus - Panacea: Listening to these guys is like being flayed. Its a wonderful experience that you should try sometime. Aurally removing the flesh from your body with UoU. mmmm.
24. Orchid - Death of Modernist: See above description. I just hope people know that UoU was doing this in the early 90's. Orchid do a good job of it, but not as good as Ampere.
25. Life At These Speeds - Retina: It took me a while to like this album. To Your Health. I pretty much love every second of it now.
26. Converge - Divinity: "God Killer, Mind Cleaner". Those are awesome lyrics. "The shallower, the more I sink".
27. Life At These Speeds - Birds and Climates: This is one reason why it took me so long to get into the new album. The urgency is so ripe here. Compared to the poppy melodies of To Your Health this feels like death metal. Obviously its nothing like that, but its a track that only seems to build in intensity as it plays.
28. Pinback - From Nothing to Nowhere: First song from the new album, with Mario Rubalcaba playing drums. He played in 411, Clikatat Ikatowi and Black Heart Procession as well as Thingy and Hot Snakes. Pinback is one of my favorite bands because Three Mile Pilot os one of my favorite bands. This song is one of the least Pinback-ish songs in their catalog.
29. Crud is a Cult - Stance/Emotion: The gang vocals at the end are choice "Love Hate Life Death!". I also like the double tracked vocals on Seans voice.
30. Overcast: Then I got to Overcast and I had to give that a few plays. Overcast played some awesome fucking metal. They had some seriously good rhythms too. Brian Fair is one of the best metal vocalists, even to this day. Though I am not a huge Shadows Fall fan, as the bird flies.
ahhhh, well, that was fun. I listened to a few more things, distractedly I might add, and then listened to Underdog and Into Another for the rest of the day and my ride home. (Thanks Sven!)
Maybe this would have been fun with more graphics... who knows, not me. Its friday and I'm off. Its 2pm. Life rules, for today at least. I'll make my crucial death metal post later on and who knows, maybe I'll stay indoors for long enough to catch up on some of my other stuff..
Cheers!
posted by blend77 at 12:52 PM
16 Comments:
It's Friday... where's my death metal? (kidding, of course).
But it's good to see that Crud Is A Cult made your list. I have a lyric from the same song stuck in my head, but it's this one "and I will ask myself... DOES EMOTION LIE!!!".
cool list! especially the first two tracks...
you're missing an 'i' both times in Voidoids - do you listen to Richard Hell's other stuff, Destiny Street and Time? Also, never heard of Council of Five Nations, but it sounds like an especially cool/geeky (delete as appropriate) emo name!
I friended you on last.fm, and made this blog last week. My problem with last.fm was that it picked up everything I had done prior, which for some reason gave seemingly random numbers. While I do enjoy Coliseum, I really doubt they'd beat La Quiete for number of plays.
And yes, I share your Sufjan pain. In fact, the only songs I do listen to are the blatantly banjo-y ones. If you check the Austin City Limits website, they have a live video of him playing Casimir.
Diversity is for suckers. Hardcore 24/7 all the way ;)
Kidding. Blend would you happen to have any Harvest? I got it on my ipod but it got erased from my hard drive tihs weekend somehow.
hey blend, i haven't commented here in forever but it thought i'd say hi again.
nice to see you explaining that uranus was "doin' the do" long before orchid... they still don't get enough credit for being so fuckin' revolutionary. i used to live in montreal and yannick (uranus, tragedy) would often come to visit from portland, and then he was back living there for a while. in the hardcore scene there, the man is basically treated like a god. it's stupid, i know, but it happens. anyway i never wanted to be one of the "fans" going up and chatting with him at a show just cuz he was yannick, but then one day he just started talking to me, for no other reason than i was there, and so was he... over the next year we got to know each other pretty well, just from seeing each other around a lot, and i gotta say yannick is one of the nicest people you could ever meet. he'll do anything for anybody, and he always cares what you have to say, no matter who you are. truly reflecting what the 'core should be all about, which is too often forgotten.
so anyway, it's maybe just another reason to feel good about loving union of uranus: knowing that the song-writer is one of the nicest people ever.
awesome scrobbling...this should really be a regular feature...interesting.
I have two Harvest albums I can up tonight if you can't do it Tim, just lemme know. i think they are Transitions and god complex.
I think I like To Your Health more than the s/t now, but both kill.
i hope that absinthe stuff gets reissued. that 10" is incredible. my roommate played it for me a few years ago when i first moved in it blew my mind. i think it holds up better than groundwork.
did you see the new AP? there is a piece about 23 bands that shaped punk and unbroken, heroin, moss icon, SDRE, cap'n jazz, CFD, etc are all mentioned along with the more obvious magazine responses like bad brains, fugazi, black flag, etc. i think it's pretty good honestly and i'm very critical of that thing.
hi
a bit off topic, but i had a request:
any chance the Submission Hold records that were put up in a comment on the August 2007 "49th Parallel" post could be re-upped? i have a craving to listen to them, and can't find this stuff anywhere...
thanks so much, and thanks for all the great music all these months/years.
Papstar I would truly appreciate the harvest records. Thank you.
sure Jeff, i will get those up either late tonight or in the morning.
on a side note, anybody have any Ribbon Fix? my wifey loves the one album I have (gathy years), and surprisingly enough, I just don't wanna really search them out for her:P
anything is appreciated!
http://www.bestfriendsday08.com/
ummm brainworms and cannabis corpse on the same lineup....I am definitely going.
looks like a good 3 day lineup pretty much. I'm hoping to go to at least saturdays show.
hey tim, it doesn't look like i will be ending up in new york this june, instead i will be flying me to ct. but don't fear, i lined up a tour with asobi seksu for october so i will definitely be seeing you then.
can i call you captain scrobbles?
kiernan - here's waiting for another monkey
http://www.divshare.com/download/2459800-66e
i'll try and up progress later this evening
hey everybody, glad you like my scrobbling. Capt Scrobbles will suffice from now on. ^_^
Sorry I couldnt get back to anyone. I spent the weekend outside. It was beautiful and sunny in NYC. My dog ate a bee and got sick too. Silly puppy. She is okay. She just puked a lot. ^_^
Sooooo, uhhh, cool. Im here. Say hi.. Read my new post. I have to add a new blog or two the blog roll on the side...
That is all. ^_^
I think it should be Dr. Scrobbles, because that sounds like Dr. Snuggles. He was cool and he knew what he was talking about ;-)
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