OK. So after I decide to take a break from blogging because I had nothing exciting to talk about, an abundance of music related news and discoveries drop into my lap. So I'll post. Back to basics.

First off, if you are even remotely a fan of music, you have to check out this site.

Pandora

Unbelievable man. It is by far one of the coolest music websites I've ever come across. Simply enter the name of a song or artist that you like, and utilizing a massive database and complex search algorithms it will create a customized play-list of similar music based on the song or artist you input. It incorporates all sorts of different recognizable qualities of a song or artist into each query. Using values like melody, harmony, tempo, beats per minute, vocal style, key, instrumentation, arrangement, etc, it will find songs that are strikingly similar to the song or artist that was input regardless of genre. What makes it even better... you get to decide if they are doing a good job or not by voting a "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" to each song within a given search. Give it a thumbs down if you think it doesn't belong in the group on which the search was based, and they won't play it anymore on that particular search. Here's a snippet of how they explain it:

Together we set out to capture the essence of music at the most fundamental level. We ended up assembling literally hundreds of musical attributes or "genes" into a very large Music Genome. Taken together these genes capture the unique and magical musical identity of a song - everything from melody, harmony and rhythm, to instrumentation, orchestration, arrangement, lyrics, and of course the rich world of singing and vocal harmony. It's not about what a band looks like, or what genre they supposedly belong to, or about who buys their records - it's about what each individual song sounds like.

Over the past 6 years, we've carefully listened to the songs of over 10,000 different artists - ranging from popular to obscure - and analyzed the musical qualities of each song one attribute at a time. This work continues each and every day as we endeavor to include all the great new stuff coming out of studios, clubs and garages around the world.

Moving on...

I discovered quite possibly the cheapest place on the Internet to download MP3's.

AllofMP3.com

Most download-able songs on the net are ranging between 70 and 99 cents per song on places like Itunes, Napster, Rhapsody, etc. How about a place where you could get them for oh, I don't know, like 07 CENTS PER SONG! Or $1.50 FOR AN ENTIRE ALBUM! And I'm not talking shitty obscure garage bands here either. Some of the top artists in music on this site. You can even select your quality and audio format. Check it out. I just downloaded a 6 song EP the other day for 83 cents.

Still more music news...

For those of you who didn't know yet, my favorite local band The Formula Kid, is no more. They will release the album they were working on, and most likely play one more show when it comes out, but Drew Johnson the driving force behind the band is burnt out. From here on out he'll be focusing on writing and recording solo material, which I will be looking forward to.

Until then check out this guy:

Dave Barnes (official site)

Dave Barnes (MySpace site)

He sounds a lot like Drew vocally and has a musical style that can't be described, much like the Formula Kid. Somewhere between jazz, blues, rock, country, and pop. I can hear Steely Dan, Jackson Browne, John Mayer, Michael Buble, Rascal Flatts, Gavin DeGraw, DMB, and even old school blues rock influences via his Mississippi / Nashville upbringing. It's really very good musically. John Mayer seems to like it (read his 7/6/06 post).

Speaking of geniuses...

BT has a video trailer out for his new project (just click the view video link). I'll go out on a limb and say it looks like fucking Fantasia for the 21st century. An electronic symphony combined with stunning visual imagery. This is big man. More and more, musicians are doing things in a multimedia format. This may be the benchmark for all that follows hereafter. (You can also check this out on his official or personal MySpace pages)

And finally...

No really I mean FINALLY, the "Supergroup" Army of Anyone (Richard Patrick from Filter and the DeLeo bros from STP) have an active website up with some tracks from the new album. I'm excited!! Check them out on, yep, you guessed it...

Army of Anyone (official site)

Army of Anyone (Myspace site)

There! I posted something of quality and value! Everyone happy now?

- these thoughts flowed through Jeff's fingers @ 12:50 PM