New and future music for you

Out now:

Seven years later, we have new Garbage!

May 28:

Paloma’s second album. She is a lesser known British songstress, at least in North America, yet I still like her!

May 29:

Regina Spektor’s sixth long player!

June 12:

Metric return with their highly anticipated fifth album!

June 19:

Indeed we had Extraordinary Machine (2005 – retail version), but the unfinished version leaked, only to get the re-recorded version… So almost 13 years after When the Pawn Hits the Conflicts He Thinks like a King What He Knows Throws the Blows When He Goes to the Fight and He’ll Win the Whole Thing Fore He Enters the Ring There’s No Body to Batter When Your Mind Is Your Might So When You Go Solo, You Hold Your Own Hand and Remember That Depth Is the Greatest of Heights and If You Know Where You Stand, Then You’ll Know Where to Land and If You Fall It Won’t Matter, Cuz You Know That You’re Right, we have The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than The Driver of The Screw And Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do.

September 10:

The Spirit Indestructible will be Nelly’s fifth album, and her first English album since 2006s Loose. Timbaland produced the majority of Loose. Nelly’s new album will see Rodney “Darkchild” Jerkins as the primary producer, so no doubt it will be fairly commercial, hopefully good nonetheless.

September 25:

10 years, 9 months, and 14 days later we will have a new No Doubt record, assuming the release date sticks. The new No Doubt should prove to be interesting as it has been ten plus years in the making, of course not directly, as Gwen pursued her solo career with two albums.

Later:

I still have to listen to Flavors of Entanglement, yet I still look forward to new music from Alanis!

Music Video of the Day, another 100! (And all from the start!)

Yet another 100 Music Video of the Day videos! The first year, and the next 100. In a few months, year two will be complete!

I have added all the videos prior as well (click at the end of this post), mostly for my benefit, as it makes searching easier. I have accidentally had a couple of duplicates, but fixed them shortly thereafter.

Click the video number to get the original tweet of the video in question. I noticed Snapcase, #353, is now private, that is because since I featured it, VEVO has uploaded numerous Snapcase videos. I definitely have not checked them all, however it is interesting to see their fate. Hopefully if gone, they will have been uploaded by someone else, the record label, or VEVO.

Also, I started a Blogger blog to feature every video individually (starting at #575), the aptly titled Music Video of the Day or the full name to avoid confusion (and to plug my Twitter/blog): Music Video of the Day (via @tmmblog – toomuchmusic.wordpress.com)

#MVOD is now up to #617 as of this posting. To view 566 to 617, of course visit my Twitter, @tmmblog, and for quicker access, just click on ‘favorites.’

On with the list!

#565 Jenn Grant – How I Met You
#564 Grimes – Oblivion
#563 Adele – Chasing Pavements
#562 The Jam – Down In The Tube Station At Midnight
#561 Sheryl Crow – Steve McQueen
#560 Joan Osborne – Right Hand Man
#559 Alanis Morissette – Hand In My Pocket
#558 Leona Lewis – Better In Time
#557 Robin Thicke – Magic
#556 Dido – Hunter
#555 St. Vincent – Cheerleader
#554 Pink Floyd – High Hopes
#553 PJ Harvey – Good Fortune
#552 Faith No More – A Small Victory
#551 Goldfrapp – Yellow Halo
#550 Taylor Swift ft. The Civil Wars – Safe & Sound
#549 The Balconies – Kill Count
#548 The Cure – Just Like Heaven
#547 A Tribe Called Quest – Can I Kick it?
#546 De La Soul – Eye Know
#545 Enya – Only Time
#544 The Police – Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic
#543 No Doubt – Bathwater
#542 Whitney Houston – Greatest Love of All
#541 Art of Noise – Close (To The Edit)
#540 Gwen Stefani – What You Waiting For? (Director’s Cut)
#539 Our Lady Peace – Superman’s Dead
#538 Sarah McLachlan – Into the Fire
#537 Kathleen Edwards – In State
#536 Kathleen Edwards – Six O’Clock News
#535 Foo Fighters – These Days
#534 Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Date With The Night
#533 House Of Pain – Shamrocks And Shenanigans
#532 The Presidents of the United States of America – Peaches
#531 Ignite – Bleeding
#530 Imogen Heap – Headlock
#529 Garbage – Breaking Up The Girl
#528 Tina Dico – On The Run
#527 Katy B – Louder
#526 OK Go – Here It Goes Again
#525 Alice In Chains – Man In The Box
#524 Regina Spektor – Samson
#523 Melanie C – Goin’ Down
#522 Descendents – I’m the One
#521 Emeli Sandé – Next To Me
#520 Spice Girls – Say You’ll Be There
#519 K-OS (ft. Saukrates) – I Wish I Knew Natalie Portman
#518 Lilly Wood and The Prick – This is a Love Song
#517 Sloan – Unkind
#516 Royal Wood – Do You Recall
#515 The Black Keys – Lonely Boy
#514 Nine Inch Nails – The Perfect Drug
#513 Social Distortion – I Was Wrong
#512 Red Hot Chili Peppers – Can’t Stop
#511 Marina and the Diamonds – Oh No!
#510 Gravediggaz – Diary of a Madman
#509 Sarah Brightman – Captain Nemo
#508 Rise Against – Make It Stop (September’s Children)
#507 Chiddy Bang – Ray Charles
#506 Le Tigre – TKO
#505 Bad Religion – Infected
#504 Crash Test Dummies – Keep a Lid on Things
#503 Eric B. & Rakim – Follow The Leader
#502 LL Cool J – I’m Bad
#501 Iron Maiden – Hallowed Be Thy Name
#500 Mastodon – Blood and Thunder
#499 The Offspring – All I Want
#498 Lupe Fiasco – The Show Goes On
#497 Dire Straits – Tunnel of Love
#496 Geggy Tah – Whoever You Are
#495 Ariane Moffatt – Montréal
#494 Catatonia – Road Rage
#493 Bing Crosby & David Bowie – The Little Drummer Boy / Peace On Earth
#492 Kathleen Edwards – Change The Sheets
#491 The Be Good Tanyas – It’s Not Happening
#490 Melanie Doane – Happy Homemaker
#489 The Go-Go’s – We Got The Beat
#488 U2 – Get on Your Boots
#487 Rancid – Crane Fist
#486 Jully Black – DJ Play My Song
#485 Caracol – Certitudes
#484 Rihanna – Cheers (Drink To That)
#483 The Cardigans – For What It’s Worth
#482 Red Hot Chili Peppers – By The Way
#481 Beck – Where It’s At
#480 Kenna – Freetime
#479 Noisettes – Scratch Your Name
#478 Lauryn Hill – Doo Wop (That Thing)
#477 RUN-DMC – Rock Box
#476 The Ramones – Howling at the Moon (Sha-La-La)
#475 The Donnas – Skintight
#474 The Smiths – Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before
#473 Charlotte Cornfield – All of the Pretty Mistakes
#472 Sarah Slean – Sweet Ones
#471 t.A.T.u. – All About Us
#470 Raised Fist – Breaking Me Up
#469 Rancid – Red Hot Moon
#468 Sheryl Crow – Leaving Las Vegas
#467 The Cranberries – When You’re Gone
#466 Norah Jones – Don’t Know Why

Click to view all the rest from the beginning (unless you are reading from the direct link to this post!)

Continue reading

New music preview, Metric – Synthetica

Well, I was originally was going to reblog the blog post I first saw about the new Metric (not quite as easy as retweeting!), but his post is fairly personal, so I will just ‘borrow’ from it! Original post can be found here: New Music 2012 – Part 14 – Metric ‘Synthetica’

So the new Metric, Synthetica, is due for release June 12, and the first single, “Youth Without Youth”, will be released on May 1, 2012.

According to Emily Haines, Synthetica “is about forcing yourself to confront what you see in the mirror when you finally stand still long enough to catch a reflection. Synthetica is about being able to identify the original in a long line of reproductions. It’s about what is real vs what is artificial.”

Perhaps it is just me, but I find the cover art would feel at home on a Rush album, and Emily’s comments could easily have come from Geddy Lee referring to a Rush album!

Click the above image for a massive JPEG of the album cover. And below, the album cover upside down to save you the trouble of standing on your head, or turning your monitor upside down…

Full tracklisting:

1. “Artificial Nocturne”
2. “Youth Without Youth”
3. “Speed the Collapse”
4. “Breathing Underwater”
5. “Dreams So Real”
6. “Lost Kitten”
7. “The Void”
8. “Synthetica”
9. “Clone”
10. “The Wanderlust”
11. “Nothing But Time”

Head on over to the official Metric website, ilovemetric.com for plenty of tidits on the new album, and “when the lyrics are where they belong, a secret little prize will be unlocked. And so it begins…”

More Metric: Facebook, Twitter, and Soundcloud.

Follow me on Twitter, where I tweet everything about music, including new music releases (watch for hashtag #FutureMusic)!

Spring cleaning post #2: Music podcasts I’m listening to

Second spring cleaning post! A few podcasts and radio shows. I just added a few words to this to fix it up.


Huey Morgan, frontman of the band Fun Lovin’ Criminals, has a show over at BBC 6 Music. I only just discovered it.

The Huey Show (listen online)

I see Don Letts (I don’t know him too well, but I will call him the John Peel of punk/reggae) also has a show on 6 Music:

Don Letts (listen online)

A good old Nellie McKay podcast @ Maximum Fun blog

I listened to this in May of 2010, not a bad podcast from CBC Radio 3. CBC Radio 3 Extended Play: Interviews and Ideas, EP #10 – Is Music a Universal Language? (scroll down and click the MP3 link)

Propagandhi (awesome Canadian punk rock band) started a new podcast that to date lasted all of two episodes!

Propagandhi podcast

More Propagandhi, and similar (old) podcasts over at G7 Welcoming Committee Records

What I’m reading, watching and listening to on the World Wide Web

I will start off with my friend Wayne’s radio show, “North of the Border.”

His show plays nothing but the best in modern Canadian music, hence the title, as it broadcasts out of New York State (Troy to be exact). It can be heard Saturday nights at 7 p.m. Eastern Time (North America) on Exit 97.7 WEXT. However it can also be streamed live, through their website, or using the TuneIn radio app on numerous different platforms (iOS, Android, Blackberry, etc).

Canadian Music Hall of Fame

Oscar Peterson is, quite simply, one of the greatest virtuosos in jazz.

Head on over to their blog for some good reads. Also, check out the featured artists, Oscar Peterson being one right now. Listen to his music, and your IQ will slowly rise. And check out all manner of other great Canadian music!

Sinéad O’Connor: ‘I define success differently’ @ The Guardian

O’Connor has spent the past 25 years forcing onlookers to take sides: depending on your tastes, she’s either an attention-seeker whose capricious behaviour has taxed fans’ loyalty for years, or one of pop’s bravest artists.

First Take: Little Scream @ mtv.ca
Spotlight on Little Scream’s Laurel Sprengelmeyer. Yet another talented emerging Montreal artist!

Drum Fill Friday @ NPR
On my first try, I think I got them all in 7 or 8 tries after listening to them all. The Beatles one was the only one that was really easy for me!

Red Hot Chili Peppers Release Interactive Music Video @ Warner Bros Records
Pretty cool!

Lastly, I first heard this during the new G.I. Joe trailer, a movie that I will not see, but the music within, a remix of “Seven Nation Army” by The Glitch Mob is very sweet!

Another Beatles post #2

I picked up the book A Hard Day’s Write: The Stories Behind Every Beatles Song by Steve Turner, and in the preface he described what the book is not, and then what it is (basically only the story behind the songs). In describing what it is not, he pointed the reader to other books. That is what this post is about, a few other Beatles books of interest as Steve Turner sees fit to describe what is not in his book.

This is post two (as the subject suggests). The first goes back a little over a year, it was about Beatles albums that did not make Rolling Stone’s top 500 albums of all time, read that post: Another Beatles post.

The first one is the one that would interest me the most, but it seems to be difficult to find now!

All are linked to Wikipedia’s ISBN book search (from which library catalogues from around the world and more can be searched), save for the first, which goes to the Wikipedia article about the book itself.

Who played on what session: The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions by Mark Lewisohn, who is apparently the world’s leading Beatles expert!

Musicological take: Twilight of the Gods, by Wilfrid Mellers or Revolution in the Head by Ian McDonald

What Paul was saying: Paul McCartney: From Liverpool To Let it Be by Howard DeWitt

John’s intellectual development: The Art and Music of John Lennon by John Robertson or John Lennon’s Secret by David Stuart Ryan.

Tegan and Sara videography

This is a Tegan and Sara videography, all of their videos linked (click on the song title), and a few bonus ones with them (both or individually) as featured guests.

First in what may become a series of posts!

The First from: This Business of Art (2000) dir. Sean Michael Turrell
I Hear Noises from: If It Was You (2002) dir. Sean Michael Turrell
Monday Monday Monday from: If It Was You (2003) dir. Christopher Mills
Living Room from: If It Was You (2003) dir. Kaare Andrews
Walking with a Ghost from: So Jealous (2004) dir. Troy Nixey
Speak Slow from: So Jealous (2005) dir. Tegan Quin/Brian Dutkewich/Angela Kendall
Back in Your Head from: The Con (2007) dir. Jamie Travis
The Con from: The Con (2007) dir. Suzie Vlcek
Call it Off from: The Con (2008) dir. Angela Kendall
Hell from: Sainthood (2009) dir. Jamie Travis
Alligator from: Sainthood (2009) dir. Marc De Pape
On Directing from: Sainthood (2010) dir. Angela Kendall
Northshore from: Sainthood (2010) dir. Angela Kendall

Bonus (videos featuring either Tegan, Sara, or both):

The Reason featuring Sara Quin – We’re So Beyond This from: Things Couldn’t Be Better (2007)
Against Me! featuring Tegan Quin – Borne On The FM Waves Of The Heart from: New Wave (2008)
Tiësto featuring Tegan & Sara – Feel It in My Bones from Kaleidoscope (2010)
Astronautalis featuring Tegan Quin – Contrails from: This Is Our Science (2011)
Morgan Page featuring Tegan & Sara – Body Work from: In the Air (2012)

Tegan and Sara are presently working on their new album!

Local show preview The Jimmyriggers with Sarah Jane Scouten Saturday February 18 at O Patro Vys

Saturday evening at the O Patro Vys, a very nice, small venue, Montreal’s own The Jimmyriggers take to the stage for a special show, wherein they will be recording it for a live album!

A bit of a harsh poster in my humble opinion, but since it is actually borrowed from a National Lampoon cover years ago, hopefully that dog did not die from being shot! (You did not hear it from me!)

The Jimmyriggers (their official website linked, which includes a way to win a pair of tickets!) play a blend of roots rock, rock, and alt-country. Perhaps more genres, but I just like to enjoy the music! Regardless, they have been on the Montreal scene for many years now, with two full-length releases under their belts!

I actually hear a little R.E.M. in them, and I just happened to read a Montreal Gazette review, which wrote “R.E.M.-style jangle of Sleepwalking and Half in Shadow”. Being compared to R.E.M. is high praise any day of the week in my book!

AND catch The Jimmyriggers

on CTV News at 6:00pm on Thursday February 16th.

they

will be featured during the What’s On segment with Christine Long.

CTV being a major Canadian network, albeit that is the local news segment, but still, tens of thousands of Montrealers will be watching! If not possible to be viewed, it will be archived on the segments website, located here.

Opening the show is Sarah Jane Scouten who I am just learning of now, British Columbia born, and now Montreal based, she has already grabbed my attention with her song “My Goddamn Country”! Listen to that and others over at her Soundcloud page. She sounds to be very folksy, and rootsy, as it says on her website (minus the ‘sy’, I added that). Making for a very good opening act for The Jimmyriggers!

Visit The Jimmyriggers Bandcamp page to listen (and buy!) their latest long player, I Stand in the Weeds!

Doors open at 9:30, show is $10, and since their is not a Canadiens game Saturday night, there are no excuses not to go!

Supergroups that do not exist, yet #2

Zack de la Rocha – lead vocals
Boots Riley – vocals/additional vocals
Serj Tankian – guitar
Paul Simonon – bass
Brandon Barnes – drums

This political supergroup formed with the intention of making the world a better place, and taking it to the next level, and also making killer music in the process!

Zack de la Rocha, who needs no introduction takes vocals duties, with some help from Boots Riley (The Coup, Street Sweeper Social Club). Multi-instrumentalist Serj Tankian takes a break from singing (and the occasional screaming) to play guitar.

Paul Simonon, known as the bassist for The Clash, and working with Damon Albarn (The Good, the Bad & the Queen, and Gorillaz’ Plastic Beach) also known for his political activism, most notably with Greenpeace, plays, that is right, bass. And Brandon Barnes of punk rockers Rise Against takes his drumming up to a new level.

Get ready for not only for a supergroup, but a political supergroup (that will likely be a force to be reckoned with)!

In the charts, 10 years ago

I have been thinking of this kind of post for a while now, so, why not now?

Starting with the main charts, topping the Billboard 200, that being the top albums, sales-wise of course. Jay-Z takes it with The Blueprint. Only having been on the charts for 3 weeks. Not being a Jay-Z fan, I will proceed with number 2, Alicia Keys‘ debut, Songs in A Minor. Even though only one song is in A Minor!

A few spots down, System of a Down‘s Toxicity is at the 15 spot. It is in its fourth week on the chart at this point, and peaked at number 1! Whoa, Afroman is charting at the 26 spot with The Good Times (although that is a greatest hits compilation)!

Coldplay is on at #154 with their debut. Not bad after 42 weeks on the chart, yet it only peaked at #51. They went on two win two Grammy’s with Parachutes, Best Alternative Music Album, and Best Alternative Music Performance.

In the Hits of the World Category, here in Canada, Serial Joe have the top single with “Completely“. Diana Krall‘s The Look of Love is the number one album. Dido‘s No Angel tops in the UK.

Because sales are definitely not the barometer for good music, topping Canadian campus radio (aka college radio) airplay for the chart dated October 9, 2001, was Bjork‘s Vespertine. Top Canadian release was The DearsOrchestral Pop Noir Romantique EP.

Meanwhile, dated October 29, 2001, in CMJ (Google Books is missing some issues from May 2000 to October 2001), Death Cab for Cutie‘s The Photo Album held the #1 spot.

Some music videos from 10 years after the break (unless you came to this post directly!)

Continue reading