Musicola 2008

I'm lovin' the Couch's new streamlined look! Makes me feel like I am in a board room or something! It's fun, nicely done, Cap'n Skooch!

My friends, I have been horribly remiss! Since 1995, I have been making yearly music mixes for my friends every Christmas of my favorite sounds of the year. These usually included new and obscure items I had found over the course of the previous months, a cool 80's tune, some kind of Beatle song or cover, and anything else I could find that floated my boat that year.

But, careers, relationships, and other unavoidable items at times combine to create distractions. Sad to say that there has been a lack of REALLY good music on the scene in the past couple of years; by which I mean that I have not really been looking like I used to. Oddly enough, I have been listening to a lot of old Rush and Level 42 albums lately (that, in its self, is a blog entry to consider: why do we return to the music of our youth?)

I don't want to go off on a rant or anything, but shopping for music just isn't the way it used to be. Have you seen the music department in any given Best Buy lately? Barren. Ironic that so many of the haunts that we used to scour for good music have been devoured by the infiltration of the corporate mega-mart, only to see the demise of such by Das Infobahn. For me, it used to be all about the search; to hear about some excellent -yet little-known- band and actually GO to the record store to see if MAYBE they had it. Gone are the Utopian "High Fidelity" days of hunting and collecting. These days even if you do find some cool record store to scavenge in, it is usually full of the same crap that has been floating around since the late 90's.

I have discovered one cool thing lately: all those stores that got shut down went on-line to Amazon. I am not one who likes to shop on the internet, but I have recently found some killer deals from the vendors in that arena.

Suffice it to say that I have started looking again and actually found some killer music to compile a Musicola 2008, though this one will have to encompass the finds of the last two years. I know this is not the kind of news that will shake the rafters or anything, but there are "some" that might be pretty stoked on it (I can probably count them on one hand, but I digress.)

Here are some of the records that I have been in high rotation for the last couple of years, and that made the cut:

Silverchair: Young Modern - This should be no surprise to our moderator. No longer the watered-down Australian version of Nirvana, Skooch and I discovered the band's massively over-orchestrated pop second coming about 5 years ago with their record "Dioramma". This album is so over the top that I have not stopped listening to it since it came out in 2007. It takes a couple of listens to get into, but it plays more like a concept album...with no concept. Like a work of art, or a performance piece. Got to see them play it live at the Wilturn in LA and it was one of the best shows I have ever seen.

The Pink Spiders: Sweat it Out - Power Trio makes good by listening to a lot of Marvelous 3 albums. I really like this band, and this, their latest, plays like a pageant to the would-be rock star that didn't. Stunning guitar rock with candy in its pants.

McFly: Just My Luck - No one in the USA knows who they are, but this boy-band from the UK is the biggest thing to hit Brittania since Take That! The Jellyfish influence is so heavy it makes my teeth ache. Though my English friends all make fun of me for it, I can't get enough.

The Major Labels: Aquavia - How can you go wrong when Mike Viola (of Candy Butchers-fame and the singing voice for The Wonders' Jimmy Mattingly Jr.) and pop neer-do-well Bleu get together to pay homage to 70's AM Radio? The perfection of this album is almost frightening, and you can download it for free simply by recommending it to 4 friends. I did, and I do!

My Chemical Romance: The Black Parade - Speaking of concept albums, this one about ripped my head off. I would not listen to this record for the same reason y'all probably haven't: its what the pastey emo kids with their overly-tight trousers and their pasted-down bangs are listening to. When I got around to checking it out and ingnored the title track, the rest of the album's Queen-thievery kicked me in the head and actually kinda pissed me off that I had not written it.

Office: A Night at the Ritz - Think The Scissor Sisters, but not quite so gay and sugary. This Chicago band was a Free Download of the Week on Itunes, and I had to pull it just to see if it was Michael Scott singing "Total Eclipse of the Fart". It ended up being something pretty spectacular.



Klaus Nomi: Encore - Normally you wouldn't associate the tones of a New Wave gender-confused German contra-tenor with the likes of me, but I have to confess, I have been listening to it and its musical merit it starting to outweigh the kitsch factor. IRS records' amazing 1982 concert film "URGH! A Music War" featured this performance by this....guy?...and it made me so confused and repulsed that I had to check out the recent documentary "The Nomi Song" to get the full picture. Honestly, it grows on you.

Ludo: You're Awful, I Love You - More mid-West guitar pop that gets really good when you listen to it the second or third time.

Plain White T's: Big Bad World - Their last record was much better, but this one is pretty good too!

The rest will have to wait for another post, or simply wait until Christmas and you can hear for yourself!