1. Prince - The Beautiful Ones - Purple Rain 1984 belonged to Prince, with his masterpiece Purple Rain topping the charts for a solid five months on its way to selling 13 million copies. Since I've never been a huge Prince fan, some of it can't help but sound synth-heavy and dated, like "The Beautiful Ones" in fact. But in all, it's a fantastic album, and "Purple Rain" is as transcendent as the

Former Buffalo Tom singer/guitarist and current solo artist Bill Janovitz has posted a free MP3 of one of my favorite Replacements tracks. You can download an MP3 of Janovitz's acoustic cover of "Little Mascara" here . The cover is part of his new "Cover of the Week" feature. He's also posted free MP3 of covers of Bruce Springsteen and Tom Waits. The man's got good taste. You can find all sorts of other fantastic free material on Janovitz's blog here . [...]

The Pitchfork 500 is Pitchfork Media 's chosen list of the best, most influential songs from 1977 to 2006. The Pitchfork 500 isn't a numerical list but it covers different eras and chooses songs that suit that time period. Previous Chapters: One + Two 1983-1986 was a time where at least my older sisters were born and my parents had moved into Canada ('84). They did listen to a lot of pop music at that time but a lot of the music I recall didn't have that [...]
With lots of year-end lists to get through I thought I should give you the second installment. Today I present you with: Best non-studio albums of 2008 : 10. Portastatic - Some Small History A massive b-sides collection from the Superchunk side project. Review 9. Belle and Sebastian - BBC Sessions Great live [...]

No one can argue that The Replacements were a rare breed. Sure, they looked like a bunch of slackers from the back of the lunch room, but when they hit the stage, they had a ferocity that could match any state's top football team. Yet at the heart of every frantic performance, there was a sweet spot that melted anyone's soul, and that's where they found success. Such charm was harder to find in the band's early work, which began with Sorry Ma! I Forgot to Take Out The [...]

photo: christian landry Brett Milano, a Boston music writer and pal, recently interviewed Paul Westerberg for the Rock Band site ("Alex Chilton" is featured on RB2). He dishes on his ode to the Big Star frontman, the "493 record and a maybe-kiboshed, maybe-not-kiboshed Mats reunion. His son plays Rock Band but not he: It's beyond my coordination to hit the buttons. Here's the transcipt, and full audio ! Tags: alex chilton , big star , paul westerberg , replacements , rock [...]

It turns out The Replacements' classic "Alex Chilton" is part of the new Rock Band 2 video game. The song made it's first appearance on the 1987 album Pleased To Meet Me , which was recently reissued with a plethora of bonus material (my review of it here ). There's an interview with 'Mats singer Paul Westerberg on the video games website. You can check out 18-minutes of Paul here . Paul Westerberg's website Rock Band [...]

Did you ever sit in the kind of rickety chair you found in the street and brought back home into your apartment because this is where we all got our furniture back in the day, cast off from someone else’s life? Did you sit and look at the place in the wall where the paint job was peeling and you got up, picked at it and found another layer, a different color of off yellow, off green or off white, even red than what you had since the day you moved in because that was what landlords did they painted [...]

Above: "Funeral for a Soldier" by Scott H. Spitzer for USAF (DOD 030403-F-1166S-001, public domain) Tuesday was Veteran's Day . Newly restored aircraft carrier the USS Intrepid-a ship that saw extensive combat in the Pacific during World War II-was rededicated as a museum in New York at Pier 86 on the Hudson River. In America, and in many countries around the world (where the holiday is known as Armistice Day or Remembrance Day), people took time to remember those who have served in their nation's military, especially those who lost their lives. [...]

Fleetwood Mac, 1977: original version from Rumours From as early as I can remember I have always loved Fleetwood Mac . Their sound, their music, reading about the torrid love affairs between bandmates and declining marriages that created some of the most beautiful songs I have ever heard. I'm talking pre- Gwen Stefani and Tony Kanal ( No Doubt ) shit. True love and despair, threats to quit the band, drugs, world-wide tours, managing professionalism in the studio when you literally want to kill the very person you depend [...]

via king mag and their look at bush as a retrospective via pictures. here is the remainder of the mats show from dekalb. 28. he's a whore 29. i want you to want me 30. southern girls 31. layla 32. smoke on the water 33. schools out 34. love grows where my rosemary goes 35. temptation eyes [...]

Many of my blogging friends are outraged and depressed over the passage of anti-gay marriage amendments in Arizona, California and Florida this past Tuesday. The simple fact is that in some of those states the very same people who voted in Obama voted out the rights of gays to marry and it's making folks more than a little upset. Here at chez Tart, we remain unfazed. Why? Marriage sucks. Marriage should be outlawed. Nobody should be married. Marriage is for neanderthals and pricks (no not the [...]

Many of my blogging friends are outraged and depressed over the passage of anti-gay marriage amendments in Arizona, California and Florida this past Tuesday. The simple fact is that in some of those states the very same people who voted in Obama voted out the rights of gays to marry and it's making folks more than a little upset. Here at chez Tart, we remain unfazed. Why? Marriage sucks. Marriage should be outlawed. Nobody should be married. Marriage is for neanderthals and pricks (no not the [...]
hola, friends! here's part two of the mats show from dekalb. part three will be up later today. i am having serious storage capacity issues - i am down to like 20 megs. so, i gots to delete a whole bunch of stuff today. 16. black diamond 17. i hate music 18. tommy gets his tonsils out 19. unknown 20. cant hardly wait 21. god damn job 22. [...]

couple things i have learned about new orleans thus far: 1. there are huge fuckin cockroaches down here 2. the people, at least the ones i have met, are almost overly friendly 3. bud's broiler makes one mean freakin burger 4. not nearly as ghetto as i was led to believe 5. community coffee makes a really great cup o' joe. long and short, we are definitely diggin new orleans thus far.... i got so much new shit to talk about, but all of its going to have to wait another few days to [...]

Here's a quick playlist to get you through this afternoon. X - The New World Eddie Vedder - Here's To The State Of Mississippi (Original Phil Ochs with updated lyrics) Pete Seeger - We Shall Overcome The National - Mr. November The Pharcyde - If I Were President The Replacements - Election Day Woody Guthrie - This Land Is Your Land

I hope everyone votes Tuesday, and I hope everyone is fully informed before making their choices. If you're not sure who to vote for after at least eleven straight months of campaigning, well, you're on the Internet, go to Google and look around for yourself. There's no excuse not to be well informed. So to celebrate our democracy and the truly wonderful choice we can hopefully make for ourselves on Tuesday, I've listed the fifty states below, in red and blue, depending on which candidate, Bush (red) or Kerry (blue), the state voted for in 2004, along with [...]

Frank Yang I'm going to have to stop using my line about any British band being able to fill a venue in notoriously Anglophilic Toronto... this past Wednesday night at the El Mocambo, The Rumble Strips were not only able to draw just a couple dozen people, they couldn't even get their support act to show up. Okay, in the case of tourmates Birdmonster , it was less the Rumble Strips' fault than the border guards who wouldn't let the San Francisco outfit into the country (I think this is at least the [...]

The highlight of my rather tedious Wednesday? Hearing Velvet Underground's ' Sister Ray ' on Sirius Deep Vault in the car. Hearing a young Lou Reed sing "I couldn't hit it sideways' totally made my day. (And you can listen to Reed's new live CD of Berlin over at AOL Spinner ). And in other exciting blog-o-riffic trendsetting.... Lots of metal dudes who shop at Wal-Mart totally bought AC/DC's new Black Ice CD , to the tune of nearly 800,000 copies! [...]

Can you believe that I just started listening to the replacements like…a week ago!? WHY!? They’re so good! Here’s why: I read this book called Petal Pusher , who is incidentally by Laurie Lindeen, now wife of Paul Westerberg, then founder of Zuzu’s Petals. Anyway, I wanted to like this book, but I didn’t. I wanted to like Laurie’s band, but I didn’t really (they’re not too bad, just not exactly my cup’a). The positive outcome of this situation is that I was moved to check out some Minneapolis music (the early 90s Minneapolis scene probably could [...]