In any normal situation you would be getting a blog full of interesting material right now, but there's one problem: My computer crashed yesterday afternoon. Best case scenario I get it back Saturday-ish. Worst case scenario...well, let's not go there *takes a few deep breaths*. So suffice it to say I don't see much point in running an mp3 blog when I have no mp3s to post for the time being. So VLM is gonna take an unexpected vacation for the week. In my absence be sure to check out my blogging comrades via the sidebar on the [...]
(For the record, Blogger effed up the old template so it looked a little ugly, hence the new one. Hoping they fix it/something better comes up soon. Sorry for the otherwise subpar look for the time being) A couple of people at EMI must really have dreaded coming into work these last couple days. Coldplay's rabidly anticipated fourth album Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends leaked last night, 13 days before its official June 17th release date. I have a lot to say in this review, but if you don't have time to [...]
The title of the entry pretty much says it all. Obtaining it now, will have a review of it in the coming days. Just posted this as a means of encouraging all ye who would do such a thing to check your torrents and music forums to see if they've gone up. And no this will NOT affect the project in the previous entry. ==TJ==
I've begun a new project for the summer (in addition to revamping the layout on this very site). After seeing just how much music exists on my computer and amount that I've never actually listened to, I have decided that I am going to listen to my entire music library by August 31st. Just to make things a bit more interesting, rather than try to do some interesting shuffle sequence, I'm just going to go alphabetical by artist. My goal on August 31st is to have every song by every artist from +44 to The Zutons with a play count [...]
Today Disturbed dropped their Indestructible , their fourth studio album. The band had already promised a heavier, angrier album than anything we've heard from them to date, and in hearing lead singer David Draiman talk about the inspiration for the album (up to an including an old girlfriend's suicide, a fire that burned his garage and motorcycles, among other things), it's understandable where it's coming from. As someone who wasn't blown away by Ten Thousand Fists and still thinks Believe was the best Disturbed CD (and a sorely underappreciated album in general), I was simultaneously [...]
I recently picked up the debut album from Duffy, the Welsh singer-songwriter that's continuing the 60's soul revival inexplicably made popular by Amy Winehouse. Shortly thereafter I swallowed my reservations and gave Winehouse's Back to Black album a listen. Needless to say, I was only half-surprised by what I heard. Something pertaining to Amy Winehouse's antics pops up on one of my celebrity trash websites on average once a week, sometimes more. I honestly don't understand the appeal. Winehouse doesn't even have the appeal of someone like Britney Spears or Lindsay Lohan whom people can at [...]
News of Prince's cover of Radiohead's "Creep" from Coachella this year has traveled far and wide, but somehow the controversy around it has only just now kicked up. The basic facts: Prince is ridiculously stingy about the amount footage from his concerts and his overall image on the internet (he shut down his website and declared war on eBay and YouTube over his material). Prince covered Radiohead's breakout hit. Video of said performance hit the web, as a reasonable person might expect would happen. Prince's label has squashed nearly every video of the show, citing a copyright violation. [...]
Changes still taking place on the blog layout. Looking for a better picture to use as a banner, but not much luck so far. Still open to thoughts/comments on the whole thing. In the meantime, I made my first mix on Mixwit earlier this weekend (link over on the left). As the title suggests, it's all acoustic versions of awesome songs. Have at, and expect more soon. ==TJ==
This edition of Weekend WTF is brought to you by Germany. More specifically Munich, the city in which Bon Jovi played a show last weekend. Normally this event would have gone unnoticed by VLM except for the following: 1) Right now Welsh singer-songwriter Duffy is scoring a hit on the chart in the form of her first single "Mercy" 2) I got a digital copy of her debut album Rockferry , and was very pleasantly surprised by it (a more in-depth review and a comparison to fellow soul revivalist Amy Winehouse is pending) 3) After tooting [...]
Hey everybody. You've probably noticed the site has a few subtle changes (and if you hadn't notice, you should really be more aware of your surroundings). I decided to mess around with a few things and see how it all looks. Feel free to leave feedback and such if you think something is particularly awesome/ugly. This reconstruction will be going on until I a) get bored with it, or b) settle on something I really like. In the meantime, check out the various widgets and such that are all around, and continue to enjoy your day! Random MP3 [...]
I've been positively dreadful when it comes to posting things that I say I'm going to. This post is prime example. I promised a follow-up on a number of Under the Radar bands (as well as introducing a few new ones) some time ago, and this entry will at last make good on said promise. A week or two back I exchanged emails with the management of Drive A. The result was me receiving a small press package that included, among other goodies, a copy of Drive A's self titled debut. Before I dip into a review of [...]
So it's been over a week since my last post, and that's just not cool. No excuse really, other than laziness and distraction by that little thing called real life. This'll be a bit of a wandering post, but it'll more or less get you up to speed. I've spent the last several weeks (since I got home from college, pretty much) job hunting. Given the fact that I'm using present tense here should tell you how said search has gone. Turns out that nobody particularly wants seasonal help from college students while in a recession. Imagine that. [...]
As I mentioned yesterday, I finally saw High Fidelity yesterday when it randomly showed up on cable at a time I could watch it. Admittedly I missed the first 20 minutes or so, but it was still effing brilliant. If you haven't seen the movie, all you need to know for this new series of posts is that while John Cusack and Jack Black sit around their vinyl shop they come up with all kinds of Top 5 lists. In that same spirit, I present the first of Viva La Mainstream's Top 5s. This topic for this one [...]
The meme below has been circulating around one of my music forums, and rather than be the millionth person to post it there, I decided to transport it over here. I only do these when I think a good one crops up, so enjoy it. 1. Song from the last record bought/downloaded [legally]: Michael Jackson - Billie Jean [ iTunes ] [yes, the last album I legitimately paid money for was Thriller ] 2. Blues: The Animals - House of the Rising Sun [ iTunes ] [...]
Today marks the release of 3 Doors Down's self-titled fourth album, already making waves with the radio hit "It's Not My Time". The follow-up to 2005's Seventeen Days is a return to form for the band that started out as a straight-arrow rock band and really never should have tried anything else. The band's previous two albums, 2002's Away from the Sun and Seventeen Days were both worthy efforts, but weren't the balls-to-the-wall rock you'd expect from the band that ripped listeners a new one with "Kryptonite" back in 2001. The biggest [...]
I've been fiddling around with iTunes and last.fm a lot in the last few days, trying to stretch its limits in the name of getting cooler content from it which could in turn give cooler stuff to this very blog. Haven't had too much success, but gonna post it anyway and see if someone has a genius solution. I've been trying to find a way to make iTunes give me a weekly chart; that is, I want iTunes to tell me what songs I played most frequently in the span of a week or a month. It'll tell [...]
This goes out to my good friends Justin and Peter, two of the biggest fans of Amanda Palmer I know. A link to a post on The Lefsetz Letter showed up on my twitter feed, and it basically restored my faith in famous musicians being generally nice people. Lefsetz posted an email he was sent by Ms. Palmer which read as follows From: Amanda Palmer Subject: re-Please Drop Me my label-dropping game has become very fun. please pray for me. it's a lesson in how the future of music is working [...]
Thanks to a massive pillaging of my dear friend Nicole's music collection (one of the few collections up at school that's actually larger than mine), I've got several new ideas for future additions to the Album A Day, including two great album from Ben Folds. I had previously only had Way To Normal , which despite my glowing review last year, faded from memory pretty quickly. Thanks to Nicole for taking care of that for me. I think what makes Ben Folds such an enjoyable personality in music isn't his talent on the piano, or his lyrical [...]
Viva La Mainstream!
Avicii – Two Million
Yellow Magic Orchestra edit from Chrome Canyon
Beck – I Just Started Hating Some People Today
H&M Lookbook Mujer y Hombre Otoño 2012.
