Special Countdown: 12 Years of Last.fm (Part 4) (#20-11)

Counting Crows ca 1994

I'm back with another installment of the countdown of the Top 50 artists that I listened to from 2/14/06-2/14/18. This episode is the much-anticipated Bottom 10 of the Top 20.


12 Years of Last.fm (Part 4)

***Featuring***
Ben Folds
Cartel
Counting Crows
Fall Out Boy
Green Day
Kanye West
Less Than Jake
Me First and the Gimme Gimmes
R.E.M.
Radiohead
Red Hot Chili Peppers

New Countdown: Exclamation Points!

Foster the People

It's time for another countdown with some bonus songs and a lot of fun! We have fun here, right? RIGHT? Right.


Countdown #384

***Featuring***
Foster the People
Imagine Dragons
lovelytheband
Muse
Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats
Panic! At the Disco
R.E.M.
Silage
Sir Sly
Thirty Seconds to Mars
Two Feet
Vance Joy

New Countdown: Full Circle

Beck

It's all coming back around this episode. ....And other circular puns. I thought it would be easier to come up with fun circle puns, but I guess I'm a little below the curve (is that a circle pun?).

Anyways, enjoy this mega-long episode!


Countdown #360

***Featuring***
Beck
Cage the Elephant
Foo Fighters
Imagine Dragons
The Lumineers
A Perfect Circle
Portugal. The Man
R.E.M.
Radiohead
The Revivalists
Thirty Seconds to Mars
Vance Joy
Walk the Moon

2015 Artists of the Year Countdown!

Fall Out Boy

It's funny. I usually think of this as the last countdown of the year, but really it's the first countdown of the NEW year! So, Happy New Year and I hope you enjoy this countdown as much as I enjoyed making it!


2015 Artists of the Year Countdown

***Featuring***
Barenaked Ladies
The Beatles
Dessa
Diet Cig
Doomtree
Fall Out Boy
NOFX
P.O.S
R.E.M.
Smashing Pumpkins
Taylor Swift

One Year, 100 Albums: #13 R.E.M. "Automatic For the People"

R.E.M. Automatic For the People, 1992

I recently talked on my podcast about how I came to know R.E.M. I was in 6th grade and would listen to the Lion King soundtrack over and over as I did my spelling homework. Eventually, my mom suggested that I might want to listen to something else. Say, for instance, this R.E.M. album Out of Time. I took it under advisement and eventually did start listening to other music. Specifically the first two Kriss Kross albums. Not *exactly* a win in Mom's column, but not a loss either.

It was probably two years later that we were in Crest Books, a musty old used bookstore that is now the headquarters of a limo rental place, and for some reason, I was browsing the books and Mom was browsing the CD's. She bought Automatic For the People for me and gave it to me in the car. I looked it over and it seemed ok, but I wasn't completely sold.

I remember the specific events around which I became sold. It was basically bedtime, but Mom was on the phone with someone so I was listening to this album on my Discman while I waited for her to get off. For whatever reason, maybe the headphones, maybe the silence of a quiet house, this album struck home. I may have read along with the lyrics in the liner notes (I don't recall if the liner notes for this album had the lyrics or not...) or maybe I was just in the right place, cognitively, but it really struck me that these were stories! Narratives in music! Not just silly, "I love you, won't you love me too" stuff, but narratives with emotions and complications!

And, in what I'm realizing is becoming a theme in some of these stories, some of the songs had profanity in them! I found out what the "Star" in "Star Me Kitten" stood for. I heard lyrics like this, from "Ignoreland"

They amplified the autumn, nineteen seventy-nine.
Calculate the capital, up the republic my skinny ass.
TV tells a million lies. The paper's terrified to report
Anything that isn't handed on a presidential spoon,
I'm just profoundly frustrated by all this. So, fuck you, man. (Fuck 'em)

By the time I got to the gorgeous one, two punch of "Nightswimming" and "Find the River," I was hooked. The lyrics and music touched me in a way that was rare at the time and I knew that this was an album for the ages. 

Later, I'd find that this album was somehow linked in my mind to the time in which it was released and I started thinking about what it would have been like to be an adult in 1992 and getting this on cassette tape. In fact, I wrote a poem about listening to "Drive" as a character from that time. I had an epigraph from "Sweetness Follows," so I guess that means the poem is more about listening to the whole album. Anyways, this is super awkward, but here's that poem and then we'll do the video and featured songs.

Automatic

Yeah, yeah we were altogether
lost in our little lives

R.E.M. “Sweetness Follows”

Driving through Central Illinois

On a cold winter’s day

Michael Stipe’s voice is haunting.

But fitting.

How can this Georgia boy

Strumming an acoustic

Add his own layer of frost to the windshield?

The landscape is the brown of all the leaves of America

That fall

But never hit the ground

They settle on these fields.

The interview is tomorrow.

November 14, 1992

For a job

A life

I don’t know.

R.E.M. - Drive
R.E.M. - Ignoreland

You can buy Automatic For the People at Amazon, Amazon MP3, and iTunes

New Countdown: It's Alright Ma, I'm Only Podcastin'

Phoenix

So it's hella late and I need to be up to make eggs and bacon with my 3 year old for Mother's Day probably pretty early, so I'll keep this short.

Happy Mother's Day to all applicable recipients of that greeting!

Enjoy this greeting card in podcast form! (PS Non-moms are totally also allowed to enjoy it. BUT NOT AS A GREETING CARD IN PODCAST FORM)

Countdown #197

***Featuring***
Alanis Morissette
Arctic Monkeys
Bastille
Bear Hands
Big Country
The Black Keys
Bleachers
Cage the Elephant
Coldplay
Fitz & the Tantrums
KONGOS
Phantogram
Phoenix
R.E.M.

Monthly Poll: Beck - Odelay

So I want to focus a little more on these Alternative Album Grammy Winners that I'm playing for bonus songs on the Countdown. So I think, on the first Monday of every month, I'm going to do a little retrospective poll related to the album from the proceeding month.

April's album was Beck's Odelay

Please answer the following questions in the comments section. (If you don't have an answer, feel free to skip the question)

1. What is your favorite track on Odelay? (cool! i can embed the whole album!)

• Devil's Haircut
• Hotwax
• Lord Only Knows
• The New Pollution
• Derelict
• Novacaine
• Jack-Ass
• Where It's At
• Minus
• Sissyneck
• Readymade
• High 5 (Rock the Catskills)
• Ramshackle
• Computer Rock

2. What is your favorite Beck album?

3. Which do you feel should have won the Grammy, if not Odelay:

• Tori Amos Boys For Pele
• Tracy Bonham The Burdens of Being Upright
• R.E.M. New Adventures in Hi-Fi
• Smashing Pumpkins Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness

Flashback Countdown #4!!! 1995!!!!

This is the 4th Flashback Countdown I've done and it might be my favorite so far! 1995 often slips by me when I'm thinking of great years for Alternative Music, but this countdown should serve as a reminder that it was a fantastic year. Every song is enjoyable and uncringeworthy.

Oh it's also the Countdown's 3rd Birthday! Happy Birthday Appetite For Distraction Alternative Top 10 Countdown!

I'm going to start having an image of one of the bands featured on the countdown each week, chosen at random. I've switched to a new RSS reader and it'll look pretty on that. And that's the reason I am doing this. It's selfish, but maybe it'll add something to the blog posts....

Flashback Countdown #4

***Featuring***
Better Than Ezra
Bush
Elastica
Green Day
Live
Nirvana
Oasis
P.J. Harvey
R.E.M.
Sponge

Monthly Poll: U2 - Zooropa

So I want to focus a little more on these Alternative Album Grammy Winners that I'm playing for bonus songs on the Countdown. So I think, on the first Monday of every month, I'm going to do a little retrospective poll related to the album from the proceeding month.

So, January's album was U2's Zooropa

Please answer the following questions in the comments section. (If you don't have an answer, feel free to skip the question)

1. What is your favorite track on Zooropa? (Spotify)

• Zooropa
• Babyface
• Numb
• Lemon
• Stay (Faraway, So Close!)
• Daddy's Gonna Pay For Your Crashed Car
• Some Days Are Better Than Others
• The First Time
• Dirty Day
• The Wanderer

2. What is your favorite U2 album?

3. Which do you feel should have won the Grammy, if not Zooropa:

• Belly Star
• Nirvana In Utero
• Smashing Pumpkins Siamese Dream
• R.E.M. Automatic For the People

Newb...I mean NEW Countdown

I realized when recording this one that there are a lot of bands that are either touring in support of, or in the process of making, their debut albums. It'd be fun to see a show with all of them together. And I think it would work, genre-ically. If I win the lottery, I will host an annual year end concert with all of the bands that made the countdown, but have only released one album (LP) at most. What would I call it?

ANYways....

Countdown #130

***Featuring***
Alex Clare
Atlas Genius
AWOLNATION
The Black Keys
Imagine Dragons
The Lumineers
Mumford and Sons
Muse
Passion Pit
R.E.M.
Youngblood Hawke

New Countdown: Strong Start. And then it was after midnight :)

Yeah, I really shouldn't do these podcasts so late. I really let myself spool out the ramble on this one. But I think it's actually ok. Just make sure you listen to it at like 12:30 am. :)

Countdown #128

***Featuring***
Alex Clare
AWOLNATION
The Black Keys
Grouplove
Imagine Dragons
The Lumineers
Mumford & Sons
Muse
Passion Pit
R.E.M.
Youngblood Hawke

New Countdown: Hey! I can't find nothin on the radio!

So. Now it's November, huh? Well that means we have a new Best Alternative Album Grammy Winner to start poring over. And it's a good one. You'll see :)

This is a fun one, you guys.

Countdown #127

***Featuring***
Alex Clare
AWOLNATION
The Black Keys
fun.
Imagine Dragons
The Lumineers
Mumford & Sons
Muse
Passion Pit
R.E.M.
Youngblood Hawke

New Countdown in which I imagine Mumford & Sons use instruments that they don't use

That's right. It's a countdown where I let my imagination just go with whatever it can come up with. Good tunes, though

Countdown #46

***Featuring***
The Black Keys
Cage the Elephant
Foo Fighters
Linkin Park
Middle Class Rut
Mumford & Sons
My Chemical Romance
R.E.M.
Rise Against
Young the Giant

Round 1a!!! and something of an actual update, too!

Ok everyone. We're starting. This is the real deal. The first two match-ups of the first round are:

1. Barenaked Ladies vs. Alkaline Trio

Barenaked Ladies - What a Letdown from Are Men
Alkaline Trio - Back to Hell from Crimson

2. Green Day vs. Pearl Jam

Green Day - American Idiot from American Idiot
Pearl Jam - Nothing as It Seems from Binaural


In other news, we are putting the hammer down when it comes to buying a house. It's a big scary process to buy your first house, but we have a kickass support system and things are looking good on that front. I'll post here if anything big happens (after the family knows), so check this page for all my incredibly interesting adventures in real estate.

Also, has anyone heard the new R.E.M. album? I'm hearing really really good things about it and I'm seriously considering picking it up. They can be hit or miss, but when they're hitting, they hit HARD. Automatic For the People is one of my all-time favorite albums and if you haven't heard it, you should check it out. Here's a great song from it to whet your whistle.

R.E.M. - Ignoreland from Automatic For the People