New Countdown: White Stripes on the Bonus Segment, We Hardly Knew Ye

Arctic Monkeys

Now, THIS is a more typical show, in terms of deadline. I'm not early. I'm not late. I'm right where I usually am: typing up the blog post for a podcast at nearly 1 AM. It's a sultry, film-noirish life I lead, isn't it? (Just noticed the word "noirish" looks like "no irish", which is a stance I certainly don't hold any truck with. Irish Welcome!)

There's a very indulgent bonus feature thing in this episode, but you have to get through the first half to find it. Happy hunting!

Countdown #191

***Featuring***
Arctic Monkeys
Barenaked Ladies
Bastille
Cage the Elephant
Fitz & the Tantrums
Foster the People
KONGOS
Lorde
The Mighty Mighty Bosstones
The Neighbourhood
Phantogram
The Vandals
The White Stripes
Young the Giant

Post for Rickey

Rickey: I know I didn't post the "Countdown" label for episode 191. HOWEVER, it was for good reasons of not enough characters allotted in the Labels section. This is a special post for those of you sorting by "Countdown" to get all the episodes: A link to the blog post where the podcast is linked. DOUBLE LINK

Blog Post Containing Episode #191

One Year, 100 Albums: #27 Death Cab for Cutie "Plans"

Death Cab for Cutie Plans, 2005

Plans is the most beautiful, uplifting album about death that I've ever heard.

No, not all the songs are directly about death, but I think they all are at least glancing at it out of the corner of their eye.

Take "Summer Skin" for example. It's not about death. BUT it's about the end of summer and the approach of winter and the acceptance that this is the cycle that everyone goes through. So, it actually kind of IS about death. But in a non-depressing way! Which is quite lovely.

A lot of people are going to point to this album as the completion of the band selling out or changing their sound to appease a growing fanbase or whatever. They'll point to earlier albums as "way better" and maybe they're right, but this album is the album I keep coming back to. It makes me a little bit calmer about this runaway train we're on. You know. The one hurtling towards oblivion? This album reassures me that, as long as I cherish my time with the ones I love, and make sure they know who they are, I'll never be alone.

This is an album that I would never want to talk about with Ben or the band, because I have such a delicate interpretation of it built up in my head, that I couldn't stand it if they were to shatter it.

Death Cab For Cutie - I Will Follow You Into the Dark

Death Cab For Cutie - What Sarah Said

You can buy Plans at Amazon, Amazon MP3, and iTunes

Throwback Thursday: 1979

10. Olivia Newton-John - A Little More Love
9. Bobby Caldwell - What You Won't Do For Love
8. The Pointer Sisters - Fire
7. Dire Straits - Sultans of Swing

This is a live version of this song, and I prefer to have the music video but that'll be increasingly rare as we get away from 8/1/81. This was recorded about 6 weeks before this chart came out. It's called the "2nd version" because, if the comments are to be believed, Knopfler messed up the 2nd guitar solo and decided he wanted to do the song again.

6. Rod Stewart - Do Ya Think I'm Sexy?
5. Peaches & Herb - Shake Your Groove Thing
4. Donna Summer with Brooklyn Dreams - Heaven Knows
3. The Doobie Brothers - What a Fool Believes
2. Gloria Gaynor - I Will Survive
1. Bee Gees - Tragedy

New Me First and the Gimme Gimmes album this May!

So, Fat Mike did an AMA on Reddit a couple of weeks ago where he said that the new theme for the new Me First and the Gimme Gimmes album was going to be Divas.

Well Joey Cape just posted a link to an Esquire article about the album, which is going to be called Are We Not Men? We Are Diva! which is slated for release in May.

Yay!!

Here's a link to the article, which also contains a cover of Paula Abdul's "Straight Up" which is fantastic, of course.

One Year, 100 Albums: #28 Pearl Jam "Vs."

Pearl Jam Vs., 1993

First albums are often the rawest album in a band's catalog, but for whatever reason, this sophomore album is the rawest, hardest rocking album the band has ever done. I know it's supposed to be about conflict, and boy does it deliver on adherence to a theme.

If you only know Pearl Jam from the radio, you might be SLIGHTLY aware of the bitchin' guitar solos present in a lot of their songs, but I'm not sure you can know the levels of bitchin' they achieve without listening to the first song on the album, "Go"

The best thing that I ever did with regards to PJ was purchasing a bootleg live album (from their Official Live Bootleg Series, of course) and just immersing myself in that. I picked out an album with as many songs that I knew that I loved and then sat back and let the songs that I'd never heard before wash over me. After a while, it seemed that most the "new" songs that I loved from the live album were from Vs. and so when I bought this album, it was no big surprise that I loved it as much as I do.

It has rockers like "Go" and "Animal" and "Rats", quiet reflection in "Daughter" and "Elderly Woman..." and "Indifference", and a lot of incendiary political stuff on tracks like "WMA" and "Glorified G". It also has the closest thing to a Bruce Springsteen song that PJ has ever done in terms of feeling the need to get in your car and drive away from your troubles and start over ("Rearviewmirror").

If you only buy one Pearl Jam album in your life, this one is an EXCELLENT choice. It encapsulates every good quality that the band brings to the table.

Pearl Jam had a longstanding policy against making music videos and I couldn't find a satisfactory live video. So here's 3 songs! If you have a favorite Vs. era live video, post a link in the comments!

Pearl Jam - Animal
Pearl Jam - Rearviewmirror
Pearl Jam - Indifference

You can buy Vs. at Amazon, Amazon MP3, and iTunes

Top Ten Tuesday: Soko "We Might Be Dead Tomorrow"

Another song to make it up to the Top Ten on the wings of a viral video! I love it when this kind of thing happens. It feels like we're permanently recording phenomena that go beyond music.

SO. Here's the official video for the song. I'm going to say it's NSFW (not safe for work) but there's nothing offensive in the video. It just has some candid, clothesless moments. It's a beautiful video, actually. It just might give a passing coworker the wrong impression.

Here's a SFW version with an orchestra backing her. This really is a gorgeous song.

And finally, here's the video that lots of people watched that got the song up into the Top Ten. Apparently Soko is one of the people in it, though I couldn't pick her out. See if you can!

And I also saw this and I think that it should also be on this post, because Jimmy Fallon surely contributed to the chart.......position....ok it's just because of the cute puppies and kitties.