My favorite song (that I never listen to): Part 2 of an ongoing series.

1. "I Against I" - Massive Attack and Mos Def
2. "And It Rained All Night" - Thom Yorke
3. "Baby's Got A Temper" - The Prodigy
4. "I Feel You" - Placebo
5. "Use You" - Dave Gahan
6. "Race - In" - Battles
7. "God Given" - Nine Inch Nails
8. "Walk Away" - Sisters of Mercy
9. "Loose Fit" (12" Version) - Happy Mondays
10. "This Is Love" - PJ Harvey
11. "The Weeping Song" - Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
12. "Then" - Charlatans UK
13. "Konichiwa Bitches" - Robyn
14. "Satellite" - Depeche Mode
15. "Music Is My Radar" - Blur
16. "Red Tape" - Agent Provocateur
17. "Skip Divided" - Thom Yorke
18. "Neighbors" - Gnarls Barkley
19. "Deeper and Deeper" - Dave Gahan
20. "Leyendecker" - Battles
21. "When The Body Speaks" - Depeche Mode
22. "The Beginning of the End" - Nine Inch Nails
23. "Big Fun" (Original "Magic Juan" 12") - Inner City
24. "To Hell With Poverty!" - Gang of Four
25. "Out of Time" - Blur

This is what iTunes Genius gave me when I plugged Massive Attack/Mos Def's "I Against I" into it. Some of these are expected, either by virtue of being in a similar genre or groove (Charlatans, Thom Yorke, Gnarls Barkley) or by being performed by an artist with an oblique relationship to Massive Attack (Agent Provacateur... Thom Yorke). I wasn't really expecting the HEAVY Depeche Mode bias, though. Also, the Nine Inch Nails, Battles, PJ Harvey and Blur songs leave me scratching my head. Admittedly, it flows pretty nicely (except for the last four tracks, which are kind of the aural equivalent of shaking a baby, only you are the baby) but I never would have put all these songs together like this.

Oh yeah, the Robyn track sticks out like a SORE THUMB yet still manages to be the perfect thing to put into that spot. It's like the Genius algorithm knew what I wanted despite what I was thinking, and it was right and I was wrong. Creepy.

EDIT: Links to videos (a mix of official, bootleg and fan-created) are now up for all of these. Check them out if you don't know them; there's some good stuff here.

Where my Hyrule thugs at?

One of my favorite things about 2000 was the mashup explosion; for a while it seemed that you couldn't venture out into the web's musicverse without stumbling over a laptop producer creating brilliance out of disparate sources. Soulwax and Richard X (aka Girls On Top) are among the biggest names to come out of this scene; personally, I have always been a big booster of Matt Tuozzo and Lance Lockarm.

I don't know if Team Teamwork was active during this time period and I don't really care. A link to their mashup album The Ocarina of Rhyme was posted on a gaming messageboard I like to read during my downtime and I haven't been able to stop streaming it since. A wide variety of hip-hop a capellas (Clipse, Common, Jay-Z, Busta Rhymes, Aesop Rock and MF Doom to name a few) have been spliced with music from various levels of the game "Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time" and the result really couldn't be any better. I wish I hadn't given up my DJ dreams because practically every track here would get incorporated into my sets, PARTICULARLY the reworking of Busta's "Don't Touch Me". I never played this game, mostly due to not having access to a Nintendo when it came out; I'm thinking I should hit eBay and change that.

Cosmetic goodies

John finally allowed me access to edit the blog template, so I've changed a few things:

• We now have a search box! Use this to see if we have talked about your favorite band; also use it to search the many sites we have linked.
• Our Last.fm profiles are now visible so you can see what we've been listening to (since we are fascinating like that).
• Our wonderful labeling system is now displayed on the right-hand side of the blog to help you filter down to a particular subset of posts. (How telling that the only label we've reused so far is "Depeche Mode".
• The blog template has been widened so that widescreen video embeds no longer spill over onto the right column. (If this makes the blog too wide for your screen, PLEASE let me know. I'll figure out something.)

I was going to throw Google Ads on the bottom as well just to see what madness they would put up as our topics drifted wildly but a) I know no one would click on them, and b) I don't really feel like haggling with John over the monthly 5 cents that would be rolling in.

Feedback is greatly appreciated; any suggestions for improvement will be considered.

Our founding fathers died for this

This Fourth of July, I think all Americans should celebrate the creative freedoms bequeathed to us by our founding fathers. Borne out of frustration with British taxation without a corresponding voice in how those taxes would be used, the brave men and women who started our great nation built a foundation upon which we are allowed to express ourselves as we see fit. It is a glorious thing, something that brings out the best in us and can create art that transports the connoisseur to an other-worldly place, fraught with emotions running the gamut from fear to ecstasy. In keeping with this fine tradition, I present to you one of the crown jewels of American art; a piece of music so singular that any description I could possibly attempt would not do it justice. This is something you must see/hear for yourself.

My dear readers, I present to you: "Tea Bag" by Tea Bag Boyz



It is a movement, indeed. I know our founding fathers are looking down on us now, teabagging all of God's creation in the name of artistic freedom. Their blood, sweat, tears and freakish thigh muscles set us on the road to this apotheosis of musical expression. Squat proud, America!