It began in ninth grade. My brother and I started getting junk mail. The real kind that showed up in your mailbox. BMG, Columbia House. Buy 12 CDs for the price of 1!* We saw this as the cheapest way to increase our music collection, so we picked out some Boys II Men, some Blackstreet, and some other stuff we heard on the radio.

One of these CDs included the band Deep Blue Something who had a song on the radio called Breakfast at Tiffany’s. I’m sure many of you remember the song. Catchy tune, right? Well, the rest of the CD should have been released under a different band’s name: Deep Blue Pile O’ Poo.

Harsh review, I know. But I also know that you come here for the truth, and eat it up like Toed on catnip.

P.S. I hope my writings leave you as euphoric as my cat after a little of the ‘nip.

Anyway, today’s song comes from the band Soulwax. It is off of their 2005 album, Any Minute Now. This album isn’t as bad as the one I mentioned above. In fact, it’s somewhat good for a listen or two, but overall, I skip over more tracks than I did walking home from the bars in Madison. (There’s train tracks that run through the town).

The song is called NY Excuse. Enjoy!

*Shipping and handling charges of $5 per CD.

So, I forgot to post something before leaving for the weekstart. My bad. P.S.Sunday through Tuesday will now be known as the weekstart. It overlaps the weekend on Sunday, because every end is a new beginning. That’s right, this blog sides with the glass half full model of the world.

Monday’s song should have been Jamie Cullum’s Blame It On My Youth. So here it is. Erin and I danced to this for our first dance. We learned to rumba, added an intro and an outro which made it look like the whole thing was choreographed. It was good stuff.

Today’s post is about a kid in a candy store. That kid was me, and the candy store was the Electric Fetus. Hooray! The Electric Fetus is a record store in downtown Minneapolis. Erin and I walked in and went straight to the new rock section where I found two CDs that I can’t get in Rochester – Peter Bjorn And John’s Writer’s Block and !!!’s Myth Takes. I also impulse bought the new Modest Mouse and an old Josh Rouse. So, you’ll probably be hearing a song off of at least two of these albums in the near future.

I had a conversation with the guy behind the counter while buying these CDs. He said that the Peter Bjorn and John album was really flying off the shelves, and I said something along the lines of, “I know. I came from Rochester just to buy it.” which got us talking about the music scene in Rochester (non-existent). He didn’t believe me.

So, for those of you who might be in the know more than me, where is a place to see a live band in Rochester? I could offer up Kathy’s pub or the Viking Lounge as places that I’ve heard of cover bands playing. I’ve seen bands at the Hanger and I know 2 Live Crew has been at Rookies twice in the past five years. But bands playing their own music?

Well, I did some digging because I guess I didn’t believe it either. Here’s a link myspace page with music in Rochester – a decent amount of bands. I guess I’ll have to check some of them out sometime.

If you remember earlier I said that you might be hearing from one or more of the CDs I bought this weekstart… well, here you go! Peter Bjorn And John’s Young Folks.

I noticed something funny as I uploaded today’s song. Apparently, I’ve been obsessed with the letter A the last two weeks. Starting last Monday:

• I played Arcade Fire
• Added some Architecture in Helsinki that Friday
• Ranted about Avril on Monday (and some of Wednesday)
• Played Andrew Bird on Wednesday

And today, the theme continues. Your Friday fun song is I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor by the Arctic Monkeys. They have a new CD coming out in April – apparently trying to hang onto their popularity from last year’s release.

P.S. Another A? Anniversary. On Sunday, Erin and I will no longer be newlyweds! Oh, and we’ll be out of town on Monday and Tuesday, so Monday’s post should hopefully be posted on Sunday.

Nick is back, all right! On the way to work, I was thinking about the time in high school that I was a backstreet man, but I’ll get to that in a second.

First, about yesterday’s post. I forgot to include a few details, like why I was doing this, and some other rules I set down. I thought about counting syllables in Avril’s music when I heard one of her songs playing in a department store. I didn’t hear too many multi-syllabled words, so I thought it would be fun for a post. Secondly, I was slightly worried that I would get called out for this, but then remembered that I don’t have enough readers to do fact checking just yet.

In Avril’s song, Complicated, technically she sings the four syllable word “complicated” multiple times, but I only have her down for one in the four-plus category. That was because I only counted choruses once. With the way these lyrics websites work, it’s hard to figure out how many times a chorus is sung, and I didn’t want to do the extra multiplication. Lazy editting on my part, but doesn’t take away from the results.

Anyway, backstreet men. Ah, what a glorious set-up that was. Me and five friends in high school signed up for the talent show and convinced the teacher supervisor to let us perform without seeing the act in person. We re-wrote the words to portions of three of their songs, made a mix of the three songs sans vocals, and recorded our own vocals over them. Then, we got some time with another friend in a dance studio and choreographed our dance.

I was dressed up in black pants and an N-Suck t-shirt tied in a knot showing off my stomach. Another guy was wearing shorts and suspenders. Unfortunately (fortunately?), I didn’t ever see a tape of the performance, although there is a rumor that one exists.

Today’s song is pretty fresh and new – I picked up the CD yesterday… well, I downloaded it off of emusic.com. If you like indie music, emusic.com is a good place to go looking for it. Anyway, it’s off the new Andrew Bird album, Armchair Apocyrpha. This song is called Imitosis.

On Sunday, after my alma mater’s basketball team learned why you have to play two halves of basketball, I decided I needed to focus on something other than March Madness. After going to the mall with Erin, it seemed that today would be a good time to discuss the statistics of Avril Lavigne. Scary subject, I know.

So what are the statistics of Avril? Well, I counted all of the occurrences of words with one, two, three, and four-plus syllables in songs by Avril Lavigne. I only counted syllables on her first CD, “Let Go”. Yeah, I had too much time on my hands today. Anyway, here’s the table:

And there you have it. A whopping 97% of the words used in Avril Lavigne’s hit album are 2 syllables or less. Not that surprising. What was surprising was that the song Nobody’s Fool contains a five-syllable word – creativity!

Anyway, does this mean that Avril’s music is simplistic? Well, yeah, probably. But how does it compare to some music I listen to? Let’s try the opening song from Minneapolis’s own The Hold Steady – Stuck Between Stations:

Ah, a plethora of multisyllabic words! If you’ll notice… The Hold Steady use the same number of 4+ syllable words in one song as Avril does in her entire album. Sorry, Avril. Hope you find your sk8er boi.

P.S. Today’s song is Stuck Between Stations by the Hold Steady. It was picked before I decided to do the statistics of Avril, so I didn’t cheat by picking an overly complex song.

Ok, I admit it. I was watching the NCAA tourney instead of writing a post last night, so instead you’re just going to be getting a quick link and a song.

I’ve mentioned this device to some people who read the blog before, but now you get to see it in action! It’s clocky! The alarm clock that runs away and hides when you don’t wake up!

Anyway, today’s fun song comes from the band Architecture in Helsinki. The first is a career, the last is the capital of Finland, and the middle is just a stupid preposition. Put them together, and you have a fun band. Don’t worry, though, they’re from Australia, which seems to have this thing about super-groups up on stage playing fun, nonsensical songs. Anyway, this is Wishbone from 2005’s In Case We Die.

Yes, today is Pi Day. Why? Well, because it’s 3/14, silly. In other regions of the world, the slashes are replaced by dots, meaning the date looks more like this: 3.14. Granted, they also usually put the day before the month, so it would look like 14.3, but we’re ignoring that and assuming that you do your dates like you barbecue on the 4th of July – like an American.

This is the first March 14th that I’ve ever thought, “Hey, it’s 3/14. And a very happy pi day to you as well, my good man,” while tipping my top hat and taking a puff from my favorite pipe, trying not too much water in my galoshes or on my handlebar mustache. Spit spot, indeed.

So why pi day? At work today, I’m getting pie at 1:59. Why 1:59? Well, as any good nerd can tell you, the first six digits of pi are 3.14159. Do some creative punctuation and there you go: 3/14 1:59. Eat some pie.

To celebrate pi day, I figured I’d have you listen to some math rock. No, not songs about multiplication, but rock music played in funny time signatures. At Lollapalooza, A.C. Newman of the New Pornographers bragged that his band had the most difficult time signatures this side of Coheed and Cambria. While that’s true, I’m leaning more towards bands that are all math rock, so today you get to listen to a band that was part of the D.C. math rock scene in the early double-zeros (00’s). They are Faraquet, and this song is called Carefully Planned.

Before I start writing this post, I’m going to first say that staying out late on the first night of daylight savings time is stupid and should be avoided – especially if you have to get up for work the next morning. Proceed.

Last night, Erin and I took the fabled black focus up to the twin cities to partake in the musical event dubbed Lawlawpalooza: A Benefit for William Mitchell Law. Based on the number of people in the place, I have a hard time thinking they made much money from the event, but it was a good time.

There were four bands scheduled to play. Each was given an hour time slot starting at 8. The band that I came to see, Modern Mercenary was up at 10. Opening the night was (if I remember correctly) Marshall Cretin who was a great opening act. Aftermath, a classic rock cover band followed, and then came Modern Mercenary. I enjoyed all three bands. Even though they all played rock, they all played different types of rock, so it was a good variety.

Sidebar: I’m not a great reviewer in general. I can review albums, but I find redeeming qualities, so my reviews are usually higher than they should be. I generally enjoy any concerts or movies that I go to. Don’t ask me why.

Anywho. Aftermath was the classic rock cover band that probably should have been named after the lead guitarist. We’ll call him Soren, cause he looked like a guy a know named Soren. So, yeah, they should have been named Soren and Those Other Guys. Soren knew all the tricks in the book to make his guitar sound like the original soloist. He used the whammy bar frequently, did a couple of pick slides, played over his head, and even played their last song with a beer bottle slide. Oh, and he posed and looked up with a cocky half-smile any time he was doing something cool.

While I was watching him shred on stage, I found myself confused as to how impressed I should be. On one hand, the guy knew how to play very very well. On the other hand, all he was doing was reproducing solos written by other great artists. And while it was fun to watch the guy, you could tell that the rest of the band was up there just watching him, too. Thus, the band should have been called Soren and those other guys.

I got home around 12:45 last night. Which circles me back to my original point. My blog is cyclical, people. Like a wheel.

Today’s song comes from the new Arcade Fire album, Neon Bible. It’s called Intervention. There’s not really any reason I chose this song, except that I really enjoy the fullness of the organ and background orchestra. Granted, this fullness is probably lost in the 128 kbps MP3, but hopefully you’ll get enough of an idea that you’ll want to go out and buy the CD, which is very good.

Before I start, I’d like to apologize for such a long post. Also… no comments on the humping salt shakers?!? Come on people, that was hilarious!

Ok, Angela, you asked for it, so here I go. Everyone knows the stories about the RIAA suing people for illegally downloading music. While I disagree with illegal file sharing – artists should get paid for their music – I don’t agree with the RIAA’s tactics of suing their customers. Granted, most of them have broken copyright laws. Notice I say most. The latest actions of the RIAA to sue the owner of an IP address without proof that said person has broken any laws is shady at best.

I also don’t agree with their other tactic of bullying people into settlements instead of going to trial because they have such thin cases. Give us a couple thousand dollars for downloading the Baha Men’s Who Let the Dogs Out. (Who! Who! Who! Who!)

Anyway, that’s an old RIAA issue. The current issue I have involves royalties and internet radio. On March 1st, the U.S. Copyright Royalty Board decided to enact a “per play” rate proposal for internet radio. For a good description of the proposal, see this link. I’m going to talk to that link for the rest of the time (I’m basically reiterating most of the information). This proposal would create an increasing rate for each internet radio performance. A performance is defined as streaming one song to one listener.

Granted, the rate they are proposing doesn’t look so bad at first glance. Less than a tenth of a cent per performance. Multiply that number by 500. Now multiply that by 16 (the average number of songs per hour). Now multiple it by 24. All of a sudden you’re wondering where all this money is going to come from.

And that’s just it. These new rates are going to shut down all of the small-time internet radio sites, some of the medium-sized sites, and then the only sites that can survive will be the large, corporate web sites. The kind that can afford lawyers to negotiate a better rate. How do they negotiate a better rate? Ugh… agreements with the RIAA.

So… why does the RIAA hate it’s own customers? Well, they don’t. They just want their piece of the pie. And internet radio is like their own slice of Baker’s Square Triple Berry a la mode. Unfortunately, by eating the pie, they’re slowly eating away at potential customers. Yeah, bad analogy. Internet radio is the main source of finding new music for many people, and by taking that away, they’re taking away possibility of people finding this music and then going out and buying it. Wait… you mean internet radio serves the same purpose as regular radio? Who woulda thunk it? Not the RIAA.

And that’s why they’re an angry dinosaur. They’re the old guys in the bank commercial who hate WaMu because it offers free checking. I really wish I owned Walk the Dinosaur by Was (Not Was). It would be appropriate. Here’s the YouTube video instead.

Today’s song could be considered fun, I guess. I like it, and it’s kind of relevant. It’s Your New Aesthetic by Jimmy Eat World.

While cleaning the kitchen on Saturday, I stumbled on some salt and pepper shakers. Erin and I got these two cute guys as a wedding present. As you can see in the picture, the two of them sit on the table hugging like a bunch of long-lost family members at a reunion. If they had dots on their heads, they would look like a yin-yang from above. Here’s a pic to show you what they should look like:

And here’s how I found them on the counter on this cold Saturday afternoon:

Sounds like I should call the Tokyo Police Club! Don’t ask me why. I just wanted to play a song off of their riveting, 16-minute long CD. No, it’s not an EP. Technically, most EPs are less than 17 minutes long, but then again, most EPs don’t have seven tracks, either. You say tomato, I say tomato. You say EP, I say CD. Let’s call the whole thing off… and listen to Cheer it on!

Speaking of Asians wielding weapons (Tokyo Police Club)… Chris Wendland’s band Modern Mercenary is playing at the Nomad on Sunday, March 11th, in an event dubbed Lawlawpalooza. If you live in the Minneapolis area and want to see some good, live, local music, then stop on by! Wendland claims it starts at 7, but the Nomad’s website says 8. He can fill in the details better than I can. Oh, and Wendland… I doubt I have more than 10 readers of this humble blog, so I wouldn’t be too excited about me advertising. Sorry.