I used to think The Cold War would be a killer band name. Little did I know Cold War Kids were already out there...and now there's The Civil Wars. I've got another prospective band name I wonder if anyone will ever use - HISSYFIT. Google search yields no results so far.
This record was a stylistic departure, and a creative leap for The Prayer Chain, and it may have been too much for the "Christian" music industry at that time to handle...and that's fine. I love this record. I remember listening to it in headphones in my dorm room in college. For being as misunderstood as they were The Prayer Chain is one of most encouraging bands to a believer that I've encountered.
I wish I could get Spotify's embed codes to work in Blogger - oh well. I'm a Windows Phone guy and am used to exclusion:) I can't find ANY videos for this track. It's off Tooth and Nail's very first release, Pet The Fish by Wish for Eden. I played the heck out of this CD when I got it, and still like it today.
Sorry for the dumb background, but this is the only video I found of this song with good sound. This is typical Hatebreed - heavy and chunky. This is what they do and they do it well. Also pretty typical of Hatebreed lyrics. This is a song of despairing about repeated mistakes and wanting to change and pull yourself out of the hole you keep digging for yourself. Enjoy your morning headbang.
This is one of 59 tracks in a set that's essentially nothing but beats - kind of a toolbox for DJs to make stuff with. Most of it is pretty simple, but there are some other more developed songs in the set. I kept it just because I liked some of the beats - good to have as background music sometimes.
Just a little instrumental ditty from one of my favorite bands at the moment. This is from their 2009 Blue album. They just recently released Yellow and Green, which I'm still digging into. The band will be out of commision for awhile as a result of a bus accident they had while touring in Europe. Their bus went off a 30 foot viaduct and several band members have broken vertebrae and other broken bones. Here's a recent note from the band on the accident: Thank you to all of you who have been sending the tidal wave of positivity our way. We are uplifted by its sheer magnitude, and power. Every single one of you is making our days and nights easier and our recovery quicker. Thank you all so much, we are truly lucky to have such incredible people on our side. A sincere and heartfelt thank you from each of us to each of you.
I love it when I can find a decent live video. This is one of my favorite songs from the Choir. It's from their record Circle Slide which came out in 1990! Wow - 22 years ago! Beautiful song. I random picked it earlier but forgot to post on it. Thankfully these guys are still making music together. I haven't seen them live in years, but back when I worked in music I'd see them around town all the time.
Zao's done a few songs with a social commentary and I think this is one of them. It talks about releasing the wolf from its cage and it having time to plot - I think referring to repeat offender criminals who are freed again. The "weak" being those who can't resist the urges to commit crimes. I REALLY liked Where Blood and Fire Bring Rest. This record has a little bit of that flavor but it doesn't grab me quite as much.
My life as a DJ was short but fun. I started learning to mix at the original Rocketown in Cool Springs, then moved on to playing an early morning shift (like midnight to 3am) at The Underground in Nashville and playing 1 or 2 "raves". Back to Rocketown - we had a lot of hip hop kids so on Friday nights we'd start off with hip hop then move on to house music. We'd get records in from the regional DJ services and one of the best things we ever got was some instrumental records from Outkast's ATLiens. Totally forgot about that record. Slow, smooth, clean beats - just the boom, bap, high hat, the bass line and some guitars. This track features some cats from Goodie Mob at the beginning. I think I may cue up some ATLiens era Outkast today.
A few years ago I wanted to enhance my collection with some American pop classics and downloaded a best of from The Carpenters. I think I'm one who only really needs the hits. I've never heard this song before but it sounds like something from an After School Special - when Tracy's working on that really tough paper, or Bobby's getting his first job at the car wash, or Susie's getting ready to try out for the team...You've Got It! I might be deleting this one, but will hang on to some of The Carpenters' classics.
This is a band I come back to every now and then and realize how good almost all of their songs are. I'm mostly into their first two records and this is from one of those. Super catchy.
There were a bunch of live videos but none of them good enough to post. What I loved about Juliana Theory is how well they duplicated their recorded sound live. This was a solid band and I wish we could get more music from the. This song was on both Love and Emotion is Dead.
I really liked this record from AFI - I guess just the energy of it and the melodies and hooks along with some intensity. They had a few good tracks on the last record I heard - Miss Murder and Love Like Winter. I'm not sure if they're doing anything these days or not.
This is one of the bands I booked shows for that I still listen to - and one of the few punk bands I listen to. A lot of the songs sound similar (especially in this era for them), but they were good players and a tight band. This is a fun song.
I was surprised when this came up since I thought I had already deleted Bon Voyage. This is the wife of Starflyer 59's Jason Martin and I just never liked the songs - and the breathy vocals got old quickly. Every song on the record sounds like this one. I guess this one is being used for the TV show Lie To Me, so I guess it's not all bad.
Teenage Politics is my 2nd favorite MxPx record after Slowly Going The Way Of The Buffalo. These guys had a good long run. I've checked out some of the more recent records but they just didn't grab me.
I liked a few songs off The Black Parade, especially the title track. Otherwise I'm kind of "meh" on My Chemical Romance. They're a band like The Strokes that magazines claimed were "saving" rock music - not so. They ended up being overhyped and fizzled after two records. Meh.
Looks like this song is about having grace in the face of lost love. Never heard this one before. I might need to trim the Björk out of my collection since I never really listen to her. She can write some great melodies, but a lot of her writing sounds like what a kid would do hitting random notes on a piano or making up notes in a song as they make it up. Just sayin'.
This is the title track of the record that is my first real exposure to Wilco. I was familiar with them and I think I'd listened to a bit of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, but it didn't stick with me. I've listened to some of their records after this one and they didn't stick either, but for some reason I really liked this record. This is the closest thing to a jam band I'll ever listen to. Ever.
Getting lots of old school Christian metal in here lately. This is from the era when I guess you could say it became legit. I still listen to some of the earlier Tourniquet albums because they were so good musically (if you like metal). I also found a video of them doing this song live back in 1991, but it the vocals sounded awful. I never saw Tourniquet live so I wonder if Guy Ritter's odd range really carried over live.
One of the best Morning Shuffles since I started doing this thing. This is my favorite song from my favorite Radiohead record...yeah, I said it. The Bends is my favorite Radiohead record. This video was made back when music videos mattered. I remember watching this one over and over again to see the story it told. Have a good week everyone!
I first saw The Prayer Chain live at AtlantaFest - probably 1991 or 1992. I bought their Shawl album not long before seeing that show and didn't get this, their debut EP, until later. This EP has some songs I love - this one, and another called Some Love which is especially fitting this week given all the Chick-Fil-A related hoopla. I appreciate this EP because it's one of the few records that does seem to focus on the real things that are important in faith and life.
I've got a real soft spot in my heart for Deliverance, have just always liked the band. Maybe because when I was a kid listening to only Christian music it was the first "crunchy" metal band I found that I liked. In the early 2000s I sold all my CDs after ripping them, but then lost a bunch of the files, so I was glad to see various download/subscription services with Deliverance in their catalogs again. Their sound is something people these days would laugh at but there's nostalgia in it for me. I did see them once live and they were very tight. Supposedly Jimmy Brown has gotten some of them together again to do more recording.
P86 comes up again. This is another one I've downloaded thinking I might come back to it later. I do like Andrew's vocals on this one, and am glad P86 got away from the Rage Against the Machine sound they started off with. They developed their own sound quickly, but the market was saturated with heavy bands and it just didn't quite catch. This is pretty good though. I think my favorite record of theirs is Truthless Heroes.
