Les Brown and His Band of Renown - Best of Capitol Years...
IMHO, a great BigBand compilation! :-)

If you don't, have some of this weed...

Just as long as they don't have a DJ that speaks his pot-induced ramblings...

I find those extremely cheesy

Summer of Love [Original Unreleased Mix]

The B-52's ~ Time Capsule: Songs for a Future Generation (1998)

Listening to: 'Shit For Brains' from 'Teeth EP' by 'Fudge Tunnel' on Media Center 9.1

Hmm. Interesting title...

Listening to: "Out Of The Blue" by David Gilmour, from "About Face" (1984) on foobar2000 v0.667

Duke Ellington - Blues To Be There - Ellington at Newport
LAME 3.91 a-p-s

Just listened to 1 hour "In Extremo" live on TV

Heavy Metal plus 4 players with bagpipes, hurdy-gurdy and othe medieval instruments plus lots of fire on the stage

Listening to the Abbot and Costello Routine - "Who's on First" from 17 Apr 1945 - testing/playing with MPC and MP3 stuff and this track seemed like a good subject.

Listening to: "Clocks" by Coldplay, from "A Rush Of Blood To The Head" (2002) on foobar2000 v0.667

Definitely one of the best modern albums.

Incubus - Glass via winamp in ogg -q9

Melissa Williamson - You're not Here

From the Silen Hill 3 soundtrack (opening)

Sets the mood perfectly for the game

Shpongle - Once Upon the See of Blissful Awareness
(FLAC 1.1.0 at its --best)

Great work... It's a pity they've released only two discs (yet).

Listening to: 'Orange Peel' from 'Organ Donor' by 'Reuben Wilson' on Media Center 9.1

Master of a Hammond B3.

Rush - 2112 (full) - from 2112 (ultradiskII) - LAME a-p-i

Guster "Amsterdam" off of their new CD Keep It Together in LAME --alt-preset standard format.

That's a great song...I've been a big Rush fan for 20 years. I want to buy that album, as my only copy of that song currently is the cut version from Retrospective.

---

Right now I'm listening to...

Black Sabbath [1970 Basement Tapes]

Ozzy Osbourne ~ The Ozzman Cometh: Greatest Hits [Reissue] ~ [2002]

U2 - The Joshua Tree (Audio CD)

Kraftwerk - The Man Machine

Every Kraftwerk fan should know that Brazilian website.
I'm going to buy their new album in a few days.

Thomas Newman - The Next Place.

Ten minutes of bliss

Listening to: 'Dope Sucks' from 'Herman Brood & His Wild Romance' by 'Herman Brood & His Wild Romance' on Media Center 9.1

The Who - The Seeker; Vorbis GT3b1 -q6 using Winamp2.81c

The Mars Volta - De-loused In The Comatorium, lame 3.90.3 --alt-preset standard, ripped and encoded as a single file with EAC so I can listen to it on my portable without any annoying gaps.

Mike Oldfield - Tubular Bells (MPC)

(First-time listen... I can't exactly say I'm blown off my feet yet )

emonerd jukebox: Autechre - [Amber #06] Piezo [MPC, 185kbps, 8:00] [foobar2000 v0.7 beta 28]

Holiday

Scorpions

Deadly Sting: The Mercury Years [Disc 1]

--My Polish/German ex-girlfriend got me hooked on the Scorpions, and my affinity only intensified when I saw them in the best live performance I've seen in years...Red Rocks Amphitheatre - Lakewood, CO - Summer, 1999. We went because she *insisted*, but I never would have expected to like them so much...

Scorpions - Wind of Change
From Moment of Glory album, featuring the Berliner Philarmoniker

@ScorLibran: higly recommended

Radio Futura - A cara o cruz (live).mp3

"Es que el amor es una enfermedad/que una vez contraida no se cura/y por mas que uno quiera perdura/y se contagia con facilidad"

Translating:

"You know that love is a disease/that once you get it you can't cure/and it stays with you even if you don't want it/and it is very contagious"

Or something like that.

Best spanish (as in from Spain) band ever...

The Smashing Pumpkins - 04 - Hummer.mpc

Listening to: 'Love Is The Drug' from 'The Best Of Roxy Music' by 'Roxy Music' on Media Center 9.1


Great album cover, too. They always had good ones.

Thanks...I'll have to check out that album.

---

Right now, it's:

Long Distance Runaround , The Fish (Schindleria Praematurus)

Yes ~ Yessongs [Disc 2] ~ (1973)

...in FLAC 1.1.0, played on PhatNoise Music Manager

Yes is one of those groups I just can't get into; something about the lead vocalist's sound drives me nuts and makes me want to hurt things. Specifically, my ears and/or the stereo. It's the exact same effect I get if I try listening to Rush, which would lead one to believe it's a simple matter of vocal similarities... save that Robert Plant shares many of the obvious similarities, and I love listening to Led Zeppelin. (Half the folks who read the above paragraph are now probably shaking their heads and saying, "There's no accounting for taste.")

Right now I'm looking forward to the upcoming Jefferson Airplane reissues (August 19 - the same day four of the missing Neil Young albums are supposed to be released, barring a last-minute rescission by Neil!). The first four Airplane albums are being re-released with bonus tracks, new liner notes, etcetera, and to help myself get in the mood I hauled out my current Airplane collection and slid one of their albums randomly in to play. Turned out my fingers had selected Bless Its Pointed Little Head, the live album which immediately followed those first four, and directly preceded Volunteers.

The current song is "Plastic Fantastic Lover," which is quite a different experience from the studio version on Surrealistic Pillow. All in all I prefer the studio version, but this has still got to be one of my all-time favorite Airplane tunes... and it beats the dope-smokin' bejeezus out of "Somebody to Love." B)

- M.

I put Mike Oldfield in the same camp as Randy Newman. A lot of people say they're really great and I just don't get it.

The funny thing is that I love Mike Oldfield's sister, Sally! Her album Water Bearer is just a masterpiece, but unfortunately it's very hard to get. I just checked on amazon.com and they've got someone trying to sell a "lightly scratched" one for $75!

@M: As a matter of fact, I only developed a taste for Rush, Led Zeppelin and Yes in recent years. I used to not be fond of any of them, for the very reasons you cite...specific vocal styles, which I believe are an "acquired taste". When I learned how to play electric bass, I learned a bunch of Zeppelin songs (maybe 20 or so), John Paul Jones became my biggest musical influence, and I began wanting to just listen to Zeppelin as often as I wanted to play it.

None of them are yet my favorites, but I do like them now, Zeppelin pretty well, Rush more and more, and Yes is *gradually* growing on me. No band will ever de-throne Pink Floyd as my favorite, though.

And speaking of bassist influences, my other two main ones were Roger Waters and Geddy Lee, though the latter did some *frikkin' hard to play* stuff! I can only play three Rush songs well enough to be comfortable doing them on stage...Spirit of Radio, Tom Sawyer and Limelight. Well, I *used* to be comfortable playing them, anyway; it's been over two years since I've touched either of my basses.

Edit: Jefferson Airplane is something that I'd probably like as well. It seems my main musical tastes are going in two directions: psychadelic rock and post-punk. But I never developed a taste for Neil Young (though I bought Decade and made a concerted effort to. )

-----
And at the moment, Winamp3 is playing...

Interstellar Overdrive

Pink Floyd ~ Relics ~ (1971)

...in FLAC perfection.

Well... I hardly know any of his albums, so I can't really judge. Apart from Five Miles Out which sounded so weird and ugly it gave me nightmares (seriously!), my general impression is like "sounds OK, but nothing extra-special".


Funny you should mention that... I sold a Best Of compilation of hers which I had lying around here at eBay for 3 EUR, a few days ago.


Also funny that you guys should be talking about Rush right now... because in the batch of 6 CDs I ordered at Amazon yesterday (6.66 EUR per CD, so why not), I included Power Windows. I've read on multiple websites that it's "softer" than any other of their albums and more focussed on keyboards and sythesizers than on hard guitar riffs, and the preview clips seem to support that (it's a hell of a difference compared to Vapor Trails).

(I just *hope* that it's not one of those over-compressed, ruined remasters... does anyone know who were they done by?)

Listening to: "Honestly OK" by Dido, from "No Angel" (1999) on foobar2000 v0.7 beta 28

sublime - garden grove

EDIT: now listening to Sublime - Doin Time

I'm currently listening all Don Caballero discography. This is instrumental rock, quite furious, with an octopus behind the drums. I'm ashamed i haven't heard them sooner, because it's exactly the kind of music i like.
I'm curious if some know these guys, or know some other bands that have similarities with them.

Hmm...I'll have to give Power Windows a listen, that's one I don't have. And I usually like when bands explore "variations" in their style. I hope it's not super-compressed junk-mastering, too!

About Dido's No Angel... I really like that one myself, and I also listen to a lot of Vanessa Carlton and LeAnn Rimes, too. (LeAnn's new stuff is very different than her old stuff...she's not country anymore.) Also, if you like Dido, try Michelle Branch as well. I just bought Hotel Paper a few weeks ago, and it's a great album.

-----

At this moment, it's...

La Do Da

Journey ~ Captured ~ 1981 ~ (FLAC)

...With the what's still the BEST drum solo I've ever heard in my life...no wonder they call him "Machinegun"...how does he *do* that???

Damien Rice - Volcano - a-p-s

I'm absolutely sick of LeAnn Rimes, she's just like any other commercial pop "artist" as far as I'm concerned, and just too mainstream. Actually, given the amount of airplay her recent singles receive here, one *has* to get sick of her. (Heck, I don't even think her voice is at all good...)

I like Dido because her music is just different and better than that of most other performers in her league. "No Angel" is mostly free of songs that just annoy you after some time as is the case with albums from people like LeAnn Rimes. (That's not to say the material is of particularly high quality , but it's just pleasant to listen to. And her voice is beautiful.)

About Michelle Branch... I've actually been looking out for cheap ways *cough* to preview some of her stuff. I only know her voice from a single by Santana where she sings - I certainly like it.


Listening to: "The End Of The Innocence" by Don Henley, from "The End Of The Innocence" (1989) on foobar2000 v0.7 beta 28 (absolutely beautiful piano playing by Bruce Hornsby, an the rest of the album is pretty damn good, too)

The Ataris "Fast Times At Drop-Out High" off of their album End Is Forever (2001).

Rage Against The Machine - Renegades - 04 - Renegades Of Funk.mpc

--

1652. YUP - [Lauluja metsästä #03] Mikään ei voi mennä vikaan [3:30]

Guster "Keep It Together" off of their 2003 album Keep It Together.

Captain Beefheart - Sun Zoom Spark

.. on (finally) FB2k 0.7


mobius

The Smashing Pumpkins - 06 - Pennies.mpc

Download - The Eyes of Stanley Pain - 06 - Base Metal

Off off-topic (on to Ogg):

Interestingly enough this track encodes at a WHOPPING 372Kb/s using GT3b1 at -q6.

fugazi / blueprint

David Bowie - A Better Future - cdda

From the Heathen album

Nearly finished with Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band - Live 1975-85 (3 CDs, MPC). This collection is simply unbelievable.