OK, I haven’t listened to an “iPod,” per se, for years now, but that’s how this started back with the 2005 list, so I’m not changing it now! (Also available: 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010.)
1. “Finally Moving” – Pretty Lights
2. “Sex with an X” – The Vaselines
3. “Machine Gun Blues” – Social Distortion
4. “Waterfall” – The Fresh & Onlys
5. “Moneygrabber” – Fitz & The Tantrums
6. “Ten-Twenty-Ten” – Generationals
7. “Resolution” – Steve Wynn & The Miracle 3
8. “Be Your Bro” – Those Darlins
9. “Hard Lesson” – The Burned
10. “The Youth Die Young” – Mad Rad
11. “Girls FM” – Happy Birthday
12. “Damn These Vampires” – The Mountain Goats
13. “Forget That You’re Young” – The Ravenoettes
14. “Street Fighting Man” – The Rolling Stones
15. “How Soon is Now?” – The Smiths
16. “Ace of Spades” – Eli “Paperboy” Reed
17. “Gunfight Epiphany (Theme from Terriers)” – Robert Duncan
18. “The Coming Days” – Hello Echo
19. “It’s a Long Way to the Top” – Lucinda Williams
20. “Blackout Baby” – My Goodness
21. “California (Hustle and Flow)” – Social Distortion
22. “Over the Ocean (iTunes session)” – Best Coast
23. “48 Roses” – Mariachi El Bronx
24. “Rollerblades” – Eliza Doolittle
25. “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” – The Rolling Stones
26. “Fluorescent Adolescent” – Arctic Monkeys
27. “When I’m With You” – Best Coast
28. “Coming Down” – Dum Dum Girls
29. “Mayhem” – Imelda May
30. “Paint It Black” – The Rolling Stones
31. “Cinderella” – The Sonics
32. “Knee Deep (feat. Jimmy Buffett)” – Zac Brown Band
33. “Dream On” – Aerosmith
34. “Sun Was High (So Was I)” – Best Coast
35. “Bad Vibrations” – The Black Angels
36. “Don’t Stop the Music” – Easy Star All-Stars
37. “Sympathy for the Devil” – The Rolling Stones
38. “Marathon” – Tennis
39. “Screws Get Loose” – Those Darlins
40. “Pumped Up Kicks” – Foster the People
41. “Psycho” – Imelda May
42. “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” – Jake Shimabukuro
43. “Matador” – Maria Taylor
44. “One Day” – Sharon Van Etten
45. “My Body” – Young the Giant
46. “Don’t Sit Down ‘Cause I’ve Moved Your Chair” – Arctic Monkeys
47. “Tainted Love” – Imelda May
48. “Revolution Girls” – Mariachi El Bronx
49. “Cuddly Toy” – Roachford
50. “Midnight Rambler (Live)” – The Rolling Stones
51. “Rocket Queen (iTunes Session)” – Slash
52. “Under Cover of Darkness” – The Strokes
53. “Like the Wheel” – The Tallest Man on Earth
54. “Rumour Has It” – Adele
55. “The Beat Goes On” – Beady Eye
56. “Birth of Serpents” – The Mountain Goats
57. “I Learned the Hard Way” – Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings
58. “Fall to Pieces (iTunes Session)” – Slash
59. “Rock ‘N’ Roll is Free” – Ben Harper
60. “Summer Mood” – Best Coast
61. “Johnny Got a Boom Boom” – Imelda May
62. “Redemption Song” – Playing for Change
63. “Oh My Heart” – R.E.M.
64. “Old Number Seven” – The Devil Makes Three
65. “Ritual Union” – Little Dragon
66. “Hotel California” – The Moog Cookbook
67. “The Adventures of Rain Dance Maggie” – Red Hot Chili Peppers
68. “Play with Fire” – The Rolling Stone
69. “Back from Cali (iTunes Session)” – Slash
70. “Simple Love Song” – Anuhea
71. “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” – Bauhaus
72. “JB-Still the Man (feat. Rev. Al Sharpton)” – Bootsy Collins
73. “Bloodletting (The Vampire Song)” – Concrete Blonde
74. “Hard Times” – Gillian Welch
75. “Big Wave” – Jenny and Johnny
76. “Banana Republics (Live)” – Jimmy Buffett
77. “So Long & Thanks for All the Fish” – Jody Talbot
78. “Whole Lotta Love” – The Moog Cookbook
79. “Honky Tonk Women” – The Rolling Stone
80. “Sucker Train Blues (iTunes Session)” – Slash
81. “Red Light Love” – Those Darlins
82. “Werewolves of London” – Warren Zevon
83. “Where the Boat Leaves From” – Zac Brown Band
84. “So Long” – Zooey Deschanel & M. Ward
85. “Beggar in the Morning” – The Barr Brothers
86. “Hey Ladies” – Beastie Boys
87. “Hey Yea” – Booker T.
88. “Spectacular Girl” – The Eels
89. “Cryin’ Shame” – Ferocious Few
90. “Cowboy in the Jungle” – Jimmy Buffett
91. “Re: Your Brains” – Jonathan Coulton
92. “Easy” – Liz Phair
93. “I Would Die 4 U” – Mariachi El Bronx
94. “More than a Feeling” – The Moog Cookbook
95. “Ruby Tuesday” – The Rolling Stone
96. “Communication Breakdown (iTunes Session)” – Slash
97. “Take Your Medicine” – Cloud Cult
98. “Young Americans” – David Bowie
99. “Friend of the Devil” – The Grateful Dead
100. “I Hate People” – Jemina Pearl & Iggy Pop
The blog lives! At least, it shows life for the annual list of the top 100 songs I listened to on the iPhone the year before:
1. “Cryin’ Shame” – Ferocious Few
2. “This Year” – Mountain Goats
3. “Too Fake” – Hockey
4. “From the Devil Himself” – Viva Voce
5. “Heart of Steel” – Galactic
6. “Boyfriend” – Best Coast
7. “Seven Nation Army” – Nostalgia 77
8. “How You Like Me Now” (single edit) – The Heavy
9. “Man on Your Mind” – Albert Cummings
10. “F**k You” – Cee Lo Green
(more…)
At Liz’s request, here’s what I’m listening to and watching on my iPhone at the moment. Note that some podcasts are daily (or even more frequent), many are weekly, a few are monthly and others are just updated whenever the creator gets around to it. These can all be found via iTunes or your podcasting client of choice.
* APM: Marketplace Morning Report
* APM: The Dinner Party Download
* BlizzCast: The Official Blizzard Entertainment Podcast
* Buzz Out Loud
* Coverville: The Cover Music Podcast
* The Current Song of the Day – Minnesota Public Radio
* Grammar Girl Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing
* IndieFeed: Alternative/Modern Rock Music
* IndieFeed: Blues Music
* IndieFeed: Indie Pop Music
* KCRW’s Film Reviews
* KCRW’s Martini Shot
* KCRW’s Morning Becomes Eclectic
* KCRW’s The Business
* KCRW’s Today’s Top Tune
* KQED’s The California Report Podcast
* Loaded (HD)
* The Loh Down on Science
* The Loh Life
* Loveline
* The Moth Podcast
* The Nerdist
* NPR’s On the Media
* NPR: Hourly News Summary Podcast
* NPR: Pop Culture Podcast
* NPR: Science Friday Podcast
* NPR: Story of the Day Podcast
* NPR: World Story of the Day Podcast
* Official Disneyland Resorts Podcast
* Onion Radio News
* Our Ocean World
* OutDPS! Hunting Party Podcast
* Peter Day Music Podcast
* PRI’s The World – Geo Quiz Podcast
* PRI’s The World – Global Hit
* PRI: The Sound of Young America
* The Roadhouse
* Shark Week 2009
* Shifted Sound
* StarDate
* The Takeaway: Story of the Day
* Tap that App (HD)
* Texas Blues Cafe
* That Sound
* Tiki Bar TV
* Today in the Past
* WNYC’s Radiolab
* The 404
I’m starting to prefer short podcasts of under 10 minutes in length. I recently found myself heading out the door each morning with nine hours of podcasts to listen to in an eight-hour day, and purged a lot of them, or traded full-length shows for highlight podcasts.
Without any warning, Liz Phair released a new album over the Fourth of July weekend, “Funstyle.” The 11-track album is available online only, via her Web site, and for a mere $5.99.
“Funstyle” was apparently a shelved false start that she decided to release online while everyone waits for the “real” album to be finished.
At least half of the tracks feature her frustration at Hollywood, labels and fans who want endless regurgitations of her debut, “Exile in Guyville.”
“Funstyle” is interesting in that it highlights both how much of the last two much-despised albums were her, and not her label (a lot of the instrumentation sounds very similar), and how much they weren’t. There’s a lot of kookiness here, for instance, which hasn’t been seen in full effect since at least “whitechocolatespaceegg.” At one point, she rhymes “genius” with “penis,” for instance (but it’s an insult, and not old school dirty talk this time around).
In fact, the whole album is very much in the vein, musically, of WCSE, although the subject matter is no longer about her dissolving marriage and her relationship with her son, but rather her career. That’s always dangerous territory, creatively: The audience for discussions and complaints about the entertainment industry is relatively small, especially for an artist who made her bones speaking about broadly understandable topics.
At other times, it sounds like she went into the studio with Cornershop, given all the references to the Indian subcontinent and the dense layering of voices and instruments on some tracks. (This works for me: I love Cornershop.)
While “Funstyle” isn’t not the best album ever, it definitely feels like we’re getting to hear her, and not what some A&R guy packaged up, and that’s a real improvement.
I’ve been thinking about podcasts a lot recently.
For one thing, Peter and I are talking about bringing back the Hesperia Star podcast, which ended in 2005, before most people even knew what a podcast was.
For another, I looked at my “Top 100” smart playlist in iTunes, which tracks the 100 songs I’ve listened to the most in the current calendar year, and I noticed that, other than about 28 songs or so, I’ve rarely listened to the same song more than once this year. I realized that’s because I’m now up to more than six hours of podcasts a day on my iPod/iPhone, and some days, more than 10.
I think podcasts are great, and provide the sort of democratization of broadcast media that HTML pages first provided for print media years before. Just like anyone can now write a newsletter or newspaper (even if they’re called blogs) and have it posted online, there are much fewer barriers to entry to someone who’s always wanted to be a broadcaster.
Naturally, the best podcasts are by the pros — NPR and affiliate station KCRW pretty much school everyone in the podcasting world, and even podcasting maven Leo Laporte got his start in radio — but there are also plenty of good ones, especially music shows, created by fans-turned-podcasting pros.
But there are a lot of fan or amateur podcasts that I’d love to listen to, but can’t, because they’re so, so long. I keep running into this with World of Warcraft podcasts, but, looking through iTunes, the problem seems to transcend all genres.
Far be it from me to dampen the enthusiasm of amateur podcasters, but I’d listen to a lot more podcasts if I didn’t have to commit an hour (or even up to two hours) to listening to a rambling, unfocused podcast (sometimes with all of the technical snafus left in), instead of several tighter podcasts instead.
I intend to practice what I preach: If we do revive the Hesperia Star podcast, I’ll be pushing to make it either a 15 or 30-minute production, with dedicated amounts of time for various categories of discussion. All it will take is a stopwatch and a merciless hand on the editing controls in Garage Band.
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