100 Days That Changed Music

“Sub­tract the fol­low­ing 2,400 hours from his­to­ry and you’d have no mp3s, no LSD, no hip–hop, no soul–sucking cor­po­rate rock — actu­al­ly, can we erase that last one? Blender presents the most earth–shakingly impor­tant days in music, ever.”

Here are the top 10. Make sure you see the full list.

10.) April 26, 1977 — Stu­dio 54 opens

9.) May 6, 1965 — Kei­th Richards writes the “(I Can’t Get No) Sat­is­fac­tion” riff

8.) Decem­ber 21, 1960 — Bob Dylan leaves Min­neso­ta

7.) March 2, 1983 — MTV airs “Bil­lie Jean” video

6.) Octo­ber 25, 1997 — Dr. Dre hears Eminem freestyling on KPWR’s “Wake Up Show” in L.A.

5.) August 1, 1981 — MTV debuts

4.) March 30, 1994 — Kurt Cobain buys a Rem­ing­ton M–11 20–gauge shot­gun and a box of ammu­ni­tion

3.) June 1, 1999 — Nap­ster released

2.) August 11, 1973 — Kool DJ Herc invents hip–hop

1.) Feb­ru­ary 9, 1964 — The Bea­t­les on Ed Sul­li­van

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Your Secret iPod Shame

We talk a good deal about vir­tu­ous pod­casts here. But this episode of The Bri­an Lehrer Show (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) com­ing out of NYC, focus­es on the down­right embar­rass­ing songs that you have hid­den on your iPod. And they talk about it with Kele­fa San­neh, the pop music crit­ic from The New York Times. If you care to admit to your own songs of shame, you can use the veil of anonymi­ty and list them in the com­ments below. And don’t wor­ry, we won’t hold it against you… Have a good week­end.

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The Beatles: Podcasts From Yesterday

Pod­casts often have a nice way of bring­ing the past back to life. Bea­t­les fans will undoubt­ed­ly appre­ci­ate sev­er­al audio files ded­i­cat­ed to the Fab Four. Let’s start with a par­tic­u­lar­ly good one. Rolling Stone Mag­a­zine, as part of a web fea­ture called Lennon Lives Fore­over, has released a pod­cast (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) of Jann Wen­ner’s famous 1970 inter­view with John Lennon, which was con­duct­ed short­ly after the band’s bit­ter breakup. Run­ning over 3 hours, it is one of Lennon’s most exten­sive inter­views, and it ranges broad­ly, touch­ing not just on the breakup, but also on art and pol­i­tics, drugs, Yoko, pri­mal ther­a­py and more. Anoth­er notable pod­cast along these lines is The Lost Lennon Tapes (iTunes — Feed — Web Site). Orig­i­nal­ly pre­sent­ed by West­wood One in 1988, this pod­cast presents a col­lec­tion of Lennon’s pri­vate tapes — tapes that include ear­ly record­ings of The Bea­t­les, radio inter­views with John, demo tapes, chron­i­cles of the Dou­ble Fan­ta­sy record­ing ses­sions, and pri­vate moments at home.

Next up is some­thing for George Har­ri­son fans. This pod­cast, called George Har­ri­son Liv­ing in a Mate­r­i­al World (iTunes — Web Site) takes a look back at George Harrison’s 3rd solo album. And, among oth­er things, it includes inter­views with artists who played on the album. Liv­ing in a Mate­r­i­al World, which went to #1 on the charts in 1973 and was dig­i­tal­ly remas­tered last year, rep­re­sents, at least for some, Har­rison’s most artis­ti­cal­ly pure solo work.

Last­ly, we con­clude with a cou­ple of pod­casts that look at The Bea­t­les as the col­lec­tive Bea­t­les. Here, we give you Beat­legs Pod­cast (iTunes — Feed — Web Site), a show that always fea­tures rare inter­views or behind the scenes clips, fol­lowed by a rare out­take or live per­for­mance that few have heard before. And then there is Bea­t­les Minute (iTunes — Feed — Web Site), a pod­cast com­ing out of Philadel­phia that gives you short, dai­ly tid­bits about the band.

Bonus: you can get a few alter­na­tive takes on songs from the Help! and Abbey Road-era here. (The site pro­vides songs in mp3 for­mat.)

As a final note, all of these pod­casts are housed in our devel­op­ing Music Pod­cast Col­lec­tion. If you are not sure what a pod­cast is, check out our Pod­cast Primer. And final­ly, if you want more cul­tur­al media along these lines, be sure to Sub­scribe to Our Feed.

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Elvis Costello: The First Ten Years Podcast

A quick heads up for Elvis Costel­lo fans: In this ten-part pod­cast (iTunes — Feed — Web Site), Elvis reflects on the first 10 years of his career, tak­ing lis­ten­ers on a tour that looks back at “his child­hood, musi­cal influ­ences, singing, song­writ­ing, chang­ing his name, record­ing, Nick Lowe, the Attrac­tions, the hits, the miss­es, get­ting arrest­ed and much more.” So far, 4 of the 10 seg­ments have been released; the oth­ers will be rolled out over the remain­der of the summer.For more pod­casts along these lines, check out our Music Pod­cast Col­lec­tion as well as our Arts & Cul­ture Pod­cast Col­lec­tion.

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Watch “Live Earth” Live (Now)

Unless you’ve been liv­ing in a bunker some­where, you’ve prob­a­bly heard about Live Earth, a 24-hour, 7‑continent con­cert that’s been orga­nized to raise aware­ness about glob­al warm­ing and to inspire action on the envi­ron­men­tal front. You can watch these shows live by click­ing here. The con­certs in Asia are already under­way, and the West­ern Hemi­sphere shows will start tomor­row (Sat­ur­day). Thanks to Al Gore for pro­mot­ing this event and this impor­tant larg­er cause.

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Miles and Coltrane on YouTube: The Jazz Greats

One of our read­ers tipped us off to a cou­ple of vin­tage jazz clips on YouTube. First up is footage of Miles Davis and John Coltrane play­ing a nice ren­di­tion of “So What,” the lead­off tune from Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue (1959), an album that ranks at the very top of the jazz canon. There is a rea­son why it has five stars and 649 reviews on Ama­zon. It’s just a damn good album.

Next up, we give you Coltrane play­ing “My Favorite Things,” which was first released in 1960 on an album with the same title. This com­plex rework­ing of the song made famous by The Sound of Music came to be Coltrane’s most request­ed tune. And the video (1961) shows Trane lit­er­al­ly and fig­u­ra­tive­ly breath­ing new life into the sopra­no sax­o­phone.

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MP3 Music Blogs: For Your Listening Pleasure

Numer­ous MP3 blogs, oth­er­wise called “music blogs” or “audio blogs”, have sprout­ed up since 2003, offer­ing lis­ten­ers the chance to get exposed not only to for­got­ten music and out-of-print albums, but also to new music being put out by new bands and indie labels. Below, we have col­lect­ed some of the more well-regard­ed MP3 blogs across dif­fer­ent musi­cal gen­res. As you will note, many sites will host an MP3 for only a lim­it­ed amount of time, mak­ing it so that you can sam­ple music for free but also giv­ing you an incen­tive to pur­chase music that you like and want to own. Have a look and feel free to let us know if we’re miss­ing some good ones. Mean­while, we’ll add to this list over time. Sub­scribe to Our Feed

  • An Aquar­i­um Drunk­ard: Based in Los Ange­les, this eclec­tic audio blog “bridges the gap between con­tem­po­rary indie and vin­tage garage, psych-folk, coun­try, New Orleans funk, R&B, soul and every­thing that falls in between.”
  • Brook­lyn Veg­an: Here you get a New York City-cen­tric, most­ly-music blog that focus­es on report­ing music news, live show reviews, tour dates, and, yes, MP3’s.
  • Cacoph­o­nous: A clas­si­cal music MP3 blog.
  • Chrome­waves: Along with the rumi­na­tions of a self-con­fessed indie rock geek, you get an “MP3 of the Week” that fea­tures a ran­dom or not-so-ran­dom cov­er song.
  • Daytrot­ter: Gives you “exclu­sive, re-worked, alter­nate ver­sions of old songs and unre­leased tracks by some of your favorite bands and by a lot of your next favorite bands.”
  • Des­ti­na­tion: Out: A jazz blog focus­ing on rare or out-of-print music. Typ­i­cal­ly pub­lish­es twice a week, and leaves songs avail­able for about two weeks.
  • Dis­co­belle: A Swe­den-based music blog that posts sin­gle tracks and remix­es and occa­sion­al­ly exclu­sive mix­es from DJs all around the world.
  • Done Wait­ing: Part film, part music with MP3s.
  • Elbows: A meta col­lec­tion of great music blog posts, which col­lec­tive­ly pro­vides you a snap­shot of what’s going on in the new genre of audio/music blog­ging.
  • Fluxblog: One of the old­est and most com­mon­ly cit­ed MP3 blogs, this site posts two MP3s every week­day along with more relat­ed infor­ma­tion.
  • Goril­la vs. Bear: One of the big­gies worth check­ing out.
  • I Guess I’m Float­ing: A good music blog with a good sprin­kling of MP3s.
  • Idol­a­tor: Maybe this sum­ma­ry will help: “When the inter­net came, we over­threw the pasty white tastemak­ers, the duplic­i­tous music mar­keters and the man­u­fac­tured pop idols. And then they all came back. This is Idol­a­tor. We’re so dis­ap­point­ed.”
  • La Blo­gotheque: A well-regard­ed French lan­guage MP3 blog.
  • Large­heart­ed Boy: A “music blog fea­tur­ing dai­ly free and legal music down­loads as well as news from the worlds of music, lit­er­a­ture, and pop cul­ture.”
  • Marathon Packs: Writes about and lets you lis­ten to inter­est­ing songs, to para­phrase the sites self-descrip­tion. Keeps audio files post­ed for two weeks.
  • Moist­works: An audio blog start­ed in April 2004 (mean­ing it has a track record) that gets updat­ed Mon­day through Fri­day.
  • Motel De Moka: A dai­ly blog post­ing eclec­tic playlists, includ­ing indie rock, acoustics and ambi­ent.
  • My Old Ken­tucky Blog: What’s new and hot in indie rock, pop, folk and hip-hop.
  • Noth­ing But Green Lights: An MP3 blog that keeps track of indie, elec­tro, folk & pop, all from the UK. The site only posts tracks that the inter­net is giv­ing away for free, or ones that have been grant­ed per­mis­sion.
  • Prod­uct Shop NYC: Although not exclu­sive­ly an MP3 blog, you do get some MP3s worth your time here.
  • Said the Gramo­phone: Launched in 2003, the site is among the first MP3 blogs and it offers a dai­ly sam­pler of “real­ly good songs,” although all songs are removed with­in a week or two of post­ing. The blog comes out of Cana­da.
  • Six Eyes: An MP3 blog by Alan Williamson.
  • Skat­ter Brain: A most­ly indiepop music blog.
  • So Much Silence: MP3s a plen­ty.
  • Soul Crates: Your home for soul MP3s.
  • Stere­ogum: A pop­u­lar gos­sipy blog about the indie music scene. The site often posts MP3s of new music, plus offers record reviews, announces tour dates, and cov­ers music fes­ti­vals.
  • The Hype Machine: The Hype Machine tracks and aggre­gates a vari­ety of MP3 blogs. Anoth­er meta approach.
  • The Music Slut: A com­pre­hen­sive music blog with oodles of MP3s.
  • Trrill: Anoth­er good clas­si­cal music audio blog.
  • WFMU Beware of the Blog: An MP3 blog run by WFMU, an inde­pen­dent freeform radio sta­tion broad­cast­ing out of NYC.
  • Who Needs Radio?: We believe in music, not mon­ey. We’re here to keep your ears alive.
  • You Ain’t No Picas­so: A good music blog with a very nice blogroll and MP3s too.

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U2 Plays @ The Cannes Film Festival


The 60th Cannes Film Fes­ti­val is in full swing. It’s all film for ten plus days. But last night, music – or real­ly U2 – took cen­ter stage. Before the mid­night screen­ing of their new rock­u­men­tary, U23D, the Irish band played a two song set (Ver­ti­go and Where the Streets Have No Name) on the red car­pet. It was short and sweet. You can watch it below. Cheers.

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