Soundgarden - "Live to Rise"

Nearly three months ago, I said, "I think I'm finally ready to start posting here again too."  It was a nice thought, but I guess it just wasn't meant to be.  Oh well - I still think of this blog quite often, but the combination of good free music and time to write about it has been rather elusive.  I have a good song for you tonight, though.

Over the last couple of years, Soundgarden have been slowly but surely putting together one of the best reunions I've ever witnessed, although it probably helps that I was a massive fan of them back in the 90s when they broke up.  From a few one-off shows, to a compilation album packed with hits, rarities, and a brand new song (albeit one that was written and partially recorded nearly two decades prior to its release), to their first-ever live album, to their first tour in fourteen years, to a new album that is due to be released sometime this year, they have once again become a musical force to be reckoned with.  Today marked yet another milestone in their return: the release of their first newly written single since they began their reunion.  "Live to Rise" will be featured on the soundtrack to The Avengers and, for a limited time, can be downloaded for free from iTunes.

I hear a bit of an Audioslave sound in most of the song, but in reality I guess it's more of a Chris Cornell sound, since he wrote the song.  The guitar solo is definitely all Soundgarden, though - I've really missed Kim Thayil all these years!  The best part is that this is just a taste of what is to come - I can't wait to hear the new album!

Happy listening!

URL:

http://itunes.apple.com/ca/album/live-to-rise-single/id516435279

Blog Action Day 2010

Today is Blog Action Day, a day during which bloggers all around the world come together to write about a single important topic.  Even though I haven't been doing a whole lot of blogging lately (my reasons for which are summarized in a comment on a recent post on Feedback), I still wanted to participate in this day.  The topic for this year's Blog Action Day is water; this being a music blog, it made sense to have some music about water.

A few months ago, I came across a live version of Pearl Jam's "Amongst the Waves", which was originally released on last year's Backspacer.  That album has actually turned out to be one of my favourite Pearl Jam albums yet, and "Amongst the Waves" is one of my favourite songs on the album; the big, anthemic chorus is something that Pearl Jam really excels at, and I love the upbeat nature of this song.  While the song itself isn't actually about water, I'm going to say that it's close enough for my purposes right now.  I'll get back to more regular blogging someday soon, I'm sure; in the meantime, enjoy the song and feel free to check out some more of the Blog Action Day action - there are quite a few music blogs involved, if you're looking for a place to start.

You'll need to subscribe to Pearl Jam's mailing list to access the download.  If you're cool with that, the download link should arrive in your inbox shortly.  Happy listening!

URLs:

http://blogactionday.change.org

http://www.pearljam.com/widgets/atw/index.php

How to Destroy Angels (EP)

In case you missed the brief update I tried to slip into my last post about How to Destroy Angels, their eponymous EP can now be downloaded for free (at the time of that post I didn't know how they would be distributing the EP; the information was only made public the day later).  All you need to do is head to their online store and enter your email address, and the download link will be sent to you.

The basic sound of the EP is Nine Inch Nails with female vocals.  I like it a lot - as any regular reader of this blog knows, I am a huge NIN fan, and hearing so many trademark NIN sounds (like syncopated drum beats, distorted synthesizers, and beautiful piano melodies) with Mariqueen's often hushed and fragile vocals is a nice change of pace.  Trent Reznor has stated that the band's next release will sound "more focused", so perhaps the EP may be best considered as a demo of sorts. but it's a good one.

The 6 songs are encoded as 320 kbps MP3s, and the zip file containing them weighs in at about 62.3 MB.  Happy listening!

URL:

http://www.howtodestroyangels.com/store/

How To Destroy Angels

Trent Reznor has formed a new band called How to Destroy Angels that also features his wife Mariqueen Maandig and frequent Nine Inch Nails collaborator Atticus Ross.  The band's self-titled debut EP is due to be released in July, but you can get a sneak preview of the album via a series of short video clips (as well as a full-length video for "The Space in Between" - if you do decide to check the video out, just be aware that it is rather gory and not at all for the faint of heart) on their website.  At this point I don't know whether or not the EP will be available for free: Reznor has been very generous with his recent releases, so it wouldn't surprise me to see a free release; on the other hand, the first single, "A Drowning", is currently only available for purchase, so the EP may very well follow suit.  [Update 2010-05-27: Looks like I spoke too soon - the band themselves have confirmed that the EP will be available for free download on June 1; you can pre-order the free download - i.e. sign up to receive an email when it is ready to download - from their store and also download "The Believers" right away.  Nice!]

However, multi-tracks for both "The Space in Between" and "A Drowning" have been made available on the Nine Inch Nails remix site, so with a small amount of effort you can actually make your own versions of the two songs.  The multi-tracks can only be downloaded using BitTorrent; if you are unfamiliar with torrents, a wealth of information about them can be found right here.  In order to do anything truly useful with the multi-tracks, you will also need an application like Audacity to edit them.

What you do with the files is really up to you - I like to play around with multi-tracks and create my own remixes when I have time for it (shameless plug: if you search for "durga2112" on the remix site, you can listen to a few Nine Inch Nails remixes that I made a couple of years ago), but so far I've only just listened to both of these songs as they are.  "A Drowning" has, for the most part, a very mellow, almost chilled out, sound; musically, there's a bit of The Fragile and Ghosts in there, but Mariqueen's dreamy vocals take the song into another plane altogether.  "The Space in Between" is much darker, but it still has the general feel of a slow Nine Inch Nails song with female vocals.  Overall, I think both songs are excellent, and I'm quite excited about hearing the full EP when it comes out - whether or not it's free, I'll be picking it up for sure.

I hope you enjoy these multi-tracks, and if you decide to do something creative with them, please leave a comment here to let me know where I can check it out.  Happy listening!

URLs:

http://www.howtodestroyangels.com/home.html

http://remix.nin.com

http://btfaq.com/serve/cache/1.html

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

Bad Religion - 30 Years Live

This will probably be one of my shortest posts ever, as I am simply too unfamiliar with the music to properly comment on it, but at the same time, I realize that it's a big enough deal to be worthy of a post.  Bad Religion have released a free live album in celebration of thirty years together.  The album is called 30 Years Live, and you can download it by signing up for their mailing list.  Once you get your email, it will have a code that you can use on the Bandcamp website to download the album in the format of your choice - the default is MP3 320k, but you can choose lots of others, even FLAC if you want to be able to burn your own copy in CD quality.

My brother Mike (who wrote a post on this blog about Metallica a couple of years ago) is a pretty big fan of Bad Religion, so he's much more qualified to talk about them than I am.  He says that the album has "one heck of a setlist," and that the first and last songs, which are from their debut album, "sound light years better here!"  Also, if you visit the band's page on the Epitaph site, "you can click on the album covers on the bottom of the screen and download 1 or 2 songs from almost every single one of their releases. and that includes a few of their best songs, i.e. 'sorrow' from The Process of Belief. altogether you can download enough for a really nice little unofficial greatest hits record."

Okay, so this wasn't as short as I'd thought it would be, but that's mainly thanks to Mike.  I hope you enjoy the album, and also the free MP3s from the record label's site if you decide to check then out.  Happy listening!

URLs:

http://www.badreligion.com/mailinglist.html

http://www.epitaph.com/artists/artist/5/Bad_Religion

Brian Ray - Mondo Magneto

Brian Ray, who is perhaps best known as Paul McCartney's guitarist, has made his debut solo album, Mondo Magneto, available for free this week.  To get it, all you need to do is go to his Facebook page and follow the instructions (namely, click the "Like" button near the top of the page, which should cause the download link to appear) - just make sure that you do it before Sunday, May 16.

Having never heard of Brian Ray before I read about this offer on Twitter, I didn't really know what to expect from this album.  I ended up listening to the whole thing three times in a row last night before I decided I needed to get some sleep, and it was the first thing I listened to today; needless to say, I think it's a pretty cool album.  The first song, "Good for Nothing", has a cool guitar riff that bends and twists all over the place; I actually get a bit of Tom Petty vibe from the verses, before the hard rocking chorus kicks in.  The lyrics to "Vinyl" make some very creative use of album and artist names to weave a story about LPs that were stolen from the trunk of the narrator's car.  "Soft Machine" is a slow rocker with a bit of a Led Zeppelin feel and some great guest vocals by Etta James.   "All I Know" is a beautiful little ballad with some nice backup vocals.  "If You're Leaving Me" is another ballad, mainly acoustic with a nice string arrangement.

The guitar playing on the entire album is excellent; Ray has a great sense of when to lay low and let the vocals and other instruments do the talking, and when to cut loose with a big, meaty riff or some tasteful slide playing.  Remember, Mondo Magneto is only available for free until Sunday, May 16, so if it sounds like something that would interest you at all, go and download it immediately.  Happy listening!

URL:

http://www.facebook.com/brianrayguitar

Song Spotlight: Trans-Siberian Orchestra - "Believe"

I was a little surprised (but pleasantly so) to see that Trans-Siberian Orchestra have offered another song from their latest album, Night Castle, as a free download; you might recall that they previously offered "Child of the Night" as a time-limited free download.  "Believe" is the latest song to be offered, and what's interesting is that it is actually being made available for a video contest; you can download both the album version and a "radio" version to use as the soundtrack for a video of "something/anything you believe in."  I'm not particularly skilled in video creation, so I doubt I'll even attempt to enter a contest like this; however, for those who are so inclined, it looks like the prize is quite nice, so it might be worth your time.

"Believe" was originally released by Savatage on their 1991 album, Streets: A Rock Opera.  Even though this is technically a cover version, Trans-Siberian Orchestra actually evolved from Savatage, so this song is much more representative of their sound than "Child of the Night" is.  It opens quietly with piano and vocals, which are later joined by drums and distorted guitars; it is a power ballad through and through.  I really like the way the vocals are delivered in this song, and there is a beautiful guitar solo near the end of the album version (the radio version basically strips out all the instrumental sections).

Both songs are available as high quality (320 kbps) MP3s.  If anyone decides to make a video to go along with either version, please post a link to it here - I would love to take a look at anything that my readers create.  Happy listening! 

URL:

http://feature.atlrec.com/contests/tso/believe/

Song Spotlight: Smashing Pumpkins - "Widow Wake My Mind"

Hmm, nice.  Looks like the widget that the Smashing Pumpkins have created for Teargarden by Kaleidyscope (which I added to my post about "Song for a Son" last month) automatically updates when new songs become available. Which is kind of a roundabout way of saying that the album's second song, "Widow Wake My Mind", was released on Monday and can be downloaded directly from the band's official website.  I really like the odd-time guitar riff that opens the song, as well as the different keyboard textures that underscore much of the song.

At the current rate of one song every 41 days, the entire 44 track album should be complete by sometime in October, 2014.  I'm sure that will change as more songs become available, but it's still fun to think about what a huge undertaking this album is.  Happy listening!

URL:

 http://www.smashingpumpkins.com/

Song Spotlight: Smashing Pumpkins - "A Song for a Son"

Teargarden by Kaleidyscope, the ambitious new Smashing Pumpkins album, has had the first of its 44 songs released.  As of December 8, 2009, "A Song for a Son" can be downloaded for free from the band's website.  I've been trying to figure out the best way of covering this album here; for example, do I post an album spotlight of the entire thing, 44 individual song spotlights, or something in between?  Since a lot depends on how the band itself decides to release the album, I'll just post about this song for now and figure out the rest of the details when I know more.  Given the amount of people who come to this blog looking for free Smashing Pumpkins music (my post about Machina II is the most popular single post on this site by a very wide margin), I think that's the best thing to do.

I really like "A Song for a Son".  Billy Corgan has stated that it has "the right epic quality to it that says, ‘OK, here we go on this massive journey!’"  I have to agree.  The song starts quietly, with piano, acoustic guitar, and what sounds like a Mellotron providing the backdrop for Corgan's vocals.  Later on, it moves into more progressive territory with layers of harmonized guitars.  If this is even a taste of what is to come, then the rest of the album is definitely something to look forward to.

You can download the song from the band's website.  They're using a widget that I will try to embed at the end of this post.  If you don't see anything there, then I guess it didn't work.  If you do see something there, please let me know what you think of it, as I generally like to keep my posts pretty plain, but if people find it useful (i.e. it makes it easier to download the music), perhaps I'll try things like that more often in the future.  Happy listening!

URL:

http://www.smashingpumpkins.com/

Song Spotlight: Moonalice - "Down The Road A Piece"

Well, that was fast.  The second song from Moonalice's second studio album, "Down The Road A Piece", has been released.  Once again, it can be downloaded directly from the band's website in MP3 and FLAC formats.  The title of the album now seems to be Online Only. Only For Free., at least according to the tags in the MP3 file.

 

The song itself is a very cool blues-based boogie tune that features some awesome solos from the piano and guitar.  I hope you've been enjoying this album as much as I have so far, and I'll be back whenever the next song is released.  Happy listening!

 

URL:

http://www.moonalice.com/music/ 

Song Spotlight: Moonalice - "It's 4:20 Somewhere"

Back in September, when the Smashing Pumpkins announced that their next album would be released for free over the Internet, one track at a time, they received quite a bit of press about it (as well as a big increase in the number of visitors to this blog searching for a "free Smashing Pumpkins album"), and deservedly so - it's definitely a different way of releasing music, and it's nice to see major artists trying things like this.  However, it appears that Moonalice have beaten them to the punch, having recently announced the release of their second album, Free, one song at a time over the Internet.  The first of those songs, "It's 4:20 Somewhere", was just released last weekend, and can be downloaded directly from their website in 128k MP3 and FLAC formats.

 

I first wrote about Moonalice back in June.  Since that time, I have continued to follow them on Twitter and Facebook and have just been fascinated by them; last week, they stated that they "got rid of our manager, publicist, and label in favor of Facebook, Twitter, and [their] website" as an experiment in social media.  I don't think too many major artists would be willing to do something like that, so I support their initiative in as many ways as I can.  Of course, it helps a lot that their music rocks, as all the social media experiments in the world wouldn't be able to help them otherwise.  "It's 4:20 Somewhere" is no exception - it's a great mid-tempo rocker with a laid back feel, excellent guitar playing, and gorgeous backing vocals.  It's a great way to kick off their latest experiment, and I can't wait to hear where they go from here.

 

I hope you enjoy this song; if you do, please stay tuned for more new songs from Moonalice.  I'll most likely be posting about each track as it is made available, although future posts will probably be shorter than this one.  Happy listening!

 

URLs:

http://www.moonalice.com/music/ (for the song, plus lots of other free music)

http://totallyfreemusic.blogspot.com/2009/06/artist-spotlight-moonalice.html

http://www.facebook.com/moonalice?ref=ts

http://twitter.com/Moonalice/

http://www.moonalice.com

Song Spotlight: Megadeth - "1,320'"

If you missed out on the free download of Megadeth's "Head Crusher", which was only offered for one day in July, this one is especially for you.  "1,320'", another song from their latest album, Endgame, can currently be downloaded for free from their page at Roadrunner Records.  Like the former song, this one is another dose of old school thrash metal that fans of their older albums will feel right at home with.  The song starts off with the sound of a race car revving its engine, followed by an insane sounding guitar riff that would fit right in on Killing Is My Business... And Business Is Good!, the band's 1985 debut album.  The final minute and a half of the song consists of Dave Mustaine and new guitarist Chris Broderick trading blistering guitar solos with each other, much in the same way as Mustaine and Marty Friedman did on "Hangar 18" from 1990's Rust in Peace.

I'd also like to take a moment to discuss the value of free music here.  Before I downloaded "Head Crusher" in July, the last Megadeth album I had purchased was 2001's The World Needs a Hero.  I could not bring myself to get excited about their next two albums, 2004's The System Has Failed and 2007's United Abominations.  I think the main reason for this was the fact that I didn't really know who the band was anymore - my favourite albums all come from the 90s when they had their most stable lineup with Marty Friedman on guitar, Nick Menza on drums, and co-founder David Ellefson on bass.  One by one, all of those guys departed the band for their own reasons, leaving me doubtful that Mustaine could ever come close to what he produced with that lineup.

All it took was a single listen to "Head Crusher" to make me realize how foolish I was to think any such thing.  In my post about that song, I said that it sounded "pretty good" and that I was considering checking out Endgame once it was released.  Well, I did just that yesterday, and it has been in fairly constant rotation ever since.  I'm very glad to have found my way back to a band I once proudly considered one of my favourites, and to discover that they are still producing excellent music, no matter who may be in the band.  I think it's even more awesome that it was a free download of a single song that led to the band regaining a lost fan - had I not been able to hear "Head Crusher" for myself, I probably would have carried on without even acknowledging the release of Endgame.  Instead, it is now a serious contender for my favourite album of the year.

So to summarize: free music is awesome and bands stand to gain a whole lot by releasing even a little of their music for free.  If you haven't heard any Megadeth before, or if you like their old music but not their newer stuff for whatever reason, you could do a lot worse than to check out "1,320'".  It's a 3.54 MB MP3 file, and no registration, email address, or anything else is needed to download it - just click the DOWNLOAD TRACK button, and get ready to enjoy.  Happy listening!

URLs:

http://totallyfreemusic.blogspot.com/2009/07/song-spotlight-megadeth-head-crusher.html

http://www.roadrunnerrecords.com/artists/Megadeth/ (go here for the "1,320'" download)

Artist Spotlight: TRV$DJAM

Back in June, I posted about TRV$DJAM's then-new album, FIX YOUR FACE VOL. 2 - COACHELLA '09.  This album blew me away when I first heard it, and when I discovered that the first volume of Fix Your Face could also be obtained for free, I decided that I should learn more about the innovative duo of DJ AM and drummer Travis Barker, with the intention of giving them a more comprehensive writeup sometime soon.  This past week brought us the sad news that DJ AM has passed away, so I think this would be a good time for a post in memory of DJ AM and in celebration of the incredible music that TRV$DJAM produced.

 

I've been trying to come up with some words to describe their music, but I have been failing miserably.  Instead, I think it is better to just point you to their download page, where you can download the two Fix Your Face mixtapes.  Ideally, you should make sure that you have enough time to listen to each one in its entirety (about 43 minutes for the first one, and about 50 minutes for the second one), and just let it play.  If you're like me, there will be a lot of songs on both volumes that you're familiar with, and perhaps quite a few that you're not so familiar with.  But the way that they blend seamlessly into (and sometimes over) one another will likely be something that you haven't heard before.  To take so many songs from such a wide variety of genres and eras and make them work so well together is a work of genius, and anyone who considers themselves a lover of music should definitely give these mixtapes a listen.

 

RIP, DJ AM.  Thank you for the excellent music for which you will always be remembered.

 

URL:

http://totallyfreemusic.blogspot.com/2009/06/album-spotlight-trvdjam-fix-your-face.html

http://www.trvsdjam.com/downloadpage/download_box.html

Song Spotlight: Metallica - "My Apocalypse Intro"

Metallica have just released a newly-recorded intro to "My Apocalypse", the closing song from last year's Death Magnetic album.  That song, in case you haven't heard it, is the most furious burst of straight ahead thrash metal Metallica have done since 1988's ...And Justice for All (and, I have just learned, the winner of the 2009 Best Metal Performance Grammy award).  According to the band's MySpace page, they have really been enjoying playing the song on tour, but they just "felt like it could use something extra", so James Hetfield wrote a new intro for the song which can be downloaded for free from LiveMetallica.com.

The new intro stands in stark contrast to the rest of the song; instead of being a relentless sonic assault, this is all about building mood.  The first 12 seconds of the roughly one-minute intro consist of nothing but a tolling bell, a gentle rainfall, and a crashing thunderbolt.  The bell and the rainfall continue to sound for the rest of the intro, while a simple melody is repeated on a keyboard (or a processed guitar - it's hard to tell) over a subdued but steady drum beat.  The final note of the melody is accompanied by another crash of thunder, and the drums continue for another few seconds.  It would have been awesome if they'd just released a recording of the full song including this intro, but this is still quite cool - it adds an epic feel to the song, and I'm really looking forward to hearing the full thing someday (hopefully a full recording of the current tour will surface on the site after the tour is finished.)

If one minute of free Metallica music isn't quite enough for you, be sure to check out the rest of the free recordings on that site in The Vault.  There are now more than 20 full concerts available; my brother wrote a guest post about some of his favourites last year if you need help finding a place to start.  Happy listening!

URLs:
http://www.myspace.com/metallica
http://www.livemetallica.com/live-music/0,321/Metallica-mp3-flac-download-7-21-2009-Free-MP3-Download--My-Apocalypse-Intro-Copenhagen-DEN.html
http://totallyfreemusic.blogspot.com/2008/05/guest-post-artist-spotlight-metallica.html

Song Spotlight: Pearl Jam - "Speed of Sound"

Note: As of November 2009, this contest has ended, and I can no longer find a link to the "Speed of Sound" demo.


If you're a Pearl Jam fan, you probably already know that they have a new album coming out in September called Backspacer.  "The Fixer", the catchy first single from the album, is in heavy rotation on rock radio, and various other songs from the album have been played live by the band and by Eddie Vedder in his solo shows.  I have to admit I was a little disappointed when "The Fixer" was not made available for download (although you can still stream it from Pearl Jam's official website, and probably a few other places); I guess I was spoiled when they made "Worldwide Suicide", the first single from their last album, available for free.

Today, though, I found out (via Twitter) about a cool new game on the Pearl Jam website.  If you head to this page, you will be presented with a 3x3 grid of numbered tiles along with the following instructions:

"Find 9 images from Backspacer that have been placed all around the web. Once you find an image, click it and it will be added to the grid on the left.

Find & click all 9 Backspacer images and get a free download!"

Now, when they say "all around the web", they mean it.  To be honest, I don't know how anyone could possibly track down all of the images on their own; fortunately, with the Internet being what it is, there are already a few complete lists of the necessary websites floating around, so if you don't feel like doing all the work yourself, I will include my own list in this post.

First, though, let's talk a bit about the free download that they promise.  "Speed of Sound" is a song that will be included on Backspacer; however, the version available for download here is a solo demo version by Eddie Vedder.  The song is very much in line with Vedder's work on the Into the Wild soundtrack from a couple of years ago (actually, it would fit very well on that album).  Most of the song is just Vedder and an acoustic guitar, but there are some beautiful vocal harmonies and some sparse electric guitar lines that really add to the melancholic feel of the song.  I quite like the song so far, and I am very curious as to how it will sound on the album; whatever the rest of the band decides to do with it, it could well end up being one of the highlights of the album.

Now, onto the list.  Out of fairness to those who would like to try and play the game by themselves (and I sincerely wish you the best of luck if you choose to do this - the promise of a free Pearl Jam download was simply too overwhelming for me, causing me to look for all the hints I could find), I've decided to use bit.ly to shorten the URLs.  This way, those who are impatient (like me) can simply click on any or all of the links to go exactly where they need to go, while the game will not be spoiled for those who wish to play fairly.  Without further ado...

1. http://bit.ly/ngwRE
2. http://bit.ly/pR7aV
3. http://bit.ly/X59oo
4. http://bit.ly/gLXqi
5. http://bit.ly/10JVy6
6. http://bit.ly/KdC7l
7. http://bit.ly/HnxgZ
8. http://bit.ly/ZhVrN
9. http://bit.ly/DfQAa
   

Clicking on any of these links should take you to a page that contains one piece of the Backspacer artwork (if it doesn't, please let me know right away and I will do my best to fix it).  Clicking on the image will take you back to the Backspacer page on the band's website, this time with that piece of the puzzle filled in.  Once all 9 pieces are in place, the download link for "Speed of Sound" will appear.  However you decide to play the game, I hope you enjoy the song once you hear it.  Happy listening!

URLs:

http://www.pearljam.com/

http://www.pearljam.com/backspacer/art

Artist Spotlight: Jonathan Coulton

Today I'd like to feature an artist that I've known about for quite some time - in fact, I featured him on my Free Christmas Music blog way back in November 2007, and he was a small part of my massive Halloween Treat Bag post last October.  Somehow I manage to keep rediscovering him every year or so, and I think it's about time he's had a proper artist spotlight here.

 

Until recently, my source for free Jonathan Coulton music has always been his MP3 store, in which nearly three dozen songs can be downloaded for free (they are conveniently marked with a little smiley face icon in the "Free" column; clicking on the smiley face for a song brings up a page of information about that song, including a link to an MP3).  This in itself is a pretty incredible collection of free music, and even if you venture no further into Coulton's website, you will still come away with some excellent music.  However, I have recently become aware of the fact that even more of his music can be found for free on his site if you're willing to do some digging around.

 

When I began listening to Coulton's non-Christmas music last year, someone recommended the song "Re Your Brains" to me.  That song, unfortunately, has no smiley face icon in the MP3 store, so I actually ventured over to YouTube (something I rarely do, as online video is not something I typically enjoy) and found a pretty funny video that set the song to images from World of Warcraft.  When Lifehacker posted their interview with Jonathan Coulton, I was surprised that the link to "Re Your Brains" was not to a video (like the link to the Portal theme song was), but rather to a blog post on Coulton's website.  Following that link, I was delighted to find, at the end of the post, a link to the "Re Your Brains" MP3.  A few more links led me to a very impressive source of free music: the Thing a Week podcast.  This was an extremely ambitious project in which Jonathan aimed to record and release one new song every week for a year, from September 2005 to September 2006.  A look at the podcast's page reveals the results of that experiment: 52 blog posts, one for each week of that year, each containing a link to an MP3 download of that week's song.

 

If you've looked at his MP3 store, then you're likely already familiar with a lot of these songs, as most of the free songs there (the ones with smiley faces) are from the Thing a Week project, which is split into four volumes in the MP3 store.  Still, the remaining Thing a Week songs nearly double the amount of free music available from Coulton, and there are some real gems in there.  "Re Your Brains", sung from the point of view of an annoying former co-worker turned zombie, is certainly among the best, especially when the whole gang of zombies joins in for the super catchy chorus.  His cover of Sir Mix-a-Lot's "Baby Got Back" is something that simply has to be heard to be believed.  There are a few more covers in the project, with my favourite being Queen's "We Will Rock You/We Are the Champions", which was the final song of the project and contains some excellent vocal harmonies.  Another favourite of mine is "I'm Your Moon", an original song about Pluto which is sung from the point of view of its moon, Charon; unusual points of view like this pop up in quite a few of Coulton's songs.  With 52 songs to pick from, I'm sure that just about anyone will be able to find something to enjoy.

 

One more place where I've found some free Jonathan Coulton music is, surprisingly, the Popular Science website.  In 2005, they did a special issue called "Future of the Body", for which Coulton provided a soundtrack EP entitled Our Bodies, Ourselves, Our Cybernetic Arms.  This 5 song EP can be downloaded in its entirety right here, and it is well worth checking out, as there are some real gems on it.  It's gotten a lot of play since I discovered it a couple of weeks ago, and "I Feel Fantastic" has been stuck in my head for quite a while now.  Check it out, along with whatever else looks interesting to you, and happy listening!

 

URLs:

http://freechristmasmusic.blogspot.com/2007/11/artist-spotlight-jonathan-coulton.html

http://totallyfreemusic.blogspot.com/2008/10/halloween-treat-bag.html

http://www.jonathancoulton.com/store/downloads/

http://lifehacker.com/5294280/jonathan-coulton-on-making-songs-and-geeking-out

http://www.jonathancoulton.com/2006/03/24/thing-a-week-26-re-your-brains/

http://feeds.feedburner.com/thingaweek

http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2005-08/future-body-soundtrack

Song Spotlight: Janet LaValley - "Unwind"

If you enjoyed listening to Tribe or Janet LaValley's solo song "It's All Right With Me", then you may be interested to know that another LaValley solo MP3 has been made available by Janet herself.  "Unwind" is another song from her still unreleased album Extraordinary Popular Delusions (and the Madness of Crowds), and the 2.65 MB MP3 can be downloaded directly from her website.

 

"Unwind" is another hard rocking song.  The distorted vocals add a touch of aggression to the song, but it's still catchy enough to sing along with (the lyrics are even conveniently embedded in the MP3's tags).  I hope "Unchained" and "It's All Right With Me" are just teasers for what will eventually be a full release of the album in some format, because it sounds like it has the potential to be something really cool.

 

Tribe fans will likely appreciate this song the most, but anyone who loves hard rock (especially of the female-fronted variety) would do very well to check it out.  Happy listening!

 

URLs:

http://totallyfreemusic.blogspot.com/2008/04/artist-spotlight-tribe.html

http://totallyfreemusic.blogspot.com/2009/05/song-spotlight-janet-lavalley-its-all.html

http://www.janetlavalley.com/

Artist Spotlight: Justin Townes Earle

I have been a huge fan of Steve Earle for many years now. I am currently enjoying listening to his recently released album Townes, which is a tribute to Earle's friend and mentor, Townes Van Zandt. This album is not the only thing Earle has named after the late singer-songwriter - his first son, Justin Townes Earle, also bears that name. It is perhaps not too surprising that Justin has chosen to pursue a career in music. When he was a teenager, he made a guest appearance on his father's album El Corazón, playing guitar the rocker "Here I Am". He also appears on Townes, this time singing a duet with his father on "Mr. Mudd & Mr. Gold".

I initially found it rather amusing that Justin appeared on the album "courtesy of Bloodshot Records", but after thinking about it a bit, I think it's great that he is forging his own musical path, rather than just riding on his father's coattails. Justin has released three albums of his own in the last few years, and last.fm is currently hosting two free MP3s from the second album, The Good Life. The first one, "Hard Livin'", is a fun country romp, while the second one, "Who Am I to Say", is a beautiful ballad. His Wikipedia page mentions that he has played at South By Southwest for the last 2 years, and a quick trip to the SXSW website yielded a third free MP3: "Midnight at the Movies", the title track from his latest album, which is another beautiful, laid-back country ballad.

Justin has also recently given permission for recordings of his concerts to be distributed via the Live Music Archive. At the time of this writing, there are 21 complete concerts available for download in multiple formats, including MP3, OGG, and FLAC. The sound quality of these recordings is not always perfect, but if you are a fan of live recordings, they are well worth checking out. Right now I am listening to the 2008-12-24 show from The Cactus Cafe in Austin, TX, and it sounds great - the recording is very clear, and the performances are excellent.

For someone who bears the names of not one, but two musical legends, Justin Townes Earle has a lot to live up to; from what I have heard so far, he is doing very well for himself indeed and has a very bright future ahead of him. I'm really looking forward to hearing more from him, and I hope you enjoy this music too. Happy listening!

URLs:
http://www.last.fm/music/Justin+Townes+Earle/_/Hard+Livin
http://www.last.fm/music/Justin+Townes+Earle/_/Who+Am+I+To+Say
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justin_Townes_Earle
http://2009.sxsw.com/music/shows/schedule/?a=show&s=88839
http://www.archive.org/details/JustinTownesEarle

Album Spotlight: TRV$DJAM - Fix Your Face Vol. 2 - Coachella '09

NOTE: Twitter is no longer required to download this album for free.

I have to admit, I'm really surprised at what a great source of free music Twitter has become for me. A recent article on Mashable (which I follow on Twitter, naturally) described a free mixtape from the duo of Travis Barker and DJ-AM (collectively known as TRV$DJAM), which currently can only be obtained by sending out a tweet with a link to the download page. I guess I must be getting old or something, because I had never heard of these guys before now, and to me a "mixtape" is an actual cassette tape - hardly something that can be shared over the Internet. Still, one tweet is nothing for some free music, so I happily authorized the site to send out a tweet from me and proceeded to download the 70.9 MB zip file.

I'm glad I did. Fix Your Face Vol. 2: Coachella '09 is quite unlike anything I've ever heard before. The album starts off with the opening notes of Guns N' Roses' "Welcome to the Jungle", which is then given a dance beat before segueing into The Beatles' "Eleanor Rigby", which is backed up by a grooving drumbeat. All of this happens in the first 90 seconds of the first track, at which point I began to understand what the term "mixtape" means in this context - basically, the 50-minute album is a continuous mix of songs spanning multiple genres and eras. I listened to it while I was putting out my garbage last night, and on many occasions I had to stop and marvel at what these guys have done. Anyone can make a mixtape with songs like The Mamas and The Papas' "California Dreamin'", The Who's "Baba O'Riley", and Metallica's "Enter Sandman"; to do it so seamlessly, with songs flowing into, out of, and over one another makes this a true work of art that anyone who considers themselves a lover of music should hear.

The extremely wide range of music featured on this mixtape means that anyone who listens to it is sure to come out of it with their own list of highlights. There are songs on here that I love, some I've hated, and some I'd never heard before, but I love the way that they all work together. If there are any moments that stand out to you as being particularly noteworthy, please leave a comment so we can all check it out. Happy listening!

URLs:
http://mashable.com/2009/06/01/twitter-marketing-music
http://twitter.trvsdjam.com/

Artist Spotlight: Moonalice

I was drawn to today's featured artist in a rather unconventional fashion. Shortly before I started using Twitter, I read an article about a band that "Twittercasted" one of their concerts - in other words, they recorded their concert, and after each song was finished, the audio was encoded into an MP3 and uploaded to the Internet, at which time a link was posted on the band's Twitter feed. A pretty neat idea, I thought, but since I had no idea who this band was and I wasn't on Twitter at the time, I didn't think too much more of it at the time. A few weeks later I did join Twitter, though, so I decided that I should look this band up to see what they were all about.

After a bit of searching (in particular, I needed to come up with the word "Twittercast", after which the search was fairly trivial), I found that the band was called Moonalice. I began following their Twitter feed, and I also checked out their website to learn more about them. I immediately recognized one of the members of the band as G.E. Smith, who, among other things, is the former musical director of Saturday Night Live; I used to love the brief snippets of his playing that would be shown before and after the commercials on that show, so that gave me a really good feeling about Moonalice. My next stop was their music page, which lists an astounding amount of studio and live tracks to download, along with the following, extremely cool message:

The music you download from this page is free for your listening pleasure. If you like our music, pay it forward to your friends. Turn them on. It's about the music. If you feel so inclined, let us know who you are.

There are 4 studio tracks available for download. My favourites of these are "Blink of an Eye", which, with its laid back sound and female lead vocal, brings Fleetwood Mac to mind; and their cover of Steve Earle's "I Ain't Ever Satisfied", which is given a wonderful treatment - I love the way the song mellows out in the third verse and then slowly builds back up into the chorus. All 4 of these tracks are available as both 128k MP3 and lossless FLAC files. If you check out the band's iLike page (also available here for Facebook users), you can find a fifth track entitled "Listen to Those Eyes", which is a cool little rocker.

As cool as those studio tracks are, the live tracks are where things really get interesting. At the time of this writing, there are 17 complete concerts available for download, including the first 2 Twittercasts (called "Tweetcasts" here). Some of the concerts are very lengthy - I downloaded one that is more than 3 hours long - and contain a nice mix of original Moonalice songs and cover songs. Some of the covers I've heard are the Rolling Stones' "Jumpin' Jack Flash", Procol Harum's "A Whiter Shade of Pale", the blues standard "Eyesight to the Blind", Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone", and the classic truck drivers' anthem "Six Days on the Road". The diversity in their selection of cover songs should give you a hint as to how diverse their own music can be. Another thing that is not apparent just from looking at the track lists of the concerts is that these guys like to jam - a LOT - with song lengths regularly approaching 10, 15, and even 20 minutes. One of the highlights of a few of the concerts I've listened to is "Tell Me It's Okay", which repeatedly builds up and drops back down, and features some beautiful guitar solos from Smith.

If you still ain't satisfied and want even more free Moonalice music, you would do well to check out their Twitter feed, where they are still doing Twittercasts. I have yet to catch a live Twittercast, but I have been able to llisten to a few "Zombie Twittercasts", in which they take a show from their archives and upload the MP3s via Twitter beginning at 4:20 in a selected time zone (some past start times have been on Greenwich Mean Time and Newfoundland time - the latter being based on a suggestion of my own), usually on Fridays. However you decide to check Moonalice out, I hope you enjoy their music. I also hope that Moonalice continue to be as cool, genuine, and accessible as they are now. Happy listening!

URLs:
http://twitter.com/Moonalice
http://moonaliceband.com/
http://moonaliceband.com/music/
http://ilike.com/artist/Moonalice
http://apps.facebook.com/ilike/artist/Moonalice?_fb_q=1