Grooveshark is an online music service that allows you to sample different music for free (or pay a small fee for the ad-free version).   Fresh from a legal settlement, Grooveshark’s audience is growing daily.  The LA Times points out that Grooveshark is about enabling people to sample and discover new music artists, giving folks the ability to share their discoveries with friends.

With an easy-to-use interface, a very good search engine, and a great recommendation system, Grooveshark has the potential to keep you exploring music on your computer way too long.

According to Wikipedia, Grooveshark doesn’t have any Beatles music.  But it does have quite an extensive catalog.  Also, it has more than just music.  I just finished listening to Bill Cosby’s Revenge.  I hadn’t heard that since I was a little girl.   It was just as funny all these (many) years later!

He armado una lista de reproducción en Grooveshark colocando las canciones de la banda sonora de Scrubs (ficha en IMDB), esta serie que me ha gustado mucho.

Utilicé la información que proporciona IMDb y traté de incluir la mayor parte de las canciones. Obviamente me faltan varias, pero haré lo posible por seguir completando las listas.

Si hace falta alguna canción, favor de indicar en los comentarios el episodio y de ser posible, en qué tiempo aparece. Dejo la lista a continuación, las canciones están separadas por temporadas.

Temporada: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.

Right now I’m on grooveshark.com listening to the newest Grizzly Bear and Phoenix albums (both are fantastic). I feel a little guilty though since I haven’t paid a cent to either band and yet I’m able to hear each album in its entirety. As a recording artist myself, I think about how I’ll feel when my album shows up somewhere for people to listen to for free. I know part of me will be happy that it’s out there for anyone to hear and that I just want to share my work with anyone who might be into it. Then I think about the time I’ve put into it. How I’ve labored over each note, every beat, every last thing. I think it’s that I want it to have meaning – to have value to you. To me it’s not really about making money, it’s about feeling like the work I put into this is appreciated somehow. There’s just so much out there that’s created to be consumed and disposed of without any thought but I don’t feel like music should fall into that category. Maybe some music should, I guess. Some of it is definitely just candy, but for the most part even most silly pop songs have their origin in something honest. It takes a human to come in and sing the notes, write the songs…to CREATE. Maybe it’s not all good, but it is art.

What is art worth to you?

It is a bit early for a blog, but I am in a good mood and wanted to share why.

Today is going to consist of a lot of cleaning and homework/studying because I have two sets of homework due tomorrow, and another big test. Music always helps me move faster, and concentrate what I am doing. I think it because I can focus on the lyrics and music of the songs, and focus on my task, so I won’t have any room to think about how these chores are really not what I want to be doing at the moment

My music preference has been changing lately to include more electronica and techno, because this is mostly what Dragon listens to. I have never liked it much, because as a lover of words, I pick my music based on the lyrics. This does not mean they have to be good lyrics, because I like quite a lot of incredibly cheesy and ridiculous pop music. But I always thought most techno consisted of chopped up songs that I can’t really understand, or hardly any words at all. Obviously there are sub-genres I did not know about, and as I have been finding those bands, I have become more open to it. In fact, many of the bands, (Smile.dk is the one that comes to mind) have that right amount of cheesy lyrics that I love, mixed with a good beat.

Anyway, this got me thinking about my favorite pop music that you never hear anymore. Not from people like Britney Spears, or Justin Timberlake. I mean the bands that were only popular for a short amount of time, then disappeared after a few years. Bands like M2M, S Club 7, B*witched, etc. I LOVED all of these bands, because they were the simple catchy music songs, with really cheesy love lyrics that really spoke to my hormonal pre-teen psyche. Plus, many of them could actually sing, unlike artists of today.

A few weeks ago I found a site called grooveshark.com. I do not download music, though this is mostly from a fear of getting viruses, rather than me thinking it is wrong. The war on music downloading is a whole other debate for another time. Anyway, sometimes I just want to listen to a cd, not necessarily buy it, and it’s hard to find places online to do that. Grooveshark lets you though. I have been able to find every cd I have wanted for so far, and been able to listen to it in its entirety, for free, with no ads or signing up. I am not sure how it works, but there is no downloading or anything, so I assume it is legal.

Anyway, I have spent the morning thus far, listening to all of the old bands I used to play over and over when I was young. It’s really funny to realize I remember every single lyric, and think about how much time I spent just listening to these songs. Songs that talked about things I had not even experienced yet, like love and heartbreak, regret and loss. It is hard, and kind of sad, to remember a time in my life where I was innocent. A time in my life where there were still some things I was protected from.

Anyway, just wanted to share that site. It is definitely a memory lane day.

<3Shii

I am in love with Spotify - that’s all I have to say.

For all of you who currently do not get to enjoy this excellent streaming service, I would highly recommend Grooveshark. That is referred to as the ‘Spotify of the US’ by TechCrunch. I like the Spotify UI better, but I like the flexibility of a browser version that Grooveshark give me.

All in all – Spotify and Grooveshark are really two excellent Music streaming services, and both have a free account available.

Don’t stop the music!

I received my formal login to Google Wave last Friday and have been playing with it over the past week. I’ve had my developer account for about a month, but you can’t really do anything with it other than program and test things. Needless to say, I was excited to get my normal account so I could actually interact with people and play with the system.

I’ve found some very cool things searching the public waves (type “with:public” into the search bar in Wave) like this Grooveshark Widget. Check it out:

I love KWS (Kenny Wayne Shepherd) and this is one of my favorite KWS songs. My favorite quote about this guy is from a friend of mine, we’ll call him “Beers.” He said, “That kid is an a-hole, but man can he play the guitar.” While I don’t have any personal experience with KWS and cannot confirm nor deny his nature, I do know the guy plays well and has put out some pretty cool albums since his first at the age of 17.

So far this is the coolest widget I’ve found and it’s really easy to make and use the widget in other social media outlets. As a musician it’s fun to be able to make these and share tunes. Quick and dirty!

Some of the annoyances conveyed by others are understandable. It is a bit distracting to see the real time typing of responses and when looking at the “public” list you see quite a bit of lag because of all the things going on in the frames. Definitely could be a time sink and/or waste of time if you aren’t careful.

On the flip side, it’s very cool that you can have a real-time conversation with someone and see what they’re typing as you’re typing.  I kind of enjoy not seeing the “Chat” tab not being lighted orange as you wait for a person to respond to you.  The sharing capabilities and editing feature is also very cool.

As more features are added and widgets are created I can see this improving.  For me, I’d also have to restrict what I see because I cannot handle the distractions of the constant updates of the public feed.  Any others having fun playing with Google Wave?  Thoughts?

Ryan Lucia
Recruitment@voyagemtg.com

CC BY-NC-SA Adriano Lima on Flickr

Song of the Day: The Golden Filter – Solid Gold

Notes: Very nice dance track. Listen below…

In my opinion, music, more than any other art form, does the best job of conveying mood. I have an extremely long playlist on my computer that I like to put on during playtime, and I thought I would share some of my favorites. These are in no particular order, though I have to say that “Singer” by Jump, Little Children is probably my favorite.

These songs do different things, of course. Buckcherry’s “Porno Star”, for example, makes me want to fuck on the hood of Camaro. “Slow Like Honey” is more sensual, more loving. “L’Amour Ne Duras Pas Toujours”, that french electro-pop gem, is all about smoke and mirrors, evasion and teasing — perhaps not lyrically, but musically (incidentally, the title means “Love does not last”).

I chose the esthero song “If Tha Mood” as a sort of blanket representation of most of her work — the album “Breath from Another” is an excellent play-through album for sexy time. Mm, Esthero makes me want to be a funky female DJ. She’s so awesome.

The Muse song I included, more than anything else, makes me want to get into trouble. But you can’t argue with this great lyric: “I wanted freedom / Bound and restricted / I tried to give you up / But I’m addicted.”

You may notice I included 2 covers — nothing against The Velvet Underground or Prince (as they’re both undeniably awesome in their own ways), I just happen to enjoy Dave Navarro singing “Venus in Furs” (Mmmm…) and the Foo Fighters doing “Darling Nikki”. So hot.

Anyway, enough. You can play through my selections thanks to Grooveshark, and their awesome widget-creating capability. Readers, please add to this by telling me what your favorite sexy songs are!

Zo, weer een nieuwe streaming muziek engine. De Buma Stemra’s van deze wereld kunnen immers niet genoeg worden tegengewerkt. Die andere bekende online muziekdienst Deezer is ook stiekem al een tijdje best wel kut. Steeds meer alba (meervoud van album) zijn gewoonweg niet meer gratis luisterbaar via deze site. Deezer wordt immers door allerhande verderfelijke platenmaatschappijen kapotgeprocedeerd en daar bezwijk je vroeg of laat onder.

Maar welkom in de grote boze wereld die internet heet: als er een paddenstoeltje wordt vertrapt, schiet er ergens anders weer een nieuwe uit de grond (wat een ontroerende metafoor toch weer!). Wanneer gaan die platenboertjes nou eens stoppen met huilen? Accepteer eens dat procederen tegen internetsites vechten tegen de bierkaai is. Welterusten! En wáág het niet om hier te klikken.

Det er gratis, det er enkelt og det virker uten å installere ekstra programmer! Grooveshark spilles av rett fra nettleseren din.

www.Grooveshark.com

Det har plaget meg lenge at Spotify ikke har Metallica, Led Zeppelin osv. Det har Grooveshark. Utrolig enkelt å bruke og du slipper å installere noe som helst.

+ Bare gå til siden og søk etter en sang og spill av, du kan og registrere deg slik at du kan lagre spillelister.
+ Kjapt og enkelt å registrere seg . Jeg spilte  kanskje 30 sekunder på å finne meg en sang, spille den av og registrere meg på siden mens jeg hørte på sangen i samme vindu.
+ Du slipper å laste ned og installere program.
+ Gratis! Uten irriterende reklameavbrudd (har ikke opplevd det enda).
+ Har en del artister som Spotify ikke har, blant annet Metallica, Led Zeppelin, Beatles og Pink Floyd.

- Om du har et multifunksjonstatstatur med play og stopp-knapp så virker ikke knappene. Du må gå til siden selv for å bytte sang osv.
- Sangene starter ikke like kjapt som i Spotify, merkbar forskjell.
- En del sanger har dårlige tags.
- Kan være litt buggy.

Siden ser ut til å fortsatt være i utviklingsfase, så minuspunktene blir muligens fikset på etterhvert.
Lurer på hvor mange ganger jeg skrev programmet i stedet for siden, føles som om det er et program når jeg driver å knoter inne der

Imeem is a service that will allow you to stream music on demand. (Screenshot by HowStuffWorks.com)

There’s been a lot of business talk going on this past week. HP acquired 3Com. Intel paid a massive settlement to AMD. Google bought VoIP company Gizmo5. And it’s apparently not over. MySpace is in the process of acquiring Imeem. Peter Kafka at AllThingsD wrote that he’s confirmed the story, which was originally reported by Michael Arrington at TechCrunch.

Imeem, for the uninitiated, is unlike Internet radio services, because not only can you upload and share music, but you can also listen to specific songs in the site’s database on demand. You can also save specific playlists if you prefer. I’ve got an Imeem account, and I like it and Grooveshark (a similar service) a lot.

Though MySpace also acquired another music site, iLike, not too long ago, MySpace’s motives in picking up Imeem may not have as much to do with the site in its current incarnation as it is about the people behind the site. Both Kafka and Arrington said the team and intellectual property — including Snocap, a company Imeem acquired in 2008. Snocap, a wholesale music retailer, had technology that enabled Imeem to see just how many times a particular song was played, according to Arrington. This helps Imeem pay the music labels their due.

That’s important, because as Kafka points out in his article, Imeem is just one of many streaming services that has had problems with music licensing fees. Perhaps the combined service will be able to continue offering free streaming, at least for a little while longer.

For more on some related topics, take a look at these articles:

How Streaming Video and Audio Work
How Internet Radio Works
How MySpace Works

I’ve been sick this week so I’ll keep this post short.

Hacking

Create a full MIDI Drumset with Guitar Hero and Rock Band Drums

I’ve always wanted to get an electronic drum set. Must be some deep desire to play in an industrial thrash band.

Create a font from your own handwriting

How cool is this?

Art

Flame Gate

If I saw this in the woods, I think I'd walk toward the light.

CARDBOARD a cardboard animation!

Music

Grooveshark

This is what I believe the future of music is going towards. Grooveshark is a site were you can look up artists and make playlists just as if they were locally stored on your computer. This is similar to the popular music sites such as Last.fm and Pandora, but with Grooveshare you pick each and every song that you want to hear. You don’t rely on the sites algorithm to choose a song that you might like. Last.fm and Pandora are great music discovery tools, but for just listening to music that I want to hear, Grooveshark in my new favorite site.

Stereo8

This is an internet radio station were you can vote on the songs that are played. Interesting concept, with sites like Digg and Reddit getting very popular, you would think that this would be a great idea. Personally I don’t see the point. There are plenty of music sites were I can pick the music I want to listen to. Why should I have to be at the mercy of what the masses choose. If I wanted that I would start listening to the crappy radio stations.

8 Best Ways to Share ‘Mix Tapes’

Speaking of music, here is a Wired article that has a lot of information on music sites. I am still checking out the first few. Some are new to me and some I need to check out again. If you want to discover new music then check out the article.

Grooveshark es uno de esos servicios por los que uno dice “vale la pena pagar Internet”… y no es para menos, de verdad. Si se atreven a probar este servicio, les aseguro que no lo van a dejar. Sigan leyendo por favor, que ahora viene lo mejor.NO TIENES QUE PAGAR NADA para poder escuchar la música que tú quieras al momento que lo quieras.

NO SE TRATA DE RADIO EN LINEA, es música a la carta! O sea, tu escribes el nombre del artista o canción o género y walá: ahí vas a escuchar directamente lo que deseas.

NO TIENES QUE ESTAR DANDOLE A PLAY a cada una de las canciones, ya que puedes poner por ejemplo: Coldplay y seleccionar sólo las canciones que desees escuchar, puedes modificar el órden de las mimas al escucharlas, etc… en otras palabras: puedes armar TU PROPIO PLAY LIST y guardarlo.

NO TIENES QUE VOLVER A HACER TU PLAY LIST si te registras (que tampoco cuesta) lo podrás guardar.

INCLUSO EL SISTEMA PUEDE ESCANEAR TU LIBRERIA (o sea hacer una lista de las canciones que tienes) para que de esta manera, no solo puedas escuchar lo que buscas sino lo que ya tenías.

ABURRIDO DE LA MÚSICA DE SIEMPRE? Entonces activa la Smat PlayList que te permitira por ejemplo escoger una “cancion modelo”, tocarla y enseguida el sistema solo irá agregando más canciones del mismo tipo.

TAMBIEN PUEDES ARMAR TU RED. Invita a tus amigos, diles tu nombre de usuario, permite que te agreguen y listo… podras escuchar la música de ellos y ellos la tuya.

SIN AMIGOS EN TU RED? Entonces haz nuevos en base a tu librería… exite una seccion llamada People I Might Like que no es otra cosa que gente que tiene tus mismos gustos de acuerdo a tu librería y lo que has escuchado. Ellos pueden ser tu medio para encontrar música genial.

… uy si con esto no te animas a probar el servicio es porque de plano no sabes lo que te estarás perdiendo. Les dejo el enlace: www.grooveshark.com

We’ve gotten some great feedback for our showdown, check it out:

If you aren’t up to speed, here’s the deal:  We’re going to take some suggestions from our musically sophisticated readers about what a REAL rock song sounds like.  We’re looking to “explore” the meaning of hard.  So, if you think you have a pretty good idea about what it means, post a comment below and tell us.  Then we’ll pit song vs. song in bare-knuckle mixed-martial arts match ups and see which tunes have some teeth left. We’re looking for song-to-song matchups, so if you think James Taylor has some heavy tunes (we do) then pass it along.  And if you nominate the winner, you get a trophy or something.

Here is a sampling of some of the feedback we have gotten so far:  some of it you may know, and some you may not (unless you’ve been hanging out with the wrong crowd). Feel free to stretch out.  The weirder, the better.  Tell us what you think.

————————————————————————-

Well, i pretty much turned my Thursday night listening into a playlist for everyone to process.  see if I am on the right track.  From standard rock fare to more cerebral.  Enjoy. – HT

__________________________________________

And one more, thanks Sam.

Army Cook, City Point, VA – War Between the States

—————————————————————-

I’m sure I speak for all the OS staff in thanking all of our Veterans for the service toward which they were either called or compelled.  Freedom, among all things, is worth protecting, and personal sacrifice is deserved of the highest honor and respect.  So, thank you, Veterans, for your service in defense and support of liberty.

“It may be hard to comprehend the twisted logic that led to this tragedy. But this much we do know — no faith justifies these murderous and craven acts; no just and loving God looks upon them with favor.” – President Barack H. Obama @ the Memorial Service for Fort Hood

“No just and loving God looks upon them with favor.’ Well that line specifically sent me down a road, already today,  a road I didn’t expect to travel, yet one I go down whenever it calls.

I immediately thought of a verse in the Tom Waits song, “Day After Tomorrow”.

‘You can’t deny
The other side
Don’t want to die
Any more than we do
What I’m trying to say,
Is don’t they pray
To the same God that we do?
Tell me, how does God choose?
Whose prayers does he refuse?
Who turns the wheel?
And who throws the dice
On the day after tomorrow?’

This song, written from the point of view of a soldier, though one distraught, may well be the most astute and underrated anti-war song ever.

One can be thankful, daily, for the service of Veterans in this country, and at the same time be vehemently anti-war.

I’ll return to update this post throughout the day.  I have other things of interest I wish to share.

——————————————————————————————

In other mentions of Veterans on this Armistice Day, there is a fascinating new documentary out by the name of The Good Soldier.  I was lucky enough to catch an hour of it on PBS the other night.  It also is being screened this weekend at a local theatre.  From the synopsis on the website, The Good Soldier follows the journeys of five combat veterans from different generations of American wars as they sign up, go into battle, and eventually change their minds about what it means to be a good soldier.

Weaving in and out of this film is a haunting score written by first time score writer JJ Grey.

The Good Soldier

—————————————————————————————–

And now for my gripe of the day, hell, you could say its my gripe of life.  I’m not a fan of the United States National Anthem.  And especially not a fan of the first verse.  You know you’re only reciting the first verse to the poem, The Star-Spangled Banner?  Ok.  Good.  Just thought I would remind you.  This verses greater meaning, in my opinion, is about triumph after a perilous fight.  It speaks of war, bombs, rockets and such.  A great framework for a country to rally around before every major event which may kick off any day of any year. You think?  Let’s all sing about winning a war.

No thank you.

I’ll sing about this land and its glory, its tolerance, compassion and kindness, even through the grit and grind.

I’ll sing the songs of Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger.

I’ll sing about how “this land was made for you and me”.

——————————————————————————————

Finally,here’s just a splattering, musically, of the thoughts which have surrounded me today.

Thank you Veterans for all you give.  Cheers to you.

“I’m not really a pacifist. If an army invaded this land of mine, You’d find me out on the firing line.” – Pete Seeger

My love affair with the Grooveshark deepens by the day.

So I like music.  And I like discovering new music.  So go and check out the following sites:

Grooveshark

It allows you to stream music online for free from their database.  They have a huge library of music (rarely can I not find the song I am looking for), they allow you to stream any song in it,  and you can create and save playlists online.  I find a lot of music that I like online, yet I can’t always listen to the songs when I want in the order I want.  Grooveshark lets me create playlists from these songs I find and then stream them online.  They recently re-did their site, making it even more user-friendly, so go and check it out.

8Tracks

8Tracks is a cool mix site where you can create playlists of at least 8 songs from your library and songs that other people have included in their mixes and share with others.  You can create an online account and then find other mixes that you like and follow them, receiving updates when they post new mixes.  I find that this is a good way to share music I like and discover new music.  My only complaint is that searching within the 8Tracks network is sometimes difficult, as it might not have what you are looking for.  But if you have an extensive library to upload from, this shouldn’t be a problem.

thesixtyone

TheSixtyOne is my most recent favorite music site.  It’s concept is one that I find very appealing – by listening to and discovering new music you can increase your reputation and level up.  You can ‘heart’ songs that you like, and then when other people ‘heart’ the songs after you, you earn more reputation points.   They even have quests, like subscribe to 3 listeners’ radios, or listen to the top 5 most recently posted songs, which also give you more hearts to give out and reputation points.  It is a cool incentive to discover new music and be social on the site.

Another thing that I like is the great variety of artists.  Most of the artists on thesixtyone are ones that I have never heard of before, so I am constantly discovering new songs and artists.

Enough talk – check out this mix I made on 8tracks using artists from thesixtyone.  All good new music.

Also, add me as a friend or follow me on these sites and I will return the favor – look for bigred051525.

So I was surfing the web on this fine evening, when I came across this awesome new website called tuberadio.fm. TubeRadio is basically just like Groovershark a online music player, which is completely free and easy to use, it uses youtube as its source for music allowing you to search and play music easily and then make your own playlists it also  has a boat load of features.  Everything from Similar artists, to lyrics. After using it for like 10 minutes I was pretty much ranting to my friends on Facebook that they need to drop everything and start using it. Honestly if there were more sites like this and grooveshark I would  stop having to illegally download shit and I’m sure so would a lot more people.

Check out the video its a quick how-to and get you familiar with its features

via:Lifehackers

Perambulando por alguns blogs,eis que encontro no da Twittess, um post sobre o GrooveShark.
Já tinha visto em outros lugares, mas não tinha o conhecido,fiquei na curiosidade e ao entrar na página em menos de 2 minutos,já me cadastrei,e aprendi usar.

O Grooveshark que é praticamente uma rádio online é muito útil,nada de  ficar procurando suas músicas para baixar, no site basta o usuário digitar no campo de pesquisa, nome do artistita/banda/música e irá aparecer inúmeras opções.

O mais legal que você monta sua playlist e escuta as músicas que você favoritou,e ainda é possível baixa-lás e compartilhar com seus amigos,é uma ótima ferramenta para quem utiliza a Internet de outros pcs.

Fica a dica.

Song of the Day: Phoenix – 1901

Notes: A song from their latest album. Listen below…

Grooveshark ist ein neuer Musikdienst bei dem man anders als bei LastFm alle Lieder in voller Länge hören kann, darüber hinaus findet es außerdem mehr Lieder von meinen Lieblingsbands als ich bisher kannte O.o ….darunter Demo’s,Alben die nur auf Vinyl erschienen und Live Mitschnitte.

Viel Spaß beim Musik hören (ihr dürft auch mitträllern und mir davon videos schicken )

Wow I haven’t posted here forever! Looks like highschool is busier than I thought… Anyway here’s a cool playlist I made up of some of my fav songs. Enjoy!

]]> http://davidcrew.wordpress.com/2009/11/02/david-crews-perma-playlist/ Tue, 03 Nov 2009 01:54:41 +0000 David Crew http://davidcrew.wordpress.com/2009/11/02/david-crews-perma-playlist/ http://ordinarystrangeness.com/2009/11/01/sunday-round-up-11-01-09/ Sun, 01 Nov 2009 16:46:02 +0000 bobida http://ordinarystrangeness.com/2009/11/01/sunday-round-up-11-01-09/

Happy Halloween, hope it was spooky.  We got behind this week, so, for your perusal, we offer the

Friday Sunday Round-Up:  November 1, 2009.

NOISE:

Formative Sessions:

I’ve been on a little bit of an electronica kick lately.  Follow this link to a nice Downtempo Mix, 60 minutes of headphone-friendly chill that will set you zero-Kelvin cool and smoother than a satin smoking jacket, with only a trace of the “Banana Republic factor”.  Brought to you by LA’s Miguel Vega.

Formative Sessions Mix (a Mediafire Download Link)

–BL

It seems like Bill Frisell is always publishing new work, and this week I discovered his latest (I think) project called Disfarmer, a jazzy take on folkish roots.  I’m a sucker for these adaptations of vernacular music (a la Edgar Meyer/Yo Yo Ma’s Appalacian Waltz).  As always, the music is amazing, spooky, bright and brooding.  Worth the $14.  And if you don’t know Frisell, Grooveshark him.  Its pretty easy to love.

–BL

Faraquet

This one is new to me, but not to the world.  Some would call it “Math Rock”:  heavy, discordant, but technically adept straight ahead rock verging on punk.  I suppose you could liken it to Fugazi (with whom they toured some), maybe Polvo or Pavement, maybe even of The Tar Babies.  For some reason  I associate this kind of music with Chicago, I think, because a while back I bought a string of albums like it from Chicago.  But it has that hard, crisp intelligence that seems like Chicago.  Nevertheless, they hail from DC, the vacuum of hard, crisp intelligence.  Unfortunately, I’m late to the party.  They broke up 5 or 6 years ago.  Check out these samples from the Southern Records website

Faraquet–A Study In Movement

Faraquet–Cut Self Not

WEBBY:

Learn Something New Every Day

Like the title suggests, this clever and easy to read website delivers a shot of insight every morning.  Wow your friends at lunch with your clear grasp of minutiae.

UNURTH

Urban Art, if you are into it.  Its sometimes an under-appreciated nuisance, and there are some impressive images on this site.

The O.S. CHALLENGE:

Its getting late in the football season and the matchups are strong.  As an Auburn fan, that’s a pretty tough pill to swallow, but as a football fan in general I really love this time of year.  Big, mean defensive matched up against lightning faster offenses with bruising tackles; a fast secondary defending a dynamic passing game; and all of the excitement leading to big upsets huge victories and dashed hopes.  All we need are some playoffs to make it all legit and less conspicuously corporate. The BCS isn’t ready for that, but we at O.S. are.

Here is the idea:  we love music.  Love it, and can’t get enough of it.  We love football, but we need a playoff.  So, as a proxy, we are going to make one up with music, since hardly anybody pays for music anymore (sadly) and there are few corporate interests in good music (despite plenty in bad music).  We are going to pit song against song in a 4-tiered bracket, and we are going to figure out which one rocks the hardest.  All we need is your feedback.

In one division we are going to match up the big boys:  Smash-Mouth football with big, heavy, hard-hitting monsters of rock that take no prisoners.  Guys that never wear out, the serious beasts that need only be pointed in the direction of the kill.  They make holes for their backs to blast into, straight up the middle.  32-Dive, 32-Dive, 32-Dive.  These are the songs that kick hard and fast, merciless and focused.  In the other is the West Coast and the Spread (maybe even the A-11).  These guys are quick and technical.  They play a sophisticated game, sometimes on the ground, sometimes in the air, sometimes short and sometimes long.  It takes a lot of depth and talent to pull it off.  Thats the other group of songs that we are looking for: exciting, unpredictable, and indefensible.

So give us some matchups.  Just take a second, scratch your chin, and enter something in the comments column below (or email us, if you are bashfull).  We want individual songs, not whole albums. We will have them reviewed by subjective, opinionated self-proclaimed aficionados and music snobs (let us know if you think you’ve got the stuff, and maybe you’ll get a shot) until we get to the final showdown, where YOU–our loyal readers–will get to make the final call.  Just like American Idol, but with real music and just in time for the holidays.