ModifiedLogic

This album King For a Day, Fool For a Lifetime by Faith No More is not only their best album in my opinion, but also tops on my all time list for many reasons. One interesting note is that it was the last album I purchased on cassette. I remember looking through the cassette liner notes so much that they fell apart at the perforations. I listened to the tape so many times, some parts of the album began to have distorted sound.

I used to listen to this album front to back, or side to side rather, since it was a tape. I would listen to it in a walkman while I rode my bike when I was a teenager. Something about these songs always struck a chord with me. Somehow, the different styles that FNM were messing with (jazz, funk, metal, and more) on this album work so well.

This is one of those albums that I have quoted lyrics from for the past ten years. Lyrics like "what a day when you can look it in the face and hold your vomit" or "it’s always fun until someone gets hurt and then it’s just hilarious". I can listen to the opening of "Last To Know" a million times. The opening part of that song is so powerful and memorable for me when Mike Patton sings:

"Where it grows on trees
But never blooms"

Did I mention the album art by Eric Drooker is just classic?

The most interesting part of this album is that it became a fan / cult favorite type of album. It’s such a complete album I am surprised that it isn’t more known and revered. There are no big FTN hits like "Epic", but every song is polished and solid. I’m still trying to figure out why it’s not available on iTunes or the Amazon music store.

This album and I have reconnected in a big way and I can’t stop listening to it.

When I heard about Muxtape, I thought it was a cool idea. Upload songs and create a mixtape that you can share. I knew I wanted to make one, but I wasn’t sure what I wanted my theme to be. It’s not like you can only make one (one per email address), but I couldn’t think of a good idea.

With all my reminiscing about Nirvana and the 90’s, I decided to make a Muxtape that is comprised of some of the best cover versions of Nirvana songs.

The Muxtape, aptly named, Best Nirvana Cover Songs has a little bit of everything. There sure are plenty of Nirvana covers out there in recorded land, but I truly believe these are the best. Check it out.

One of my top wants/needs for the iPhone is the ability to scrobble audio tracks to last.fm. I recently re-jailbroke my iPhone using ZiPhone and installed Mobilescrobbler. Now, a big piece of the "scrobbling puzzle" is filled in.

Mobilescrobbler is a full featured last.fm client. It allows you to listen to your last.fm radio (loved tracks, person radio, neighborhood), scrobble tracks, check lyrics, friends, artist info, love tracks, ban them, skip them, and more. Seriously, it covers just about everything you can do with the last.fm desktop client. It does all of this over wi-fi OR edge.

Now, every app has to have it’s "cool" feature right? Well, Mobilescrobbler supports iPhone gestures. Swipe and pinch away.

Sometimes, people ask me why I like last.fm so much and why scrobbling is so important to me. There are many reasons, but here are the first few that come to mind:

1. I like many many different kinds of music. Rather than talking about them all, I can say, go look at my last.fm page.

2. It helps me, and others, keep track of what I listen to. If I hear a new band from someone’s share iTunes library or on last.fm radio, there is a record of it. I can go back and see exactly what I was listening to at what time. In a lot of cases, now you can listen to full streaming tracks as well.

3. Finding new artists is a huge part of the equation. You can generate a radio station for say, bands that sound like Coheed and Cambria. For a person like me who likes to constantly discover new music, it’s a no brainer. Mix that with the rest of the social aspects of last.fm and the new music discovery possibilities are near infinite.

Getting back to Mobilescrobbler. The app itself is a big part of the puzzle, but there are still a few missing pieces, for me at least. The big picture to me is, being able to scrobble any and all music from any source. With Mobilescrobbler, it covers me at home, anywhere I have my iPhone including the car and walking. For my particular audio sources, I’m only missing audio played on say, my Xbox 360 or on my Sirius radio. Do we need to go that far? I’m not sure. But I’d like to.

The end result is, I am very happy with what Mobilescrobbler gives me. I’d say that now, at least 75% of the music I listen to will be scrobbled, and that’s just cool.

This morning I broke out the Nirvana box set, With The Lights Out. I never really spent too much time with it in the past because for the most part, I had already collected 30 bootlegs / imports that contained almost everything on the box.

Listening to some of these songs like Curmudgeon and Been A Son reminds me of how different the music industry was 13 - 15 years ago. Not only did Nirvana open the door for heavy music of all kinds to go mainstream and spawn radio stations that would play all of that music, Nirvana also helped create the peak / prime for how much money record labels could get out of one person, me in particular.

First of all I was going to record stores with money (cash) in hand ready to buy CD’s. And when I say record stores, I don’t mean Walmart, Target, or Best Buy. I’m talking about mom n’ pop shops that charged $15-$18 per disc. Back in the early to mid nineties, those major store chains didn’t exist in my area. I remember as a teenager walking to the record store as an adventure, sometimes with friends. It was different going to a record store because you would talk to the people who worked there and maybe sell a few cd’s for credit on a new one. It’s the same experience you can get in comic shops still to this day, thank god for that.

Nirvana was the first band that made me seek out CD singles or "MAXI" singles. Curmudgeon for instance, was on the Lithium CD single. If I remember correctly, that disc cost $5 or $6.99. Now when you think about that by today’s standards, that’s crazy. On one level it’s crazy because I don’t think CD singles exist anymore. On another it’s crazy because a lot of people don’t buy albums on disc anymore and if they do, sometimes a new artist cost $6-$7.99 for their whole album. Somewhere, someone realized putting a B-side on a disc with a single would make true fans go rabid. Then there were imported ones. I think I paid $14 for the UK All Apologies CD single which had the song Moist Vagina on it. It was later released in the US I believe for a cheaper price with the song "Moist V" on it.

Here we were. Or, here I was dishing out wads of cash. Piles and piles of cash, that in essence, was going to the sale of one album. We are a long way away from that ever happening again. But I will remember that time as special. There was still a mystery in music. When a song your favorite band comes up on a CD single or a live import that you never heard and you just can’t wait to dish out $30 to hear it and put it in your collection. It wasn’t local to just Nirvana either. There were a lot of other bands at the time who were experiencing the same success.

It was a different time for other reasons too. There was an innocence and an ignorance to this different kind of music that Nirvana represented. I remember vividly being in music class in seventh grade. Mr. Coviello was our music teacher. Once a week he had students bring in a CD of their favorite music so the whole class could listen to it and discuss it. I remember requesting to bring in my CD a bunch of times. People brought in things like Mariah Carey before I got a chance to bring in my gem. When it came to be my turn. I handed Mr. Coviello Nirvana’s Lithium CD single and telling him to play track 3. He did a double take when he saw the cover. When that riff started to play, I looked around the class and people were laughing and making faces that were made of unpleasant, including the teacher. I believe the line "I’m a lady, can you save me" was the point Mr. Coviello walked over and said "ok that’s enough".

I had mixed emotions that day. On one hand I was pissed because why was my music not as important or worthy of a discussion? So what it was loud and weird to the class, big deal. On the other hand I was happy. I was happy that I played something in that class that blew them away and pissed them off. I mean, it was totally a self serving move. I knew what was going to happen. The funny part is, I guarantee 90% of the kids in that class went on to like Nirvana in some way. Nirvana Unplugged anyone?

Flash forward to NOW. You would have to play some seriously fucked up shit in a seventh grade music class today to get that same kind of reaction  wouldn’t you? I mean, I can’t even think of a band that could elicit that kind of reaction today. Whatever you picked today, someone would like it and be running a fan site for it and no one would be shocked.

It was a different time. It’s funny how hearing a few songs helps you remember and appreciate things.