So, always wanting to pay my way but interested in what fine gems people like Heather from Fuel Friends and the Aquarium Drunkard are serving up. I now find myself digging into the realm of live bootlegs and well recorded shows. There are a few must haves over at rbally.net: GBV at the 40 Watt, a Jeff Tweedy 48 song set, Jesus and Mary Chain Live in Vienna and over at Transmission3000.com: two sets by the Afghan Whigs, Fugazi, and Hot Snakes to name a few. The T3 server is a little slower than Bally’s imac server but you will be happy. These guys have almost any sort of live band from The Smiths to The Cure in the alternative genre that is worth having. It’s pretty incredible that people took such care to document some of these bands. So now you can just sit back and putt stuff in shuffle mode and the trip is on. No need to worry about never seen such and such band.

This has not replaced purchasing music of course, for instance, I picked up the new Thom Yorke at Tunes in Hoboken the other day and it is fantastic. It’s pretty much in the vain of the Radiohead Kid A material. “Black Swan” us a stand out track because Yorke says fuck a lot in the refrains. This is mp3 blog thing is on some level satisfying my completist and budget needs when it is too damn hot to do any yard work, waste cash on crap i might not have checked out to othewise. So the Rock will always be on.

Once last thing as a fyi in the freebee music circuit. The recent issue of Mojo comes with a really good James Brown summer compilation cd featuring a bunch of Mr. Brown’s influences, some classic tunes and some of the funk he contributed too. If can find any copy’s I say go for it.

…one last tidbit just in from the Pitchdorks for the complete indie rock fools, there is a Chavez re-issue in the horizon which will include one unreleased track(which is sad) and a ‘documentary’ of the band when they toured with Guided by Voices called Boys Making Music …Music Making Men. They never got the large respect they deserved outside of nyc but i see it in my future to be stuck inside riding the fader once again. No noise yet on the matador site so must be some insider stuff. The Guitarist Clay Tarver went onto make his millions producing the Got Milk adverts and bassplayer Scott did some acting. Really was a shame they never did a third record. Their recent reunion shows these past few years were awesome.