download

The attempt at all-out bribery continues, folks

The bribe is that, if you subscribe to the tunequest feed, I’ll use that medium to point you toward free music downloads that are worthy of your attention.

I had been using WordPress’ “Optional Excerpt” to point to the links whenever I wrote a post. But that was proving cumbersome. It unnecessarily tied the posting of links to my own erratic posting schedule and it was requiring me to bookmark and retrieve lists upon lists of those links. Then I had to format the excerpt for the feed version before posting. In short, it was turning into a major pain.

So I’ve outsourced that job to del.icio.us.

Starting today, those links will be posted as individual feed entries along side my regular posts. You’ll be able to tell the difference by the [del.icio.us] tag at the end of the title. I can point you to them as I find them, regardless of whether I have a post near completion, which hopefully means more great music for you and less work for me.

Plus, it means you don’t actually have to read my posts in order to get the links…

Go ahead and check the feed. You’ll find a link to my favorite song from 2006.

Original Star Trek on iTunes Store now

UPDATE March 26: After nearly a two month stint of being offline at the iTunes Store, the Star Trek TOS is back. The complete first season is available in its original broadcast form. Additionally, newly remastered episodes from the first season are available in their own section. iTunes is still the only source for them in their uncut form.

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Episodes of the original Star Trek are now available on the iTunes Store. As if you needed Star Trek in another medium. Still, if you just can’t live without your Trek-to-go and don’t feel like encoding them yourself, 2 bucks an episode isn’t too bad. So far it’s only the first season but I’d expect the later ones soon. The image quality isn’t too bad either (based on the preview snippet at least).

And since the new "enhanced" episodes haven’t finished airing yet, my guess is that they’re the original cuts.

Luis Bacalov – La Seduzione: An Italian Tentazione

the seduction 1973

Continuing the tunequest within a tunequest today, I listened to a handful of tracks by Argentine composer Luis Bacalov during the morning’s rainy commute to the office. Bacalov rose to prominence writing film music for 60s and 70s era spaghetti westerns and hard boiled Italian dramas. Prolific, he’s got more than 140 composer credits to his name and even won an Academy Award in 1996 for Il Postino. More recently, he has gained some notoriety from several of his songs being included on Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill soundtracks.

The track below, titled Nago, is from the 1973 Italian film La Seduzione, about a man who reunites with a former lover and then is seduced into an affair with her 15 year old daughter.

This thing is a swaggering waltz of funk. It gently lures you in with its sinister wah, sensuous horns and smooth smooth rhythm. But just when you think you know what it’s all about, it morphs, ever so briefly, into a deep driving piano groove. Then, as if to say that as easily as things change, they can easily change back, it returns to it former self.

Tight.

Nago

Pearl Jam: I Got a Feeling [Beatles cover]

Back before all this digital music and internet mumbo jumbo, finding a live recording of a band’s performance was a tricky proposition. There were basically two ways to go about it. One, if you someone who was in a bootlegging circle, you could ask to trade a copy of their recording for a copy of one you had. These were the days before CD burners, so any copy you received was on lesser-quality cassette tape. Or two, you could stumble upon one in the racks at used music stores, finding a quasi-legal, imported recording.

Sometime in 1993, I happened upon a CD, imported from Italy, called I Got a Feeling, via that second method. It’s a high-quality recording of Pearl Jam, live at the legendary (and recently closed) CBGBs in New York City, November 8, 1991 (about 2 months after the release of Ten).

It was a surprise gig that ran about 40 minutes and was attended mostly by fan club members. That explains why the audience on the recording seems to know all the words, despite the fact that Ten wouldn’t enter the Billboard 200 (at #155) for another 2 months.

For comparisons sake, Nirvana’s Nevermind was already at #17 on the chart the week this was recorded.

Still, the show itself is an illustrative overview of that early period of the band’s history. The best part however is the final song of the set: a fantastic cover of The Beatles’ I’ve Got A Feeling with some nice ad-libbing from Eddie.

Download: I Got A Feeling (iTunes m4a file)

Enjoy.

Ratatat really does make the world a better place

Take for example this remix.

Normally, I absolutely can not tolerate Missy Elliot. I just don’t like her style. And her 2004 single I’m Really Hot was a completely egotistical crapfest which couldn’t manage to display the slightest bit of talent or even a minisculey appealing hook.

So it is a bit of a minor miracle that Ratatat manages to not only make the song listenable, but the duo actually creates something awesome from it.

Have a listen:

and a free download.

All hail Ratatat. Truly musical gods.

Finding Statistics About Your iTunes Library

iTunes logo with graph

Anyone who has been reading the tunequest for a while knows that statistics, numbers, figures and graphs have played a large part in its progress. In fact, it was the discovery that 10% of my songs were responsible for 49% of my total play counts that prompted me to set out on this endeavor in the first place.

To this day, I’m still surprised by the lack of sophisticated options available for gathering and analyzing iTunes’ stored data. That XML file has been a statistical treasure trove since the day it started recording star ratings and play counts. You’d think that in the four years since, there would be a more mature market of programs to choose from.

However, 2006 has actually seen some positive developments in that regard. While there is still no killer app for iTunes stats, there are a number of solutions for parsing your XML file and learning more about your music, and yourself.

Continue reading →

The Classics of Ratatat

This is exactly what a sophomore album should be. It has everything that made the debut so fresh and engaging, while adding nuance and complexity that show a clear maturation of sound, yet is not so over-indulgent so as to become foreign and off-putting.

I refer, of course to Ratatat’s recently released second album: Classics.

One might argue that it takes a particularly confident or arrogant band to name an album “Classics,” especially so early in their career. But I think the boys know that they’re onto something genuinely inspired and magnificent. The band not only manages to live up to the album’s title, but they exceed all expectations.

For evidence, download yourself some free mp3s of their singles: Lex and Wildcat.