Last year I made a real effort to listen to a lot of new music (which is why I was able to come up with this top 10 albums of 2010 list.)

This year I haven’t made that effort. But a lot of other people have. So here’s a best of of best of 2011 lists to give you some ideas of what new albums may be worth your time.

The AV Club

1. Wye Oak – Civilian
2. Fucked Up – David Comes To Life
3. Bon Iver – Bon Iver
4. Low – C’mon
5. Wilco – The Whole Love

Read the rest »

Remember these guys?

You may not appreciate it at this point but these guys were a sort of cutting edge rock and roll group for their time. They were a self contained song writing, performance and production unit, that lyrically addressed in any depth for the first time, the youth culture of California of their day. There were other groups that represented the surf culture of the time but they were mainly instrumental twangy surf groups with only regional appeal. No one had yet lyrically put this whole scene on the map nationally.

I don’t need to go too deeply into a detailed account of their history, but with three brothers, a cousin and a good friend, with an insane talent for tight harmonies that no one else comes close to, and a bit of help from the Wilson brothers’ creepy idiot father, and Brian Wilson‘s natural talent for writing music and arranging these insane harmonies of the top of his little Hawthorne Valley, California  head, they uniquely represented for the whole country and the world, a romantic vision of the surf, cars and girls lifestyle on the beach, just as we all imagined it would be like.

As time went on and Brian and the group’s creations became more and more adventurous and successful, they began to make a permanent mark in American culture. The Beach Boys. All American good guys. Until Pet Sounds. Read the rest »

Hi kids: My home stereo quit some time ago and my car stereo quit some time ago and my computer, I don’t think will last a month, so it’s no wonder that I’m irritable and alienating all my friends with my crass, anti-social, self pitying behavior.

But look at it from my point of view. If you’re looking at this site, you probably like music or something, so imagine if all you have to play it on is an iPod. And you have to share it with your wife who also loves to listen to music, and you have to listen on your computer on an old set of second hand speakers, without the recommended amount of ‘hi’ or ‘fi’, and you have to drive around in total silence while you go out to pick up your prescription or dry cleaning, or are on your way to fight your traffic ticket in court, because the bloody signs are so bloody confusing, and it was the last day of the month and the officer in question was just trying to bump up his ticket numbers before the end of the month to impress the brass down at city hall, in the hopes that he’ll eventually be taken off traffic duty and given a cool posting in homicide or vice, and eventually work his way up to commissioner and just have to sit at a desk and force the traffic cops to increase the city’s income by issuing more and more questionable by-law violations as provincial traffic violations and putting some poor law-abiding citizen on the screws, just because the officer in question hates his job and wishes he were in homicide or vice, or better yet, gone fishing!

I’m getting hungry now so that also makes me irritable, so I better leave before I insult someone. By the way, here’s another neat cover version. After all, this is a music blog. It’s about music you know! For all of those who believe that the sacred should not be violated by the profane:

The Fall – A Day In The Life – YouTube

When I was in England in ’88, NME put out this Sgt Pepper cover album for a child help-line charity. This was one of the better covers.

Over and (likely) out.

Amadeus (Rock Me)

As a self appointed cultural director in all of your personal lives, I strongly advise you to get these “Important Albums“, because one day, you will inevitably be on a boat for a ‘three hour tour‘ (yes that’s right, A three hour tour) and you will be shipwrecked with a millionaire and his wife, a professor, a movie star (hilarious hijinx will ensue) and you will wish you had a varied music collection to last you through the long years of coconut flavoured exile.

This list of 5 is quite a varied collection of sounds that sometimes go against popular opinion. But with an eternity with the coconuts and Marianne, the popular choice will soon become unbearably boring and you’ll wish that you had these tasty little nuggets. Read the rest »

In the late ’80s, David Letterman had a feature for a little while on his program featuring throwing things off of tall buildings. I only bring it up because my piece of crap computer, which is freezing up and ‘blue screening’ on a regular basis now is becoming a candidate for my own ‘throw it out the window of my 11th floor apartment‘, and see how it likes that!

It’s slowly grinding to a halt. Since this computer was made, progress has completely passed it by. Bit rates for music and video is much higher now and I need to upgrade in order to keep my video content from looking like South Park all the time.

Things that it used to do, it just barely can do now. The hard drive makes lots of complaining noises these days. iT ONLY MAKES SENSE THAxxxdAMN CAPS LOCk!!!……

My old PC

Read the rest »

The Original Brother Sister Team! And Much Better Than Donny And Marie!

I don’t listen to ‘muzak‘ like stuff. I also don’t intend to include ‘compilation albums‘ in this Important Albums series. However, this album is so much more than either of those things.

Talented? You Better Believe It!

Raised as CT then CA kids, the both of them demonstrated an aptitude for music right away. Richard Carpenter spent loads of time listening to music and playing the piano. Karen was more the outgoing athletic type, but was also passionate about music. Karen started playing the drums while in high school and became a rather good drummer that could, according to Richard, play in “exotic time signatures“.

Richard formed a jazz trio in the mid ’60s. Later in 1966, at a musician’s home studio, Richard was accompanying an auditioning trumpet player on piano and it was suggested to Karen that she try singing. After doing so, the musician remarked, “Forget the trumpet player, that chubby girl can sing!” (What a bastard!) Read the rest »

Bon Jovi everybody! Howsitgowin? OK. Here’s the deal: If you’ve been checking in regularly and not been finding new posts as often as you have in the past, don’t worry. We’ve all been kind of busy dealing with stuff like health issues, real jobs, being held without being charged, and everyday matters like that. But once we’re allowed our one phone call, things will pick up again, I promise….

An Irrelevant Picture of an Old Guy

…but in the meantime, while you’re here, why not check out some of the “Back Issues” of Music By Day. There’s a little something for everyone here. (We are a bit Beatles/Pink Floyd/Radiohead-preoccupied here but what the hell!)

A Family Hairloom

Just click on some of the links to previous months and years and take a chance. You’re bound to find something interesting. For instance, you might find a writer who’s style you like, so you can just click on that guy’s or gal’s name and pull up all of their posts, and get one person’s take on a number of topics. One of my favorites is  Mozart Breath . Fiendishly clever, that one is! And my stuff (Amadeus) is pretty hot poop as well! Hah!

A Creepy Album Cover

Or,,, you could scroll down and click on one of the tags on the right to pick a topic or band you like and pull up all the articles that give a mention (passing or otherwise) of the tag selected.

Check out the Categories along the top or a more extensive list just to the right and pick one that sounds promising. “Album reviews” is good. There may not be a lot of “new” album reviews but there are a lot of reviews of records from the past that may have been forgotten or even overlooked the first time around.

Instant Headache Relief!

“Mushrooms” is posts about stuff that cannot be explained away by normal logic, and not about fungal growth as you might have originally thought! Also of note is “IHateU’s Place of Hatred“. There’s only 2 or 3 posts in that one but a couple of them are classic.

You can also learn a bit of trivia and history about Music By Day itself under “The MUSIC BY DAY Awards  ” . If you’re a Beatles junkie, you could be stuck here ALL DAY! just by clicking the “Beatles” tag.

Among the hi-lites of our posting history is Leslie Loveface‘s insightful expose on the music of  Hollywood Undead – The Worst Music Ever?  It was the most successful posting in that it generated, not only the most hate mail ever, but the most mail ever period! In fact we got SO much hate mail that the comment box imploded and all four hundred and some comments disappeared. Check it out!

(For more hatemail, see Here.)

We learned a lot about the youth of America and their articulate ways. With these people being our future, and a stagnant economy coupled with a comatose education system it is clear that America is really going places and you all owe us expressions of gratitude for never having pointed this out publicly. But all kidding aside, America‘s wonderful! (Except for the south).

Paul McCartney - 1957

And as you read and educate and entertain yourself here at Music By Day, feel free to leave a comment expressing your opinion on what you’ve just read. We thrive on feedback from the readers and love pointing out how retarded some of your views are, thus making ourselves feel good (about ourselves). Believe me, this hurts us more than it hurts you!

Or just leave a comment that isn’t related. Maybe you just want to express your opinion on the lack of sense of an agrarian economy in an E-centic world. It’s possible that nobody will respond to you but rest assured that your comment will be read and that someone might go away provoked to thinking ‘Do I really like Cheese THAT much?”.

Sarah Silverman's Boobs

So, therefore, in conclusion: Don’t go away discouraged if you’ve been checking in and haven’t seen a new posting for a week or two. Browse around while you’re here. There’s loads of hidden gems that don’t deserve to be forgotten. I said upon my arrest that it was just a harmless bit of fun. I executed a dazzling handstand while tossing my racket in the air which came down on the bridge of the nose of the choirmaster during a tricky bit in C# minor.

I don’t know why I said that.

JUST STICK AROUND! OK?!!

P.S.: Check this out. You’ll curse me for it later!

Radiohead has announced the first dates from their 2012 US tour:

February 27th – Miami, FL – American Airlines Arena
February 29th – Tampa, FL – St. Pete Times Forum
March 1st – Atlanta, GA – Philips Arena
March 3rd – Houston, TX – Toyota Center
March 5th – Dallas, TX – American Airlines Center
March 7th – Austin, TX – Frank Erwin Center
March 9th – St. Louis, MO – Scottrade Center
March 11th – Kansas City, MO – Sprint Center
March 13th – Broomfield, CO – 1st Bank Center
March 15th – Glendale, AZ – Jobing.com Arena

~~~

Jobing.com Arena? … Really? Arenas have such terrible names these days!

Howdy internet trawlmeisters: In January 1984 I taped (remember those days?) about an hour of my favorite radio program “The Original Import Show” on Toronto’s CFNY 102.1-The Spirit Of Radio.

In the days before the internet, that was the only way to hear about the coolest new wave obscurites from Britain and Europe. After you heard some sound that appealed to you, if you got the name of the artist, you had to race down to the import record store to grab a copy before they were gone and (for the most part) lost in the mists of time (as most of them were).

So,,, here’s my problem: the last song on the tape got cut off about a minute into it and I didn’t get the name  of the band. As the ’80s rolled on, I started trying to find out WHAT THIS SONG WAS! But nobody knew! I even found the host of that program recently and he had no memory of this tune at all.

So,,, I bring this query to the WORLD. Someone on this planet (or one near here) must know what this song is and who does it! I would dearly like to know so I can obtain the whole song and perhaps others, using the frightening new techniques that science has made available today.

Here you are: Mystery Song

I’m sure it’s some (now) obscure European group whose identity is lost in the distant past but I MUST KNOW this song! …and you’re in a position to help.

Thank you indeed.

Seig Howdy! Music By Day Consumers. Since Pink Floyd seem to be ALMOST as popular as The Beatles around these here parts, it’s probably a good idea to address a couple of issues I see as being unimportant to anyone but the newly obsessive Pink Floyd fan who needs just that little bit more than the “Immersion” box sets are going to supply.

“Why Pink Floyd?”

The Pink Floyd's highly ambitious stage show set the standard by which all concerts would be judged!

If I didn’t have to pay rent, I would’ve bought the Dark Side of The Moon immersion set and the Wish You Were Here and The Wall immersion sets as well as the Sure to come immersion versions of Piper At The Gates Of Dawn and Animals (they must be on the way!). However, there are some good you-tube videos of people taking us on a tour of the immersion Dark Side… set, so you can feel like you know what’s going on. What they include and are going to include in the later sets are,as far as I’m concerned, brilliant, except I don’t know if I need the marbles, the laundry, and the coasters at all.

However, the idea of the 5.1 and the original quad mix of the albums (except for The Wall, the quad idea had died by then)is great and I do look forward to hearing them. The Alan Parson‘s early test mix of Dark Side…is interesting as is the fantastic live rendition of the album in 1974. Having seen them in ’87 I can also say that having the films made for certain songs would be cool as well. Those are legitimate treasures of course and as always, the packaging is top notch and likely worth the money.

But I think that EMI and the band should really embark on a live album series for the FANS. Especially those very adventurous early years where they weren’t completely in juke-b0x mode and note perfect every time. There are some great BBC and European FM broadcast recordings that capture some really great and ‘out there’ stuff. And maybe the odd audience recording of stuff that would be considered very rare and desirable. In the mean time…..

Pink Floyd tone it down a little bit.

I thought I’d give you all (those who don’t already know this stuff) a head start on the best live RoIOs (Recordings of Illegitimate Origin) to get in order to complete the early Pink Floyd experience.

Read the rest »