Break Songs (Or Music to March Break By)
Published March 12, 2010 @ 15:49 in Lists, Music

It's March break.

Here are songs in my collection that have the word "march" in the title.

• 19th Nervous Breakdown - The Rolling Stones
• 21st Century Breakdown - Green Day
• A Room At Heartbreak Hotel - U2
• Achy Breaky Song - Weird Al Yankovic
• Alone I Break - Korn
• Ballbreaker - AC-DC
• Bend and Break - Keane
• Big Stuff (Previously Unissued Breakdown And Chatter) - Billie Holiday
• Break - The Kleptones
• Break - Three Days Grace
• Break Down Doors - Default
• Break Down The Walls - Chris Jericho - RA The Rugged Man
• Break 'Em Off Some - Cypress Hill
• Break 'Em On Down - Big Joe Williams
• Break Her Down - Moist
• Break It To Them Gently - Burton Cummings
• Break It Up - Foreigner
• Break It Up - Cypress Hill
• Break My Body - Pixies
• Break My Stride - Unique II
• Break My Stride - Mathiew Wilder
• Break of Dawn - Michael Jackson
• Break On Through (The Doors) - Pearl Jam
• Break on Through (To the Other Side) - The Doors
• Break Out (Insert) - N.W.A.
• Break Some Off - Korn
• Break Stuff - Limp Bizkit
• Break The Bed - Odds
• Break the Grip of Shame - Paris
• Break The Ice - Britney Spears
• Break The Spell - The Rolling Stones
• Break Ups 2 Make Ups - Method Man/Method Man
• Break You Off - The Roots
• Break Your Heart - Barenaked Ladies
• Break Your Heart - Natalie Merchant
• Breakadown - De La Soul
• Breakaway - Ratatat
• Breakaway - Sass Jordan
• Breakaway - Kelly Clarkson
• Breakdown - Guns N' Roses
• Breakdown - Handsome Boy Modeling School
• Breakdown - Jack Johnson
• Breakdown - Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers
• Breakdown - Tantric
• Breakerfall - Pearl Jam
• Breakfast At The Circus - David Wilcox
• Breakfast In America - Supertramp
• Breakfast In Bed - The Pretenders
• Breakin' Dishes - Rihanna
• Breakin' the Law - The New Pornographers
• Breaking All The Rules - Ozzy Osbourne
• Breaking Free - High School Musical
• Breaking In - Means
• Breaking My Own Heart - Duffy
• Breaking The Girl - Red Hot Chili Peppers
• Breaking The Habit - Linkin Park
• Breakout - Foo Fighters
• Breakout - Swing Out Sister
• Breakthrough - Big Wreck
• Bringin' On The Heartbreak - Def Leppard
• Calypso Breakdown - Ralph McDonald
• Communication Breakdown - Led Zeppelin
• Communications Breakdown - Chilliwack
• Daybreak - Barry Manilow
• Disciplined Breakdown - Collective Soul
• Don't Break My Heart - UB40
• Don't Confess (This Thing That Breaks My Heart) - Tegan and Sara
• Don't Go Breaking My Heart [With Kiki Dee] - Elton John
• Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker) - The Rolling Stones
• Finish Your Collapse and Stay for Breakfast - Broken Social Scene
• Guilty (Previously Unissued Breakdown And Chatter) - Billie Holiday
• Hard Habit To Break - Chicago
• He Don't Love You (And He'll Break Your Heart) - Levon & The Hawks
• Heartbreak Beat - The Psychedelic Furs
• Heartbreak Hotel - Elvis Presley
• Heartbreak Hotel - Billy Joel
• Heartbreak Hotel - Whitney Houston
• Heartbreak Radio - Delbert McClinton
• Heartbreaker - Led Zeppelin
• Heartbreaker (Live, 1987) - Nirvana
• How Could An Angel Break My Heart - Kenny G
• I Feel Like Breaking Up Somebody's Home Tonight - Ann Peebles
• I Want to Break Free - Queen
• It's All Gonna Break - Broken Social Scene
• Jailbreak - Thin Lizzy
• Nookie, Break Stuff - Richard Cheese
• Only Love Can Break Your Heart - Neil Young
• Only Love Can Break Your Heart - Psychic TV
• Orange Juice Blues (Blues For Breakfast) - The Band
• Rude Boy Abroad [Lazare breakdub] - Bedouin Soundclash
• So He Won't Break - The Black Keys
• Spybreak! (Short One) - Propellerheads
• Stop Breakin Down Blues - Robert Johnson
• Stop Breaking Down - The White Stripes
• Super Disco Breakin' - Beastie Boys
• The Break - Soul Asylum
• Time To Break Up - blink-182
• To Da Break Of Dawn - L.L. Cool J.
• Unbreak my Heart - Johnny Mathis
• Up for Breakfast - Van Halen
• Welcome To Heartbreak [Ft. Kid Cudi] - Kanye West
• When Love Breaks Down - Prefab Sprout
• When the Levee Breaks - A Perfect Circle
• When The Levee Breaks - Dread Zeppelin
• When the Levee Breaks - Led Zeppelin
• When Your Lonely Heart Breaks - Neil Young & Crazy Horse
• You're Breaking His Heart - Mark Mothersbaugh

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Music Companies Cut Off Nose to Spite Face
Published February 21, 2010 @ 09:41 in Music

Damian Kulash Jr. of the band Ok Go has contributed a great opinion piece to the New York Times.

You may recall Ok Go's treadmill video for "Here It Goes Again". That clever, homemade video made Ok Go a huge success. They posted it to YouTube in violation of their record contract with EMI but it was viewed tens of millions of times, brought big crowds to their concerts on five continents, and made them and EMI a great deal of money.

Forever I've been baffled by record companies disabling the embed feature on official music videos. They're preventing publishers like me from giving them free advertising, and it forces us to find a poorer quality upload or to share the song set to a picture of the album cover or something much less impressive. It makes no sense to me, and it makes no sense to Kulash.

Embedded videos - those hosted by YouTube but streamed on blogs and other Web sites - don’t generate any revenue for record companies, so EMI disabled the embedding feature. Now we can’t post the YouTube versions of our videos on our own site, nor can our fans post them on theirs. If you want to watch them, you have to do so on YouTube.

But this isn’t how the Internet works. Viral content doesn’t spread just from primary sources like YouTube or Flickr. Blogs, Web sites and video aggregators serve as cultural curators, daily collecting the items that will interest their audiences the most. By ignoring the power of these tastemakers, our record company is cutting off its nose to spite its face.

EMI essentially prohibits the band's video from going viral, from being shared throughout the world, and the results speak for themselves.

The numbers are shocking: When EMI disabled the embedding feature, views of our treadmill video dropped 90 percent, from about 10,000 per day to just over 1,000. Our last royalty statement from the label, which covered six months of streams, shows a whopping $27.77 credit to our account.

Clearly the embedding restriction is bad news for our band, but is it worth it for EMI? The terms of YouTube’s deals with record companies aren’t public, but news reports say that the labels receive $.004 to $.008 per stream, so the most EMI could have grossed for the streams in question is a little over $5,400.

Normally I'd embed the video here, but EMI doesn't want me doing that. Cutting off its nose to spite its face indeed.

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New Broken Social Scene Single - Free MP3
Published February 19, 2010 @ 14:57 in Music

New BSS is coming. It's been awhile since we had a new record from Toronto's Broken Social Scene collective.

The first song from Forgiveness Rock Record is World Sick and it's a free MP3 download from http://www.brokensocialscene.ca/ right now.

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Underwhelmed Original Hear and Now Version is a Kool Thing
Published February 13, 2010 @ 16:59 in Music

Sloan just quietly released a collection of b-sides and rarities they're selling at http://www.sloanmusic.com/ for $9.99. It's 26 tunes, and the first is the original version of Underwhelmed.

If Sloan's embeddable player worked, you can hear this version of Underwhelmed above. I've never heard it before, even though the song we all know and love made my Ten Canadian Tracks list.

Is it me, or did Underwhelmed sound an awful lot like Sonic Youth's Kool Thing before they changed it up?

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The 1989 Skid Row Trifecta
Published February 10, 2010 @ 09:26 in Music

I'll admit it, I was digging the hair bands in the late 80s. One band I enjoyed in 1989 was Skid Row, fronted by Torontonian Sebastian Bach.

Skid Row's self titled debut spawned a trifecta of mega hits that received a wealth of radio play in this city. It was only in the days before Nevermind and Ten that such a trifecta was even possible.

Today, for no particularly good reason, we revisit these three hit singles from Skid Row. It's '89 y'all, not Beethoven's fifth or sixth.

18 and Life

I Remember You

Youth Gone Wild

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Kendel Carson
Published February 4, 2010 @ 16:44 in Music

In my review of the Blue Rodeo concert at Massey Hall, I mentioned the opening act Dustin Bentall. He was great, but he was best when joined by Kendel Carson. This entry is about Kendel.

I'm not really a country music fan, but I like folksy country rock and ol' bluegrass stuff, like you heard in O Brother Where Art Thou?. I like Blue Rodeo, I hate Keith Urban. I like Johnny Cash, I hate Kenny Chesney. You get the idea...

I loved Kendel Carson last night. Maybe it's because I've always had a thing for the fiddle, but I couldn't get over how good she was. He she was earlier in this tour performing "Oh Baby Lie Down".

Her fiddle solos were outstanding, and she complemented the country rock tones of Dustin Bentall perfectly. You can see her here that same night helping out with "Draft Dodger".

I really knew nothing about Kendel, so I'm catching up.

Although classically trained (and eventually a performer in the National Youth Orchestra and a featured soloist with the Victoria Symphony), Carson’s musical passion lied in the folk, country and rock scenes – especially after her family moved out West. “There’s an amazing roots scene out in Victoria,” she says. “That became my primary influence. It’s a really community-minded spirit out there. It’s inspiring.”

Give this chick a fiddle and a little room, and the world's her oyster.

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Blue Rodeo at Massey Hall
Published February 4, 2010 @ 07:49 in Music

Last night, I was at Massey Hall to see Blue Rodeo. I've been a Blue Rodeo fan since 1987 when the DJ we hired for our grade school dance told us he was going to spin us a new one and I heard "Try" for the first time. And if you're going to see a band you like, there really is no better forum in the city of Toronto than Massey Hall. The acoustics are perfect.

I was having a blast before Blue Rodeo even hit the stage. Dustin Bentall opened, and he was joined by Kendel Carson. I wasn't familiar with either artist before I heard them last night, but together they were absolutely amazing. I'm giving Kendel an entry all to herself because she blew my little mind. Stay tuned for that one.

Here's a little of Dustin Bentall and Kendel Carson (she's the blond playing the violin) warming us up last night.

When it comes to Blue Rodeo, you're either a Cuddy or a Keelor guy. Sure, many love both, but everyone has a preference. I've always been a Keelor guy, and last night reminded me why. This is no knock against Cuddy, who has sang the national anthem at 2 out of the last 3 Leafs games I've seen live, but Keelor's worth the price of admission on his own. He's got the cool voice and the cool parts, and if he wants to extend "Diamond Mine" another 20 minutes, I'm perfectly okay with that.

Here he is instructing the Massey Hall crowd before Cuddy came in to order us on our feet.

That leads nicely to my only criticism of the night. This is the first concert I've attended where we all sat on our seats until the encore, and I've been to many, many concerts. Was it because it's Massey Hall? Was it because it's Blue Rodeo? I'm not sure, but nobody stood and it didn't feel natural. I believe I've ranted on this subject before...

Here's the finale, Blue Rodeo joined by Dustin Bentall and Kendel Carson for "Lost Together".

A big thanks to my mom, who responded brilliantly to my request to receive no stuff this Christmas. She bought me the perfect gift, a ticket to see a great band at Massey Hall. This was the third concert I had ever seen with my mom, joining Kid Rock at the Molson Amp and The Tragically Hip at Fort York.

Thanks, Ma!

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That Horrible, Horrible Auto-Tune
Published February 1, 2010 @ 20:30 in Music

Like a sucker, I watched the Grammy Awards last night. I PVR'd the show and started it about 45 minutes in, so I could skip the commercials. I never like the Grammies, but I always feel compelled to watch them for some reason.

The music was once again mediocre. Actually, this year I felt the music was worse than usual, and that's saying something. As bad as the bulk of the performances were, nothing was as horrible as the performance by Jamie Foxx and T-Pain. The song, entitled "Blame It", was just about the most awful thing my ears have ever had the displeasure of hearing, and I like rap.

What did you think? I couldn't believe how bad it was (Slash's solo excepted - Slash performing the solo from November Rain almost saved this steaming pile of shite) and my second time through it, it's even worse than I remembered. I blame Auto-Tune.

Auto-Tune is horrible. It should be reserved for the news. I blame Cher for starting the Auto-Tune fad, and it's gotten completely out of control. Jamie Foxx and T-Pain (if that's his real name - I suspect it's not) should be ashamed. Auto-Tune isn't just cheating, it's killing popular music.

Death to Auto-Tune.

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Dead Teen Songs: My Favourites
Published January 22, 2010 @ 09:59 in Lists, Music

In my travels the other night, I stumbled upon Dead Teen Songs or Teenage Death Music or the teen death song or teen tragedy. In addition to being quite the title, it's quite the list.

You've got to love songs about teenage death. Here are my ten favourite dead teen songs.

• Last Kiss - Pearl Jam
• Leader of the Pack - The Shangri-las
• I Don't Like Mondays - Boomtown Rats
• Delia's Gone - Johnny Cash
• The Legend Of Tom Dooley - The Kingston Trio
• Freddie's Dead - Curtis Mayfield
• 19 - Paul Hardcastle
• Adam's Song - Blink 182
• Jeremy - Pearl Jam
• People Who Died - Jim Carroll

But my favourite teen tragedy song didn't even get a mention on this web page. That would be Big League by Tom Cochrane and Red Rider. Hit a truck doing seventy in the wrong lane to the big league.

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Uptime / Downtime from The Kleptones
Published January 2, 2010 @ 11:27 in Music

The Kleptones "released" one of my favourite albums of all time. I almost wrote "favourite mash-up albums", but that's not true. A Night at the Hip-Hopera is one of my favourite albums overall, just like Girl Talk's Feed the Animals was my favourite album of 2008.

The Kleptones have a new album available for download here. It's called Uptime / Downtime and I'm downloading it as I type.

Here's the cover art. Do you recognize the city?

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