Got Any Bandwidth?

See? I lay off the posting for a couple of weeks, and what happens, my file hosting bandwidth gets sucked dry. For the first time, ever. Gee, I must be getting popular, or something. Wait until I manage to work Britney Spears, Hannah Montana and David Cook from American Idol into the same sentence. Oops, too late!

I'm going to scout around for some additional file hosting options - preferably with the hotlinking so you can preview the file in SnapShots (which I think is cool, anyway).

In the meantime, my bandwidth will reset in a couple of days and I'm going to post some additional links for anyone who can't wait to hear Fiat Lux and It's Immaterial again.

Random 80's Wednesday

Fiat Lux - Solitary Lovers (12" Single, 1985)
M - Doubletalk (from Famous Last Words, 1982)
It's Immaterial - White Man's Hut (7" Single, 1983)
Little America - You Were Right (from Little America, 1987)
The Weathermen - Punishment Park (from The Black Album, 1988)

Download all the tracks here and save my bandwidth! (via Rapidshare)

**UPDATE** Just found out that the Weathermen album is available for download from Amazon and i-Tunes, so I have deleted the file and added a link. Go buy it, it's great!

Pat Boone - A Closer Walk With Thee (1957)

I really didn't want my last post - frivolous, trivial and a little risque - to be my only comment on Easter Sunday. And therefore, in a dramatic change of pace and direction, I would like to present my dear mother's favorite record, A Closer Walk With Thee by Pat Boone. It was one of the very few 45s I remember from my childhood.

Just A Closer Walk With Thee
Peace In The Valley
He'll Understand (And Say Well Done)
Steal Away

Happy Scrappy?

You know, I barely noticed Scrappy Doo in the Scooby Doo picture I posted a few days ago. Once I saw his annoying, grinning schmuck I looked a little closer. As it turns out, maybe he had a reason to smile - being short sometimes has its advantages!

Link-O-Rama

I'm going to use the English band 1,000 Violins as an example of how to discover a band and enjoy a sumptuous feast of music as a result.

This week, I have been hanging out at Sideroom Singles, a really cool and interesting concept blog from Australia. The concept is that the author takes ten 7" singles from a pile in his side room, and posts all ten as a continuous podcast. A parallel blog also records the associated B-Sides. Being from Australia, there are a lot of 80's bands that I've never heard of, but it's a real musical mixture starting at around 1979 and running through to the late 80's with a few more modern releases, such as Royksopp, thrown in. He also scans the singles covers and backs which makes the whole enterprise akin to wandering into a friends back room, shuffling through his stack of records, and occasionally thrusting up a sleeve with the question, "So what does this sound like then?"

One artist mentioned was 1,000 Violins with their song "If I Had Words", and seeing as I liked the sleeve I downloaded the podcast and ripped that individual track (using the marvelous Audacity, if you must know). Within about three seconds of the intro, I knew I liked it and set of into the blogosphere for more information.

Turns out that the band is widely known in the C86 scene and was tipped as a worthy successor to The Smiths. Next stop was one of my favorite indie-pop blogs, Take The Pills, who naturally mentions the band several times and featured their 2001 compilation reissue Like 1,000 Violins at this post. If you should stop over, then I dare you to surf away without finding at least another half dozen indie-pop gems to enjoy. A great, great site.

A little more digging led me back to another old favorite, the Cactus Mouth Informer. Another afficionado of the C86 scene, his new year's eve post last December included the solitary LP released by 1,000 Violins, entitled Hey Man That's Beautiful. It certainly is. From there it was just a hop and skip to finding additional posts about the band on The Rain Fell Down and a very detailed description of the background of the band's first record label at Down With Tractors. Most of the bands from the C86 scene remain unknown to me, so expect a few more posts on the topic in the future.

For a great overview of all things C86 related, then stop by Indie MP3, a site that's been around so long I sometimes forget to mention how great it is. There's also a comprehensive essay here.

Oscillate Wildly

One of the more geeky things that I do (and there are a few) is keep a list of my favorite music artist in any given month. It's a lot easier than trying to keep a chart (although now I'm using i-Tunes to play my music collection during the day, I'm getting there) and it's kind of an interesting way to see what type of music has been capturing my attention. For example, I can look back to early 2003 and how, after hearing Alphaville's "Forever Young" for the first time, I spent the rest of the year discovering modern European synthpop and the so-called darkwave artists, such as Wolfsheim, De/Vision and Camouflage. Other artists that have also made the list at various times in the last few years include Richard Hawley, Hard-Fi, The Feeling, U2 and, periodically, spoken word performances such as the author Bill Bryson and comedian Eddie Izzard. I compare my fluctuating musical tastes to a kind of aural Doctor Who, popping back and forward in time relatively seamlessly, making a few interesting discoveries, and then traveling on again.

All this is kind of a round about way of discussing the fact that in the Spring of 2008, I am hopelessly obsessed with obscure 80's material. Almost to the point where I am too busy making discoveries to update my blog anywhere near as often as I'm used to. So if you noticed that I've been slacking, then I accept that, I apologize for neglecting MFL and thanks for still being around to read this.

One positive aspect is that I have enough new material to keep my "Random 80's" posts going for quite a while. I also have a lot of albums to put up. I'm really tempted right now to go the whole hog and get myself the Ion USB turntable I thought about for Christmas so I can get digging into the large quantities of second-hand vinyl I am starting to notice more often nowadays.

If I'm not blogging at the moment, you can find me on Soulseek. I used the program back in 2003 to investigate some of the synthpop acts I was just discovering. For a couple of years, it looked like membership had declined, but I've been able to track down a lot of good stuff recently and Soulseek is a really good place to discuss your finds and get recommendations from friends. If you should see me on there, say hello.

Random (Irish) 80's Wednesday

Minor Detail - Canvas of Life (from Minor Detail, 1983)
The Adventures - Two Rivers (from Theodore And Friends, 1985)
Boomtown Rats - Talking In Code (from V Deep, 1982)
The Fountainhead - Rhythm Method (12" Single, 1984)
Ghost of an American Airman - I Hear Voices (7" Single, 1987)