A Bloy and his Blog

I’ve been wanting to replace my old MP3 player for a while now. It’s a few years old, so the features and storage capacity are lacking compared to players on the market now. I decided to give in to my technolust and started shopping around.

Part of me was reluctant to go with an Apple iPod. My old player was from Sansa, and concerns about Apple’s proprietary software bothered me a bit. After reading some online reviews, I decided to try one of the new Sansa models. I was not impressed. The controls seemed clumsy and hard to get used to. I experimented with loading music from my computer onto the player, and that was a clumsy experience as well. So, I returned the Sansa player, and picked up a 4 GB Apple iPod Nano. Wow! What a nice device. Yes that’s right, I am now one of the Pod People.

read the rest of: One of the pod people

I had been anticipating this CD by The Shins ever since I first heard the marvelous, Chutes Too Narrow (their previous release) over two years ago. In fact, about a month ago, I reserved a copy at my local record store, just be be assured I could get it on the day it was released. I’m sure it’s difficult for a band to follow such a well received disc as Chutes, but after listening to Wincing The Night Away for over a week now, I think they have made a very worthy follow up.

The Shins have a talent for creating beautiful melodies with hooks that stick with you long after you’ve heard the song. While Chutes was a much brighter record emotionally, Wincing The Night Away has a bit of a darker edge to it. Indeed, the title alludes to a bout of insomnia the band’s frontman (James Mercer) had.

read the rest of: The Shins: Wincing the night away

Here are my picks for best music of the year, including samples of key tracks.

Richard Ashcroft – Keys to the World
The former lead singer of The Verve, Richard Ashcroft pulled from a variety of styles to make an outstanding CD. The Motown flavored “Music is Power,” the brit-pop “Break the Night with Colour” and the Paul Westerburg-like ballad “Sweet Brother Malcolm” are all excellent songs. The title track is another superb brit-pop song.

read the rest of: Best music of 2006

Last night I went to the Bob Dylan concert at the Kohl Center here in Madison. When you go to see such a legendary performer, you bring a lot of expectations along. After all, you’ve heard those classic songs a hundred times before, in their original recorded form.

Over the past several decades, Dylan hasn’t been one to reproduce the song’s original studio sound in concert, and he certainly doesn’t sing the same way he did twenty (or even ten) years ago. However, the outstanding backing band, and that sometimes raspy voice did have more than their share of shining moments. That was especially true when they performed the bluesy songs like “Lonesome Day Blues” or “Rollin’ and Tumblin’” (a song from his newest and highly acclaimed disc, Modern Times). Musically, another strong moment came when the band opened the encore with another of the new songs “Thunder on the Mountain.”

read the rest of: Bob Dylan at the Kohl Center

Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers stopped in Madison last night in the middle of their 30th Anniversary tour (they’ve been around 30 years already?). They played an outstanding show here at the Dane County Coliseum.

Because of the busy day I had at work yesterday, and the gloomy weather we’ve been having for the past week or so, I really had to drag myself off to the show. However, when Tom and the band walked out on stage and started playing the opening riffs of “Listen to Her Heart,” I was instantly glad I came. Judging by the crowd’s enthusiastic welcome, I wasn’t the only one.

read the rest of: Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers

The band I was looking forward to most at this year’s Summerfest was My Morning Jacket. Coming off the heels of one of my favorite albums of 2005, I had high expectations. I wondered how this unique band’s recorded music (which sounds elaborately produced) would come off live. I was not disappointed. The show started off with the opening drones of “Wordless Chorus.” When the lead singer got to the line “We are the innovators, they are the imitators” I thought, “you can say that again.”

read the rest of: My Morning Jacket

I’ve spent the past few days in Milwaukee, hanging out with friends and going to Summerfest. One of the great things about the fest can be amount of talent that’s available. With the main-stage amphitheater and seven major side-stages there is of a lot of music going on. Sometimes, the quality of the acts on a given night can be so high it’s tough to decide which act to focus on. In some ways this can be a bad thing. Because there are so many bands you want to see, you can end up seeing a smattering of a lot of acts, missing out on each band’s entire performance.

read the rest of: The Summerfest cup runneth over