I was driving to Brentwood pushing the buttons on satellite radio.

Country radio is going through a boring phase right now. You know the format is fucked up if Jessica Simpson is climbing the charts, it’s got no RESPECT! You want to hear something just a little bit different, whether it be instrumentation or structure, and all you get is retreads of the same old formula.

So I jumped to Sirius 30, the Coffee House. Which has got live versions of so many AAA/soft rock tracks. But, whatever was playing there and on Little Steven’s Underground Garage didn’t tickle my fancy, so I pushed the button once more.

That’s the world we live in. You don’t have to listen to anything you don’t want to. Better yet, you only want EXCELLENCE! The old farts are flummoxed. Isn’t good enough good enough? No!

So I ended up listening to Death Cab For Cutie’s "Cath" on Left Of Center. Thinking this is pretty good, how I’m glad the deejay picked it out, how I can’t imagine spending hours playing the same damn album again and again anymore. That’s the old paradigm the same old farts can’t understand is done. We’ve got the history of music at our fingertips. We’re grazers. Just ask Eric Garland of BigChampagne. It’s a singles world. Believe otherwise and you just demonstrate you’re living in the last century.

But I didn’t need to tell anybody about "Cath".

I do need to tell you about what came next, the Raveonettes’ "Aly, Walk With Me". It had the heaviness of Zeppelin’s "When The Levee Breaks" mixed with modern sounds. It was fresh, yet retro. But what appealed to me most was the bludgeon, I liked being beaten over the head. It reminded me of being stoned in the basement, with Mountain riffs sledging my brain. I imagined going to a club to see the Raveonettes live. Nodding my head in the darkness, melding with the music, melding with the band.

And that’s what it’s about. In the last decade it became about melding with your peeps, the music became grease, fluid to get bodies moving on the dance floor. Whereas music used to be dead center. "Aly, Walk With Me" is dead center. It’s not about looking at your bud, checking out the women, it’s about closing your eyes and DRIFTING!

This sounded better in my car. Everything sounds better in a controlled environment. But the MP3 has an hypnotic character.

Download it for free and listen:

The Raveonettes

(On a Mac, hold down the Control key when you click on the link, "Aly, Walk With Me MP3", and then select "Download Linked File" from the pop-up menu.)