I love to download music.<\/p>\n
There, I admit it.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m not a recovering P2P-aholic, I’m a binger.\u00c2\u00a0 And Monday night I binged.<\/p>\n
You see I’ve got a list of about twenty five things I always search for in my P2P application.\u00c2\u00a0 And, at least once a week, I fire up the app to see if I can find them.\u00c2\u00a0 And Monday, I did.\u00c2\u00a0 I got Wendy Waldman’s "Sundown", from her third album.\u00c2\u00a0 I haven’t heard it in THIRTY YEARS!\u00c2\u00a0 Sure, sure, I could buy the newly-released CD…\u00c2\u00a0 But there’s a guy on Amazon bitching that each and every one of these re-releases is cut SO LOW that they shouldn’t be bought.\u00c2\u00a0 Here, I’ll quote him:<\/p>\n
"So I was thrilled to see all Wendy Waldman’s albums get reissued on CD. But the sound on all of em is TERRIBLE. The levels are so low…gotta crank up the stereo to hear anything. what’s up with that? So so disappointing."<\/p>\n
So, I’m not about to drop all those bucks.\u00c2\u00a0 I’d rather have an original ripped from the vinyl.\u00c2\u00a0 But what was noteworthy was, THE GUY I TOOK IT FROM HAD A FAST CONNECTION!\u00c2\u00a0 So I looked inside his hard drive.<\/p>\n
Same deal with the guy who had the new Dolly Parsons album.\u00c2\u00a0 And the one with the obscure tracks from Al Kooper’s "Easy Does It" (hey, I own it on vinyl Al, and I felt ripped off THEN, so don’t ask me to buy it AGAIN!)<\/p>\n
You see P2P isn’t only track to track.\u00c2\u00a0 You get to peek inside the COLLECTION of another person.\u00c2\u00a0 And take what you like.<\/p>\n
I took 81 tracks.<\/p>\n
Here are some of the highlights:<\/p>\n
"Diamond’s Are A Girl’s Best Friend"
T-Bone Burnett<\/p>\n
Best thing T-Bone’s ever cut.\u00c2\u00a0 Makes you believe all the hype.\u00c2\u00a0 The laconic way he sings it, like he’s sat in Texas so long getting drunk that all he can think of is making music, RESONATES with the listener.\u00c2\u00a0 Like your best friend knocked on your door just shy of midnight and started to regale you with his adventures.<\/p>\n
"LSD Commercial"
Country Joe and the Fish<\/p>\n
"Now if you’re tired or a bit run down
Can’t seem to get your feet off the ground
Maybe you oughta try a little bit of LSD"<\/p>\n
I haven’t heard this since the sixties.\u00c2\u00a0 "I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ To Die" was one of the first albums I ever listened to on headphones.\u00c2\u00a0 Most people prefer the band’s first record with "Sweet Lorraine", but I always loved this one.<\/p>\n
"Suitcase"
Badfinger<\/p>\n
Completely forgotten, in retrospect a classic band.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s not only "Day After Day".\u00c2\u00a0 I LOVE "Perfection".\u00c2\u00a0 And, NEVER forget they wrote "Without You".\u00c2\u00a0 The day Mariah Carey writes ONE song as good as this one she covered for a hit is the day I believe she’s a major talent.<\/p>\n
"The Modern Alchemist"
Blodwyn Pig<\/p>\n
I already have "See My Way" and "Dear Jill".\u00c2\u00a0 True classics you can now only hear on XM.\u00c2\u00a0 Sure, Mick Abrahams’ half of Jethro Tull wasn’t as inspired as Ian Anderson’s, but "Ahead Rings Out" is collection-worthy.<\/p>\n
"Ice Cream For Crow"
Captain Beefheart<\/p>\n
All these years later, the Captain sounds MAINSTREAM!<\/p>\n
"Eight Miles High"
Chris Hillman<\/p>\n
Who even knew he cut it?\u00c2\u00a0 The mandolin is mixed way up high, the harmonies are perfect, and with Hillman’s next door neighbor vocal instead of McGuinn’s nasality, you can listen again.<\/p>\n
"Blues For Billy Whitecloud"
David Ackles<\/p>\n
Did you buy "American Gothic"?\u00c2\u00a0 Based on the reviews?
Took me a couple of plays to get into it.\u00c2\u00a0 I’ve still got the vinyl, but I haven’t listened to it in thirty years.<\/p>\n
"The Jealous Kind"
Delbert McClinton<\/p>\n
Oh, I bought this album after I’d broken up with a girlfriend and was drinking too much.\u00c2\u00a0 He doesn’t quite live up to the rep, but there’s SOMETHING in his voice.\u00c2\u00a0 And, if you’ve never heard "Sandy Beaches", you’re in for a treat (and I found a LIVE version of that P2P!)<\/p>\n
"Tigers Will Survive"
Ian Matthews<\/p>\n
How many times did I see this album in the store and never buy it?\u00c2\u00a0 I’ve never even HEARD this track.<\/p>\n
"Let It Be Me"
Karla Bonoff & J.D. Souther<\/p>\n
LIVE!\u00c2\u00a0 This is what the majors don’t understand.\u00c2\u00a0 We fans LIVE for this shit.\u00c2\u00a0 Don’t dole it out in bits and pieces, give it ALL to us.\u00c2\u00a0 Fuck all this rap about the dying album, a true fan wants EVERYTHING!\u00c2\u00a0 It’s only the CASUAL fan who cherry-picks.\u00c2\u00a0 Used to be everybody was a fan.\u00c2\u00a0 Now, video games are more important than music.<\/p>\n
"Prince Of Peace"
Leon Russell<\/p>\n
Also live.\u00c2\u00a0 Was this on "Leon Live"?\u00c2\u00a0 That three album set I played once?\u00c2\u00a0 God, was that a rip-off.\u00c2\u00a0 But just one track all these years later resonates.\u00c2\u00a0 Buy Leon’s very first album, with his take on "Delta Lady".\u00c2\u00a0 It even tops Joe Cocker’s cover.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s almost Spector-esque.\u00c2\u00a0 With everything but the kitchen sink thrown in.<\/p>\n
"Sitting By The Window"
Moby Grape<\/p>\n
You’ll be stunned how good this sounds all these years later.\u00c2\u00a0 Despite the hype, Moby Grape WAS really talented.<\/p>\n
"Girlfriend"
Modern Lovers<\/p>\n
I LOVED that first album, with "Pablo Picasso".<\/p>\n
"Lady Jane"
Rotary Connection<\/p>\n
Talk about a forgotten band!\u00c2\u00a0 You do know that Maya Rudolph, from "Saturday Night Live", is Minnie Riperton’s daughter, right?<\/p>\n
"Working On The Road"
Ten Years After<\/p>\n
Admit it.\u00c2\u00a0 You got fucked up and listened to Ten Years After.\u00c2\u00a0 The best album was "Cricklewood Green", but "Ssssh" was listenable too…<\/p>\n
"Stephanie Says"
Velvet Underground<\/p>\n
Nobody bought the albums back then, but VU’s work has lasted longer than all the bands that sold millions.<\/p>\n
"Crimson and Clover"
Dolly Parton<\/p>\n
I read a great review of Dolly’s new album, "Those Were The Days", in the "Wall Street Journal".\u00c2\u00a0 They singled this track out as the apotheosis.\u00c2\u00a0 Actually, "Me and Bobby McGhee" is better.\u00c2\u00a0 I took that one too.\u00c2\u00a0 Along with, well, I got the whole ALBUM!\u00c2\u00a0 I was never going to buy this record.\u00c2\u00a0 But, I’ve got a newfound appreciation for Dolly ever since I downloaded her cover of Collective Soul’s "Shine" from an earlier album.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s pretty widely available P2P.\u00c2\u00a0 And, if you dig that, be sure to take the LIVE version from Letterman, performed on 1\/30\/01.<\/p>\n
The major labels are history.\u00c2\u00a0 Nobody even CARES anymore.\u00c2\u00a0 They’ve gone from protecting intellectual property to protecting their BUSINESS!\u00c2\u00a0 Yes, it’s a death spiral.\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t know if they could have survived, but by squandering the opportunity of new technology, by not realizing that the game had irrevocably changed, they’ve turned into TiVo.\u00c2\u00a0 A company so busy playing along with the powers-that-be that it was left behind.\u00c2\u00a0 The future comes, as time moves inexorably forward.\u00c2\u00a0 If you think I’m about to destroy all my MP3s, delete my P2P app from my hard drive, you’re fucking NUTS!\u00c2\u00a0 It’s not about stealing.\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, I can get all this stuff for free (except for that which is unavailable at ANY PRICE!)\u00c2\u00a0 But, by time I send an e-mail, and wait for the FedEx, I’m no longer interested, the mood has passed.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s what music is all about, mood.\u00c2\u00a0 What sounded great ten minutes ago, what interested you yesterday, sounds positively AWFUL right now.\u00c2\u00a0 It just doesn’t square with how you feel.<\/p>\n
We live in an instant society.\u00c2\u00a0 At a giant smorgasbord of entertainment.\u00c2\u00a0 Isn’t it funny while record companies are holding their product back, television producers are jamming it down our throats in all kinds of incarnations.\u00c2\u00a0 Not only are there downloads, and deliveries on demand, you turn on the damn box and you’re confronted with 300 channels!\u00c2\u00a0 Asking us to go back to the CD model is like asking us to go back to three networks!<\/p>\n
My life has been enriched by my downloads.\u00c2\u00a0 Hearing stuff I never knew existed, that I wasn’t going to buy at any price.<\/p>\n
That’s the way it is today.\u00c2\u00a0 You can deny it, but it’s reality.<\/p>\n
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I love to download music. There, I admit it.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m not a recovering P2P-aholic, I’m a binger.\u00c2\u00a0 And Monday night I binged. You see I’ve got a list of about twenty five things I always search for in my P2P application.\u00c2\u00a0 And, at least once a week, I fire up the app to see if […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,5,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-business","category-online","category-the-music"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-3V","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}