Brown and Yellow Snow

Oh man. This week's mix is as eclectic as it is inspired. I mean, this is the golden stuff - not quite super-kitschy but totally fresh shit you probably have not pressed your ears against. Here are the tracks.

Brown and Yellow Snow - Warm Tunes for January 2008

1. Yi Ma - Speedking
2. Bought Your Weight - Haymarket Riot
3. Ever - Flipper
4. Frozen Gtr - Thurston Moore
5. Lovin in the Red - Theoretical Girls
6. Colonel Mustard - Thee Cybermen
7. Eleanor Rigby - Dick Hyman
8. City 2000 A.D. - Beat Girl (From the soundtrack to Beat Girl the movie)
9. Va Va Voom - Low Flying Owls
10. Nazi Apocalypse - Simply Saucer
11. Sleeping Gas - Teardrop Explodes
12. Daddy Love - The Trashwomen
13. Tragedy - The Wipers

Get the mix here. For help with this (downloading, unRARing, etc) - please google, drop me a line in the comments, or check out some of the links.

So, as you see, there aren't too many things linking these tracks together. But, like always, my numbering of the tracks is painstakingly deliberate. I'm not saying that you always have to listen to my mixes in order, but if you do, then you might appreciate the arrangements. I guess this week's mix is inspired by my lo-fi and dreary-eyed experience in another Indiana winter. I think there is a subtle tone to this mix that echoes the raw cough of January - and fuck it anyways. I'm on a warm couch in an afghan tent.

To wet your whistle (or is it "wh-et, whhhh-et"), I'll tell you about the track by Thee Cyberment. This is off of a compilation called Hour of the Gun, an Italian Surf/Trash/Western compilation. This is some rad surf - not the same ol' North American stuff (Shadowy Men, etc) which is okay but, well, just gets to be monotonous musically. You can buy this album and a not more of Spaghetti Western/surf/trash at http://www.onemilliondollarrecords.de/



The Thurston Moore song is off of his new solo album, Trees of the University. I have not seen too many mentionings of this album around the internet - but I find it to be a solid and lovely album. You don't have to be a Sonic Youth freak to appreciate the richness of this guitar-driven daydream. This album may not be lo-fi in production, but seamless mixing doesn't contradict Moore's basic punk-rock aesthetics towards music itself.

Simply Saucer is a great underground find from the annals of deep-cut history. From the website Epitonic
"If you're a serious afficionado of underground rock music history, hearing Simply Saucer for the first time borders on the miraculous, perhaps just a notch down from Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. Their music was the offspring of the dense, abrasive, streetwise proto-punk of The Stooges' Funhouse and The Velvet Underground's White Light/White Heat, the proto-metal crunch of The Kinks at their very loudest, the moody and ethereal intricacy of early Pink Floyd, and the huge, hypnotic electronics-laden grooves of Can. They also added a brilliant sci-fi element, offering lyrics about cyborgs and metalloid bodies while making ample use of the theremin and loopy sound generators -- in addition to their potent dual guitar attack and ferocious runaway rhythm section."

Then there is the Trashwomen. This all female trash/garage/surf band originated in San Francisco in 1991. They put out a few records, a few splits, and were on several trash/surf comps. Very lo-fi and high-awesome.



The rest of the bands are fairly recognizable - so I'll spare you the Dr.Bullshit-music info. Download, enjoy, and check back for more Warm Tunes.
And if you dig it - drop me a line in the comments baby.

A prompt: from my myspace blog

Because soon the internet as we know it, have come to love it, will be no more. Overdramatic? Paranoid? You bet. And all for good reason. I'm not going to try and pretend that I completely grasp the whole "net neutrality," debate. I understand that at the very core, though, the very fact that we are debating whether the four major media corporations should get to decide who gets what content for what price is, well, its a bad sign. A sign saying "we've almost figured out how to control every virtual blip and boop."

But that really isn't what this blog is about. It is about you and me and the fact that thousands of resources for the free and abundant exchange of information and media and ideas exists right now - and most of us barely learn how to harness this power that is

THE FUCKING INTERNET!

Sure I think things get censored, search results bought, search engines controlled for profit - but the fact that millions upon millions of users are constantly on their fat-watch-dog-asses, sniffing out bullshit and calling it out immediately----FUCKING AMAZING CYBER-ANARCHY!!!

And the hilarious part is THEY created US. We're sheparded to the shiney, gleaming, flashing distractions: except now they are interactive. Television be damned, I'll watch videos online and leave a shitty comment right below it. When was the last time you flipped across Scrubs on TBS and thought, "if this is whats funny, I'd like to shoot myself in the face." Well, if you'd seen that clip on youtube or some other more obscure video player - you could leave that thought right under the video. Immediate participatory entertainment.

Dang, this didn't start off as a late night rant - but the dork-orific passion just creeps up with a little Lambrusco.

Okay, what this is REALLY about is my love of piracy and all that it heeds, represents, and uncovers. But its really dangerous, right? Well, sort of. It is getting more press as far as arrests and shut-outs. But piracy is the potsmoking of cyberspace: everyone does it, and everyone who does it knows that it really should be okay....unless you get into dealing, selling, etc. Eh, anyhow - with major sites like the almighty OINKME going down, this shit is getting hairy.

Should that stop you?

Fuck no!!!

So it isn't as easy as clicking a file and hoping it isn't the NSA or RIAA. You just have to search out the tricks.

First I tried a proxy. That was complicated and didn't seem foolproof. Then I tried PEERGUARDIAN but got paranoid about it and again - I didn't really get how it would cover my ass. (These are all cautions taken in regards to torrents, mind you)

So really, I say get out of the neighborhood where all the crime is if you don't want to get caught. Get into the suburbs of Blogs and Directories. Below is a great video explaining a little bit about what I mean.


Here is another way to use search engines - but it is made completely simple. Just click on either firfox or ie and use the search window that pops up to search for any music! Svens Blog!!!!!

Totally fuzzy has made this search engine that searches music blogs that put up mp3s. The blogs included in the search are all willing to be a part of the search.
Totally fuzzy search engine


Okay so there are a few things to learn once you start locating these files of songs and/or albums or whatever. Some of them come in zip files or rars. These are just compressed files - like wrapping your mp3s up in one of those vaccum sealers. You just need WINRAR or something similar to get them out. If the program confuses you - just drag and drop the file onto the program window and hit "extract."
Some of them are hosted on weird download sites.
Some of them use passwords.
I mean, you kind of have to learn by trial and error and asking questions/researching. But its worth it! When I actually put together a stellar mix of rad shit that you'd never heard and never would have - its because awesome ppl on the net have made it available and I've figured out how to get it! So far, I've heard of NO cases of ppl getting in trouble for downloading files this way....but it won't be long.
Its just too fucking rad for it not to get fucked up - so learn it, try it, and enjoy it while you can.


Dude, I have not typed that much alllllll year. Maybe I can turn this in as an essay? If this shed any light for you, please comment and feel free to ask me any questions.

To punk to Stumble

It is weird to stumble to the end of a cyber-universe, but indeed, I did. For those of you familiar with stumble and do so on a regular basis - make sure to thumb-up and review your favorite punk rock sites, because there are not near enough crawled.