Terrible Analogies

With Christmas fast approaching I thought I’d turn our attention towards one of the often overlooked and underappreciated holiday songs that sums up how I feel about this particular gift-giving season.  Straight off their festive and upbeat 1984 sophomore album Hallowed Ground I present the The Violent Femmes’ feel-good song for the holidays Country Death Song.

Kinda brings a tear to your eye, doesn’t it?

Reminds me of the days in high school where I was first exposed to music such as The Violent Femmes, David Bowie, Agent Orange, The Descendents, Yello, Bauhaus, Tom Waits, The Cramps, Dead Kennedys, The Damned, Kraftwerk, Oingo Boing, Talking Heads, and Tones On Tail. Man, those were the days where discovering music was really something special, when the term “alternative” actually meant something, and Friday Night Videos was still watchable.

…and this is where you might expect me to rail against the current crop of musicians as lacking in talent (and I so was tempted to do so), but the more I thought about it the more I realized that it’s not the fault of lousy bands for being popular.  We all know it’s the fault of the record labels trying to turn a buck. There’s an amazing number of incredible bands out there that just don’t get the exposure that they deserve. Cases in point, here are some of the current releases that I’m listening to:

• Bomb The Bass – Future Chaos
• Vile Evils – any and all singles (long live Pop Will Eat Itself.  No Pop?  No style!)
• Death Cab For Cutie – Narrow Stairs
• Andrew Bird – Armchair Apocrypha
• What Made Milwaukee Famous – What Doesn’t Kill Us
• The Sounds – Dying To Say This To You
• Mindless Self Indulgence – If
• Greg Laswell – Three Flights From Alto Nido
• The Helio Sequence – Keep Your Eyes Ahead
• Cut Copy – In Ghost Colors
• The 69 Eyes – Framed In Blood
• The Sea And Cake – Car Alarm
• Delta Spirit – Ode To Sunshine (gotta stick up for my local San Diego bands)
• 1990′s – Cookies
• Love Motel – Apres Le Paradis

These are just a few of the bands that I’ve either recently gotten in to or have been following for some time.

To be blunt, the American top whatever lists are rubbish.  It sometimes feel like we have absolutely no taste in music (of course that’s very subjective on my part, I know).  In my experience I’ve found that visiting sites such as the UK Charts, the Indie Top 200, the Global Albums Chart, or spending some time on Epitonic.com / !K7 has yielded some amazing results. When possible I sample the music via iTunes then download from my sources of choice.  These are just a few links for record suggestions.  Slog your way through the ‘nets and find your own alternative sources for worthy bands.  There are surprises around every corner, you just have to put forth the effort and look.