Coachella

I am getting ready to go to Coachella. I am happy about this.

This is my tentative way of approaching the festival, based on the set times:

Saturday

12:00 - 12:30 - Brother Ali. possibly leaving early to see
12:30 - 1:00 - Section Quartet. or wandering instead.
1:00 - 1:35 - Rob Dickinson
1:35 - 1:45 - chill. water. check merch.
1:45 - 2:00 - Platinum Pied Pipers, stay until 2:30 if it's great, otherwise, leaving early for
2:00 - 2:30 - Hybrid, leaving early for
2:30 - 2:50 - The Walkmen, stay until 3:15 if it's great, otherwise leaving early for
2:50 - 3:40 - Lady Sovereign
3:40 - 4:30 - the Duke Spirit
4:30 - 5:05 - most of Animal Collective, leaving early for
5:05 - 5:55 - Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
5:55 - 6:45 - My Morning Jacket
6:45 - 7:00 - either get dinner, check out the end of TV on the Radio, or get close for
7:00 - 7:50 - Sigur Ros
7:50 - 8:20 - end of Ladytron
8:20 - 8:45 - either get dinner, check out some of Franz, or get close for
8:45 - 9:35 - Cat Power
9:35 - 11:00 - game time decision. could go Depeche Mode and stay for a while, maybe leaving to check out Atmosphere. OR i could head to the Sahara Tent for Audio Bullys and good position for
11:00 - 12:00 - Daft Punk

Sunday

12:00 - 12:45 - The Octopus Project
12:45 - 1:10 - chill, get some water, check out merch, on the way to
1:10 - 1:50 - Youth Group, leaving early to see
1:50 - 2:15 - The Dears, leaving early to see
2:15 - 3:05 - Mates of State
3:05 - 3:30 - some of Amadou & Mariam, leaving early to see
3:30 - 4:10 - Ted Leo, leaving early to see
4:10 - 4:55 - Metric
4:55 - 5:15 - either stay and chill or try and get food and water
5:15 - 6:00 - Wolf Parade, leaving early
6:00 - 6:40 - game time decision between Sleater-Kinney and Bloc Party, possibly/probably leaving early to see
6:40 - 7:10 - Gnarls Barkley
7:10 - 7:15 - water, making way to
7:15 - 8:05 - Yeah Yeah Yeahs
8:05 - 8:25 - laughing. probably making my way to
8:25 - 9:15 - Mogwai
9:15 - 10:20 - most of Massive Attack, possibly leaving early for
10:20 - 10:55 - Dungen
10:55 - 12:00 - most of Tool

Lots of very fast walking involved.

Last.fm

Recently played tracks (and seriously, I've told them I am in Phoenix and not London or whereever it would be 6pm right now):


Weekly top artists (standard disclaimer about this not counting what I play with my Creative or in my car or whatnot):


Why am I posting this as a standard blog post rather than putting it in the sidebar or something? I don't know. I guess I don't know which I would post there. Nor do I want to fool around with the template enough to fit this in. It'll be somewhere in the new site, whenever that happens. Also I'm supposed to be leaving to drop off tax forms at some mail drop. But I'm sitting here, listening to Metric and babbling.

And yes, I was listening to Metric when I wrote this; the first chart there shows what I'm currently listening to... that is what I'm listening to when you look at it rather than when I post it. So, basically, it makes sense as a sidebar or something but not as a post signature or something. Though that would be cool. Ish.

Also I'll cut it down so it doesn't show a ridiculous number of songs/artists/whatever.

UPDATE: It only shows 5 for the artists and maybe that many for the songs. That isn't excessive, for a blog sidebar, now is it.

Saddle Creek

Two Gallants came to Phoenix recently, played a fantastic show.

After that show I bought their latest album, What the Toll Tells, on vinyl. The best part was the following:

Free Digital Download with the purchase of this LP! Each LP comes with a code allowing you to download the full record one time only, so you can enjoy your LP on your portable MP3 player!

It does appear as if Saddle Creek recently started this (as have a few other similarly sized labels) but it makes me happy. Yeah, I could still buy the vinyl and then download the mp3s from whereever (or get them from whatever and then buy the vinyl) but it's always nice when the label approves, you know?

Anyway if I have a choice of what's going to just be sitting around I'd pick the big beautiful vinyl (with two bonus tracks) because it's the mp3s (on my computer, Creative or on the mp3 CD I burned) that are going to get used.

Gimmie Indie Rock

The subheading says it all:

Herein, we will run tournaments that are utterly inconsequential, will fuel moderate bickering, and ultimately please nobody. Enjoy!

This is a user-voted tournament of 192 songs that were "gleaned from a survey of allmusic, Magnet top 60 albums of 95-05, Pitchfork's best albums/singles of various years and decades, and surveys of our friends and acquaintances." The idea took form during a similar tournament based on Rolling Stone's recent Top 500 songs of all time (I'll find the link to that, if such a a thing is still possible.)

It's fun because you get to make fun of bad songs. And rep for the good stuff. And wonder where the great stuff is. Seriously though, the lists are about as good as they could be (the brackets are all available now, here's the Southeast)... and the seedings... well, that's why we vote (in the comments, hopefully including hilarious and/or insightful commentary.)