Artist: Walls of Jericho

If Rhapsody ever reads this blog, please properly reclassify this band from Electronica/Dance to Metalcore.

BTW, I learned this band from the "Chicks of Metal" episode of Uranium (the Fuse channel metal show) The "frontlady", Candace Kucsulain, has a really powerful voice.

RHAPSODY Link

Track: Soul In Isolation

Artist: The Chameleons UK
Album: Strange Times

I think Rhapsody is playing this track on my station because I have Joy Division on the list. The Chameleons sounds more like the Mission (UK) to me. In any case, this is great Post-Punk/Goth.

BTW, this UK suffix definitely reflect the US-centric bias of the service. (Well, this service is currently available in US only anyway. Who knows when it'll get really successful and goes global?) The Chameleons (UK) was not only better known but also established earlier than their US namesake. Same for the Mission. IMO Rhapsody should have either suffix the US ones or at least both. The French's fear of Google marginalizing all non-US culture/literature is not totally groundless.

RHAPSODY Link to 'Untitled' instead of the above track since it is not available for on-demand listening. Too bad :(

Artist: Oscar Lopez

If you like Jesse Cook, Gypsy King, Strunz and Farah, you gotta check out Oscar Lopez's Flamenco guitar works.

RHAPSODY Link

Album: Joe Henderson in Japan

For some reason the album's title doesn't mention it's live. Joe Henderson was accompanied by top-notch Japanese jazz musicians, whose names I wasn't able to find on the web. Just like these musicians, this album should have been more well-known than it is 'coz the music on it is awesom: simply hard bop at its best.

While I'm at it, I've got an enhancement request for Rhapsody: it's OK not to have all liner notes available for every album but could you please at least list the personnel? That's especially important for jazz and classical.

RHAPSODY Link

Album: The JazzTimes Superband

Personnel: Bob Berg (tenor saxophone); Randy Brecker (trumpet, flugelhorn); Joey DeFrancesco (Hammond B-3 organ); Paul Bollenback (guitar); Dennis Chambers (drums).

Obviously this is an All-Star lineup. I have no idea why this album flew below my radar screen when it was out in 2000. Fortunately I discovered it through Michael Brecker's similar artist link on Rhapsody.

This is made by Concord Records to celebrate the 30th anniversary of JazzTimes magazine. The magazine gotta feel really honored by such a fantastic album.

RHAPSODY Link

Artist: Life Of Agony

Album: 1989-1999

This band seems to be one of the many decent metal bands that went under the radar 'coz they didn't go the "Grunge" way and made it big in the early 90s. This album is a collection of their work during the 90s. Most are pretty original sounding Thrash/Alt metal.

RHAPSODY Link

Track: Volt Heart

Artist: The Iguanas
Album: Plastic Silver 9 Volt Heart

Thanks to Mark for recommending this song. It indeed brings back the good ol' memory of listening to late night radio in bed (or by the desk, last minute studying for upcoming exam at 2am)

BTW, blogging really is one of the best feature of Rhapsody, allowing fellow Rhapsodites (sp?) sharing their thoughts.

(Slightly related news: radio giant Clear Channel is going to experiment with new strategy. Would you care?)

RHAPSODY Link

Album: I Got No Kick Against Modern Jazz

Label: GRP Records

Man, looks like I'm obsessed with jazz covers of Beatles! This one is from GRP so you could imagine it's mostly smooth jazz (but not all.)

RHAPSODY Link

Track: A Chain of Flowers

Artist: The Cure
Album: Join The Dots: B-Sides & Rarities

Found another gem of the Cure on this box set of B-sides. This track sounds like it could have been on the Disintegration album, which is considered their best by some of their fans, including me.

RHAPSODY Link

Track: We All Stand

Album: Power, Corruption & Lies
Artist: New Order

If the only New Order song you've heard is 'Bizarre Love Triangle,' you might have been wondering why they were considered the 2nd coming of Joy Division at one point (besides having all surviving members from J.D. after Ian Curtis' suicide)

I did too, until I heard this song, from their 2nd album, which also contains 'Blue Monday.'

RHAPSODY Link

Track: Night Flower

Artist: Donald Byrd
Album: Free Form

I didn't expect such a beautiful ballad from the trumpeter better known for his funk jazz stuff. Great recommendation by Rhapsody (do they really analyze what I listen to and show this album on the front page for me? That I don't know)

RHAPSODY Link

Artist: Candlebox

Track: You
Album: Candlebox

Do you notice how good grunge (or post-grunge in this case) sound, a decade after its hey-day? (Special thanks to the poster on Engadget who mentioned this being the last CD he bought before he boycotted RIAA)

RHAPSODY Link

Service: Napster-to-go

Previously I wrote an article about the virtue of a subscription-based music service Note that my excitement about subscription-to-go services is only theoretical as I have subscribed to Rhapsody but not Napster-to-Go for lacking compatible MP3 player. Here is a detailed review of the latter from The New York Times. Both of us brought up the same point/appeal of the low cost of experimenting with new music. It's interesting to see that the reviewer wrote 'I hit Napster thinking that maybe half of the tracks I'd want would be "buy only." To my amazement, it was less than a tenth..... even, yes, Metallica have made their entire catalogs available for subscription download.'

Side note: his comments about ditching his TiVo was equally interesting: 'I recently discovered (with some horror) that I could live without TiVo. Time Warner Cable offered a box with better picture quality at a better price - about $9 a month with nothing up front. Compared with TiVo, the new box's interface is medieval dentist painful to use, but I use it and I don't look back.'

Opinion: PyMusique = your iTunes without DRM

Just when Stevie J happily pointed out a "non-hack" that allows people to record songs from Naspter-to-Go, his very own music store is running into its own problem: meet PyMusique The "hack" that allows users to buy songs from iTunes Music Store without being locked down by DRM (digital right management) It is this very DRM that restrict their songs to play on the users' own computers and iPods only. Note that this hack doesn't advocate piracy: you still need to pay for your own tracks. It's just that you will have more freedom with what you've bought. Hey, doesn't that sound like ... fair use?

Bad Karma, Steve.

Album: Chet Atkins Picks On The Beatles

Track: Yesterday
Artist: Chet Atkins

I'm on my third different cover of Yesterday! Chet Atkins is best known as a country player but he's much more than that as you could witness from this album.

RHAPSODY Link

Track: Eleanor Rigby

Artist: Sugo Music
Album: The Beatles Instrumental Jazz Tribute

How about another jazzy Beatles' cover? This one is very upbeat, perfect for this gloomy weather :D

Don't let their name fool you into thinking they make elevator music!

RHAPSODY Link

Track: Yesterday

Artist: Joe Pass
Album: Virtuoso #4

This morning I'm definitely in the mood of some jazzy Beatles' cover. What could be better than Joe Pass' version of "Yesterday"? I miss my LPs of Pass' Virtuoso Vol. 1 & 2 that I left in Hong Kong!

RHAPSODY Link

Track: Angel

Artist: Simply Red

I've performed a search on tracks named 'Angel' on Rhapsody and there are ~1600 'Angel' available (and ~7000 including the ones not available!)

Simply Red is my favourite white soul band but this one may not be my favourite Angel (of course my favourite gotta be Jimi Hendrix's!) Anyway, it's interesting enough.

RHAPSODY Link

Track: Another Time, Another Place

Artist: David Sanborn
Album: Closer

I'm not going to buy this CD for sure since I don't need another version of "Don't Let Me Be Lonely Tonight" but this is a good track that I'll listen again. I do see a market in selling music on a track-by-track basis when physical media is not involved and thus keeping the price of singles reasonable enough. (I did buy the DVD-A version of the Sanborn album before this for testing my new DVD-A/SACD Universal player. While that album, Timeagain, is supposed to be unplayable on some models, the music itself was not bad at all.)

RHAPSODY Link

Track: Point of Many Returns

Artist: Sam Rivers
Album: Contours

I should listen to more of this now that I'm in the mood of straight-ahead jazz. Of course he's more well-known for his avant-garde works.

RHAPSODY Link

Album: Strength

Artist: The Rh Factor
Track: Listen Here

This pretty good groove jazz album fell off my radar screen just because it's from Rh (aka Roy Hargrove) I guess I like his straight-ahead stuff too much.

RHAPSODY Link

Track: Compassion (Ballad)

Artist: Chick Corea
Album: Change

Well, you know for sure it's a ballad from its title. And it's a wonderful one.

Another useful thing about Rhapsody: now I could listen to albums I no longer have, like the whole bunch of cassettes that didn't migrate with me to US, or in this case a missing CD. This CD went AWOL with Depeche Mode's 101 and other couples of my favourites while I was living in NYC.

RHAPSODY Link

Article: What happened to radio?

I bet most music lovers of our generations grew up listening to a lot of radio (and still do if they have long commute) And most of us are sick of the poor current quality of programming. It was summed up the best by this Wired magazine's article: short playlist dictated by computer, blocks of 10-minute screaming ads. This interesting article explained what happened to the radio industry in the recent years in details and what forces it to change.

Opinion: "renting music" = bad idea? A closer look

If you follow the reactions to the new Napster-to-go service, you have probably heard these popular arguments against the idea of "renting music" (actually it should be called music-on-demand):

Argument #1: you lose everything once you no longer pay for subscription so this is no good compared to "buy and own your music"

Argument #2: if you have to pay to listen, why don't you get satellite radio?

Well, don't bash music-on-demand just because it is not as intuitive an idea as CD and radio. IMO this type of service is ideal for people who like to actively search for new music. The keywords are "new" and "active":

[New] I'm the type who get tired of music fairly easily (my typical listening pattern of a new CD is: once for the first week, once for the 2nd, once for another month, 5-10 more times for its "lifetime" unless it becomes an all-time favorite like "Kind of Blue." Even my all-time favorites do not get a lot of playtime for fear of getting bored. This pattern changed somewhat because of my use of shuffle on iPod/iTunes though) So $9.99/month for all-music-I-could-listen is a dream comes true for me. I would never be able to afford buying that many new CDs. And I won't hear that many new music on radio (even satellite radio) either 'coz they usually maintain playlists and are often repetitive (More of my unfavorable review of XM radio here.)

[Active] Radio advocates say radio is superior because (1) zero effort is required to listen to radio (once you've setup your radio and antenna properly) and (2) DJs would expand their horizon by introducing new artists/albums/trends to them while on-demand listeners has to pick music by themselves and keep listening to what they know and have heard before. I'd like to point out this is simply a matter of preference between being active or passive. Listeners who actively search for and listen to music from artists similar to their favorites on demand would probably listen to a higher percentage of music they like than passive radio listeners. On-demand listeners could experiment with music they haven't heard before without risking the cost of full-priced CDs and thus expand their horizon economically.
BTW, although they might not be programmed by "celebrity" DJs, Rhapsody does provide many different "radio" channels for those "passive" listeners.

Artist: Matthew Shipp

Track: Paradox Y
Album: Matthew Shipp's New Orbits

I know about this avant-garde pianist through his work as member of the awesome David S. Ware Quartet. He's equally amazing as leader of his own group.

RHAPSODY Link

Artist: The Mission UK

Album: Sum & Substance: Best Of The Mission

I almost forgot I used to like this band very much. I've rediscovered them thanks to Rhapsody! "Butterfly On A Wheel" was a big hit once upon a time. (And they sounded like U2 the most on this track :P ) "Deliverance" is my favourite on this Best-of album.

RHAPSODY Link

Album: Zoon

Track: Shine
Artist: Nefilim

Nefilim is the second incarnation of IMHO one of the best goth band ever: Fields of the Nephilim. This album sounds heavier than anything from FOTN.

Here is an in-depth analysis of the myth behind this album

RHAPSODY Link

Artist: Annihilator

Album: Carnival Diablos

Annihilator deserves a lot of credit for sticking with the fundamentals of thrash metal in this day of age, instead of selling out like Metallica did.

I salute them!

RHAPSODY Link

Album: Jazz Loft Session

Track: Pensive
Artist: Julius Hemphill

This is another track I like from this avant-garde jazz album, from the era when musicians experimented with new stuff in Manhattan lofts.

RHAPSODY Link