Ramblings From Justin Penney

I love eMusic. I signed up originally when they had the "unlimited" account. I really didn't take as much advantage of that when I should have and cancelled after they got bought. I went back a few months ago and it's now the best $20/month that I spend. I get 90 song downloads of legal mp3s. Just plain mp3s. You can copy 'em. Burn 'em. Do whatever because there is no stupid DRM crap that everyone defeats anyway.

I do all my "work" work on Linux and when I was originally shopping they were the only music store that supported Linux. They still have the client but you have to hack a little to get it to work. Some people find some older libc files but I just install tinyproxy to get around the connectino probelm with recent libc versions... anyway. I'm happy.

So they recently added a bunch of stuff from Deep Elm. It's been good to get some stuff I'd been meaning to buy anyway. Black Phantom Crusades by Red Animal War is so good. I've had a couple songs on a sampler and man... this whole album is awesome. I'm at the moment downloading Dance a While, Upset by Settle fish. I also got Civil Wars by David Singer & the Sweet Science. I wasn't disappointed in Civil Wars but I really expected every song to hit me like "I Will Come Back From the War." They didn't still a good album.

I've been litening to the Matt Skiba/Kevin Seconds Split EP a lot lately. The Matt Skiba songs are just amazing! They are so direct but interesting. The dark subjects set to mostly happy sounding songs really does it for me. That's the major reason I like Good Mourning by Alkaline Trio so much... how could you not like pop-esque songs about serial killers and alcoholism?!?

I'm listening to Control by Pedro the Lion right now. Why don't I hear more people talk about them (him). Damn. I got interested after Achille's Heel came out and I went to their site and they had relatively detailed recording notes up. After reading about the creation I had to get it. I love that album. The songs are so catchy but dark. The content is amazingly versatile and accessible considering that they are considered a Christian band. Most christian band lyrics don't really resonate with me very well but the imagery... or empathy... that these songs make you feel is amazing.

I've spent the last week without a reasonable way to listen to music. I had a DVD full of mp3s but the DVD on the laptop I was using was broke and the laptop speakers were crap anyway. When I was in the machine room last week I was singing constantly. I'm fighting sleep now just so I can stay up listening to music!

# posted by Justin @ 2:09 AM