The mp3s posted on this site are for discovery and sampling purposes only. Support these artists by buying their music, concert tickets, and whatever else they are selling.
If you are an artist, artist representative, or record label and would like any mp3s posted here to be taken down, please e-mail me at info (at) purrmusic.com. I will be happy to honor your request.
On Sunday night we went out to 3rd and Lindsley for the Sons of William and Need to Breathe show. I have become a huge Sons of William fan over the past few years. They’re a rock and roll outfit from Louisiana that impresses me more each time I see them! My only complaint is that they didn’t get to play a longer set. After all, they were one of the main reasons for me deciding to peel my face from the computer screen and head out to the club.
After hearing Need to Breathe’s headlining set, I was left wondering how I had never heard of them until now. They put on a great show with their blend of melodic, accessible rock that seemed to genuinely impress the packed house in Nashville. The lead singer for this band could seriously double as Kid Rock (he probably gets that all the time and is annoyed by it, sorry). I’m talking about looks only here. He is actually a much better singer than Kid Rock.
Need to Breathe snuck in the third verse of the Counting Crows’A Long December into one of their encore songs and made my night! It was complete with a beautifully sappy audience sing-along on the chorus. Hearing A Long December again put a big smile on my face and took me back to my high school days.
It was my senior year in high school and I somehow convinced my parents to let me and one of my friends drive four hours to Denver…over two mountain passes…on a school night…in an old borrowed car to see the Counting Crows!!! To top it all off, it pretty much rained the whole time, and we did the four hour drive back home the same night to make it to school on time the next day. We were utterly exhausted but I had such a great time. I love how just a snippet of a song can conjure up old memories.
Since I don’t have any live Sons of William or Need to Breathe mp3s, and since I’m already off topic with the Counting Crows tidbit, AND since my last two posts have had videos, here is video of A Long December. The sound quality isn’t all that great, but Adam Duritz tells the story behind the song.
We took a trip to our new multiplex, stadium seating, 632 screen movie theater last night to see Juno. To be honest, I kind of like those old little theaters with one screen that still have some unique character. There is this great little theater where I used to live in California called The Pageant that was always a kick to go to. The multiplex, however, is literally a stone’s throw away (well maybe if I was John Elway) so we usually give in to convenience.
The movie was great, all except the part about Gibson guitars being better than Fender guitars. Don’t get me wrong. I’d love to have a Gibson hanging on my wall, but any true guitar player knows that it’s the player and not the guitar that counts. Hmm…maybe that’s why I still can’t play…
Anyway, Juno finds its way into the blog this week because of the music. The soundtrack is a great collection of songs, some of which I never would have discovered if not for their placement and meaning within Juno. I’m always a sucker for folky, quirky, acoustic numbers and there are certainly some gems along these lines here. The great part is that you can actually buy the whole collection of songs on one disk or one download (unlike some other soundtracks). This probably has something to do with the “indie” nature of a lot of this music.
Alright, I know I just recently wrote about The Felice Brothers and am violating section {52-6RH/8-1} of the Blogger’s Code, but I couldn’t help myself when I came across this video. Besides, you can never have too much of a band that can channel Dylan and The Band and remain original at the same time! This past weekend I was able to get my hands on a copy of Adventures Of The Felice Brothers Vol.1 and have kept it spinning since.
Here is a live video of one of my favorites, Frankie’s Gun. Other than the tall person who keeps getting in the way, it’s not a bad video. The band looks like they’re having a blast!
Don’t you just love it when you take a chance on something and the payoff is much, much better than expected? I can’t say this is always the case with my local Chinese restaurant, which is why I usually stick to the Mongolian Beef, but that’s another topic entirely and perhaps even another blog.
On my recent trip to Florida I stumbled upon the new Grace Potter and the Nocturnals album This is Somewhere while perusing the shelves at the record store. I had never really heard any of their music before and pretty much bought it on a whim, but I was very pleasantly surprised. This is Somewhere is a stew of guitar and Hammond B-3 driven rock and blues influenced music. I was so impressed, I immediately checked their tour schedule and found out that they will be in Nashville at 3rd and Lindsley in a few weeks!
So I did what any music lover would do and bought tickets, which I might add were very reasonably priced at $10. I can’t wait to see them live. In the meantime, here are a couple live tracks off of their newest album from a show they did in Boston, MA at The Paradise on December 12, 2007:
I received my free copy of Big Head Todd and the Monsters’ new album All the Love You Need in the mail a few days ago. If you went to their website this time last month (or maybe even earlier, I can’t remember) and entered the usual contact info, they promised to send out a free copy of their new album to you!
I remember listening to Big Head Todd and the Monsters quite a bit when I was in high school. Their recordings were good, but I really fell in love with their music when I saw them live! I saw Big Head Todd open for the Dave Matthews Band at the original Mile High Stadium in Denver…yes, those were the days, before it was demolished, rebuilt, and renamed Invesco Field AT Mile High.
The memories of this event are ingrained deep as this was my first “big” concert experience. Todd played a white Telecaster and “Bittersweet” and “Broken Hearted Savior” never sounded so good. They also used to do a great cover of Jimmy Page’s “Tangerine.”
If you go to the Big Head Todd website now, you can download the entire new album for free! You have to enter your address (so some may argue that the music isn’t quite free, whatever) but that’s about it. Most bands simply use this information to help route their tours.
Giving your fans the gift of free music is a great way to spur new interest in long time fans, and even win over some newbies. If you aren’t familiar with Big Head Todd, you should check out their new album. To get the full experience, however, I really encourage you to at least check out the two older songs listed above.
Here are a couple of my favorites from the new album All the Love You Need:
I’m still enjoying the view in the photo below, at least for the next few days. When I’m not listening to the waves in the background, I’ve had The Avett Brothers newest album “Emotionalism” piping through the ipod.
I didn’t know much about this band before I hauled the disc from the bin to the cash register, but I’m REALLY glad I picked this one up. You can sample a few songs on their MySpace page.
It is easy to see why The Avett Brothers won both Duo/Group of the Year and New & Emerging Artist awards from the Americana Music Association. If you have a soft spot for melodic roots influenced music, give “Emotionalism” a few (hundred) spins. Even though you can hear a banjo in many of the tracks, and mostly acoustic instruments are used throughout the album, some of the songs give me a bit of an early rock ‘n’ roll vibe.
This is the view from where I’m staying for the next week, and as a result, my posts will be short and sandy…I mean sweet.
I finally saw “Reign Over Me” last night with Adam Sandler and Don Cheadle. The movie as well as the music was great! I’ve been searching for the “soundtrack” (not the score/background music version) and unfortunately I don’t think the group of classic rock songs as presented in the movie will be released as a collection.
I hate it when they do this. At least release two different versions, the score, and the rest of the songs that played such a key role in many important scenes in the movie. People would be willing to hand over the cash for this collection of songs. With songwriters such as Graham Nash, Bruce Springsteen, Jackson Browne, and Pete Townshend, how could you go wrong? The movie had both The Who’s version and Pearl Jam’s cover of “Love, Reign O’er Me.”
Not only is it annoying that you can’t buy all of the songs together, but even if they were all available on itunes, it takes too long to go and gather all of them and download the songs individually. If people have to hunt the music down and assemble it themselves, I see people stealing the music from a P2P service rather than jumping around twenty different itunes pages to find these songs. This seems like a missed opportunity.
On a bit of a side note: If you do happen to watch this film, doesn’t Adam Sandler look A LOT like Bob Dylan throughout much of the movie?
A mysterious package was delivered yesterday. I couldn’t remember ordering anything for myself, and all of the music I recently purchased had already arrived. Hmmm…Priority mail? Addressed to me?
After anxiously ripping open the box I was ecstatic (and very thankful) to see that one of my loyal readers had sent me the Josh Ritter songbook that I hinted I wanted in a post last month! If you are a Josh Ritter fan and can strum a few guitar chords, well maybe more than a few, then you should definitely get your hands on one of these books. Josh’s online store
This generous gift reminded me of a great Josh Ritter show from Austin, TX October 29th, 2007 that I found a little while ago. Here are a couple of my favorites from that show. The sound quality is fairly good except for a chatty audience.
