I’ve been sick for many days now and I barely have the energy or cognitive ability to even post this, but I wanted to post it while it’s fresh in my mind:

I really only listen to one radio station, and during the week it’s all talk radio - great to have on in the background while I work at my desk. On the weekends they turn to music. Not your ubiquitous corporate-sanctioned top-40, adult-contemporary, golden hits of the 60s-90s fare, but a great mix of things that weren’t exactly hip for its time (Depeche Mode, The Cure) and emerging Indie bands who are just starting to make a name for theirselves. But I digress…

While listening to the station yesterday they played a song I had never heard of by a band I had never heard of.  The lead singer’s rapping over a typical rock beat with the addition of horns and strings was catchy, and despite my usual (bad) habit of just listening to the tune and not listening to what the singer has to say, I paid attention to the lyrics. There is a strong message here and there’s a number of ways to interpret it so I won’t bias your conclusion by stating mine. One thing I will divulge is that this band, Flobots, is decidedly political in their messages. Nearly every song on their 2007 album “Fight With Tools” is easily identified as being anti-war.

Fight With Tools is the Flobots’ first album and can be purchased from Twist ‘n Shout.

Full Review this weekend…hopefully.

Edit: Video from the performance last night

via kottke.org via Kanye West. I love the dancing, the music, and the hilarious ending.

Incredible! from kwest on Vimeo.

That’s right 20 years old. After looking into the incoming traffic on Concert Panther’s Band of Horses review from an MTV blog I started looking around the site and I found a Sucker Free blog post on the new Yo! website launching.

Are they bringing Yo! MTV Raps back? Well it doesn’t look that way but they are celebrating, starting next month, the 20th anniversary of Yo!. I used to watch this show religiously. The antics were great and the artists were even better. I actually sat down sometime in the past year and watched and entire special on Yo! to wax nostalgic. Here’s a snippet from the site about the celebration:

About The 20th Anniversary Of Yo! MTV Raps

Get ready to go retro because this April is ‘Yo! MTV Raps’ month. Watch as we flash back to hip-hop’s golden era to celebrate the TV show that changed the music world forever. Hip-hop junkies rejoice — we’ve got everything from rare photos of your favorite ‘Yo!’ artists to vintage video playlists to exclusive interviews with hosts Fab 5 Freddy, Ed Lover and Doctor Dre, plus classic video clips from the show…

Here’s a first episode flashback video for you all to enjoy. Reminds me of when I really loved Hip Hop.

• MTV
• Music Videos
• MTV Shows
• Entertainment News

More videos and information available on the new Yo! site.

It sounds like the name of a government agency or some type of new technology buzzword. Casiotone for the Painfully Alone is the name of the solo music project of Owen Ashworth. Here’s an excerpt from Wikipedia:

Casiotone for the Painfully Alone is the musical solo-project of musician Owen Ashworth (born 1977) of Redwood City, California. He started CFTPA after he dropped out of film-school in 1997. He has toured with other similar acclaimed indie artists like The Donkeys, The Papercuts, Cass McCombs, Kill Me Tomorrow, P:ano, The Dead Science, David Bazan, The Rapture, and Xiu Xiu.

The musical style is characterized by the use of electronically produced beats, cheap keyboards, and slow, frank lyrics. On Etiquette, Ashworth widened his musical horizon and added more analog instruments and an overall more organic sound.

The way I describe it is if Postal Service had one guy with a Casio keyboard (CFTPA came first though). Well 1 month and 3 separate looks at this post and I think it’s ready to go. MadRock Recidvist’s heart may explode now that I’ve posted. Hopefully not though. Unlike Concert Panther, I’ll post links to available iTunage along with Amazon. He admitted to me the other day he couldn’t tell the difference between a 128K mp3 and one of a higher bitrate.

Here are some interesting videos I found on YouTube recorded on the streets. The phone booth recording was pretty impressive. Some of the tracks on his first album (Answering Machine Music: A Brief Album in Twelve Parts) was actually recorded by calling an answering machine.