Music

Great bands come and go, and these in particular left faster than usual. Just for fun, I decided to make a list of 12 bands - in recent memory - who came and went well before their time. Mostly bands that only released one or two albums, and a few who - at the very least - disbanded when they were in their prime.

    'Tis the season to blog about the best albums of 2008. This is a little difficult for me because it doesn't seem like a got that many albums this year. Thinking back, only a handful of albums stand out. Judging by my iTunes, it seems like 2008 was a pretty uneventful year as far as releases go. There were only two albums from 2008 that made it onto my "most played" list. Off the top of my head there are only two albums which I listen to semi-regularly which were released this year. After putting a bit more thought into it, I've come up with a couple lists to sum up the year's releases. I'm calling it 'The Good, the Bad and the Liam' meaning there were obviously good and bad albums which came out as well as a group of releases that were somewhere in between. These were the albums which should have been good, or albums that I really wanted to like but something was missing...

2008 was a lot like 2005: There are definitely some albums that came out that are worth a listen, but overall, it wasn't what I would consider to be a great year in music. However, looking over my entire collection of music released within the year, there are certainly a few that I think will always "take me back" to this point in time. With that, I present my year-in-music review including my Top 10 Albums of 2008:

    The Social Services are a kitschy band from Sweden. I recently came across the first single from their recently released album, It's Nothing Personal, It's National Security, titled The Baltic Sea. This song is about how Sweden is awesome, but how the people suck... Yeah, they are bitching about how sweet it is to be Swedish but they hate how people don't smile at each other. Boo Hoo. But don't get me wrong, this isn't some emo crybaby with an acoustic guitar and a funny accent just complaining about his 15 year old scenesteress girlfriend. This song is a tongue-in-cheek look at Swedish society. It's not terribly deep, but just good fun, well worth a listen.

Axl Rose SWEARS this time that Chinese Democracy will be released on November 23rd. For those of you not familiar with the storied legend of this album, it's basically been promised to us about 200+ times within the last ten years. This date is supposedly official this time, but like many, I'll believe it when I see it. And even then, I still may be a bit cynical.

    French Horn Rebellion are two guys from Wisconsin that make indie/garage dance music with plenty of beep-bop boop-bop in it. Their songs aren't all that groundbreaking, but they're fun to listen to. They currently have two videos on YouTube for Broken Heart and Up All Night. I've embedded the video for Broken Heart to the right. I think it's the superior video of the two. If you're anything like me you probably had flashbacks of any number of Flight of the Conchords episodes when you first saw either video.

    I'm really digging Broken Heart, it's a great song, it even has a guitar solo. The video is just icing on the cake. It's hilarious. I won't spoil the surprise but there is plenty of pay-off for sitting through a few minutes of watching these guys flail their arms around out of sync. It's great fun.

    Perhaps a better title would be "Is Metallica still relevant?" but that begs the question of whether they were ever really relevant to begin with... Metallica used to be a big deal, I mean c'mon... they did Enter Sandman and One, sure it's been fifteen years since they've released what most people would consider a 'good' album, but whatever. Anyone who was in middle school or high school in the nineties probably has fond memories of Metallica. Everyone knew who they were and when the Napster shit hit the fan it felt like the end of an era... probably the same sort of mass <liam> that took place when Load came out. And if you cashed out before that, just replace Load with the black album... I guess what I'm getting at is that Metallica is more than a band, they are an institution. It doesn't matter whether or not Metallica's future albums are complete shit or not. People will still buy their music, if only to criticize it on the internet. Metallica will always have fans out there and if they manage to release a decent record along the way it's just a bonus for the rest of us.