However, I’m a music lover with a conscience. If I listen to an album more than a certain number of times and I like it and I believe that I will continue to like it, I will order the CD from Amazon. The problem is that when the CD comes, I open it, rip it at a high bit rate, read the liner notes and then put it on the shelf where it collects dust. My ipod connects to everything, why would I need to pop the CD in?

So finally, I came to the realization that vinyl is the way to go. Now I know that some of you cool kids were already turned onto vinyl but the reports and articles of vinyl’s great comeback are greatly exaggerated. The total sales of records in 2007 equal the number of digital albums sold in one week. That’s not even counting the sales of individual tracks. Still I’m doing my part to make sure record labels continue to issue new music on vinyl. Just today, the UPS guy dropped off For Emma, Forever Ago. Since I actually don’t have a functioning record player, I felt like I did back in middle school when I would buy the LP and open it on the subway to read the lyrics before I even heard one note. (This, of course, is not entirely true as I have listened to For Emma so many time, it’s already ingrained into my subconscious.) In any case, it was quite nostalgic and nice.

The LP packaging isn’t as great as, say, Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, but it’s still pretty cool to take the record out of the sleeve check the vinyl for scratches, read the liner notes, and actually have something to hold in your hand. (I won’t go off on the warmth of vinyl vs digital music but I do miss my old record collection. I suspect it’s going to cost me more to replace it than it did to buy it the first time around but considering most of my CDs are stored away, at least vinyl will give me something to browse through.)

The folks at Jagjaguwar (Bon Iver’s label) also include a code for you to download the entire album in mp3 format so you really aren’t missing anything. If you absolutely need to burn a copy on CD, you can do it from the mp3s and you won’t be able to really tell the difference. The only problem with my plan is that there are new albums that are never released on vinyl so I’m stuck with buying certain albums on CD if I’m to assuage my guilt.

I know it’s all in my mind but I feel that some of the newer releases were meant to be played on a record player (Everything All the Time, The Stage Names, Attack and Release) while others clearly belong on your ipod (Kid A, Sound of Silver, anything with over 15 tracks). I know this is going to turn into a huge time, cash, and space suckage but I’m looking forward to browsing record stores again. Scrolling through the iTunes store just doesn’t have the same appeal.

On a somewhat related note, I actually get a bunch of free itunes song codes so as a small token of appreciation to the loyal blog readers, here are a couple of free iTunes codes you can use. Go ahead, take em. No really. Take em. Just post a comment saying you took em so others won’t try to use them again. I’ve got about 40 of these things I’ll be posting over the next few months so keep reading the blog.

Today’s free iTunes codes:
- PW79AMN9JP3F
- 6JLHJTN7ALRR

Related Links:
[CNET]: Really cool slideshow on how records are made

Anyone who has ever been to concerts know that they can span the spectrum from mind-blowing (Radiohead at the Greek in 2006) to a complete waste of time (Van Halen with Gary Cherone at the Concord Pavilion in 1999 — don’t ask). Last night’s Death Cab show fell squarely in the middle. I doubt I’ll remember much about the concert when I’m old and gray and telling my grandkids how much their music sucks and how, in my day… blah blah blah.

It’s not to say that they were bad — the show was enjoyable and the setlist gave long time fans a lot to be thankful for (Ending the night with Transatlanticism was a great touch.) but at no point did they bring down the house. Outside of a great acoustic solo performance (with crowd singalong) of I Will Follow You Into the Dark did you ever think, “man, this is great.”

Well, that’s my take on it. If you were there and thought differently, go ahead and chime in. Here’s the setlist:

• Bixby Canyon Bridge
• The New Year
• Why You’d Want to Live Here
• Photobooth
• Crooked teeth
• Long Division
• Grapevine Fires
• A Movie Script Ending
• Company Calls
• Title Track
• Soul Meets Body
• I Will Follow You Into the Dark
• I Will Possess Your Heart
• Cath…
• The Sound We Laugh Indoors
• The Sound of Settling
• Marching Bands of Manhattan
• — encore–
• Title & registration
• No Sunlight
• 405
• Transatlantcism

In site related news, we launched “whiteboards”, which is just another way for you guys to communicate with us and each other. Think message boards in college, not the waste of wall space in your office where you write down all the things you don’t really want to do.

It’s all public so be careful what you say. Currently the owner of the whiteboard can delete any messages they want. In the future, we’ll allow you to mark messages as private. So if you really want to tell a friend about those awesome George Michael tickets you got (meet up with Fraser in San Francisco!) , you can do so without being publicly shamed.

We also want to thank everyone who takes the time to drop us an email when they can’t find an album in our database. Slowly but surely, we’ll add every album out there, obscurity be damned. As always, send us any feedback you have on any aspect of the site.

In any case, you get to play producer/DJ and mix up your own tracks. I have no musical ability whatsoever but I just spent the better part of the evening playing around with the components. Since I have never used GarageBand before and I have…uh… no rhythm, I decided to just mix Thom Yorke’s vocals with an old Pink Floyd song. (You can hear the monstrosity here before the powers that be take it down for copyright infringement — which they did.) Now, I realize it’s no good, but it certainly was fun to mess around with. Imagine if you actually knew what you were doing.

If you listen to the five stems and you turn each on one by one, it’s incredibly interesting how simple the song is. And it’s also amazing how when you combine all the parts, what a beautiful song it becomes. It certainly makes you appreciate the talent of the people behind not just RH but all the other great bands out there. That being said, just because it’s well produced, doesn’t mean it’s any good.

On the flip side, the peril of user created content is that it’s usually crap. (See any of the amateur created commercials in the last couple Super Bowls? Awful.) The record company argument has always been: “hey look, there’s a ton of good music out there but there’s also a ton of shitty music. We filter it for you.” When you have everyone and their grandmother remixing songs, how are you supposed to know which of the 398,444 remixes that inevitably going to flood the radiohead remix site is any good? Voting? I have my doubts. A remix buried in the avalanche of uploads might be the best but hardly ever see the light of day because no one linked it from anywhere. Radiohead is quick to point out that it’s not a contest with prizes and that the public chooses the top remixes but it’d be really cool if the band chose a winner as well.

Even if the overwhelming percentage of remixes will be bad, I’m excited to hear the good remixes that will come out of this little experiment. (Kinda like this one. And this one from our buddy Foeweel.)

Anyway, fast forward to 2008, R.E.M. is struggling to stay a relevant band, the advance reviews on Accelerate are lukewarm, and to my horror, I hear “I am I am superman/ and I can do anything…” on a Toyota Sequoia commercial. It’s one of those awful commercials that show people having a blast doing something no one ever does except in commercials (and you too can have this much fun if you buy a huge Sequoia!) and I just figure another idealistic notion from my youth has gone down the crapper. I curse Michael Stipe and move on to cursing whatever college basketball game was on.

Well, it turns out that R.E.M. didn’t write the song, they only made it popular. So, while they are most associated with the song, it actually belongs to some band called the Clique. Never heard of them? Yeah, that’s probably why you shouldn’t be angry about them selling to Toyota. They probably desperately need the money. So fear not, fellow R.E.M. fans, they still have their integrity intact, if not their songwriting skills.

The next step in the chain comes now with the Raconteurs. Recently finishing up their sophomore release in early March, they went to the record company and asked how quickly could the album be released in every format available. They wanted vinyl, cd, and digital to be offered and not through a silly “Walmart Only” arrangement but rather everywhere (indie record store, big retailers, iTunes, or even their website). The response was 3 weeks. So yesterday, the Raconteurs announced the release of “Consolers of the Lonely” next Tuesday (March 25th). No pomp & circumstance or huge build up with months of anticipation in hopes of generating that big top spot of 1st week sales. They’d rather get the music out there and let word of mouth take over.

You might say that Radiohead, Trent Reznor & Jack White have the credentials and ability to do this type of thing and you’re right. But if the blueprint proves fruitful, we can only hope that getting more music quickly and easily becomes the norm. Look for “Consolers of the Lonely” to grace the lists of Favorite 10 shortly.

[Editor's Note: This entry was written by stevemc. If you have something to say and want to post it on the blog, email us at info@favorite10.com.]

OK, now that that’s out of the way, let’s talk a little bit about music. I recently got a copy of R.E.M.’s new album Accelerate. Even though I had no expectations for it, I found it to be a completely unremarkable album. Maybe it needs time to grow on me but there’s nothing here that stands out. Even Monster, which isn’t a great album, is remarkable in the sense that they took a hard left turn after Automatic for the People.

Is Accelerate better than Reveal and Around the Sun? Sure, but that’s like asking if white bread is better than hot garbage. (Reveal, in particular, is an abomination and should be stricken from the record whenever talking about R.E.M.) It’s not as if I’m one of those people who always claim a band was better back in the day. I actually keep buying and loving Rush albums. But R.E.M. hasn’t really been the same since they signed their huge deal with Warner.

I don’t know what Michael Stipe has been doing with his time and money, but maybe he should get his head out of his ass and stop writing lyrics like: “Death is pretty final/ I’m collecting vinyl / I’m gonna dj /at the end of the world! / ’cause if Heaven does exists / with a kickin’ playlist / I don’t wanna miss it /at the end of the world!” Man, that’s embarrassing. I don’t think I’ve hated an R.E.M. song this much since All The Way to Reno.

If I’m completely off base on this, someone let me know.

To all the new people: we hope you dig the site and please send us any feedback you have. We’re gonna keep fixing things up but we’d love to know what you like and don’t like.

I promise the blog entries will come more frequently — especially since I love talking about music. I currently have the new Kathleen Edwards album Asking for Flowers on constant rotation.  It’s her best album to date as she keeps getting better with each one. Whether you classify her as alt-country, roots rock, folk rock, or Canadian girl who got lost somewhere between North Carolina and Tomorrow the Green Grass rock, her new album is beautiful and I highly encourage you to check it out for a change of pace. Here’s an excellent review of the album. (Another take.)

For those of you not into that type of music, the new Okkervil River album The Stage Names might be more up your alley. It’s good to know that there are still great bands making great rock music without any discernible singles ready for radio play.

We also started a process for knocking out duplicates in the database. It’s like whack-a-mole but we’ll be weeding them out every week. If you see any duplicates that are driving you nuts, you can email us at feedback@favorite10.com.

Over the next couple of weeks, we’ll be adding friends functionality so that you can add friends and see all the lists your friends made. Right now, everyone on the site is connected somehow with Fraser and me so every list is a friend’s list. We’ll also be adding comment notification so you will be alerted whenever someone comments on your list.

Thanks for checking out f10 (again) and don’t let us down with your lists. For the new folks, you can check out the FAQ if you have more questions — or drop us a line with any feedback.

Finally, if you haven’t checked out Vampire Weekend yet, you might want to give them a try. Stevemc was the first to rave about them and the album is damn good. Probably the best out-of-nowhere debut I’ve heard since Clap Your Hands Say Yeah.

Anyway, favorite10.com was started because of the arguments that music lovers have all the time about what the best album of all time is. One of my favorite things is looking at people’s top 10 lists and discovering new music. The only problem is that if you look at someone’s list and they have terrible crap like Good Charlotte on there, you can pretty much write off the rest of their albums. (As a matter of fact, you probably should just walk away.) That’s why we think f10 is going to be so cool — if you see a list with one of your favorite albums on it, you might want to check out some of the other albums on that list. And if 1,000 people have that same album on their lists, then you know you have a pretty good chance of liking that album.

There’s a lot going on with the site that we’re still working on but we want your feedback on this early beta version. (Check out the FAQ) There are three lists that we are launching with: favorite albums of all time, of 2007, and of the moment. It’s a blank slate folks. Your favorite albums will have an immediate impact on the overall top 100. So please take some time to put together your f10 lists. It took me about 10 minutes to put mine together — and about 3 hours to edit the version that’s on the site — and I’m sure there will be changes still.

Don’t forget, other users can rate and comment on your list, so please don’t embarrass yourself even though you really really want to put that Jewel album on your there. Below is a couple of known issues we’ll be fixing asap but any other feedback you might have or bugs that you stumble upon, please drop us an email at feedback@favorite10.com.

Thanks,

Vin

Known issues and features in development:

• Duplicate albums - there are a lot of duplicate items in the database because of reissues, imports, etc. Try to pick the one that looks more correct (usually by release date) for now.
• Friends - we’ll soon have the ability to upload user photos and add friends.
• Email alerts - get an alert anytime someone comments on your list.