Happy Furry Puppy Story Time with Norbizness

can't help you on the napster thing.

but - here's some newer stuff i've gotten turned onto in the last year or so: jolie holland, metric, the boards of canada, u.n.k.l.e., quintron and miss pussycat (you'd love these guys norb), rjd2.

Two good local-ish bands: Midlake (Denton, TX) and Eisley (Tyler, TX). There should be ways to hear the music on those sites.

The Boards of Canada and u.n.k.l.e are great suggestions. If you like trip hop stuff then check out DJ Shadow. I'd also suggest Gorillaz, White Stripes, Interpol, Beck, Bright Eyes and Doves. Here's a good indie station I listen to: http://indie1031.fm/music.html

Feel free to send hate mail if you disagree.

Wilco. Blur. Coldplay. White Stripes. Lucinda Williams (this might be more than a decade old). Nelly Furtado. Outkast. Radiohead. Poe ('Haunted' album only). The Fiery Furnaces. The Flaming Lips. Tori Amos. Yo La Tengo. (Last three also more than a decade old, but their best work has been done more recently.)

Sufjan Stevens, Drive-By Truckers, Mount Sims, Iron and Wine, Songs:Ohia (LOVE THIS!), Rufus Wainwright, Aimee Mann, Dios, Of Montreal, and if you're feeling especially silly, The Danielson Familie.

Check out Secretly Canadian, the record label, for some good music in my region.

And no. Keep it illegal.

You should be glad you didn't win Doug E. Fresh in the coolness audit. Last night he shredded another roll of toilet paper and knocked a bunch of garlic down the basement stairs. Little shit.

If you like post-punk, and I know you do, you really should check out Franz Ferdinand. Yeah, they're popular, but for once, with good reason.

I can scroll through my MP3 file real quick--Death from Above 1979 is a band I can't stop listening to lately. Dirtbombs are awesome. Doves, the Dwarves new one is great, Fiery Furnaces if you want pretty stuff, the Gossip aren't new but they are still kicking out good stuff, my friend Alex swears LCD Soundsystem rocks, and I 2nd Lauren's motion on the Drive-By Truckers. I'd think about it harder, but I'm taking a break between mulching and fertilizing.

My friends Kiki, Mel and I are going to the Backroom to see the Aquabats tonight. They are a pop punk band that dresses like superheroes. They have villians and everything, but they are completely awesome.

Music right now is good. People are dropping the mopey act and learning to dance again. After seeing the Dirtbombs and the Mooney Suzuki a few years ago in concert, I realized it was finally coming and it's here.

The new Gorillaz is a must-have, like Frank Zappa meets the Dust Brothers.

Others of fine qualitie are; Adam Green, Turin Brakes, Erlend Oye and Kings of Convenience, West Indian Girl, Z-Trip, Avalanches, HarMar Superstar, Mint Royale, Kasabian, MFDoom, Mando Diao, Phoenix, RJD2, The Go! Team, The Dears, DJ Jon Carter, Air, James Lavelle, Handsome Boy Modeling School, Laptop and the list goes on and on.

I've heard good things about RealRhapsody. Nothing really about Napster. I use 'other' means of acquiring my music. (sound of jackbooted thugs kicking down the door). Ooops. gotta go.

Norbiz should think about all the bands below, but The New Pornogrpahers should be on the tops of her/his list.

The Shins (New Mexico's finest indie pop exports)
The Go! Team (described as a collection of awesome, non-existent 70s TV show theme songs)
Sufjan Stevens (awesome folky quiet pop)
Joanna Newsom (alien voiced harp playing elf)
The New Pornographers (!!!!!!!! Canadian power pop geniuses)
The Magnetic Fields (eclectic pop collective, great sense of humor, but careful of Teh Gay)
Mark Lanegan (ex Screaming Trees, solo stuff really good)
Camera Obscura (Scottish pop combo, boy and girl singers)
Mr. Airplane Man (Boston electric blues chicks)
Clem Snide (fronted by one Eef Barzelay, wry lyriced alt-country folk stuff)
The Concretes (Swedish retro pop savants, also sing the Target song, don't hold it against them)
The Beta Band (Scottish geniuses of I can't explain it)
ballboy (get their album Club Anthems, I believe you can find it free somewhere on the internets- funny funny boys- Scottish indie pop).

Badly Drawn Boy, especially if you like Coldplay.

P J Harvey (yes, more than a decade old), because she kicks ass.

"Porcupine Tree".....it's NOT MatchBox 20....

Slobberbone - now broken up, but released four albums of pure drunken beauty
Drive-By Truckers
Two Cow Garage
The Hangdogs
Kathleen Edwards

Beat me to Boards of Canada. Mike Paradinas and Jane Monheit.

Spoon, Belle & Sebastian, Beck, The Decembrists, Eliot Smith, Guided By Voices, Queens of the Stone Age, LCD Soundsystem, M.I.A. McLusky, Interpol, The Black Keys,SuperGrass, The Scissor Sisters, The Mountain Goats, Danger Mouse,Apples in Stereo, Modest Mouse... I could go on.

...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of dead
Arcade Fire
Black Keys
Bloc Party
Handsome Boy Modeling School
Lambchop
Lemon Jelly
Neutral Milk Hotel
The Radio Dept.
South (UK)
Theivery Corporation
Suburban Kids with Biblical Names

It's 'Matchbox Twenty' (not 20), bizznatch.
Get it right or you will catch hell from many a 15 year old girl.

May I add Black Mountain, Death From Above 1979, The Unicorns and Broken Social Scene?

And while I am adding exclusively Canadian bands, might as well finish up that previously begun collection of Sloan records. Not to mention dusting off those Loverboy, Rush, Chilliwack and Triumph lps you've been hanging onto for god knows why.

Why does Canada rock so hard? Arcade Fire? New Pornographers? What are they smoking up there?

May I also take this opportunity to put in a dig on Jack Johnson? Is it just me or do others agree that Jack Johnson's albums sound like an entire record of that one extra-shitty Red Hot Chili Peppers tune on each of their albums where they let Anthony Keidis actually try to sing?

Damn. Someone beat me to "of Montreal" and "The Shins." In fact, almost every recent band I've been listening to has been named above. But nobody's mentioned The Postal Service yet, and I HIGHLY HIGHLY recommend them.

So, the next best thing I can do is advocate some locals: Might I suggest, for starters The Ex-Boyfriends and Aubrey Debauchery?

Ooh, ooh, almost forgot: And Stephen Malkmus is shining without Pavement. And Crooked Fingers is good, too.

glitch pop - postal service, ms. john soda, styrofoam, +/-, dntel, figurine, junior boys, manitoba, the notwist

indie pop - the comas, american analog set, death cab for cutie, the weakerthans, tullycraft, tegan and sara, stars, snow patrol, saturday looks good to me, brendan benson, mirah

Rebecca S said Figurine! Woo-hoo! I second that also -- my friend David is in the band.

Speaking of Canada, Broken Social Scene are nice.
I forgot Ted Leo, Art Brut,& The Eagles of Death Metal.

Rebecca S- Manitoba is now Caribou. Something to do with being hassled by Handsome Dick.

Highly recommended: Bloc Party's Silent Alarm. I can't stop listening to it.

Also- Verbena's Souls for Sale. It's older, but it was way underappreciated and it's kind of like X meets Nirvana.

I have to endorse everyone's votes for RJD2, but the Go! Team suck like a pool drain. I thought someone was fucking with me the first time they said "YOU HAVE TO HEAR THIS..."

Oh, well.

Chumba-Wumba, Three Doors Down, anything by Justin Timberlake, Creed. All of these bands are fresh, original, and (most of all) superbly talented.

Muse, Muse, Muse! Muse!

TV on the Radio
Division of Laura Lee
Decemberists
Death Cab for Cutie

Interpol is wildly overrated, btw.

Bit riskier, according to taste:
Open Hand
Odds Against Tomorrow
Careen

Also, think what you like about Green Day, but American Idiot is a masterpiece.

BillyD needs to chiggidy-check hisself 'fore he riggidy-wrecks hisself.

albums to drive across tx by:

john doe's "freedom is" (new one's good, too)
cheri knight's "northeast kingdom"
eleventh dream day's "stalled parade"
brazilian girls
the posthumous elliot smith
agree w/ francesca, pj topping herself

Yeah, all those Canadian bands are good, but don't forget Destroyer, Dan Bejar's band. He wrote all the best songs for New Pornographers (e.g. "The Ballad of a Comeback Kid"). His last album, This Night, wasn't the best album of 2004 (that would be Fiery Furnaces' Blueberry Boat), but it was my favorite.

A Swedish group called Dungen also put out a really great record last year, which is supposed to be released in the US soon. It's a remarkable facsimile of late-60s psycehdelic music sung in Swedish and performed almost entirely by one guy, but he's hired a band to tour the states.

I was too lazy to go see The Hold Steady when they played my town, but I regret it. If you like Bruce Springsteen and Catholic imagery in your top-shelf bar band rock, you'll like this. A lot. It's my favorite record so far from this year.

I'd also recommend Exploding Hearts, a really promising band that sounded how the Clash would've if their biggest influence had been Sweet instead of The Who. Sadly, three-fourths of the band was killed a couple of years ago in a van accident. The lone survivor has a good new band, called the Nice Boys, which is poppier and janglier but still pretty good.

Basement Jaxx occupies the spot in my music collection that Outkast does for a lot of people, and you can't go wrong with anything on the Kompakt label. It's all high-quality German techno in 4/4 time. Also, LCD Soundsystem is pretty doggone good. You've at least got to track down "Beat Connection" and "Losing My Edge." And I'm right there with whoever suggested Phoenix; their song "If I Ever Feel Better" is my favorite from this decade.

I second the Weakerthans recommendation. They're great. But even better are the Pernice Brothers, whose new CD Discover A Lovelier You was just released. You can listen to several tracks from it via streaming audio on the Internets.

Seattle Slough, April Wine is going to be sooo pissed that you didn't mention them.

Yes, (deep breath) BOC, Caribou, Four Tet, Nobody, Explosions From The Sky, the new M83 album which is awesome, Kaiser Chiefs, Bloc Party, Engineers, Hot Snakes, anything on the Kompakt label, the Wire Live DVD + CD, Death From Above 1979, Akron/Family, A Frames, Swans re-issues, DNA re-issues, Can re-issues, Fall re-issues, and the re-release of Gang of Four's "Entertainment" w. extra tracks, plus a load of Brazilian stuff, Maria Rita, Bebel Gilberto, Vinicius Canturia, Cibelle, Marcos Valle, and of course, Caetano Veloso. That and there have been a ton of Blue Note reissues lately, esp. Bobby Hutcherson, Andrew Hill, Hank Mobeley and Freddie Hubbard.

Kasabian (sounds a lot like the Stone Roses).
Jason Moran (very good interesting new jazz).

Unfortunately most of my music predates the invention of rock & roll. Joe Oliver and Louis Armstrong? Miles in the mid-late 50s? Much musical happiness in there.

don cabellero (instrumental craziness featuring the most talented human being to every come within 50 meters of a drumset), shiner (100% badassness), planes mistaken for stars (kaboom)

damn the suggestions above are all sweet
i'd like to second kasabian and American Idiot, while adding a promo for antony and the johnsons, iron and wine(a folk group) and the dresden dolls... with a genre like 'brechtian punk cabaret' how can you go wrong?

and please dont get stuff from napster. fight the man!!! pay the russians instead!!
use allofmp3.com ... it's dirt cheap and barely legal... and their archive keeps growing. oh, did i mention there is no shit-ass copy protection?