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Return of the Friday Listening Post: Girl Talk

EDIT: Girl Talk is playing in Winnipeg, June 28th at the Pyramid.

The Friday Listening Post is back after a several week hiatus due to business and busy-ness.

Anyway straight to it: Girl Talk. Mashup artist. Awesome, pop-ish, hip-hop that blends in a tonne of Adam Freedland breakbeat style jamming - generally fantastic, energetic, listenable, danceable, fun - and full of no-doubt non-compliant, un-licensed, fairuse, screw-the-RIAA samples. Big hat tip to Gitta B. for pointing me to GT - thanks, dude!

There’s two MP3’s floating for free: Bounce That and Hold Up. Download and enjoy! Each is full of awesome moments - like when Hold Up breaks into Weezer at 2:30 — killer. This makes me want to clubbing, which I haven’t done for like 5 years.

Girl Talk has three albums: Night Ripper, Unstoppable, and Secret Diary. Each is available for purchase through the deliciously seditious sounding IllegalArt Web Store.

fair use, fairuse, fridaylistening, girl talk, girltalk, mashup, mashups, nightripper, RIAA techfold

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Comment Day & Weekend Plans

Two orders of business today:

1. I’m heading down to Fargo, ND tonite, and Madison, WI the day after for Canada’s “May Long Weekend.” I’m checking the road forecast in Trippish, BTW. If anyone reading this is in Madison, ping me in the comments! Leaving Madison Monday AM, regular posting to resume Tuesday.
2. This means I’ll be out of touch Friday, so no Friday Listening Post this week. Sorry!

Comment Day? Yeah - this is my new innovation. Today I’m not going to be writing any more posts - instead I’m going to spend my blogging time joining the discussion on other’s blogs and comment-it-up. Watch for me commenting as “rod.” If you’ve got a blog or post that I should be reading/visiting, comment it here and I’ll happily pop by!

commentday, fargo, fridaylistening, madison, northdakota wisconsin

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Friday Listening Post: High Energy Sampler

Argghhh - I popped a knuckle working the heavy bag at the gym over lunch so I can’t type to save my life. That being said, I’m *not* missing my favorite post of the week: the Friday Listening Post.

As I noted in my inaugural Friday Listening Post:

Every friday I’m going to post a link to music that pumps me up, inspires me, or just works for a Friday, along with a blurb about the artist and how that particular song resonates with the 2.0 tech scene and the modern world we live in. Enjoy! Comments and suggestions always appreciated.

If you have your own Friday Listening to share, tag it “fridaylistening” and I’ll look forward to picking it up in Technorati!

You can read through the complete set of posts here - this is the fourth.

This week:

1. If you like high energy SoCal punk with throaty, kick ass vocals, check out The Distillers - particularly “Drain the Blood” and “Dismantle Me.” Anthems, all of them.
2. “Debaser” by the Pixies. Not much to say - its awesome, and for whatever reason reminds me of summer.
3. Finally, check out this awesome Biggie Smalls / Gnarls Barkley / Violent Femmes mashup from Sound Advice - “Gone Biggie Gone (mp3 link)” - bringing together all that’s Californian with all that’s 2.0 in a creative, listenable, dance-able package.

Ok - this took way to long to type. Enjoy, and have a great weekend!

-R

biggie, debaser, distillers, fridaylistening, hiphop, losangeles, pixies, punk sound advice

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Friday Listening Post: The Tragically Hip - Family Band

This week’s Friday Listening Post points you to some Rock & Roll Canadiana (back to iTunes links, I’m afraid - not I am not an affiliate). The Tragically Hip are the quintessential Canadian rock and roll band: wildly creative, ranging in style from Queen-epic to George Thorogood blues, they have a sound that’s uniquely their own, and are generally unknown outside of Canada.

Inside our borders, however, the Hip fill 30,000 seat arenas and sell out festival shows. At least in my demographic, pretty much everyone has the words to “Nautical Disaster,” “Blow at High Dough,” and “New Orleans is Sinking” memorized - these were the anthems for our houseparties and the soundtracks to our summer. Best of all, the Hip continue to grow and evolve - cranking out new albums, new sounds, and new anthems - like “Fireworks,” “Family Band“, “Bobcaygeon“, and “The Darkest One.”

FYI: Check out the rest of the Friday Listening Posts for more great tunes - and share your own with the “fridaylistening” tag!

fridaylistening, hip, techfold, thc, thehip, thetragicallyhip tragicallyhip

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Friday Listening Post: The killer mashups of Luke Enlow, downloadable MP3’s

TGIF, and time for another Friday Listening post. The first was here (Billy Bragg) - basically, the spirit of this series of posts is that Friday is time to chill and check out some tunes that can be at least vaguely related back to the world of technology.

I’d hoped some other blogs would share some tunes and expand my horizons (just tag your post “fridaylistening” and it will queue up with any others on Technorati) - but no dice so far! How about it, Jason? (couldn’t resist taking the bait somewhere today, though I didn’t follow any rules.)

Anyway - without further adieu: I strongly recommend checking out the audio stylings of Luke Enlow - Bostonian and audio mashup auteur. Lenlow mashes up artists, genres, beats, and riffs into catchy, inspired tunes.

In particular, I recommend (right-click, Save As time):

Mercedes Beck: A spectular mashup of Beck and Janis Joplin - sounds like they were in the studio together.

Get Eastwood: The Gorillaz and Sean Paul in a mix that just works.

Kanye Mahna - Mr. West vs. the Muppets - wicked.

…and pretty much all of the rest of them too. Always creative, always fun, always mashing up - Luke Enlow personifies Music 2.0.

beck, boston, calacanis, fridaylistening, joplin, kanye, lenlow, luke enlow, mashup mashups

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Friday Listening Post: Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards

Hey - this is the first celebratory “friday listening” post. Every friday I’m going to post a link to music that pumps me up, inspires me, or just works for a Friday, along with a blurb about the artist and how that particular song resonates with the 2.0 tech scene and the modern world we live in. Enjoy! Comments and suggestions always appreciated.

If you have your own Friday Listening to share, tag it “fridaylistening” and I’ll look forward to picking it up in Technorati!

—–

Billy Bragg is a legend among protest punk and alt-folk-rockers, having written and performed politically charged, soulful, resonant tunes since the seventies (solo since ~1983). More accessible than “punk,” Bragg’s fusion adds melody and harmony to make simple compositions into anthems for everyone - not just punk fans.

One of my favorites is “Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards” [iTunes Link] - a song from “Workers Playtime” (1984) that maintains relevance 23 years later.

Edit: It starts of mellow and introspective, and by the end is a shout out loud, footstomping, rabble-rousing, rock&roll anthem. If there’s anywhere legal that I can use to post a link to the full song, by all means let me know….

If no one seems to understand
Start your own revolution and cut out the middleman

So join the struggle while you may
The Revolution is just a T-shirt away
Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards

“Cutting out the middleman” and starting your own revolution is something that the web2.0 crowd strives towards every day, and with armies of Che-sporting ironic tee-shirts coloring the urban landscape, his last verse is near-prophetic.

So anyway - if you’re looking for great way to psych yourself up for the weekend, inspire your next bout of revolutionary functionality building, or just chill out the last part of the workday, fire up some Billy Bragg.

billy bragg, bragg, fridaylistening techfold

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