Listen Up, Everyone

It's continually amazing to me that you can find nearly anything on the internets. For example, in a recent blurb in the "Sidekick" section of the Boston Globe, I read about a great Ryan Adams concert from 2003 that someone had heard. Finally got around to looking for the guy's blog today and lo and behold, there it was: a posting with individual MP3s of the entire show. Too cool, and he's right — it was an incredible show. Then I clicked around some more and found an awesome performance of "New York, New York" that Ryan did on The Late Show with David Letterman in 2001.

Anyway, about a half hour later, after going back to rbally.net, I had dug deep into the site and found MP3s of all kinds of live shows (from bands like R.E.M., the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Jane's Addiction, and Radiohead, among others), some current and some older (i.e.: from the last decade or so), and many of them worth a listen. I'll be going back to check out more of the site. In the meantime, I've provided a link to rbally.net in the sidebar of this site for future reference.

While I'm on the topic, perhaps I should point out the two other music-related blogs I already have links to: Zeon's Music Blog and Ali's Blog. Zeon tends to have MP3s of his favorite songs, soundtracks, and artists, in addition to new stuff and rare covers and other cool tracks. Currently he's got up a weird but cool cover of The Killers' "Smile Like You Mean It" by, of all people, David Gray. For full, leaked new CDs (like the entire new Killers album, not out until next week) and hot singles, go to Ali's site. That's also where I found Justin Timberlake's new CD a couple weeks early, if you're interested. But because, well, it's illegal to download these CDs at all, especially weeks before they're publicly available, the links to them are only up for about 24 hours in most cases so Ali doesn't get in trouble. Act quickly. (And by the way, if you want to hear a cool remix of the Killers' "When You Were Young," click here.)

Plain and simple, the web makes it fun to be a music fan. (No big news there, of course.) And for the record (no pun intended), I have gone out and actually bought some of the actual CDs after downloading them online. And thanks to hearing new artists on sites like these, I've been turned on to their music and have spent money on them in other ways. So there, record companies. Fan music sites do serve a good purpose. Just do me a favor, dear readers: if you become a frequent visitor of the sites like I am, don't abuse them. Buy music too so "the man" doesn't come and shut these folks down. (Stepping off the soap box now. Putting my headphones back on.)