The better albums I listened to over the past decade. My “Top 100″ list, if you will. 114, actually.

2009
The Decemberists – The Hazards of Love
Doves – Kingdom of Rust
Fever Ray – Fever Ray
Kasabian – The West Rider Pauper Lunatic Asylum
Wild Beasts – Two Dancers

2008
Adele – 19
Beyonce – I Am… Sasha Fierce
British Sea Power – Do You Like Rock Music?
Conor Oberst – Conor Oberst
Elbow – The Seldom Seen Kid
Johnny Flynn – A Larum
Juvelen – 1
Laura Marling – Alas I Cannot Swim
Lykke Li – Youth Novels
M83 – Saturdays = Youth
Nada Surf – Lucky
The Stills – Oceans Will Rise
The Subways – All or Nothing
Young Knives – Superabundance

2007
Arctic Monkeys – Favourite Worst Nightmare
Bat for Lashes – Fur and Gold
Battles – Mirrored
Blonde Redhead – 23
The Cinematic Orchestra – Ma Fleur
The Coral – Roots & Echoes
The Enemy – We’ll Live and Die in These Towns
Jamie T – Panic Prevention
Joel Plaskett – Ashtray Rock
Kings of Leon – Because of the Times
The Marzipan Man – Stories
MGMT – Oracular Spectacular
Mika – Life in Cartoon Motion
The National – Boxer
Pearl Jam – Live at the Gorge (Box Set)
Radiohead – In Rainbows
Silverchair – Young Modern
Spoon – Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
Swod – Sekunden
The Twilight Sad – Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters
The White Stripes – Icky Thump

2006
…And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead – So Divided
Detektivbyran – Hemvagen (EP)
Kasabian – Empire
The Killers – Sam’s Town
Lily Allen – Alright Still
Peter Bjorn & John – Writer’s Block
Sloan – Never Hear the End of It

2005
Boards of Canada – The Campfire Headphase
Fiona Apple – Extraordinary Machine
Hard-Fi – Stars of CCTV
Idlewild – Warnings/Promises
Nick Cave & Warren Ellis – The Proposition (Soundtrack)
The Secret Machines – The Road Leads Where It’s Led (EP)

2004
American Music Club – Love Songs for Patriots
Bjork – Medulla
Devendra Banhart – Rejoicing in the Hands
Esthero – O.G. Bitch (Remixes)
Feist – Let it Die
Jem – Finally Woken
k-os – Joyful Rebellion
Various Artists – The Ladykillers (Soundtrack)

2003
Anthony Hamilton – Comin’ from Where I’m From
Aqualung – Still Life
The Blood Brothers – Burn Piano Island, Burn
Boomkat – Boomkatalog.One
The Cardigans – Long Gone Before Daylight
Clearlake – Cedars
The Darkness – Permission to Land
The Jayhawks – Rainy Day Music
Sam Roberts – We Were Born in a Flame
Various Artists – Big Fish (Soundtrack)
Sufjan Stevens – Greetings from Michigan
The Thrills – So Much for the City

2002
…And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead – Source Tags & Codes
Archive – You All Look the Same to Me
Boards of Canada – Geogaddi
Brendan Benson – Lapalco
Death in Vegas – Scorpio Rising
Hot Hot Heat – Knock Knock Knock
Idlewild – The Remote Part
Interpol – Turn On the Bright Lights
Paul Westerberg – Stereo
Sigur Ros – ()
Wilco – Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

2001
The Charlatans – Wonderland
Fugazi – The Argument
Goldfrapp – Felt Mountain
Manic Street Preachers – So Why So Sad (Single)
Remy Zero – The Golden Hum
Various Artists – Snatch (Soundtrack)
Starsailor – Fever (Single)
The Strokes – The Modern Age (EP)

2000
Alpinestars – B.A.S.I.C.
Blur – Music is My Radar (Single)
Chantal Kreviazuk – Colour Moving and Still
Daft Punk – One More Time (Single)
Dead Prez – Let’s Get Free
The Delgados – The Great Eastern
Doves – Lost Souls
Elastica – The Menace
Ian Brown – Golden Greats
JJ72 – JJ72
Mansun – Little Kix
Moloko – Things to Make and Do
Oasis – Standing on the Shoulders of Giants
OutKast – Stankonia
PJ Harvey – Stories from the City Stories from the Sea
Primal Scream – XTRMNTR
Radiohead – Kid A
Six by Seven – The Closer You Get
The Smashing Pumpkins – Machina/The Machines of God
Stroke – First In, Last Out
Tegan and Sara – This Business of Art
The Wu-Tang Clan – The W

When one service dies, another rises up in its place. It’s the circle of life for music on the internet.

That I can recount at least a rough history of music on the internet shows my age. My own experiences started with downloading .wav and even .midi files. I remember when mp3s hit the “mainstream” – by early 1998 (a lifetime ago in internet time) it was crucial in the leak of “Given to Fly.” Full albums then became widely available through FTP, regulated through upload/download ratios.

P2P revolutionized things of course, with the simple setup offered by Napster, which hit in the last year of high school and was widely adopted by the time I got to university.

When Napster [effectively] died, I moved onto Audiogalaxy, which was a godsend for finding rare tracks. Unfortunately the service went under fairly quickly (once it gained popularity it also gained the eye of the RIAA).

When the Gnutella network held rule, Morpheus took up some space on my hard drive, then Kazaa before it succumb to the money offered by adware/spyware vendors. eDonkey 2000 takes the cake for the most ridiculous name of the bunch, though it provided the most functionality of any program I’ve ever used, combining the Gnutella network with Overnet and torrent capabilities, so it did have something going for it.

Torrents eventually replaced everything else. Azureus Vuze was my primary software, but even that happens to be gone from my system these days.

Others that came and went? Ares, iMesh, WinMX, Soulseek and even LimeWire. There are probably one or two others that I simply can’t remember.

Nowadays it’s all about the web services. I’ve never been a fan of MySpace, nor imeem, nor iLike. I never got around to trying Pandora. My website of choice thus far has been Last.fm. The “scrobbling” feature is fantastic, as are the statistics derived from it. The automatically generated recommendations have proven useful for my discovery of new artists and songs. Unfortunately they’ll be charging users for radio access from now on, so I’ll have to look elsewhere for my new music fix.

Signs are looking good that my new favourite toy will be The Sixty One (www.thesixtyone.com), which provides me with internet radio and still scrobbles.

This world needs an open-source album information database that would include high-resolution album art. Something like what CDDB once was before it was commercially hijacked.

Why do I think this? Despite having “Only update missing information” checked off in my Zune software settings, all of my album art is being replaced, often with mismatches, often with washed out images, or incorrect versions, etc.

Elly and I had the good fortune of seeing Gordon Lightfoot perform at the National Arts Centre last night (thanks to John and Maria who stumbled into 4 tickets).

We both grew up listening to Lightfoot due to his being incredibly popular during our parents’ college years. My father’s record collection was the most readily available source at my disposal when I was first getting into music, and so I’d sit in the living room listening to Lightfoot and Kris Kristofferson during my early Yellowknife years. Elly on the other hand used to listen to Lightfoot as bedtime music, and so her experience at the concert was a little confusing – trying to stay awake though her default behaviour was to fall asleep.

The concert itself was nice. We had excellent seats (eighth row center); the sound quality was amazing (I should expect nothing less from the “National Arts Centre” I suppose); it wasn’t exhaustingly long; we enjoyed a nice walk home across the Alexandra Bridge in the still-warm night air.

Gord himself looks to have been stricken by the hands of time – though he had ample energy and carried his guitar just about perfectly, he looked frail and even somewhat arthritic. Considering he turns 70 this year and in recent years has endured health scares, maybe I shouldn’t be too surprised. Still, it’s a little sad to see someone who was the definition of strong and handsome reduced to a wiry, graying figure.

The best song of 2007 was about teenage pregnancy [Kings of Leon - Knocked Up]. The best song of 2008 is about a failing marriage and its consequences on the children [Elbow - Grounds for Divorce].

A

Adrian from Last.fm weighed in a week back with his take on the site’s Top Tracks charts over the past few weeks. The problem for Adrian is that Radiohead has dominated the charts since the release of “In Rainbows” in October – an incredible span that has obscured any gains made by other artists that might show up were the boys from Oxford not included.

I don’t share his distaste. That Radiohead has held such a monopoly on things is an incredible statement about the quality of music nowadays and about their promotion and distribution model. …and quite frankly, it’s refreshing to see a chart that reflects actual listening, rather than what some Clear Channel employee is getting paid to play.

Nothing has been able to supplant the band because nothing has been able to reach that critical mass. Kanye West and Amy Winehouse have done well with “Stronger” and “Rehab” respectively, but they don’t represent anything earth-shattering. And only two songs? That’s the challenge that’s been mounted? That’s more an indication of the dearth of hit singles out there than anything else.

“Hits” notwithstanding (and let’s face it, the week before Radiohead’s hold began, Oasis’ “Wonderwall” was eighth on the chart; now it’s fifteenth – the chart has only ever given a slight indication of “what’s now”), Radiohead has been able to get their songs (or rather a complete album; they’re not shilling singles here) into the hands of more listeners. Their free distribution model has worked amazingly. They’ve removed the barriers to entry. As such, don’t be surprised if Nine Inch Nails makes at least a small dent next week with songs from Ghosts I-IV.

Esthero – Wikked Lil Grrrls (2005)

Status? Complete.

I need help explaining why the Kinks have made a resurgence. There’s ample evidence: my friend Amber lists them on her Facebook profile, Rolling Stone writes an album-by-album guide, their songs get played at a recent dance party at which I was in attendance, and they’ve even made their way into my own listening habits. Why so suddenly? Is the state of rock & roll such that we’re looking back to bands from 40 years ago to get our kicks?

For personal reasons “The Fox” will likely remain burned into my memory. The cliffs at Beachy Head (referenced in the song) were one of the better spots to get away from things during my year in England. That, and I accidentally electrocuted myself (not serious enough to hospitalize, but I wasn’t exactly expecting it) on the security wire that edges the cliffs.

A+

I’m a sociologist by profession (or rather, I would be, were I to finish my thesis project) who studies migration, and so I’ve a particular interest for matters of geography. Or perhaps it’s the other way around – my family has a diplomatic background (my grandfather and uncle have both served as Canadian ambassadors abroad) and so there were always atlases lying around… The connection is there either way.

Which brings me to Last.fm. How do my listening habits break down geographically? Of my Top 200 artists, 13 countries are represented. How do these stack up? Well, let’s consider that I’m Canadian, a country right next door to a country 10x the size my own and known worldwide for its entertainment industry, and that I’m an anglophile who basically spent a year following bands around the UK and Ireland (under the guise of a university education). So it should come as no surprise that the three countries most represented are the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada.

Following that, we have Sweden, Australia and New Zealand, Iceland, France and others.

Iceland is fairly easy to explain – it holds a spot close to my heart; I was married in Reykjavik – the first music we listened to after exchanging our vows ("já, það geri ég" for the curious) was Sigur Rós. The fact that it’s a very prolific country in terms of creative output (nearly every Icelander is a published author by the time they die) might also have something to do with it. Sweden (Kent, The Cardigans, Jay-Jay Johanson, Swod, etc.) on the other hand? I have no personal connection, so I can only assume that like Iceland it is very prolific in the arts.

[originally posted to Last.fm, 14 Feb 2008]