Here are ten of my favorites in no particular order. This was inspired by Janet at The Art of Getting By and her Tell It To Me Tuesday.

I'll be writing up some music reviews for CDs sent to me by HollywoodJesus.com. Two of them are self described as Christian hardcore. I shall link to the reviews when they are up.

My first music review is up over at HJ.

Broadcasting... : HollywoodJesus.com : Music Reviews, Previews and Spiritual Commentary

New review up at HJ.com. Another album full of screaming about stuff, "We Are the Threat" by xDEATHSTARx, a Christian hardcore group.

According to RAIN: Radio And Internet Newsletter the Copyright Royalty Board has set the royalty rates for webcasting music. It will be $0.0008 per performance (defined as the streaming of one song to one listener) retroactive to the beginning of '06 and will be raised to $.0019 per performance by 2010.

This will probably kill sites like Pandora. To make those numbers real for you,

According to the comScore Arbitron ratings report for November 2006, the AOL Radio Network had a average audience ("AQH") between 6AM and Midnight of 210,694 listeners. Multiplied by about 16 songs per hour, 18 hours per day, and 31 days per month, plus adding an additional 10% to account for overnight (Mid-6AM) listening, suggests that AOL played about 2.1 billion songs that month. At the CRB's royalty rate ($0.0008 per play), I'm guessing that would create a royalty obligation to SoundExchange for the month of November of about $1.65 million. Annualized, that's about $20 million for 2006.

And it will be over double that in three years. Greedy sons of satan. So Gizmodo recommends boycotting the RIAA this month. That means doing some research and if you want to know where you can go to get RIAA free music then check this out. Will it work? Probably not., but it might feel good.

New music review up at HJ.com

The Walking Wounded : HollywoodJesus.com : Music Reviews, Previews and Spiritual Commentary

This one's a little easier on the ears.

My latest music review at Hollywood Jesus.

A new music review is up. I've been busy of late so little content has popped up here.

Things to come:

1. I owe Sid a rebuttal and I'll try and get that up today.
   
2. I hope to see Spiderman this weekend so if I do I'll put my meager thoughts here or somewhere.
   
3. I want to post something on a book I'm reading, two books actually, A New Way to Be Human by Charlie Peacock and Overcoming Sin and Temptation by John Owen (which is actually three books in and of itself).
   
4. Oh and make sure you hit up The Rocky Mountain Ride archives (gotta get that in my sidebar). Aaron and I have added a religious show and are having excellent discussions on politics on the Saturday Political Ride.
   

Keep your eyes open and fill my comment space with the flood of your knowledge!!

Evan Almighty Presents Rock The Boat is a conert featuring Switchfoot, Relient K, and Jeremy Camp with DecembeRadio taking place in the Gibson Amphitheatre at Universal CityWalk. Yours truly will be flying out there Monday to interview the bands and cover the concert for HollywoodJesus.com. I'm about as excited as can be.

This will be my first time interviewing musicians (or anyone else) and I'm not sure yet what the format will be. If you are familiar with these bands and you have any questions you'd like me to ask them feel free to chime in here.

I'll be travelblogging my concert and trip both here and at HJ Live!. Due to preparations I'm suspending my fiction writing project (unless I find a spare few minutes) and I missed my "Coffee with Scott" spot on BTR, but I'll still be doing the political and religious Rides with Aaron this weekend.

Pray for safe travels!

Check out my Rock the Boat - Concert Coverage and let me know what you think. I'll be posting concert pics this evening along with a bit of a blog post on my LA adventures. Also perhaps I will pick 500 words back up.

Review of End of Silence by RED

Interview with Relient K

Interview with Switchfoot

Review of Don't Get Comfortable by Brandon Heath

So it's been a busy week even if it's slow here. Also check out 500 Words. I know, I know, I've missed some days, but I have been writing quite a bit even if not for that.

Angel Sword Guitar Plays Iron Maiden Songs, Slays Teen Pop Stars - Gizmodo

This is pretty awesome.

Technical Stew the first steps in a group blog/podcast on tech.

Review of Iris to Iris by Building 429

So I know you're all waiting with bated breath to hear how my birthday weekend was. Well it was a bit of a mixed bag, but good overall.

This week's question from Janet is a simple one with the possibility of being a long, detailed answer:

"What are your favorite songs with a name in the title?"

Well no long detailed answer, but as MCF usually does I do provide YouTube videos of each.

As funny this year as it was when I posted it last year.

I want a hippopotamus for Christmas!!!! I hope you get what you want and that more importantly you have good times with the ones you love.

HT to Danny

According to the Washinton Post, the RIAA wants to make ripping an MP3 from a CD you legally own into iTunes illegal. That's ridiculous. Now I understand the problem with giving mp3s that you've ripped to your best buds. I've little doubt that that violates copyright. Of course these says if you want to lend a CD to a friend that's the easiest way and when CDs are a thing of the past (and for some folks they already are) how are you supposed to let someone borrow an "album" or an individual song?

And this quote from Sony BMG's chief of litigation, Jennifer Pariser,

"when an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song." Copying a song you bought is "a nice way of saying 'steals just one copy,' " she said.

Well that's just... words fail me. Nice words anyway.

I got Call Me Irresponsible for Christmas and have been listening to it practically nonstop ever since. I love the old school-ness of the whole thing. I'm pretty sure that all of these songs are "standards" which isn't, in this case, a bad thing.

YouTube - Michael Buble - "It Had Better Be Tonight"

Geekdad tripped me down memory lane with this post and this youtube video.

My nostalgic streak is as wide as wide can be and that can be to my detriment. It's hard for me to pick up new music. Of course part of that is because the price of CDs is still pretty extravagant, but even when I listen to a new band through something like Pandora or any of the other myriad free web-based players that are out there I'm still kind of meh on things I hear that I didn't grow up with.

For me music is quite a bit about safety and sameness. I want something that I can either play in the background or when I do listen to it with all of my concentration I want the familiar. I suppose that's why I like the Buble album and the Nickel Creek album I got for Christmas. While both "new"-ish musicians they both have very old school sounds.

Now mind you I'm not saying that this is a good thing. I think one should constantly be on the lookout for new experiences and ways of expanding one's horizons. So with that in mind, if you post a song here, I will listen and critique it. It has to be available for legit download and preferably from iTunes.

I love me a good drum solo and here's two for the price of one.

Ht to WWdN

I heard this on the radio this morning and Pat saved me from having to look for it.

I love an interesting/good musical duet. That's especially true when you get artists together that don't usually go. Crossroads on CMT usually does a good job at creating this situation. That's where I first saw James Taylor and The Dixie Chicks sing together and that YouTube video inspired this post. What are some duets that pop out at you or that you'd like to see?

Thanks to Danny of Nothing Important I've learned about a new instrument (new to me anyway), the hang. It's like a steel drum siamese twin.

I suspect that everyone that has wanted to see Once has done so. I am a lame-o when it comes to getting to the theater and I'm not entirely sure that this came to my town anyway. In any case this seems like a fitting day to recommend an Irish movie.

I caught it on DVD this past week and I'll tell you that if the person that recommended this movie to me weren't in Texas I'd kiss him on his hairy facial cheek (so he should probably be glad he is). For those of you that don't appreciate my ancestral homeland's love of the F-bomb, you might want to steer clear (or possibly man up for 86 minutes). The beauty inherent in the music and the relationship between the guy and the girl far outweighs any objection you might have with the language.

For the uninitiated, this film is basically about a dude who makes music on the street for spare change (word of the day: busker) while helping his dad out at their hoover shoppe. He meets this girl and they hit it off and develop a relationship around making a demo tape for him. There are seeds of love there, but he has a girl that he's pinin' for and she has a hubby that she may want to get back with. I won't tell you how it turns out, see for yourself.

The actors are unknowns, picked I suppose for their real life talents and perhaps for the reason that they were these characters in a way most actors couldn't pull off. Also I imagine they worked on the cheap. In any event they done good.

The real star of this show as I said up top though, is the music. I need to get the soundtrack like yesterday. So go rent it. Now. That is all.

The FuMP has some funny stuff. Give this a listen.

Oh gosh, you really need to listen to Doc Popular's podcast Drown Pirate Radio mixtape. I don't know if it warrants subsribing to. Too early to tell. But if you are a troo geek it at least warrants clapping your earbuds in for a quick taste of nerdcore rap, sampling from Star Wars and ancient kitchy records, and assorted weirdness.

Okay first you need to go listen to/watch this.

Then you should download this which is the audio version and has more music.

Then you need to subscribe to TED Talks. What is it?

TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader.

The annual conference now brings together the world's most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes).

I'm pretty sure I have Sid to thank for the heads up on their podcast/vidcast. I am just now getting hooked though. You're welcome.