Root Down in the Shadow

According to most, the holiday listening season starts the day after Thanksgiving.  Black Friday starts the season off in a chaotic fashion for most, with people scrambling to re-load their collection onto their respective media players, filtering through the crap to re-find the good stuff. To help get right to the good stuff, I have put together a list of 10 songs that I am most looking forward to playing once the holiday listening season officially begins! 10.  She & Him .  I just downloaded this for $5 from Amazon.  It was too irresistible to pass up.  I can't wait to check out 'Baby It's Cold Outside'.  I loved the duet with Will Farrell on Elf , and I kind of like the duet with Leon Redbone on the Elf Soundtrack .  I'm very curious to hear Zooey Deschanel (She) with M. Ward (him) 9. Béla Fleck & The Flecktones - ’Jingle Bells' -  I love this totally nontraditional version of the song done only as Béla Fleck could ...

*** Part of an ongoing series of TOOLS TO ENJOY MORE MUSIC ***** I will attempt to profile great avenues of finding, listening to, and downloading new music, to help you , the music fan, get more out of your listening experience. The interface  was probably my first podcast.   Back in 2006 I spent many weekends working in my new house, and I needed some new music to get into while I was demolishing, rebuilding and painting.   I think I had been looking up bands for the upcoming Virgin Festival in Baltimore, MD ., but somehow I had stumbled onto four awesome new bands.   Pigeon John, the Raconteurs, KT Tunstall, and Lady Sovereign . During these early podcasts, the podcast was referred to as AOL Interface @ Spinner.com .  It was also mainly an interview with some performance added at the beinning or end.  Somehow they embedded chapters into the podcasts, so you could skip through and listen to the songs.  That was nice as, after the 10th time...

On the blog, I have featured my top music of 2010 & 2011.  This isn't meant to be a billboard top 40 by any means.  But instead the best of music, that I'm listening to, and of course what you should check out.  Looking deeper, about fifty percent of it has roots in a track I first found via a free podcast.  In fact many of the songs themselves were free.  A few years back, after finding the AOL interface podcast (now just the interface) where I found recordings of the Raconteurs, Lady Soveriegn, Decemberist, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Ted Leo , and KT Tunstall , I branched out to find more song podcasts, rather than just performances.  KEXP & KCRW , two excellent NPR type radio stations each have a daily song with KCRW's 'Today's Top Tune" and KCRW's "song of the day". Today I'll feature the KEXP 'Song of the Day.' Some gems found include, a favorite of my brother in law with Passion Pit 'The Reeling' and radio mainstays, M...

About five years ago, I was gifted my first iPod at a not-so surprise birthday party.  Having the iPod, was the catalyst that lead to today's blog.  It was the spark that pushed me to dig into iTunes and the world of podcasts.  Soon after, I discovered KT Tunstall , Lady Sovereign , and solo Mike Doughty via the INTERFACE podcast (which at the time was audio only, but is now full video and mostly performance).  I spent more time on iTunes and all of its search features.  I had hit the jackpot, now besides the obvious pickup of KT Tunstall's Eye To The Telescope album; I searched for more KT, and found KT Tunstall's Acoustic Extravaganza .  The Acoustic Extravaganza contained 10 stripped down versions of KT Tunstall songs.  It is a wonderful package of songs, as it skipped her hits 'Black Horse & The Cherry Tree', 'Other Side of The World, and 'Suddenly I See' including only 'Miniature Disasters'.  Instead it focused mainly on "B si...