-Petra Haden's cover of "God Only Knows"

-The Magnetic Fields' 69 Love Songs box set

-The Pipettes

Scott Walker, Johnny Cash new ones

Waiting on the third thing.

Comets On Fire

Suoni per il Popolo festival

Mammatus in Toronto

I'd probably say that Ronnie Spector's Last of the Rock Stars, Grant Lee Philips' nineteeneighties and Dennis Wilson's Pacific Ocean Blue all sufficiently surprised me in terms of how much I liked them on first pass.

And American V blew me away as well. That's four, which is not too bad.

i've rarely been blown away by anything. probably nothing this year

that live clip of Thom Yorke on the Rollins show


Sleater-Kinney breaking up


the new TV on the Radio

the last thing i can think of to "blow me away" was that natalie portman snl rap thing. hilarious stuff. she brought the nitz.

new tv on the radio

finally hearing cool for cats

slayer live

American V

Lucero's That Much Further West (AGAIN)

Band of Horses' The Funeral

- Joggers live

- Flaming Lips live

- that first track on the last Band of Bees record.

- lots of less specific things, like the way an instrument/vocal sounds on some song, a neat counter-melody in a Magnetic Fields song (chorus of "lonely highway"), learning how to play guitar solos better, etc.

Hatewave's self-titled album

the new Johnny Cash

the Outerlimitz album that came out last year.

1) Rufus Wainwright's "Want Two"

2) Seeing a local band Permafrown's performance - too crazy.

3) Finally listening to Nine Horses (David Sylvian) "Snow Borne Sorrow" on a proper stereo --- i.e. not my shity computer speakers. Totally blew me away. One of the best albums I've heard in years: song-wise and production-wise.

1) radiohead live playing "exit music" and "climbing up the walls" at the san diego show i went to (completely fucking blew my mind away)

2) thom yorke - black swan

3) fujiya & miyagi - collarbone

rotten sound - consume to contaminate [absurdly violent and extreme music]

tokyo police club - a lesson in crime ep [energy level set to 100%...one of the best ep's this year]

spank rock live in miami [they made me sweat it up, and were hype performers]

- Original Pirate Material & Boy in da Corner

- song & video for "Snap Yr Fingers"

1) June 17th, the return of my Silvertone guitar from my ex (ex before last ex, he had this guitar of mine since the early 1990s). The pic below isn't my actual guitar but it is exactly like mine which my mom bought for herself in the 60s, pretty dang cool with amplifier in the case, lipstick tube pickup:

[img][650:488]http://www.broadwaymusicco.com/harm116.jpg[/img]

2) A truly wonderful mix by my boyfriend which he hasn't yet posted on his Art of the Mix page, so I can't post...but it is fantastic.

3) I'm still reeling from all the leaked Elliott Smith music from this past autumn and some subsequent stuff I've heard.

(last show that blew me away [April] was Snowden who I hope blows me away again when I see them in August)

electric guitar
woodwinds
brass

Well hot damn

1) Being Santa Claus at the Flaming Lips show
2) running my acoustic through a fuzzbox more often
3) Cold War Kids

1. Playing DJ for the last hour or so of a trip last week with hockey people and finding out one of them actually recognised and liked some good music (Augie March in particular)

2. Sleater-Kinney breaking up (and also seeing them live in January)

3. Seeing Beth Ditto belt out Standing in the Way of Control and getting a small jazz club going at 3pm when, in her words, we clearly weren't drunk enough yet to be dancing

1. seeing sigur ros live
2. the format - dog problems
3. tv on the radio - return to cookie mountain

1. Getting my album completed
2. Nick Cave - Abbatoir Blues/Lyre Of Orpheus
3. Andrew Bird - The Mysterious Production Of Eggs


It's been a while since I've been completely blown away.

I'm making my list 4 and adding Percee P live.

The fact that I can download tons of obscure shit via music blogs either for free or about 13 bucks a month. Have people here talked about this before and I just wasn't paying attention?

Built to Spill - "Goin' Against Your Mind"
Lightning Bolt - "Captain Caveman"
Low - "Monkey"

3 recent faves:

Nomo - New Tones (afrobeat fakers doing a solid job)
Miles Davis - On the Corner (a good follow-up to my Sly & the Family Stone obsession)
Low - Long Division (such a beautiful album, my second favorite of theirs next to Things We Lost in the Fire)

I was also blown away by Ticketmaster on Saturday while trying to get Tome Waits tickets. Site was screwed up, had to use two separate credit cards to buy TWO tickets, and they added a $10 convenience charge to each. They're currently laughing at all of their customers (and have been for a long time) and saying "Fuck you. What the fuck are you going to do about it?"