Playlist: March 2009

I’ve been adding a few tracks here and there to this playlist, and finally wrapped it up tonight. There’s a few brand new songs, and a few older ones too. I saw The Ting Tings on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon a few nights ago and I’m addicted to this song now. Comments here, or Twitter.

Artist Song Album
01. The Ting Tings That’s Not My Name We Started Nothing
02. Dierks Bentley Lot OF Leavin’ Left To Do Modern Day Drifter
03. Scars On Broadway They Say Scars On Broadway
04. Metallica Am I Evil Garage Inc.
05. Toby Keith Courtesy Of The Red, White & Blue 35 Biggest Hits
06. Spacehog In The Meantime Resident Alien
07. Black Tide Warriors Of Time Light From Above
08. Weezer Troublemaker Weezer (The Red Album)
09. Creedence Clearwater Revival Who’ll Stop The Rain Chronicle
10. Papa Roach Getting Away With Murder Getting Away With Murder
11. Franz Ferdinand No You Girls Tonight
12. Billy Idol Rebell Yell The Very Best of Billy Idol: Idolize Yourself
13. Filter Welcome To The Fold Title Of The Record
14. Dropkick Murphys I’m Shipping Up to Boston The Warrior’s Code
15. Nickelback Something In Your Mouth Dark Horse
16. Sting & The Police Don’t Stand So Close To Me The Very Best Of Sting & The Police
17. Clutch Careful With That Mic… Pure Rock Fury
18. Shinedown Son of Sam The Sound of Madness
19. Dead Kennedys California Ãœber Alles Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables
20. Anthrax Keep It In The Family The Greater Of Two Evils

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Playlist: February 2009

Took me a little while, but I finally finished up the February playlist. Got a few new ones in there, and some old ones too. I got Slacker Radio for my Storm, so hopefully I’ll discover some new stuff and dig up even more old ones. Don’t forget to check out my music stats too.

Artist Title Album
01. Stone Temple Pilots Crackerman Core
02. Creed Bullets Greatest Hits
03. Jason Mraz I’m Yours We Sing We Dance We Steal Things
04. The All-American Rejects The Last Song All-American Rejects
05. Franz Ferdinand Ulysses Tonight
06. Godsmack Trippin Awake
07. The Cranberries Zombie Stars
08. Apocalyptica I Don’t Care Worlds Collide
09. Black Label Society Fire It Up Mafia
10. Garth Brooks Pappa Loved Mama Ropin’ The Wind
11. The Subways I Want To Hear What You Have Got To Say Young For Eternity
12. Alice In Chains Sick Man Dirt
13. Clutch The Soapmakers The Elephant Riders
14. The Lonely Island I’m On A Boat (feat. T-Pain) Incredibad
15. Anti-Flag Fuck Police Brutality Die For The Government
16. Nirvana Something In The Way Nevermind
17. Dierks Bentley What Was I Thinkin’ Dierks Bentley
18. Queen Flash Greatest Hits I
19. M.I.A. Paper Planes Kala
20. Atmosphere Trying To Find A Balance Seven’s Travels

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Playlist: January 2009

Didn’t get this posted right away this month, but I’ve been rocking out to this playlist to and from work lately. See past playlists here, and all music stats here. Noteworthy, I have passed 100,000 plays of the songs in my iTunes database. I also have over 12,000 songs now.

Artist Name Album
01. Papa Roach Time And Time Again Lovehatetragedy
02. Tim McGraw Indian Outlaw Greatest Hits
03. Shinedown Second Chance The Sound of Madness
04. Rancid The Wars End Live Nottingham 2003
05. Korn Coming Undone See You On The Other Side
06. Crash Test Dummies Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm The 90’s
07. Jimi Hendrix All Along The Watchtower Experience Hendrix
08. The Who Won’t Get Fooled Again Who’s Greatest Hits
09. Hoobastank Crawling In The Dark Hoobastank
10. Tool Forty Six & 2 Ænima
11. Metallica Breadfan Garage Inc.
12. Red Hot Chili Peppers She’s Only 18 Stadium Arcadium
13. Katy Perry Fingerprints One of the Boys
14. Green Day St. Jimmy American Idiot
15. Chris LeDoux This Cowboy’s Hat The Ultimate Collection: Chris LeDoux
16. Five Bolt Main Pathetic Venting
17. Pearl Jam Daughter Rearviewmirror (Greatest Hits 1991-2003)
18. The Misfits Rat Fink Collection
19. Clutch Wishbone The Elephant Riders
20. T.I. On Top Of The World (Ft. Ludacris & B.O.B.) Paper Trail

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Never Forgotten.

Rest In Peace

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Review: AC/DC – Black Ice

AC/DC - Black IceIf you’re anything like me, you were pumped to hear that AC/DC was releasing a new album. Although I was slightly less pumped to hear that it was being released exclusively at Wal*Mart. After waiting eight years since Stiff Upper Lip, it was nice to get some new licks from Angus and the gang.

The album features a load of songs packed with the classic AC/DC sound that is sure to be loved by any fan young or old. The unmistakable sound of the brothers Young on guitar, and Brian Johnson belting it out the album easily falls right into the groove that you’re used to. Although the first single from the album, “Rock N Roll Train” was really overplayed leading up to, and after the release of the album the rest of the tracks are pretty solid. Black Ice debuted at #1 in just about every country, with the exception of South Africa and Turkey.

My friend Nate said that he felt like Angus was holding back a little on the solos on this album, and I might have to agree with him. I didn’t get the rolling-around-on-the-ground-in-a-schoolboy-outfit feel that I was used to from Angus’ licks on most of the tracks. It was more like the shuffling-around-in-a-schoolboy-uniform that you’d expect from a 53 year old rock star. Nonetheless, a very solid release from the legendary AC/DC. Pick it up and have a listen if you’ve had that itch for something other than Dirty Deeds to jam out to in the car.

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Playlist: December 2008

Back to the same old, here’s the playlist for December twentyoheight. Word.

Artist Name Album
01. Deftones Hexagram Deftones
02. Tim McGraw Where The Green Grass Grows Greatest Hits
03. Korn Got The Life Follow The Leader
04. Billy Idol Dancing With Myself The Very Best of Billy Idol: Idolize Yourself
05. Clutch When Vegans Attack From Beale Street To Oblivion
06. Killswitch Engage Breathe Life The End Of Heartache
07. The Darkness I Believe In A Thing Called Love Permission To Land
08. Incubus Drive Make Yourself
09. Five Finger Death Punch Ashes The Way Of The Fist
10. Eric Clapton Cocaine Greatest Hits
11. Atmosphere Always Coming Back Home To You Seven’s Travels
12. Hootie & The Blowfish Let Her Cry The Best of Hootie & The Blowfish
13. Turbonegro Turbonegro Must Be Destroyed Scandinavian Leather
14. Elton John Bennie And The Jets Greatest Hits 1970-2002
15. Nickelback Just To Get High Dark Horse
16. Big Fuckin’ Skull Skulls That Ride City Buses Six Skulls Against The World
17. Damageplan Blink of an Eye New Found Power
18. Blink-182 All The Small Things Enema of the State
19. Led Zeppelin Kashmir Mothership
20. MXPX My Life Story The Ever Passing Moment


View other playlists here, and my entire music collection here.

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Review: Guns ‘N Roses – Chinese Democracy

Guns 'N Roses - Chinese Democracy There is a lot to be said about this album, which for many people was anticipated about as much as Duke Nukem Forever. The release of Chinese Democracy marks the release of new studio material from GNR since Use Your Illusion I and II in September 1991. I can’t honestly say that I was expecting a whole lot from the album when I heard that it was really for real going to come out. But I decided that I would pick it up and give it a listen.

I will start out by saying that if you aren’t a fan of Guns ‘N Roses, or more specifically Axl Rose, you probably won’t like this album. There is no doubt in any of the songs that he is the one singing and he definitely want’s to you to know that it’s him. I also noticed that almost all the songs have some weird techno beats in the intro and throughout the songs. It threw me off a little at first, but it’s kinda cool on some of the tracks. I’d say that the two standout tracks for me right now are “Better” and “Sorry”. When I was listening to this album today I found myself repeatedly losing focus thinking that this didn’t sound enough like the Guns ‘N Roses that I know and love. But I had to stop and just let myself listen and take it in. When I was finally able to set aside the fact that there was no Slash, there was no Duff, just Axl; I was able to hear a whole new sound. A sound that is so close, yet so far from the sound that anyone would associate with GNR.

I am absolutely more than pleased with the album, and I recommend it to all who have ever been keen on GNR. Allow yourself at least one good listen to take it all in and let it grow on you. Just don’t drink any Dr. Pepper while doing so, please.

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Review: Nickelback – Dark Horse

Nickelback - Dark Horse If you’re like me, you’ve never been a huge Nickelback fan. Sure they’ve had some good singles, but they all got overplayed and turned to shit on the radio. However, I picked up a copy of this album before ever hearing a single track from it, and now I can’t stop listening to it.

It’s definitely got the typical Nickelback sound, with Chad singing in his distinctive voice and pretty heavy backing riffs. I first listened to the album on the way to work, and much the same as the new Shinedown album that I recently listened to and reviewed, I found myself rating a lot of the songs pretty higly. The album flows really well and almost makes me forget that it’s Nickelback. With the exception of “Gotta Be Somebody” (which I don’t really care for), the whole album is pretty heavy. I really like “Something In Your Mouth”, “Just To Get High”, and “Burn It To The Ground”. Like I said, it’s definitely still Nickelback, but I personally think it’s better than most of the other stuff they’ve released.

I would say it’s definitely worth a listen if you’ve ever been a fan, or if you’re looking for some new rock with a rougher harder sound than a lot of the other stuff on the radio right now.

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Music Stats Updated

I did some tweaking to the stats display engine that I wrote for generating my own music stats today, which now includes data about the top 10 albums by play count, play count by genre, and I improved the execution time a bit with some newly learned functions. I also squashed a bug that was causing artists or albums with “&” in their name to display improperly due to the way PHP handles “&” in URLs. Rich helped me out with that one and we got it all squared away.

I looked around at a few scripts and libraries that allow you to easily make charts and graphs from your data, but I didn’t get too far. After all the work to get things to the state they’re in now, I didn’t feel like creating another headache for myself. At least not today. But it’s on the back burner for now. I am also thinking of some sort of way to track the history of say, the top 100 tracks/artists/albums to show how their play counts change over time. The only problem with this is that I would need to sync at specific intervals, which doesn’t happen very much right now.

Anyways, with the new data that I was able to harvest, I found some interesting information regarding my listening habits:


Genre Plays %OT Total %OT
Rock 41,379 48% 4,928 42%
Metal 21,633 9% 2,545 12%
Classic Rock 7,962 9% 1,412 12%
Punk 7,440 9% 1,558 13%
Country 4,559 5% 516 4%
Rap 1,556 2% 329 3%
Alternative 1,160 1% 218 2%
Pop 683 1% 133 1%
Industrial 490 1% 142 1%
Techno 135 0% 12 0%


This table illustrates the number of plays that each genre has, and the percent of the total plays for that genre on the left; and on the right it shows how many songs there are for that genre, and the percentage of the total library that that particular genre accounts for. While it’s pretty much assumed that these two would have very similar percentages, I found it interesting that Rock takes up nearly half of all of my listening time.

http://www.robmonroe.net/music

Anyone care to share their listening habbits? I would be more than happy to run your iTunes library through my stats engine so you could have a gander. Just let me know!

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Review: Shinedown – The Sound Of Madness

Shinedown - The Sound Of MadnessWow, four posts in one day, crazy, I know.

Anyways, I picked up on this release a little late (it came out in June), and I’m regretting it. I heard the single Devour on the radio a few times, and I really liked it, but never got around to listening to the rest of the album. If you are a Shinedown fan, from either of their first two albums, you absolutely need to pick this album up and listen to the whole thing right now.

In typical Shinedown fashion, there is a pretty good mix of hard rock songs, and some softer ballads (for lack of a better term) with string accompaniment. Some of my favorite tracks are “The Crow & The Butterfly”, one of the softer songs on the record, “Son Of Sam” which is a bonus track, is one of the hardest and fastest songs on the album and really sounds more like a Godsmack song in some parts. And of course, there is also “Deovur” and “Second Chance” which are the first two singles from the album, and both are still getting pretty good play on local radio.

I would rank this as one of the best rock album to be released so far this year. Get your hands on it as soon as possible.

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