This is a graph of the music I have/listen to by release year.  The blue line represents songs I have.  The green line is songs times the number of times I listen to them.

1994 was apparently a big year, surpassed only by 2008, which gets a huge bump listening-wise, I’m assuming due to the presence of Gods Of The Earth.

The program can break it out by genre, too, which is fun:

This is Metal only  (ranging from Black Sabbath to Goatwhore)

(Anybody know any good metal albums that came out in 1998?  Apparently, I’m missing out)

Rock: (a pretty generic category, ranging from AC/DC to Clutch to The Big Wu)

Alternative (Soul Coughing, Cake, The Decemberists, Murder By Death):

Punk:

(Note:  I lived with Ben in 2001)

Pop (LOL):

This stuff only covers listening history for the last three years or so since I had lost my iTunes Library somewhere in there and had to start over.

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Back in the late 80′s, during the heyday of hair bands, there were a lot of groups of long-haired make-up wearing dudes trying to make it big.  Slave Raider was one of those groups.  They also happened to be from Minnesota.  I’m just slightly too young to have ever seen them live, but my good friend Reuben introduced me to them back in our younger days, and I’ve always thought they were a fun band with some good songs.  Since then, several of my friends have met various band members in other capacities (lead singer Chainsaw was Jabberwocky’s drummer’s other band’s agent).

About a month ago, I was listening through my iTunes (in alphabetical order by artist) and Slave Raider’s ‘Take The World By Storm’ came up.  It occurred to me how awesome it would be to play those songs.  So I decided my next recording project would be to record a bunch of Slave Raider songs as Kathetor. A month later and here we are.  It’s a 5 song EP.  The last song technically isn’t a Slave Raider song.  It’s from an EP of the lead singer Chainsaw’s side project:  Chainsaw.

1.  Take The World By Storm

2.  The Black Hole

3.  Youngblood

4.  Bigger Badder & Bolder

5. The Devil’s Drivin’ My Car tonight

(right click any to download or right click here to download a zip of the whole EP)

I tried to change or add things where I could to make it more interesting as an acoustic album, and I recorded the whole thing in order.  My favorite of the bunch is Children Of The Grave, both because it was the most fun to record, and, in my opinion, ended up with the best results.

(Download ZIP file of whole album)

Sweet Leaf

After Forever

Embryo > Children Of The Grave

Orchid

Lord Of This World

Solitude

Into The Void

9: The Company Band – The Company Band (iTMS)

8: Tardy Brothers – Bloodline (iTMS)

7: Mike Doughty – Sad Man Happy Man (iTMS)

6: Weezer – Raditiude (iTMS)

5: Mastodon – Crack The Skye (iTMS)

4: Flight Of The Conchords – I Told You I Was Freaky (iTMS)

3: Slayer – World Painted Blood (iTMS)

2: Clutch – Strange Cousins From The West (iTMS)

1: Phish – Joy (iTMS)

A couple weeks ago I happened to look at Mike Doughty’s website during a moment of boredom and found he had a new album coming out. I had a short moment where I my heart jumped a little bit and I was really excited, but that was quickly replaced by a feeling of trepidation as I remembered my disappointment in Golden Delicious. So I made a mental note to keep an eye out for it and moved on.

About 20 minutes ago, as I was waiting for a server update to download, I had another moment of boredom and found out that Sad Man Happy Man had come out today. Not expecting much, but wanting to support Mike Doughty in his artistic efforts, I purchased the album from iTunes…

… and was pleasantly surprised to find an album full of the sorts of things I loved about Mike Doughty when I first started listening to his solo efforts: simple, moving songs with melody and grace played by a man and his acoustic guitar. And, even better, the album benefits from the addition of a cello and some honest-to-goodness rapping.

Basically, it’s album produced by one guy with a passion, rather than a record company.