Songs I Discovered in 2010

I bought the first two of Jimi's remastered CDs that were released today. I say heavy metal started with him (although the term either comes from some Steppenwolf lyrics or an interview with Iron Butterfly). I haven't had the chance to inspect them closely yet, but I've been doing some reading on the man himself. It should go without say that I appreciated his free spirit when I was a teenager. Now I'm not so sure whether his attitude came from his problems, or his problems came from his attitude. Maybe that's a sign that I'm getting old. That's okay, because I've got new and old music on this newest of my good ol' playlists. These songs are the ABSOLUTE best songs I have come across in the last couple of months. I GUARANTEE they're all worth downloading, and for each artist featured, there are many more songs to check out. Don't get bogged down by the sheer volume of artists though - each one is different from the rest, so variety is the spice of this playlist:

1. "Blood Red Tears" - Olive; I can't believe how old this song is - I figured it was a new release

2. "Bluish" - Animal Collective; some of the sound effects remind me of Erasure, and the fetish lyrics on the chorus remind me of Depeche Mode's "Blue Dress"

3. "Cousins" - Vampire Weekend; when I heard it on the radio, I thought "this sounds like The (English) Beat" until they announced that it was Vampire Weekend and then I thought "well that's why"

4. "Furore" - Adriano Celentano; the Elvis Presley of Italy, singing the theme song to Mario Bava's "first" giallo film, La ragazza che sapeva troppo (The Girl Who Knew Too Much)

5. "Home" - Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros; would've fit nicely on a folk rock mix CD I made my dad a couple years ago

6. "Hush Your Mouth" - Bo Diddley; I was looking for the pre-Led Zeppelin Jimmy Page version of this song from the rock doc, It Might Get Loud, but this is all that came up

7. "Mexico" - The Soft Pack; the artists formerly known as The Muslims (worst band name ever)

8. "The Only One I Know" - Mark Ronson feat. Robbie Williams; originally performed by the Brit pop band, The Charlatans (see my "90s Rock You May Have Missed" post for more like them)

9. "Romance Is Boring" - Los Campesinos!; my best discovery at last year's San Diego Street Scene music festival

10. "Rumble" - Link Wray & His Wray Men; from the movie Pulp Fiction, reintroduced to me on It Might Get Loud

11. "Running from the Cops" - Phantogram; two parts lazer bass to one part surf rock, with twist of bells, served underwater by a vampire harem at sunset

12. "Shark in the Water" - VV Brown; this year's KT Tunstall for me

13. "A Spaceship for Now" - RJD2; cut'n'paste DJ gets proggy toward the end

14. "Stick to My Side" - Pantha du Prince; wind chimes and vocal assist by Panda Bear

15. "Take It Easy" - Surfer Blood; geeks on the beach

16. "Take It In" - Hot Chip; start with a house beat, take away the soul vocal samples, replace them with nerds harmonizing and imagine Pac Man disco dancing

17. "Trick Pony" - Charlotte Gainsbourg; garage rock revival meets girly pop, produced by Beck

18. "Vix 9" - Bela Fleck and the Flecktones; a guy at church asked if I liked hearing the bass as the lead guitar, to which I responded "of course," to which he responded with some CDs to borrow

19. "White Knuckles" - OK Go; best Prince song not by Prince

20. "Woof Woof" - Dan Deacon; I first discovered this crowd pleaser and his noisy social experiments back on the Spiderman of the Rings album, but I wasn't sold till I got this song free from a magazine offer