This Blog Doesn't Have MP3's

Mainly, that's because I don't really spend a lot of time looking for free mp3's. When I want to download some new music, I use one of those less-than-legal peer-to-peer file share programs, like SoulSeek, which can fortunately get just about any song you want but can unfortunately not be linked on your blog and shared with all of your friends. Cause it's illegal and some people have some sort of odd moral hang-up about that.

The only place I really go for free music downloading is the Audiofile column by Thomas Bartlett on Salon.com. Bartlett's a pretty cool musician in his own right (I saw him play last year at the Troubadour with Mike Doughty's Band.) And in this column, he goes out and finds cool new mp3's online every day.

The other day, I got this Clap Your Hands Say Yeah mp3 that started me listening to that Brooklyn band's entire album. It's great, but you knew that already, because I wrote about it while intoxicated several days ago.

And today, he's got a special treat. A link to a Flaming Lips official download page, where you can access their entire new live "bootleg" disc. It's called "Fearless Freaks," after the documentary about the band coming to DVD on Tuesday (which I'll certainly try to review, if we get some in at the Blazer).

Anyway, it's terrific - 7 live recordings of Flaming Lips B-sides including on of Wayne Coyne's famed "parking lot experiments," in which he'd have dozens of car stereos playing different tapes all at the same time.

Well...it's not entirely true that I only download free shit from Bartlett's column. I will occasionally use Pitchfork links as well, like this one for the first song by The Islands, the new offshoot of the Unicorns. It's a pretty cool song called "Abominable Snow." It could easily have just been a Unicorns song, if that band hadn't "broken up."