I’m going to start doing my music writing on Mondays. Hopefully this will encourage me to write more and will give me some sort of structure, cause this site is all over the place.

On the video list you’ll see stuff from Britney Spears and Lil’ Mama. You may think this is lame but please bear with me, there are totally non-sucky things to be said about them. But first, Foo Fighters… the new rock is out! Rock has been stagnating for quite a while now and I don’t tend to listen much nowadays, but thankfully there are still some bands like the foos that bring be back to the genre once in a while. The new CD, Echoes, Silence Patience & Grace, came out last Friday, and the new single is “Pretender”. I’ve been listening to it over and over for the last week. They brought in Gil Norton, who produced The Colour and the Shape, and Pat Smear will be touring with them. They’re still innovating – the awesome Kaki King plays on the track The Ballad of the Beaconsfield Miners. They still sound like the Foo Fighters, but with a more mature sound.

Matchbox-20 has a new single out, “How Far We’ve Come”, and it’s surprisingly good. I mean, this is the first Matchbox 20 song that I don’t hate. Airborne porkers have invaded an artic hell. I mean, seriously, where the hell did it come from?

Oh apparently Stars by Hum is the new hawtness. Cadillac has been using it in their latest ad campaign and I heard it play several times on VH1. Nevermind that this song was released more than 12 years ago. I was a huge fan back then but they had very little commercial success – mostly because their music can be weird.

Forgetting about the fact that Britney Spears is LAME, I’ll say that I actually like the new single, Gimme More. I actually like some of her other songs too, and that’s because they’re written by people with talent, even if she doesn’t have any. Try to listen to some of her songs in other contexts, without shame, and you’ll find out that they’re not that bad. For example, check out the great cover of Baby One More Time by Marty Casey. All of a sudden the song has this great dark quality that was hidden in bubble-gumness. In this case, imagine that Gimme More being performed by Maroon 5 (which is not that bad of a stretch), and all of a sudden it’s not that bad.

The last note is on the Lip Gloss single by Lil’ Mama. Again, you might think this is LAME, and it’s probably one of the most annoying singles of the year. However, there’s something very remarkable about this song – it’s the first hit song to have ABSOLUTELY NO MELODY. I recognize that this is hip hop and lyrics have no melody, but this doesn’t even have a hook. It’s not anywhere near the kind of music that I would listen to, but I recognize that musical taste is subjective, and in that spirit I have to recognize that this is a pretty innovative song, even if it makes me want to jump off a bridge.

Californication is a new series on Showtime and I quickly got addicted to it, it’s so messed up. It should do fine as an Entourage replacement now that the season is over. I really like the theme, it was composed by Tree Adams. He’s done a lot of other great music by the way.

I couldn’t find the mp3 anywhere through Google, but it turns out that it’s on the composer’s website. Go to this link: http://www.treeadams.com/television.htm and click on play music.

Now, I’m not going to post the mp3, but I’m going to show you how to get it. The music player is in flash… people often publish such players because they want you to hear the music without being able to get the MP3. Luckily smart people can get around that, it’s all a matter of finding out what data flash is requesting.

1. Install the livehttpheaders extension for firefox here: http://livehttpheaders.mozdev.org/
2. Once your browser has restarted, go to http://www.treeadams.com/television.htm and open the “Play Music” tab
3. Click on Tools>Live HTTP Headers
4. Click on the Generator tab, and check the box next to “request”
5. On the music player, click on the Californication theme
6. You should see the mp3 show up immediately on the Live HTTP Headers window. You might have to look through the list, but the file extension is .mp3
7. Navigate to the mp3 location and hit File>Save As. You have your mp3.

What the liveHTTPHeaders extension does is show you the browser’s http requests. I use it a lot in web development work to make sure that Flash is requesting data correctly. This tip will always be handy when you come across a site that obscures media through flash. Now, for anyone who’s thinking about making a music player and wants a little security, just stick the audio inside a swf file. No one wants those.

I knew of Ryohei because he’s one of the singers in m-flo’s Miss You, which is one of my favorite songs. I downloaded his latest cd, Cavaca, and it’s filled with horrible, horrible covers. Check out, “You Gotta Be” at the beginning and “She Will Be Loved” at 4:00 in the video below.

However, there’s one song that I really liked – Georgy Porgy – it’s at 3:17. I looked it up and it turns out that it’s a cover of a song by Toto (of Africa fame). It might be really old, but it’s new to me. I wouldn’t have known of this song if I watched MTV all day. It’s a really good song, and it’s another reason to reject the fashionist nature of the music industry. Guiding musical taste by what’s new on the radio is so retarded.

Ryohei, your cd sucks, but thanks for introducing me to this song:

This is the latest song obsession. I didn’t watch any Japanese dramas for about a year but I recently started watching Proposal Daisakusen, which was really good. This is the end theme for the show – it’s not my usual fare, but since I really got into the drama this song has been stuck in my head for a while.