Donna's Crayons

I've been hopelessly in love with the Queen of Disco since I first discovered Donna Summer's music back in the '70s.  Her disco-era releases remain fundamental to the genre, from the 16 minute "Love To Love You Baby" (which helped popularize the extended mix), the synthesizer-driven "I Feel Love" (which birthed Eurodisco--and still sounds cutting-edge today), to the best of her dance music "concept" albums (Once Upon A Time, a modern retelling of the Cinderella tale, and Bad Girls, which tackles prostitution from the perspective of a streetwalker).  While her releases following the "death of disco" became infrequent and disappointing, her last album, Crayons, made a good case for the immortality of the Queen.  Thanks to PCPL's partnership with Freegal, one can get free and legal downloads of not only the entire album, but also remixed versions and a "bonus" track originally released only on iTunes and the European edition of Crayons.

Browsing the Wealth of Freegal Offerings

Hello music blog readers!  Just a short dispatch this week to let y'all know about the Freegal browse feature if you are not already aware.  I was poking around Freegal, and as opposed to searching directly for an artist as I normally do, I hit the "Browse A-Z" button so as I could peruse the catalog.  Lo and behold, it was a wealth of information!  Please read on to learn about the browse feature.

Alio Die: Italian Ambient Music

Last time 'round I was touting Freegal as a good source of dance music singles, but there's another side to my love of this service: ambient music.  I've barely begun to dig through the virtual crates of ambient electronic music Freegal offers, but I've already found a good deal of stuff released by one of my most recent musical loves, Alio Die.

How This Freegal Flew, or, Three Immigrants' EDM

I've discovered that Freegal is a good source of dance music singles.

This is an important discovery for me as I really like dance music, and I've always loved the single. I used to spend many hours (and dollars) in record stores digging through bins of vinyl singles, checking the little 45 RPM 7" singles for rare b-side tracks, and the big 12" singles for otherwise unavailable extended and/or remixed versions. Then record companies decided that singles "cannibalized" sales of full LPs (making me the oddball in the crowd who'd take great pride in placing every single associated with a given album next to the LP on my shelf). After 2000 the singles bins began to disappear from record stores. By 2010 record stores had disappeared as well (for the most part), so I've been lost at sea here in the desert, unable to find or buy the music that once kept my feet dancing. However, there's some hope for the dance single in the digital age, with online retailers both big and small beginning to sell .mp3 and higher quality .wav tracks, but the collections and browsing functions always seem haphazard, making any new vendor of dance singles welcome just because each one broadens the palate of options just a little.

Freegal Update, Freegal 4.0 is here!

Good news folks! Freegal has just been greatly improved.  For those of you who might not know, Freegal is a service to which Pima County Public Library subscribes that allows patrons to download 3 songs a week to keep.  It is a great way to obtain new releases, or CD's which are not available in our library's catalog.  While it was already pretty darn good, this week it was updated, and it is now way better.  Read on to hear about the changes and improvements...

Daft Punk - Random Access Memories

While you're up all night dancing to Daft Punk's single "Get Lucky," please note that the full CD is available for immediate download through the library's Freegal database. Since Random Access Memories' May 20th release, the album has been in constant rotation on my iTunes playlist. I spent a long time digesting the album, a far cry from the other electronic dance music I've consumed this past year (Burial's ghostly dubstep / Kaskade's dance-floor beats). My final opinion: Random Access Memories is a stellar album, a superb mixing of disco, electronic, off-Broadway, and funk. I can see how fans yearning for the rush of Alive 2007 might find R.A.M. shocking in its pacing, but I encourage you to explore Daft Punk's latest for yourself. Here is a simple guide to the tracks to get you started:

Who is Daft Punk - In 1999, a freak studio accident turned Frenchmen Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter into robots bent on making the world dance.

1. Give Life Back to Music - I love this funky opening track. Daft Punk's signature robot vocals, "Let the music in tonight/Just turn on the music" showcase their passion for making timeless music.

2. The Game of Love - Bubbly synth-pop song with sugary sweet lyrics. It straddles a strange line between "too fast for background music" and "too slow to dance to."

3. Giorgio by Moroder - This nine minute epic gives Daft Punk a chance both to pay homage to producer Giorgio Moroder (a pioneer of dance and pop music that worked on the Top Gun soundtrack) by using interview clips as the foundation for the song, while expanding on his influence with electrifying beats on their own.

New Year's Musical Resolutions!

1. Play more guitar: Alright, I admit it, there's a layer of dust covering my guitar! But I promise to find more time to practice in 2013. And since I'm a little rusty, I will probably start with a song that's easy and fun to play, like anything from a Nirvana album.

2. Attend more concerts: There were some great shows I missed this year because they either sold out (I'm looking at you, The Lumineers) or I double-booked that evening (I'll see you next time, Of Monsters and Men)! Luckily, next year is looking great for concerts in Tucson. Personally, I'm excited for the XX and Tegan and Sara at the Rialto and That 1 Guy and Ra Ra Riot at Congress.  What concerts are you looking forward to?

3. Download from Freegal:  Life is busy and I often forget about my three, free, legal songs each week from Freegal. But no more! I promise to finish downloading that awesome new Calvin Harris album and maybe pick up the stunning Adele Bond track, Skyfall, along the way.

Bonus resolution - No more Rick Rolls: I promise to never sing Rick Astley songs at karaoke again.


-James

To find some of the bands I mentioned:

Nirvana (click me)
The Lumineers (click me)
Ra Ra Riot (click me)
Tegan and Sara (click me)
Freegal (click me - each week)!

Anywhere but Home

One of my favorite things in Freegal is how it's helped me find some hidden gems that I never would have known about otherwise. Now, most of the time, when you hear the phrase "hidden gem," it's referring to a band or album that was overlooked despite being amazing. For me, however, there's another kind of hidden gem: songs or albums by some of my own favorite artists that I never knew existed. These are particularly exciting in my opinion because they blend the familiar with the unfamiliar, the new with the old. You get the excitement of discovering something new even though it still sounds comfortably familiar.

My hidden gem for today is "Anywhere but Home." It's a live album recording from Evanescence, recorded during a 2004 tour. Now, I'm a fan of live albums for several reasons; I think it's interesting (albeit sometimes sad) to hear the difference between a studio album and a live one. In my opinion, there's something more visceral about hearing the music without all the cleaning, modifying and other audio tricks that go into a studio work. Most importantly, however, is that you can usually find a hidden gem on a live album that didn't make it into the studio release.