The Cure released the first single from their upcoming (and as-yet untitled) thirteenth studio album today, with at least three more to accompany it. A song will be released on the 13th of every month leading up to the release of the 13th album on the 13th day of the 13th month September. 13 13 13. Robert Smith is making sure this album gets the attention that 2004’s The Cure didn’t by making a big to do about things. Which I appreciate.

The new single sounds like a Cure single, which I guess is the best we can hope for. Seems like every album after Wish in ‘92 is increasingly ignored, but Robert Smith is very excited about this one. It’s a double album, and he’s arranged to have it sold at a regular album price because it’s a decent thing to do. And because he likes the album. And because people aren’t about to pay double album prices ever again. Sound fair? Tune in next month for the next single, “Freak Show.”

Bonus Thingy!! I’m also including and MP3 for the song “The 13th” because I think it’s funny that they’ve already used that title so it can’t get mixed into this current rush of 13.

 The Cure - The Only One [3:57m]: Play in Popup | Download (2166)
 The Cure - The 13th [4:20m]: Play in Popup | Download

I fully intended to tell you all about the Say Hi (to your mom) show I went to last night at Kilby, but I got distracted by the Dresden Dolls website.  Seriously, it’s the website that I wish all my favourite bands had.  Most official sites are tragically neglected, and the ones that do get a lot of attention mostly get that attention from a “Fifth Beatle,” like Weezer’s Karl Koch.  I love Karl as much as the next Weezer fan, but it’s just not the same.  If you’re able to deal with purple text on a black background, then you’re in for a lot of Amanda-written content ( biography, responses to countless emails), a great collection of photographs,  lots of actual music (I especially appreciate the “You can tape if you share” attitude towards bootlegs).  There’s a noticeable effort to keep things from being hard-to-find, and a genuine appreciation for the fans.  There’s also a selection of hate mail that’s available, some of which Amanda has responded to, which is entertaining but also reminds me why I don’t participate in message boards anymore.
So, now you know what I was doing instead of reviewing last night’s show or working.  But I’m still thinking of you, gentle reader.

 Linda Ronstadt- Winter Light [3:17m]: Play in Popup | Download

While I was over at Culture Bully earlier, I noticed that his links list was organized by region, city, and state. I looked down to Florida to see if we were there (we’re not), and then it occurred to me to look under SLC, Utah, which is where Damon is based out of. Not there either. Not that that particularly matters, but I realized that our readers probably don’t know that we’re based out of Tampa, and Salt Lake City.

Well, we are. There you go.  I’m in Tampa for a few reasons, the most basic one being school. I go to University, yup. I think Damon is in SLC because he sort of ended up there, like an old Walmart bag. He’s a ramblin’ man of Utah, been going all over, sleeping on various couches in between going to shows and interning as a kind of shop dick at X96 in SLC. Fortunately for him, he’s done with his schooling. I still have a year. Well, realistically, a year and a half and I’ll have a B.A. that isn’t worth a shit in 2009.

Anyways, this is a good post to talk about a blog I found in CB’s list called Thanks Captain Obvious, or for short, Captain Obvious. It caught my attention because its based out of Pensacola, and I used to live in the next town over from the city, and I went to school there, too. Little weird. Also weird is that the music featured over there has a healthy mix of what we feature here, and these awesome Obvious Tapes posts, which have like 10 badass mp3s per post. What more could you want?

(Picture is from the Pensacola Bridge, or 3-mile bridge. Or whatever)

Random MP3eesie:

And yes, I spelled Burtney like that on purpose. I’m mad wicked.

 Nickel Creek - Toxic (Burtney Spears cover): Play in Popup | Download

Its 2007 again. Wait, it was 2007. Its that time of year again. Yeah. Weblog Awards. ‘Tis the season to cast your vote. Rather appropriate, being in November. Or not.

Cast your votes here. I’ve heard of half of the nominees. I wish there was a broader spectrum represented, though. Oh well, I didn’t nominate anyone, so I can’t complain.

Here’s the link again : http://2007.weblogawards.org/polls/best-music-blog-1.php

If you don’t know what a podcast is, you should find out and harness the power of it quickly.

You know how you subscribe to feeds from your favorite websites? You get to see pictures, video, bullshit, text, and then a link to the elusive golden treasure, the free mp3 that provides insight into a new band?

How about you don’t have to wade through all the bullshit? How about you can subscribe to straight-up no-crap just the mp3s? Sounds cool, eh?

If you have iTunes, its super easy. Subscribing to a podcast is just like a feed, except instead of reading it in your reader, you use iTunes as your reader and listen to your feed, instead. Without our blogging author narrative.

Sigh, its a beautiful thing. If you have iTunes, open it. Click on this. LOVETHEMUSICPODCASTINGAWAY. It may ask you to launch an application, go ahead and do that. Subscribe to it. Now whenever I post the mp3s, you get them downloaded automatically to your iTunes, and accessing them is as easy as clicking on ‘Podcasts’ in the left sidebar of your iTunes.

Try it. It’s awesome.

Here’s a screenshot to help. Please ignore the window I had open to a search for doing screenshots. If you don’t ignore it, you’ll just laugh at me.

Recently I was feeling pretty sorry for myself and my situation in general (its been a rough couple of weeks, and it ain’t over yet) when I did one of my record 6 hour surf-a-thons on the interweb. As LovetheMusic is something that requires a lot of my attention, and finding music is what I do, I of course ended up scouring the web for mp3 blogs. Good ones. We all know about Stereogum and Pitchfork, hypemachine and elbo.ws, and various other golden oldies. But what about the hidden treasure of music blogs? There’s tons and tons of links to mp3 blogs in the sidebars in many of these websites, and although I’d love to dedicate hours to exploring each and every one, I decided there had to a better way to find out about the kickass sites that we read and don’t mention. And, I’d love, and think that other mp3 blog authors would love to find out about them. All about finding new good stuff and a nice amount of networking. So, I’m proposing a kind of mp3 blog tag. Not only will it bring traffic to the smaller mp3 blogs we don’t know about, it will tell us all about them why they’re awesome, and help generate traffic for the participating bloggers and also, myself. Everyone wins.
If you want to participate, heres the deal:

• Write a blog post showcasing a kickass music blog that is relatively small. Or, if you don’t currently read one that is considered ’small’, or not very well-known, choose a major kickass music blog you read. I don’t really pay much attention to Stereogum. Maybe I should. Tell us why. Or perhaps one you’ve been reading for years that is consistently awesome. Tell us why. The tone and format of the posts, the kind of music they talk about, the really cool web design, the author is really sexy, whatever.
• Link to the blog, giving them a trackback on one of their posts and just a plain link to their blog. Let them know the deal, ie, ‘Hey, your turn. Write about a kickass blog.’ They’ll need to link back to you and link to the blog they’re writing about also. Also, a trackback to this post would be good, so we have a compilation of all them.
• When the rounds been going for a bit, I’m going to make a compilation of these posts and links to their respective blogs here, as a master list. It will be updated as needed, and linked to as a permanent fixture in the sidebar.
• By the way, don’t be corny. I wouldn’t expect you to. But just, don’t. Even if its a ‘check this out. I read ‘em all the time and they rock. Link here.’ Its okay.

I hope this will be fun and enjoyable. I originally was looking for a way to generate more traffic and ideas for this blog, and this idea sort of sprouted, and then bloomed into something more than just a traffic generator. Its just a good way to explore the nooks and crannies of the net and bring them to front.

Thanks in advance for participating. I’ll begin. Per the point of this post, I don’t know of a particularly small blog, so I’m going to talk about MusicIsArt in a coming post.

Love yourself,

Jen