I don't always know what I am going to write about for each week's Thursday Discussion. Sometimes there will be an event throughout the week that is just perfect for a starting point of inspiration for what I want to write about. Sometimes I'm looking at a bunch of random ideas I have stored in a notebook. This week my inspiration comes from a blog post I wrote late last night. I was trying to figure out what I wanted to say about the new read more]
For this week’s Thursday Discussion Jason has handed over the torch to me, so without further ado I wanted to discuss a topic which was inspired by a news submission from one of our users combined with an idea I’d had for this feature for a little while now. Imagine that the year is 2040, which albums do you think future generations and our future selves would consider “greats” from recent years. To put some sort of time constraint on it let’s just include albums released between 1990 and 2010, much like there are...[read more]
Last week I posted up a "demo day" post for our Thursday Discussion -- and you would be pleased to know that all of us on staff, and from the other sites, are pouring through the submissions to find the best of the best. Hopefully soon we'll have that completed and can move on to the next stage: voting. I'll let you know when that's ready. So, for this week I've decided to focus on one of our favorite AP.net arm-chair quarterback discussions: the bands that shoulda/coulda/woulda blown up.
It's 4/20 today ... so basically it's the one day where my twitter and facebook feed are filled up with thinly veiled hints at an activity that is apparently still illegal and yet totally cool to post all over the internet. Odd. Anyway, while cleaning out my closet earlier today, I stumbled across a box of stuff from a few years back where I tossed a bunch of band swag. Inside, I found two zippo lighters; one for Finch and one for read more]
Well, this is all kinds of awesome: Adam Duritz of Counting Crows gave a shout out to AP.net in the liner notes of their brand new album Underwater Sunshine (or what we did on our summer vacation), which is now available. Thank you Adam!
A bunch of AP.net users put together a cover song compilation, check it out here. We've got some very talented members, well done guys!
Track Listing
1. Minneapolis (Unclear Lies)
2. Can't Help Falling In Love (thecreator)
3. 23 (funnydave)
4. Futile Devices (Domenic182)
5. Must've Run All Day (electrism)
6. Putting the Dog to Sleep (PepsiOne)
7. It Takes A Lot To Laugh It Takes A Train To Cry (IIwilliamsII)
8. Time Lapse...[read more]
Well, as promised yesterday -- I've got a Thursday Discussion all ready for you. It's Friday, I know ... and we've got all kinds of crazy stuff going on today as well, but that doesn't mean we can't also talk about one of my favorite topics in music: lyrics. I'd say overall, lyrics draw me to a band more than just about anything else. I love a good vocal, sure ... but if the words are right, nothing else hits me in quite the same way. Now, we could discuss favorite lyricists (and this will be a future topic); however, for today...[read more]
A few day ago, I was searching for something to listen to in the car ... doing one of those "scroll through everything in the iPod and still can't really figure out what I want to hear" things. I ended up putting on the Foo Fighter's live album, Skin and Bones. I've always loved the renditions of the tunes, and the sing-a-long-ness of the live recording. While listening - I got into a discussion with my wife about live recordings in general. Her take was that she just preferred to hear the studio recording, that while...[read more]
It's Thursday, my body and mind is still rebelling against daylight savings time. While other AP.net staffers are posting awesome videos, drinking a lot down at SXSW, and writing album reviews - I'm preparing my Thursday Discussion, and stealing glances at the March Madness games up in the upper right-hand corner of my...[read more]
It's that time of the year again - SXSW is here! The interactive and film portions are already either underway or finished, but the part that interests all of us (music) is just about to start. As usual, AP.net staff members will be down in Austin covering a variety of parties, showcases, BBQs and everything else in between. I'll be down there once again (for my 7th year in a row!), along with Adam and Eda, to cover all of our activities. We'll be updating the @apnetatshow twitter account fairly often with some of the...[read more]
I've had a few people ask me why we stopped doing the "posts of the week" the past two weeks. The main reason is because it's extremely hard for me to go through all of the posts that are out there and pick the "best." It's easier when all of the staff and mods are helping with it -- but even then, we've got so much going on each day, we all forget. So, I've decided to retire this for the time being ... I will be bringing it back once the new AP.net layout launches (3-5 months probably). The new website will allow me to run a few back-end queries and pull the most interacted...[read more]
I've spent the past few Thursdays focusing on bands and albums I have found to be "underrated." Two weeks ago I picked the top 10 underrated bands that are no longer around, and last week it was "underrated albums" from bands that also have classics. What I've enjoyed most about these topics is that it allows me to talk about bands that I adore, but don't get as much love as I think they...[read more]
Listening to music, posting shit on the internet. Sometimes I forget that my job rules. Today is one of those days I remember. I have the volume slider increasingly close to the edge, and I'm looking over the past week's news stats to see what was the most discussed and viewed topics around the website last week. Let's get the power rankings on ...
Reading Patrick Stump's blog post earlier this week was particularly hard on me. It's always been difficult for me to see bands, or albums, that I adore - under-appreciated. It's one of the main reasons I started this website to begin with; I wanted to tell people about music I loved that no one else seemed to be paying attention to. Just last week, as part of our "Thursday Discussion," I posted about read more]
Drum roll please ... the time has come to announce our SXSW party line-up. This is something we've been working on for a long time, and we are extremely excited to be throwing our first ever SXSW party. We did our best to put together a line-up that we love and one that showcases a wide range of the bands and genres we cover on the website. Our party is taking place on Friday (March 16th) night (technically Saturday morning) at the Purevolume House. Our...[read more]
Due to a technical difficulty with the RSVP page, it looks like we've got to push back our announcement of the line-up for our SXSW party until tomorrow. We don't want to announce all the goodies without making sure there's a way you can go to the show. So, with that - we're pushing it back until tomorrow morning when I wake up. However ... I don't wanna leave you completely blue-balled. So, I will say that our lovely staff members Paul Tao and Lueda Alia will be joined by AP.net member read more]
Ohhh, Friday. I am completely in this mood right now. I'm starving, but promised myself I'd get this written up before I got to go eat lunch. So, here we go - let's get these power rankings out the door so I can get some foods. I ran out of time last week to get one of these posted, so I went back into last week a little as well to put this together.
I've started looking forward to getting to post a "Thursday Discussion" topic each week. I wake up and try and get through all the news posting stories I can before mid-day. I then ignore emails for a little while just so I can write-up this post. I think that the discussions over the past few weeks have been great. This week I got an idea as I was posting about The Damnwells - I made an off...[read more]
We like to compare things. We seem, as a society, to enjoy taking the "new" and comparing it to "the old." When a new album comes out from a highly regarded artist, it takes only seconds until the comparisons are made. Is this as good as their debut?Why doesn't this sound like their most famous album? It's virtually impossible to escape it, and the idea behind it has inspired this week's "Thursday Discussion" topic. I wanted to branch out in a new direction with this column, and I was inspired read more]
So the "what people think I do" meme has been going around the internet for the past few days, and Joe DeAndrea created one for AP.net staff members (in the replies). Dead on. I'm sure someone out there is creative enough to do one for every-day-posters too.
Hey Sunday fans; it's time for the weekly recommendations. This week we had Steve from New Found Glory join us with his picks as well. So check all of those out below, and then leave what you've been enjoying in the replies. Hope everyone's had a great weekend. Don't forget that on Valentines Day we'll be having out annual chat with TWLOHA. It's always one of the best chats we do each year.
Just a tad bit of a cluster fuck on the website this week, so this is going to be fun. It's time for this week's "power rankings." I was putting it off for a few hours because I knew what I had to put at the top, but I just can't put it off any longer. So, here we go. You ready? Yeah. Here's what was popular on the website last week - and my always fun commentary.
Figure I can put together an entire posts of the week feature before lunch. I mean, at the moment I'm just posting stupid shit on tumblr, and re-capping all of the funny, weird, and odd around the website from the last week seems like a much better use of my time. Let's see what we've got this week ... had to get some help from all of the staff this week. And if I could nominate read more]
If the AP.net office was anything besides me at a desk, staring at three computer screens at once -- I'm pretty certain we would all be having a beer on this Friday afternoon. I'm positive we'd be having the kind of debates we have weekly over email. I'd pull rank and decide that everyone must listen/dance to Penguin Prison ... and we'd all vote on what makes this week's "posts of the week" list. However, at the moment it's just me and the emails back and...[read more]
Lots of reports that this "Woman in Black" ad is crashing the site/taking over/making all the links un-clickable for a lot of people. Gimme a second, I'm personally working on trying to get it fixed. Really, really sorry about this.
Update: Killing the ads for a moment to get this sorted out.
It's Friday - and that means it's time to get down. It also means it's time for me to write up this week's power rankings and let my sarcastic side out to play. So, after pouring over the numbers, interjecting a bit of my personal bias, let's see what we've got this week ...
