These are bands that receive overwhelming positive reviews but completely underwhelm me, instead eliciting reactions ranging from indifference to outright antipathy. Basically if their collected works suddenly vanished, they would not be missed and in some cases I would sigh with relief. So in no particular order, these popular offenders include:

Radiohead
Arcade Fire
Prince
Led Zeppelin (used to like 'em a lot but I can't take Plant's whiny voice any more)
Feist
Metallica
Nick Cave
James Taylor

Somebody had to speak out :) More to come.

Fri 5 Nov – Eisley

Wow. Just wow. These guys & gals are so talented, expressive, and a joy to behold. For anyone interested in dreampop, shoegaze, or just general melodic rock, you can't get much better than Eisley.

http://www.miaowthecat.com/sd/Eisley20101105/Eisley%20050.jpg

I wrote a review of Friday's show with lots of pictures and videos and posted them over on Laughing City, the band's official forum. You don't have to be a member to see the threads either. Right, Sherri?

http://www.miaowthecat.com/sd/Eisley20101105/Eisley%20059.jpg

Remember Curve? The British trance/goth/electronic/industrial/pop/dance/uncategorizable band from the 1990s and early 2000s? Well their singer with the impossibly sexy voice has returned with a more orchestral backdrop as Chatelaine and it SOARS! I am so happy right now, I thought she was gone for good but here she is back with one of her best albums ever. Check it out for yourself, the entire album is streaming from the main page with links to buy on the site or via iTunes.

http://www.chatelainemusic.com/

Chatelaine
Curve

From Digital Music News' 10 Most Disastrous Music Industry Deals list published yesterday:

(2) CBS' acquisition of Last.fm, $280 million (2007)

Scrobbling is cool and all - and this is still a very cool site - but few would "recommend" this deal today. Amidst predictable ad monetization challenges, the company has since switched to pay-only in certain European countries, outsourced full-length videos, and bid adieu to the original founders.

Heh heh. If I get banned from posting further blogs, you'll know why.

(The full article:http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/stories/081710toptendeals)

I have over 2500 additional songs stored in iTunes that don't fit on my iPod (an older gen 28 GB workhorse) and running in Synch mode, which makes life so much easier. But I've been stumped how I could listen to all those unchecked songs wasting away. Until yesterday! Figured out a simple solution: create an entire playlist including only the unchecked songs. Then select all in that playlist & check 'em, then I can go back to my main library and hear everything. When it's time to Synch with the iPod, I go to that playlist and unchecked 'em…