Kevin's Top 50 Albums of 2000-2009

Finally finished my top 50 albums of the last 10 years.
Special thanks to Paul Gower, Paste Magazine, Pitchfork, and Last FM  for helping me discover many of these.
I hope you make some good discoveries of your own here -
cheers,
kevin


In no particular order...


1. New Pornographers - Electric Version
2. Feist - The Reminder
3. My Morning Jacket - Z
4. Deathcab for Cutie -Transatlanticism    
5. Postal Service - The Give Up
6. Gorillaz - debut
7. Lady Ga Ga - The Fame
8. Beck - Sea Change
9. JayZ - Blueprint
10. TV on the Radio - Dear Science
11. Shins - Chutes too Narrow
12. Sufjan Stevens - (c'mon feel the) Illinoise
13. Interpol - Turn on the bright lights
14. White stripes - Elephant
15. Killers - Hot Fuss
16. Damien rice - O
17. Arcade Fire - Funeral
18. Once - Soundtrack
19. Muse - Black Holes and Revelations
20. Company of Thieves - Ordinary Riches
21. Regina Spektor - Far
22. Kings of Leon - aha Shake Heartbreak
23. Ok go - oh no
24. The xx - debut
25. Tegan and Sara - So Jealous
26. PJ Harvey -Stories from the City
27. Raconteurs - Broken Boy Soldiers
28. Green day - American Idiot
29. Coldplay - Rush of Blood
30. Arctic monkeys - Whatever
31. Yeah Yeah yeahs - Fever to tell
32. Evanescence - debut
33. Amy Winehouse - Back to Black
34. LCD soundsystem - Sound of Silver
35. Flaming Lips - Yoshimi battles the Pink Robots
36. Ben Folds - Songs for Silverman
37. Rilo Kiley - More Adventurous
38. Elliot Smith - Figure Eight
39. We are Scientists - with Love and Squalor
40. Clap your hands say yeah - debut
41. Joe Henry - Scar
42. The National - Boxer
43. Bon Iver - for Emma
44. Dirty Projectors - Bitte Orca
45. Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest
46. Bloc Party - Silent Alarm
47. Broken Social Scene - You forgot it in people
48. The Walkmen - Bows and Arrows
49. Spoon - Gimme Fiction

50. still under consideration:

     Bjork -Vespertine

     Bob Dylan - love and theft

     Robert Plant and Allison Krauss - Raising Sand

     Knife - Silent Shout

     Daft Punk - Homework

  

Regina Spektor's show at the Fox Theatre in Oakland

What a great venue, I had never been there before, very impressive!
Gorgeously restored, great bar, good food, friendly people, smoothly run.
Now on to the show ---
Oh my god! I know I gush about a lot of performers on here, but seriously...
I was completely blown away by Regina's talent, songs and charisma.
Her singing and playing was spot on, her quirky and honest persona draws the audience in immediately.
She just emanates this genuine, radiant likeability.
Someone as talented and experienced as her could certainly get away with being much more cocky
But I'm sure this humbleness is a big part of what makes her loyal fans love her so much.
It was really cool to see her drum-and-piano-schtick and she also broke up the pacing by getting up and playing a song on guitar, one on the fender rhodes and one a-cappella. All AMAZING.
OK, maybe her guitar chops could use some work, but I suspect as a guitarist I wouldn't farenearly as well switching to piano.
Her russian classical influences really come through while she's seated at the grand piano, filling the auditorium with elegant timeless melodies.
I suspect I will try to see her every time she comes to town like I do with Radiohead, Death Cab and Muse.
All artists I have come to rely on for delivering near out-of-body-revelatory concert experiences.

October Riff

Working on new material at Blanketfort studios

Going to Regina Spektor at the Fox theatre tonight. Can't wait!

"string" Adam Uneven Live @ Red House, CA

A couple years ago...

El Prado - Tom Griesgraber two-handed tapping on the Grand Stick

I had dismissed the chapman stick as novelty, although tony levin did some cool stuff with it in king crimson. This is absolutely mesmerizing... I'd run out and buy one if I thought there was the slightest chance I could make it sound this good.

macbook music

After a bloody 3 year battle I finally threw in the towel on repairing my pc.

I had built the machine to create music - actually recorded and produced my CD on it.

In the middle of working up some new stuff last year with my band at the time "10" the thing just --- plain --- crashed.

So, recently I carefully studied the ProTools hardware compatibility list to make sure my next pc would be compatible. After concluding there are nearly no pc's still on the market fully compatible, I just bought a nice HP box at Costco figuring I would try my luck.

A wasted weekend later I woefully phoned up Digidesign for advice. Ultimately their advice (and I got the same advice years ago) was "go get a mac"

Now I had trauma in my past as a network admin trying to get mac snob's hardware to cooperate with anything on our network so the thought never really appealed to me.

But I took another look at Digi's ProTools LE HCL and noticed that indeed, nearly every single mac available was fully compatible. (grrrrrrrr)

So onto the apple site I go, terrified at every turn with sticker shock, those things ain't cheap.

A few feeble attempts on craigslist and ultimately I ended up in the apple store, white flag in hand.

Long story short, picked up a 13" macbook pro and I haven't had a single regret. (But I haven't paid the credit card bill yet either) All I can say is my BART commute went from dreary, boring and waaaaayy tooooo long - to incredibly short, fun and productive.

Now I'm that geeky guy on BART, headphones glued in place, working on arrangements and mixes and generally having a BLAST.

If your suffering along with a desktop pc trying to make music, do yourself a gigantic favor.

Sell the dog, and whatever else you have to, go into debt, grab a macbook and make the switch.

k