Yep you read that right, the hard rock band Seether has covered the Wham! tune “Careless Whisper” (you can hear it on Seethers homepage and you can check out Wham! here).

I heard it on Sirius Octane this morning and I – like the DJ who introduced the song – have been struggling with it since (just a little bit). On one hand, from a creative freedom standpoint,  it is cool that Seether has the balls to cover a tune by a band that – to put it mildly – doesn’t quite fit the their image.  

On the other hand, from a shoot-yourself-in-the-foot standpoint, you have to wonder what their fans think about it. I can’t imagine that the typical hard rock fan is pumped to sing along with “I’m never gonna dance again…”. And speaking from a long history as a metalhead, this sort of thing would be punishable by death back in the day (lol).

Now I don’t mind Seether and the 80’s teenager that still hangs out inside of me has a soft spot for “Careless Whisper”. But, I am just not so sure they belong together. What do you think?

I normally don’t review multiple bands from the same record label but when I stopped by the Small Stone Recordings website, I was side tracked for a few hours and ended up burning up about thirty bucks on downloads, so I figured why the hell not. Here’s a word or two about a label and a few of the bands that you should check out.  Read the rest of this entry

The other day some friends on Mixx sent me a MySpace profile of a young dude named Alton Skaggs (click his name and listen). As you can hear, he is very talented and has a bright future. He reminds me a little of an amazing guitarist by the name of Andy McKee.

Well, that whole experience reminded me of some of the amazing video I’ve seen on YouTube of various child musical prodigies. Young children that play instruments and sound like they have been playing for years.

I went and I rounded up a few videos to share with you. Check’em out now. Read the rest of this entry

Guest post: Treadmarkz is my brother-in-law, a Human Beatles Encyclopedia and the author of the weblog Treadmarkz.wordpress.com.

Well, clearly the beef between Apple Corps and Apple Computers that started a while back is still bitter as ever, and unfortunately this will deny listeners who live and die by the iPod access to the Beatles music. But, lo! Here it is! The Beatles Rock Band arrives in stores on September 9th!

The upcoming release of the Fabs’ foray into the gamer world is exciting for me. Because it is yet another confirmation of what I have been telling the Musicgoat for years: the Beatles, as a cultural phenomenon, will never – yes I said Never – die.

If I had an Xbox, Playstation or Wii, I would definitely shell out the $99.99 to get myself an imitation McCartney violin bass, or a Harrison twelve-string Rickenbacker which is included for use with the game. I would have liked more information on what specifically is included in the Special Edition. For $249, you want to know, and you want time to save up for it if it is what you want. I am sure it is not worth it unless you get an imitation Beatles sitar, Moog synthesizer, harmonium, tape loop machine, wind machine, and calliope, so I can play the Beatles’ studio-era music to the full effect.

But even if not, wow, music in video games has come a helluva long way since the Mario Bros theme song, huh?

I was surfing around the web this morning and I came across a few handy little “how to’s” for those of you looking to rid your music collection of digital rights management (DRM) by converting your iTunes files to mp3.  Check’em out.

Tech-FAQ.com’s “Convert Your iTunes to MP3 and Convert iTunes to MP3 Format (Ask Bob Rankin).

They look simple but maybe a tad bit time consuming. However, it could be a small price to pay if you are worried about losing your tunes or looking to standardize your collection.

I don’t think it will be long before most of the music download services go DRM free but these techniques look like they should get you by until.