From June:

“Dear God 2.0″ – the Roots
You don’t have to be a hip-hop fan to sense the glory in this performance, which is a reworking of a song originally recorded by the Monsters of Folk. Jim James can still be heard, but the song centers on Black Thought’s weary, rumbling, tumbling rap. (Read the entire review.)

“Here Sometimes” – Blonde Redhead
Elusively appealing song from the veteran NYC trio, with a characteristic mix of dreaminess and electronics. (Read the entire review.)

Orange Yellow – the Spires
Jangly guitar rock, with a nod to the Velvet Underground. The band is from Ventura, however, so it bounces with more of a SoCal than a downtown groove. (Read the entire review.)

(Other artists featured in June included Simian Ghost, Sea of Bees, and Sambassadeur.)

From July:

“Zorbing” – Stornoway
Bursting with melody and innocence, as invigorating as a bright blue puffy-clouded day. In a better world than this one, this is the song of the summer of 2010. (Read the entire review.)

“Alouette!” – Tallest Trees
Gleeful, skewed, clattery pop from a Nashville duo. Electronics are used with good humor, and the entire arrangement is great fun. (Read the entire review.)

“Noisemaker” – Two Hours Traffic
Nothing more or less complicated than brisk, sharp power pop. No summer should be without this one either. (Read the entire review.)

Other artists featured in July included Lost in the Trees, Like Bells, and Saadi.)

Related posts:

1. Free And Legal Music Downloading: The Fingertips Digest (May Edition)
2. Your Guilt-Free Free Music Downloads Report: We7
3. Get New Paul McCartney Album “Memory Almost Full” for Free

What I’m going to start doing here on Musicgoat is write up a quick monthly summary of the songs Fingertips has featured by pointing you to one song out of three each week–I’ll give you the link and a very brief description. This is the digest version to be sure. On the site itself, the reviews are longer and more descriptive; my aim is to give the reader a strong sense of what each song sounds like and I why I think it’s particularly good. And remember, because I’m picking just three songs every week, all three of them are really quite excellent, so it would be a great idea for you to go visit the site to hear all three songs each week.

Thanks to Corey for the invite, and let’s get right into it with an abridged look at what I picked out for May. Remember, these songs are all available as free and legal MP3s that you can download to your heart’s content.

Week 1:
“Let the Record Go” – The Mynabirds
A slice of stompy, retro perfection from Laura Burhenn, who used to be half of the duo Georgie James. The entire album is highly recommended. (Read the entire review.)

(Other artists featured week 1: The National, Hey Marseilles)

Week 2:
The Mermaid Parade – Phosphorescent
Both laid back and expansive, this one brings a slow-burning quality to its sauntering vibe. Phosphorescent is a Brooklyn-based band featuring Matthew Houck and whomever else he can get to play with him at the time. (Read the entire review.)

(Other artists featured week 2: Villagers, Beach House)

Week 3:
“The Kiss” – Pallers
A graceful, beautifully unfolding electronic dance-ballad, from Sweden. Builds without hurrying to a moving climax. (Read the entire review.)

(Other artists featured week 3: Sarah Blasko, The King Left)

Week 4:
“Captive” – Sarah Harmer
This super-talented Canadian returns after a bluegrass project to some straight-ahead pop. Very appealing. (Read the entire review.)

(Other artists featured week 4: Light Pollution, Sarah Jaffe)

You can read the reviews and listen to the free and legal MP3s on Fingertips every week. Better yet, subscribe to the RSS feed and you’ll never miss any of the songs.

Thanks for looking the picks over and maybe giving a listen. Keep reading Musicgoat and I’ll be back in early July with the June highlights from Fingertips.

Related posts:

1. Free and Legal Music Downloading: The Fingertips Digest (June-July Edition)
2. Your Guilt-Free Free Music Downloads Report: We7
3. Get New Paul McCartney Album “Memory Almost Full” for Free

The chemistry between the two of you is undeniable, how did you meet and what made you start performing together?

I wrote a song called “Redrum” and I really wanted a female to sing the chorus I had written, and then, what do you know? With the snap of a finger, I was introduced to a cute, vivacious Puerto Rican girl with amazing vocals that went by the name of Josy B. Shortly  after the recording, I realized our chemistry was so magnetic and decided to release the song as our first single, which did great overseas, and we continued to work together from that point on

What is the first song you ever wrote together?

It was a song called ‘Reveriez” which happened to be our first single from our new album Theory of Addicts. You can get a free download of our album at www.RIBKATANDJOSYB.COM. I strongly encourage all you folks out there to come join us and get yourself a free copy!

Tak, you’ve been in the game a long time with groups like Styles of Beyond and Fort Minor, how is RIBKAT AND JOSY B. different?

For starters, I’ve never done an entire project with a female. Another is I got a chance to reinvent myself and showcase my music production and songwriting ability in a way the fans have never heard or would ever expect. Our sound is more electro-pop tip with a fusion of 80’s music and early 90’s Hip Hop in it’s prime. I never considered myself to be a rapper for the most part, but more of a songwriter who was always intrigued by the art of storytelling, with the soul of a musician.

Josy B., you’ve had the opportunity to work with the legendary Dr. Dre, tell us about the experience.

It was an awesome opportunity and a great learning experience. At the time, Dre was doing the soundtrack for a movie called El Diablo and we worked together to write some lyrics in Spanish for a track that was used for one of the scenes. The song turned out great! He was a really fun and down-to-earth guy and it was an honor to have worked with the Dr.

Josy B., you seem to love fashion, does your style influence your music and stage persona?

Fashion is my love!!! I’m addicted to accessories and colorful bags. What I wear is who I am which has a lot of influence not only with the music that I do but on stage as well. I don’t try to think too hard about what I’m going to wear when I perform. I’m very versatile with my visions and mood and sometimes I throw something together spontaneously, so you never know what I may be wearing when I come out!

Your new album Theory of Addicts was just released, what tracks are you most excited to perform live?

To be honest, we get excited to perform all of our songs because we love our album! We don’t use profanity in any way and we strongly believe in unifying a nation of people young and elderly through a positive medium of enjoyable music with an innovative energy behind it.

If you could collaborate with any other artist/s who would it be?

A man-made android combining the DNA of Culture Club, Talking Heads, Human League, Huey and the News, Tears for Fears, Public Enemy, Tribe Called Quest, LL Cool J., Leaders of the New School, with a splash of Michael Jackson.

What’s the game plan for 2010?

To infect the world with a plague called “Good Honest Music”

–Sheena Felix

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1. Musician Interview with full-time touring musician Betty Navas
2. Musician Interview with Julian Shah-Tayler, musician extraordinaire, DJ, producer, sought-after songwriter…
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What you do is hit shuffle on your iPod – or any mp3 player – and then list the first 25 tunes that come up. Then you show your list to everyone who cares so that they can see how eclectic – or should I say “Musicgoatish” – you are.

Anyway, What I figured I’d do here is show you my list and then offer you the chance to do offer yours up in the comments below. It is a pretty cool way to get to know peoples taste and maybe learn about some new artists. Plus I figured it would be even more interesting considering the crowd here, seeing as how you and I are all over the place music wise.

I’ll Show You Mine…

1. Chris Knight “Speeding Train”
2. Chris Knight “Move On”
3. Deflagration “Split Wide”
4. Metallica “Cyanide”
5. Darrin James Band “Thrones of Gold”
6. James Travis “Goin Downtown”
7. Blitzen Trapper “Black River Killer”
8. Cross Canadian Ragweed “Cry Lonely”
9. Ruby Rendrag “High And Dry” (AWESOME Radiohead Cover BTW)
10. Mad Margritt “Animal”
11. Oneill and Wean “I Found Out”
12. The Joe Perry Project “Let The Music Do The Talking”
13. The Joe Perry Project “Life at a Glance”
14. Donovan Frankenreiter “It Doesn’t Matter”
15. Snew “Got Love”
16. Metallica “Blitzkrieg”
17. Van Halen Tribute “Runnin With The Devil” (Bluegrass – great singer on this)
18. Fozzy “Stay Hungry” (Twisted Sister Tribute)
19. Leaf Hound “To Many Rock and Roll Times”
20. Mama’s Cookin “Aquarius Skies”
21. Doug McLeod “I’m So Broke (I Can’t Even Pay Attention)”
22. Chickenfoot “Soap On A Rope”
23. The Commodores “Easy” (one of my all time faves)
24. Robot Lords of Tokyo “Knock Em Dead Kid” (Motley Crue Cover)
25. John Legend “Lifted”

…Now Show Me Yours

Now, go ahead and show me what you have in the comments below. Just press shuffle and start typing (shouldn’t take more than 5-10 minutes). I am interested to see what you are listen and to see if you’ve been grabbing any of the stuff I’ve been pimping here.   And if you’re feeling a little frisky, feel free to comment on my list.

Add To Yours

By the way, in case you are interested in adding to your list or need some tunes to fill it up – and you wanna support the Goat at the same time (wink, wink) – about 80% of the tunes listed above are available for download on eMusic. AND, if you don’t have an account with them, you will be able to get 35 tunes for free (to keep forever whether you sign up or not) just to try out the service for 14 days. It’s kinda like the old BMG/Columbia House  deal where you get 12 cassettes/CD’s for a penny BUT much easier and with less commitment. Check out eMusic now!

For the record, and just so I am giving credit where credit is due, I did hear Micheal Butler talk about this on his Rock and Roll Geek Show podcast but never tried it out until now.

No related posts.

I call the song “Change the World” and you can check it out now by visiting my personal site PlanetCorey.com.

It is just me, my acoustic guitar and my message.

This is something I’ve been meaning to do for quite awhile now and I have to tell you, I’ve been missing out. It is extremely fun to record music and it is hard to describe the feeling of hearing something I started from scratch playing back at you.

I’m addicted and I am a songwriting junky right now. I can’t wait to get back in the studio to record the next one.

Anyway, remember that you can share your review in the comments below, via the contact form, on your own site OR any social networking profile blog you might have (Facebook, MySpace, iMeem, etc). I don’t care what you say – since I am a big boy and can take it – all I ask is that you are honest and constructive.

Hope you like it and I can’t wait to hear what you guys think.

Related posts:

1. Music Podcast 035 – Acoustic Rock & Country Blues Blender
2. Music Podcast 037 – Acoustic Americana Triple Double Featuring Chris Knight, Willy Porter and Rob Anthony
3. Free And Legal Music Downloading: The Fingertips Digest (May Edition)

Are you looking for quality free music downloads that don’t leave you with all that guilt? Who isn’t right? Well check this out.

Lately, finding music downloads is getting easier and easier to do. So easy, that their are a ton of places to look. You could spend hours looking and comparing websites before even doing what you really want to be doing; downloading and listening to free music. Thats where I come in.

Every week or so from now until the foreseeable future, I am going to be doing a weekly post on where you can find free music downloads, what you have to do to get those downloads and point out a few tracks that you might want to check out.

Lets get to it.

Website
Todays source of tasty free music comes from a site called We7. The site was initially funded by Mr. Shock the Monkey himself, Peter Gabriel. The site relies on the use of advertising to sponsor songs to generate revenue so that you and I can get free music.

So far it seems to be working. They have over 100,000 users and have had over one million downloads. I will spare you all the intimate details but if you want to learn more stop by the We7 about page.

What to Like
Other than the fact that all of the downloads don’t cost anything, they are in an mp3 format and are DRM free.

Another feature that you might like is the one that lets you subscribe to your playlist as a podcast either in iTunes or whatever you currently use to aggregate your feeds.

Finally, sign-up is quick and you are hunting for tunes in no time.

What Not to Like
The ads before the songs are only 10 second ads. Which is not bad when your hunting and taste testing but they could get annoying when a bunch of the ad laden songs are in a playlist. But, when you think about it, if you like the track enough to put it in a playlist, just buy it and it will be ad free. Also, after about four weeks you can re-download the song without the ads.

In the pet peeve department, I don’t like the fact that the previews are extremely short. It is difficult to tell if it is worth the download until you actually do so. This is something that is common on a lot of sites so I won’t hold it against them.

Finally, I noticed that there where quite a few tracks that were not available in certain geographic locations. Track links by popular artists like Frank Sinatra, Motorhead, and Willie Nelson – I could go on – where inactive. Not exactly sure why that is. Must be some contractual distribution B.S. or something.

Tracks to Download
Here are a few tunes that should interest you. There are a ton more so stop over and check it out for yourself. If you do find anything that you think I missed, please share. Let us know in the comments below.

Baum “Happy Proud and Free” and “All Down There”
-Good ultra-mellow acoustic Switzerland style. Very good guitar work and introspective lyrics.

Coolio “Gangsta Rap featuring Snoop”
-Polished gangsta from gangsta veterans. Gotta love Snoop.

Natalie Williams “Since you’ve Been Gone”
-Most downloaded when I was there. Soothing R and B from a woman with a A-List vocals. Also love the bluesy organ in this one.

Word on the Street
Multiple opinions are better than one. There are multiple places to learn more about We7. Mashable briefly discusses We7 and Techcrunch has some recent news concerning We7.

Marshall Kirkpatrick over on Read Write Web applies the “girlfriend test” to see how easy it was to use We7.

Most importantly, if you have used the service and have anything to report – like a good experience or great music – let us know in the comments below.

You don’t want to miss the next post or podcast. Subscribe to the Goat now for the all time low price of free. You can subscribe to Musicgoat.com by email and have this stuff in your inbox seconds after I post it or you can subscribe in your feed reader or on your home page. Either way you get the info fast and easy. Don’t understand this whole subscribing thing? Check out this short video on RSS. Isn’t technology great?

Related posts:

1. Are Downloads Killing The Music Business?
2. Free And Legal Music Downloading: The Fingertips Digest (May Edition)
3. Amazon.com To Offer DRM Free Music