I got my Kylie Minogue X CD today in the mail from Amazon. I think it's an import. Anyway, I have only listened to the first song, "2 Hearts", which is also the first single from the album. It's a really good song. The album comes with another CD that I haven't even looked at yet. Surprises await. The pictures of Kylie in the CD booklet look really cool.

2 Hearts

Kylie Minogue

Here is the video on YouTube ...

I remember when Kylie came out with her version of "Locomotion" back in 1989, I think. My sister and I would sing along with it, but I think my sister would kind of roll her eyes at how pop it was. I didn't know anything about Kylie Minogue until years later when her song, "Can't Get You Out of My Head", was all over a radio station in Austin called Mega 93.3 (I think that's the right name/number). Mega eventually sold its soul to hip hop, but it was really cool for a few months there, playing DB Boulevard, Daniel Bedingfield, that song called "Addicted To Bass", I think, and lots of others. There was a commercial for the radio station that would come on TV a lot, and it would show all the videos of the songs being played. Kylie's video always stood out. To this day, I think it is one of the best pop/dance/electronic songs/videos ever.

Kylie's album after "Fever" was called "Body Language", and it is pretty good, too. The best song on it is "Slow", which I have posted on here before.

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Stereogum.com has a bunch of covers of REM's songs from the album, Automatic For The People. I listened to the cover of "Drive", but it couldn't hold a candle to the original. A friend of mine gave me this album (on cassette, of course) for my birthday in 1992, I guess. I never listened to it all the way through, but I listened to "Drive" over and over again because of the electric guitar that comes in about 2:05 into the song.

Drive

REM

I listened to a tribute album to Tori Amos called "Songs of a Goddess" recently because I wanted to hear the cover of "Beauty Queen" that is the first song on the tribute album (and has a "bagpipe" sound to it). I rediscovered this cover of "Sugar" by Rei Toei. I have no idea who Rei Toei is because when I do a search on the name, I just get references to William Gibson.

Sugar

Rei Toei

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(edit ... here is a link to the website for the album)

I think Radiohead is brave and awesome for selling their new album, "In Rainbows", directly to their fans all by themselves. I signed up to receive the album about a week or more ago. The site asked me how much I wanted to pay for it, and I think I paid about $10 just to be supportive because I love the idea of an artist ignoring the big record companies who allow the RIAA to sue people who download music (read about that atrocity here).

I think the decision to fine that woman in Minnesota hundreds of thousands of dollars is insane. Let the fine be something like $1000. That would be more sensible. I guess they made the fine so large to deter other people from downloading music without paying for it. However, bands like Radiohead (and there are many other bands who have let their fans download their albums for free) are saying you can exist without charging for your music, or you can at least sell DRM-free music to fans at a low, low price.

Bands like Radiohead know that they are going to make most of their money touring. Tori Amos and M.I.A. know that, too. There is a good article about this in TIME magazine. You can read it here ...

http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1668161,00.html

Here is the email I got from Radiohead's website today ...

THANK YOU FOR ORDERING IN RAINBOWS. THIS IS AN UPDATE.

YOUR UNIQUE ACTIVATION CODE(S) WILL BE SENT OUT TOMORROW MORNING (UK TIME).  THIS WILL TAKE YOU STRAIGHT TO THE DOWNLOAD AREA.

HERE IS SOME INFORMATION ABOUT THE DOWNLOAD:

THE ALBUM WILL COME AS A 48.4MB ZIP FILE CONTAINING 10 X 160KBPS DRM FREE MP3s.

MOST COMPUTERS NOW HAVE ZIP SOFTWARE AS PART OF THE OPERATING SYSTEM; IF YOUR COMPUTER DOES NOT, YOU NEED TO GET WINZIP OR ZIPIT INSTALLED PRIOR.

YOU CAN DOWNLOAD THEM HERE:

PC: http://www.winzip.com/
MAC: http://www.maczipit.com/

IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS OR PROBLEMS DOWNLOADING YOUR FILE,  PLEASE CONTACT OUR DOWNLOAD CUSTOMER SERVICE TEAM AT
downloadinrainbows@waste.uk.com

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I ordered the Japanese version a long, long time ago from Amazon.co.jp so that I could have the bonus tracks on the CD(which I have actually already posted on this blog, but it's the principle that counts, I guess). Anyway, here are a bunch of scans of the CD ...

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Here is the complete video for Jimmy that I uploaded to YouTube ...

However, someone else beat me to it so here is their YouTube video(which came from the same Quicktime movie source) ...

Here is the Quicktime movie (Download it), which was the source file for the two videos above ...

M.I.A. - Jimmy

And here are the three bonus tracks of Kala that are available on the Japanese version of the album ...

Big Branch, Far Far, and What I Got ...

14 Big Branch

M.I.A.

13 Far Far

M.I.A.

15 What I Got

M.I.A.

You can download these songs here ...

M.I.A. - Big Branch

M.I.A. - Far Far

M.I.A. - What I Got

More to come! ;)

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I'm glad someone put all of the clips from M.I.A.'s upcoming album, Kala, into a YouTube video. It makes it very easy to listen to them. Here is the video ...

I also actually downloaded the video in case the one above gets removed for some strange reason(I don't think it will, though).

M.I.A. Kala Samples

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It's pretty fun to listen to ...

Boyz

M.I.A.

Download here!

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