14 posts tagged “charts”

Top Artists this Week (see more)

17 Feb 2008 – 24 Feb 2008

–	1		Iron Maiden	196
	2		Radiohead	39
	3		British India	27
	4		Opeth	26
3	5		Robert Plant & Alison Krauss	18
	6		Bruce Dickinson	17
	7		Monster Magnet	14
	8		Ramones	10
	8		Black Mountain	10
	10		Joy Division	9

A far more sensible chart than last week, but clearly I have not yet overcome my addiction, following on from the fucking amazing Maiden concert a couple of weeks ago.  In fact, on Thursday last week I FORCED myself to put something else on, even though I saw no need to.  Since then, I've only kept 3 Maiden albums on my PDA, so there's been a much more even spread.

Opeth's a new one for me, recommended by Mendosus now that I seem to have conquered my death-metal-growl phobia.  Dark new musical doors are open, much to my wife's chagrin ;-)

British India were recommended by my wife, and I'm really enjoying them.  They've got a real Arctic Monkeys vibe, but they're from Melbourne.  They've got those great frenetic rockin' riffs and they make you wanna move about, something best not done in public my yours truly in any form other than foot tapping.

Next week should be a more balanced affair...

No surprises whatsoever this week, and possibly my biggest ever haul for a single artist.  The concert was on Saturday, a run-down will follow, but this leaves no doubt as to my excitement for the event of the year...

Top Artists for the week ending 10 Feb 2008

3	1		Iron Maiden	250
9	2		Radiohead	5
1	3		The Cult	2
6	3		Angus & Julia Stone	2
2	3		Monster Magnet	2
	6		Talking Heads	1
14	6		Cat Stevens	1
8	6		Black Rebel Motorcycle Club	1
	6		Richard Hell and the Voidoids	1
3	6		Robert Plant & Alison Krauss	1
8	6		Public Image Ltd.	1
	6		Nebula	1

Top Artists this Week (see more)

25 Nov 2007 – 2 Dec 2007

5	1		Ramones	68
	2		The Proton Energy Pills	56
10	3		The Clash	34
3	4		Public Image Ltd.	29
6	5		The Fauves	23
25	6		Bright Eyes	22
4	7		Radiohead	21
	8		Skid Row	20
7	9		Nine Inch Nails	17
3	10		The Pink Fits	16

The only real band to talk about this week is the Proton Energy Pills.  I've talked about Tumbleweed, Richie & The Creeps and The Pink Fits before, but this was the band they all started in back in the late 80s.  Straight outta Wollongong, they made some slight waves by moving to Sydney before it all fell apart and some of them went on to reasonable success in Tumbleweed.  The 'Pills is way punky, way dirty, and way awesome.

Bit of a trip down memory lane with Skid Row, but I wanted to hear their cover of the Ramones' 'Psycho Therapy', and it was so good I just kept listening to their stuff.  They were great, and they didn't really deserve to get lumped in with all those other hair metal bands, because they really were punks at heart. Their singer just liked his pretty boy status a bit too much perhaps...

PiL still hanging on there, but slipping a bit finally...

Not much to say this week, as I've really been listening to more of the same.  The only new entry that hasn't appeared in recent times is Bob Geldof, whose 'Sex, Age & Death' album is one I was obsessed with last year.

I haven't written about The Pink Fits before --  the guitarist is Lenny Curley from one of my favourite bands of all time, Tumbleweed (see previous post).  Fast, short, punky songs with buried vocals.  Very much the headspace I'm in at the moment, and unfortunately, completely unknown.

I'm watching the Ramones doco 'End of the Century' bit by bit on my PDA each morning on the bus, so it's safe to assume the Ramones will be there next week too.  I love music docos, and this one is totally engaging.

And my PiL obsession continues...

Top Artists this Week (see more)

18 Nov 2007 – 25 Nov 2007

–	1		Public Image Ltd.	72
2	2		Nine Inch Nails	36
1	3		Radiohead	30
7	4		Angus & Julia Stone	28
2	5		Black Rebel Motorcycle Club	24
	6		Ramones	18
1	7		Sex Pistols	12
–	7		The Pink Fits	12
	9		Bob Geldof	10
10	9		The Cult	10

Man, I'm completely obsessed with Public Image Ltd.  I bought a second album of theirs the other day, 'Flowers of Romance' from 1981, and it's even stranger than 'Metal Box'.  Can't say I'm totally into it yet, but it's so intriguing that I keep putting it on.  I'm still thoroughly intrigued by 'Metal Box' and I've been listening to it over and over for weeks now.  There's so much to it, so many layers, and so much weirdness. That's gotta be the mark of a good album.

I found a great review of the album which kinda says what I want to say.  Here's a bit:

Metal Box is an album as impenetrable as the case in which it comes... a fifty-minute swirling bombardment of Kraut-rock rhythms, dissonant keyboards, jagged guitars and Lydon's bitter lyrics and screaming vocals.
...
This is dark music, as bleak as albums like Tilt, OK Computer, Regeneration, Blood on the Tracks and The Final Cut... although it has a sound that is unlike any of those albums, or indeed, anything else you've ever heard.
...
Metal Box remains a testament to the band when they were at their utmost creative peak... and, in my opinion, is one of the most original and remarkable albums ever produced.

Looking forward to slowly appreciating 'Flowers of Romance' as much as I do 'Metal Box'.

Radiohead are still up there due to 'In Rainbows', loving BRMC's first album at the moment, and am getting into NIN's 'Pretty Hate Machine' for the first time.  Richard Hell & The Voidoids finally clicked properly with me, and my wife and I busted out the Chisel for some Aussie anthems.

Yay for tunes.

Top Artists this Week (see more)

11 Nov 2007 – 18 Nov 2007

2	1		Public Image Ltd.	107
1	2		Radiohead	79
3	3		Black Rebel Motorcycle Club	40
20	4		Nine Inch Nails	38
30	5		Richard Hell and the Voidoids	37
4	6		Sex Pistols	33
	7		The Pink Fits	27
9	8		Cold Chisel	24
6	8		Megadeth	24
5	10		Angus & Julia Stone	15

Check this shit out.  Radiohead hold the top 10 positions this week on last.fm for the most played tracks overall.  There are 10 tracks on 'In Rainbows' and every one of them is in the top 10!  But not only that, they're almost in the same order as they are on the album!  Far freakin' out, this has to be pretty rare.  Shows you what having no single does I guess, makes people get the whole thing and listen to the whole thing.  Oh, and it's amazing, so that helps.

Check it out yourself (if you click this link this week).

Radiohead still doing things to me -- that 'In Rainbows' just gets better every time.  'Bodysnatchers' is possibly the best song in the world, and 'Videotape' is haunting me at nights.  I've had all their other albums/EPs on shuffle rotation this week too, so they'll be there next week for sure.

Also got a little sidetracked on a Megadeth/Metallica thang this week -- it's been a while between drinks.  Megadeth's 'Holy Wars...The Punishment Due' from 'Rust In Peace' is truly a masterpiece and never fails to blow my mind after all these years.  That main riff is so fast that it is possible that it wasn't played by human hands at all.  Other factors are at play here.  It's below, please do yourself a favour and hit that play button.  Ahhh, Dave Mustaine, how I wish I didn't know that you were a born-again christian -- really undercuts the whole 'metal' thing you've got going on.  Kinda like knowing that Alice Cooper is a right-wing Bush supporter -- I haven't been able to listen to him in the same way since.

And John Lydon, you are amazing. You may well be a snotty nosed prick, but you are a freakin' genius.

Top Artists this Week (see more)

4 Nov 2007 – 11 Nov 2007

–	1		Radiohead	35
	2		Megadeth	29
7	3		Public Image Ltd.	28
	4		Metallica	27
3	5		Angus & Julia Stone	19
14	6		Black Rebel Motorcycle Club	17
5	7		You Am I	16
	7		Heaven & Hell	16
6	7		I Heart Hiroshima	16
6	10		Sex Pistols	14

Been a few moons since I last put my weekly Last.fm stuff up, but I think I'd like to look back at it one day to know what I was listening to at a certain time, so for no one's benefit but my own, I present last week's listening habits.

'In Rainbows' is doing things to me.  It took some listening to get into all the songs, and to start to differentiate some of the mellower ones, but man, it's good.  I paid $90+ for my copy of it, but that's because I pre-ordered the 'discbox' version which is apparently coming in December.  It has an extra disc on top of what you can download, so that should be fantastic.

Magically, bizarrely, my wife and I suddenly got into Missy Higgins' new album.  Every time we put it on before, we found ourselves saying "stop boring us Missy" and skipping tracks.  But suddenly the first single, 'Steer', sounds like her best song ever, when before it sounded like a pale imitation of 'Scar'.  Funny how these things can just click one day.

I'm really taken with the Sex Pistols and PiL, too.  PiL is a tough nut to crack, but so worthwhile.  Unlike anything I've heard before, so strange, great dub basslines, weird lyrics, no real choruses.  But completely engaging.  I keep wanting to put it back on, even before I knew if I was really enjoying it.  Thanks to Lester Bangs for the tip.

Top Artists this Week (see more)

28 Oct 2007 – 4 Nov 2007

1	1		Radiohead	105
19	2		Angus & Julia Stone	64
	3		Missy Higgins	40
7	4		Sex Pistols	31
	5		Martha Wainwright	26
	6		Silverchair	22
	7		The Shins	21
6	7		Black Sabbath	21
5	9		The Clash	19
7	10		Public Image Ltd.	18

Yay for last.fm.  I love it, it does what I've always wanted to be able to do.  I only wish I'd found it earlier...

In my first 3 months I've played 5700+ tracks at a rate of 56 tracks per day.  Interestingly, I've written about nearly all of the top 20 artists at some point on this blog.

Here's my top 20:

Top Artists July-October 2007

1		The Fauves	370
2		Bright Eyes	339
3		Tori Amos	212
4		The Waifs	210
5		The Call	179
6		Liam Finn	114
7		I Heart Hiroshima	112
8		Black Rebel Motorcycle Club	109
9		Yeah Yeah Yeahs	101
10		Silverchair	98
11		Syd Barrett	90
12		The White Stripes	85
13		The Cult	80
14		Tegan and Sara	77
15		Magic Dirt	68
16		Beasts of Bourbon	67
17		Nine Inch Nails	64
18		Iron Maiden	57
19		Ramones	55
20		PJ Harvey	54

Alrighty, this week it's the battle of the Beens.  Dad Been got pipped by Son Been by just 11 tracks.  Dad is Michael Been of The Call and son is Robert Been from BRMC and I'm loving both their bands.  Hopefully I'll get to post something when I get some more time.

The Waifs have a new album out, Sundirtwater, and it is sounding fabulous, sure to feature in these charts for a while to come.

Both Iron Maiden and Tori Amos hit the chart due to my pre-concert preparation....well, not preparation, because that makes it sound like an exam, but if I'm keen for a show then I listen to the tunes because I'm in the zone.  Iron Maiden's not until next year, so just the thought of it got me jumpy.