Feast or Famine

I finally caved and created a 'music' label for my blog. For a long time I figured it was unnecessary, but if I can have 6 posts labeled 'random videos,' then 7 posts for 'music' should be justified. Now, of course, decisions must be made about what qualifies for labeling. The Eurovision Song Contest? Well, it has the word 'song' in the title, so I suppose it has to be included. And who I am to give the OK to the Eurovision Song Contest and deny singing football players or a rap about George Washington? So I guess I'm going with an inclusive (non-judgment-valued) definition. Enjoy.

Anyway, the title of the post refers to (for a record third post! I'm not obsessed, I swear) Cotton Mather. A month ago, I had a measly two mp3s of their songs in my iTunes. Today, I have a robust 41. Wikipedia has even stepped up its game: someone created a page for them 2 weeks ago. Per the post below, the floodgates opened for me two days ago when a copy of Cotton is King showed up in my office. It's a fun album and the best track is still "Payday" which I discussed previously (and thankfully comes right after one of the weakest tracks). But Cotton is King is their first album; how could I rest without the second album, Kontiki, the album that the guys from Oasis were reportedly obsessed with? Retail seemed out (every place that lists it at all has it on 'back order'), no current eBay auctions list it, and it goes for approximately $30-100 on Amazon. Thankfully, I stumbled upon this blog and this blog post. The post is over a year old, but people (like me) keep finding it and commenting. It's definitely worth a read and when you're done you can download the French tour version of Kontiki, including the bonus tracks you hear on this myspace page, and some other rarities. The sound quality seems pretty poor (although maybe that's just a byproduct of their DIY ethos and not the rip of the CD), so I'm still going to keep my eyes open for a hard copy of it or stuff from their later work (they have a third album and a couple of EPs). They never stop sounding like the Beatles, which is a little uncanny, but the songs are good: "My Before and After" (the other song I mentioned previously) is a great song but not even my favorite. And the bonus tracks (mostly alternate versions) are as good or better than the album tracks, so don't skip them thinking they're filler. I was going to say a few more things about Kontiki but I would need to take a couple more listens.

After this odyssey, I feel like I should share the wealth, so if any of you, my friends, have a burning desire for some Cotton Mather in your life, drop me a line (you could probably also bug my partner-in-crime, Eugene, too) and I'll see what I can do.