I’m a sucker for a good Nirvana cover, and this one by a Boston band called Nemes is pretty damn good. It was so good that I bought their album that they are selling on their Bandcamp site for only $1. Seriously? They should charge more than that.

I got my autographed Jonathan Coulton cd today. I don’t know what I’m going to do with it. I already have the digital downloads, so I don’t even have to rip it. I guess it’s just proof that I buy things I don’t need just to support artists I like.

20 years ago today “Smells Like Teen Spirit” made it debut on MTV’s 120 Minutes. Music would never again be the same, at least for me.

I probably mentioned the Foo Fighters Garage Tour in the past. This video is a nice little mini documentary about their garage shows. A buddy of mine entered the contest, but sadly didn’t win, so I wasn’t able to see the Foo Fighters in his Garage. We will be seeing them on September 14th though. It should be a great show. I have seen the Foo Fighters four times, and it’s always great. How great would it have been to see them in my buddy’s garage though?

The other night Motion City Soundtrack performed, in my opinion, their biggest hit on The Daily Habit. It’s hard to believe it’s been eight years since I first heard this song. I think I have seen them in concert eight times since 2003. I’m averaging once a year. That’s not too bad. I saw Motion City Soundtrack last October, and will be seeing them yet again in a couple weeks at the Minnesota State Fair. I can’t wait.

So it’s been 20 years since my favorite album of all time, Nirvana’s Nevermind was released. Spin has released a “free” tribute album. It’s not really free since you have to like Spin on Facebook to get it, but it won’t cost you any money. I refuse to to like things on Facebook, or retweet thinks when forced to. I usually just ignore whatever it was and assume it doesn’t exist. This album was an exception, and by exception I mean, I used my fake Facebook page to like it.

I gave it a quick listen and I love how each band put their spin on on each song. It starts off with the Meat Puppets version on “Smells Like Teen Spirit”. The Meat Puppets probably are best known for playing with Nirvana on their Mtv Unplugged appearance. The Vaselines cover “Lithium”. Kurt Cobain was a big fan of The Vaselines. Nirvana covered a couple of their songs on Incesticide, and played “Jesus Doesn’t Want Me for a Sunbeam” during their unplugged session. It was only fitting that The Vaselines would cover “Lithium”. The song almost brought me to tears. Amanda Palmer also has a song on the album. She does an eerie stripped down version of “Polly” that’s pretty amazing. You can get the album for free here.

I’ve been playing around with Spotify for the last couple days, and it seems pretty good for what it is. For some people I see how it can be totally cool. You can listen to almost any song you want whenever you want. It’s great for the casual music fan that doesn’t care whether they own their music or not. With the free version you are stuck to listening on a computer, which for people that work it an office, might be all they need. Currently you need an invitation to get the free version, so I’m not sure if it’s temporary, but it is ad supported. For $5 a month you can get rid of the ads, but really, if you are going to pay for it you should pay $10 a month and get the mobile features.

I don’t think Spotify is really for me though. I like to own and collect my music. I have well over 1300 cds, and I want to be able to listen to them in the future. I have my entire music library on a 160 GB iPod Classic, so I can already listen to almost anything I want whenever I want. That being said, just because I pay for Spotify doesn’t mean I have to stop buying music. It might be tougher to buy music when I know I can listen to it for free, but I will to keep my music library growing.

I think I am going to pay for it for at least a few months to get the full experience, and see how well the streaming works. Often times what I want to listen to isn’t on my iPhone because of limited space. With Spotify I will have a much greater selection of music on my iPhone. I was surprised with Spotify’s selection. For most people they will probably find everything they want, except for The Beatles. There were quite a few bands I couldn’t find, but then I tend to listen to more obscure stuff. I was mostly shocked that they only had one Punchline album. WTF? I will just have to make sure the bands they don’t have are on my iPhone. I’m sure over time their selection will be better. I remember when I couldn’t find any of my bands on iTunes, and now everybody is there.

Three bands that I love and have been listening to a lot lately just recently released some stripped down acoustic versions of songs that I really love and thought I would share because you might not have heard of these three awesome bands.

First up is Punchline. I have blogged about them in the past before. I saw them play in 2004, and have been hooked ever since. I am surprised they haven’t gotten bigger yet. This song, “Whatever I Want, Whenever I Want”, is off their newest album that came out last year called Delightfully Pleased. Great song, great album, but a little too much background noise in the video, but it’s still good shit.

Next up is We Are the in Crowd. They are a relatively new band. They only have one album out, but it’s great. I predict they will be a household name soon. This video is a well produced acoustic version of “Never Be What You Want”, off of their album Guaranteed to Disagree.

The third band is Mixtapes. They have one album out and two EPs—all are fucking great. This song, “You’d Better Bring More Dudes”, is off their newest EP that came out earlier this year, Hope is for People. You can also check out more songs from this set here.

Today the new album from Farewell Continental, ¡Hey, Hey Pioneers! comes out. If you don’t know who Farewell Continental are, they are the side project of Justin Pierre, the lead singer of my favorite band Motion City Soundtrack. You can buy it here or here, and read all about it here, and watch their first video off the album below. You know you wanna buy it. All the cool kids are doing it, so you should too.

I was never much of a Bjork fan, but this video takes me right back to the early 90s. It got some major MTV play, probably too much back then.

Since I’ve been blogging about music lately I thought I would share some new music I am looking forward to. In my world everybody knows who The Wonder Years and The Swellers are, but they might not be as popular in the real world. I’m a big fan of both of these bands, and they both have a new album coming out June 14th.

First up is The Swellers’ song “The Best I Ever Had”, from the upcoming album Good For Me.

Next is The Wonder Years’ song “Don’t Let Me Cave In”, from the upcoming album Suburbia I’ve Given You All And Now I’m Nothing.

I became a Sonic Youth fan a few years before “Bull in the Heather” came out on Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star in 1994, but “Bull in the Heather” was probably the first Sonic Youth video to get some major play on Mtv. Hearing it instantly takes me back to my freshmen year of college.

Over the weekend I watched the Foo Fighters documentary, Foo Fighters: Back and Forth. It was pretty awesome. I saw it on the DVR, I think it was on VH1. I’m not sure when it will be on again, but you can probably find in online somewhere if nothing else. It’s really a must see for any Foo Fighter fan.

I have been a Foo Fighters fan from day one. I was positive that I would love the drummer of my favorite band’s new band, and I was right. I have seen them three times in concert. Once was here in Fargo—before I even lived here—at the Civic Center. It was amazing. The other two time were down in the cities at the Target Center and the Xcel Energy Center, both were good, but nothing beats the smaller venue like the Civic Center was.

I hate to admit it, but I didn’t listen to their last couple albums all that much. They were good, but they just weren’t as good as their first few albums. Last Tuesday they released their latest album, Wasting Light, and it’s pretty awesome. I have only had it a week, so I don’t know where to place it, but so far I am loving it. I think “Bridge Burning” is probably the best lead off song of an album that I have ever heard. It’s hard not to crank it to 11 to start off the album.

There are a few recent live Foo Fighters performances online, and I am just going to embed them here. The first one is a full-length concert that is part of CBS’s Live on Letterman series.

The second on can be found at foofighters.tv, and is a live performance of their newest album.

And finally some lucky fan had the Foos perform a mini concert in his garage.

So after one week I totally forgot about my Flashback Fridays. I blame Rebecca Black.

This week it’s one of my all time favorite Pavement songs, “Cut Your Hair”.