A Long, Strange Semi Random Friday Music

This is Your [truncated] Semi-Random Friday Music

WHEREBY Your Montag traverses the myspace music scene, follows the trail of comments from one page to the next and picks out the song I like best from each artist. Clicking the red text will cause a psychotropic substance to be added to your beverage, and you will be cognizant of a traveling, as if in flight, through space and time, yet without moving. You will enter another dimension where you will experience the artist’s myspace music page.

1. People Are Tearing at the Seams — Sex Education (Liverpool, UK) — “Glam / New Wave / Electro.” Non-sucky, updated Joy Division/New Order type stylings. Based on the photos they’ve posted, this band may contain sensitive men… — And with Sex Education, I seemed to have encountered a void: a sort of black hole in myspace music. For there seemed to be no escape from this page that would lead me to another musical artist’s page. Attempts early in the week led to error messages, extremely long page loads and timed-out connections, other clicks seemed to lead nowhere but to another of the band’s or band members’ sites in a seemingly ‘closed loop’ of some inbred marketing/promotional scheme. Later escape attempts were confounded by low disk space problems at the Montag homestead that likely contributed to songs not fully loading and playing properly. Then, finally, at the eleventieth hour… ESCAPE!
2. She Made Me a Robot — Aeris Presley (Liverpool, UK) — I would describe this as ‘punk’ only to the extent that it is proper to call something that can also be described as “yawn inducing,” ‘punk’. Which is to say, not at all. So I’ll call it ‘attempted punk.’
3. Lusitania — The Cromagnon Band (London, UK) — Latter-day prog rock. They also claim for themselves the labels ‘Funk’ and ‘Psychedelic’. I’ll go along and say “funky”; but, based on what I’ve learned about psychedelic from listening to Land of the Lost, the jury’s still out on whether I’d give them “Psychedelic-y.” Nonetheless, this band is the gem Your Montag hopes to find each time I do this exercise. All of the songs here are worth listening to.
4. Pact pt 1 — DIAGONAL (Brighton, UK) — More latter-day prog rock.
5. Follow Me — Czar (UK) — The British progledelic invasion continues! But wait. These guys aren’t trying to sound old-school. They are old school. This one’s from ’70.
6. Fist Noise — LITHIUM (France) — I’ve already typed in: “OK, this shit is getting old,” but I take it back. Lithium has done something different here and Montag likes! Beyond ‘garage,’ I’ll call it psychedonkulic. Another gem.
7. Ballad of Tommy Forrester — USAforLSD (California) — Ambient stuff, and a nice come-down from all the psychedelkicals. If you’re one who can cope with ambient music about some dude’s really bad acid trip, that is.

Your Montag’s top four, for those who have to work the next day: 3, 6, 4 and 7. Screw #1 for the blame I place on them for the cut-shortedness and the almost ruining altogether of this edition of Semi Random Music!

Suggestions? If you know of, (or are,) a myspace music artist that might value the exposure that a glancing mention on a D-list blog can bring, leave a comment here or correspond with me via electronic mail.