XmRadio & The 2,002 Best Alternative Songs

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pgh kenny
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XmRadio & The 2,002 Best Alternative Songs

Post by pgh kenny » Nov 7th 2002, 11:16 pm

Long winded, but read on...

I am addicted to Xmradio, a fee-based satellite radio service available in the USA ($9.95/month). There is a special radio that I can use in my car or home and the radio shows the name of song and artist in real time. It works anywhere in the USA so it is great for road trips.

My favorite channel is the alternative station, "Fred Channel 44". You can call up the toll-free number and they'll play your requests within 2 or 3 songs AND there are NO commercials (however there are live DJ's). Anyway, the station came up with a list of the 2,002 best alternative songs.... check it out... it is pretty good. it is pretty much a list of all my favorite songs. it's in pdf format.

http://www.xmradio.com/programming/pdf/2002fred.pdf

I know many people might think it is stupid to PAY for radio, but believe me, it is really worth it. Besides the alternative station, this thing has 100 stations so whatever mood you are in, you'll find a song you want to listen to. You can scroll through a list of all the songs that are currently playing. I don't watch tv anymore; I cancelled cable because I can listen to my radio and get more things done. I have whole house audio, so I can listen during whatever I am doing. Plus it has a ton of talk and news stations if you're in the mood for that.

More links:

Fred: http://fred.xmradio.com
Xmradio: http://www.xmradio.com
The home/car radio I use: http://www.delphi.com/electronics/skyfi/
Xm message board (should look familiar): http://www.xmfan.com

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fnordboy
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Post by fnordboy » Nov 8th 2002, 1:42 pm

Wow, at the same time i am very impressed and very annoyed with this list lol.

I went under the assumption that it was in order for 1 being their #1 alt song essential...was that wrong of me?

Some great things about this list are -

The inclusion of:

Dramarama, this band just did not get enough attention. Great F'ing band.
The Dead Milkmen - though the songs i saw on there werent their best
Midnight Oil
EMF - if you ignored them as a one hit wonder you were sorely mistaken.
Smith's Big Mouth Strikes Again one of their best songs.
Pop Will Eat Itself cant really go wrong with some PWEI
XTC
Camper Van Beethoven's Take the Skinheads Bowling... brilliant song
Sunny Day Real Estate - though there are better songs than the one i saw on here
Martin Gore - way better solo than with Depeche Mode

If i keep going this post will get outrageously long, so i will call it quits. My negatives about the list are plenty but its mainly the fact that they seemed to go with the "popular" songs instead of the better songs. And too much nirvana and green day on the list.

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Re: XmRadio & The 2,002 Best Alternative Songs

Post by fnordboy » Nov 8th 2002, 1:47 pm

pgh_kenny wrote:I am addicted to Xmradio
So this is something that ive been tormented over. Is it really really worth it? Ive wanted it since it was first announced way back when, but i dont know if i can justify the money for it.

And then the question is do i go for XMRadio or do i go for TiVo. And TiVo so far seems to be winning, especially if i buy one of the new DVD Recorder vcr type things.

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Post by K-man » Nov 8th 2002, 1:52 pm

The Dead Milkmen RULE!!!!!!!! 8)
Daddy sold the farm and they've killed my trees. K-man

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Post by fnordboy » Nov 8th 2002, 1:58 pm

K-man wrote:The Dead Milkmen RULE!!!!!!!! 8)
Great band, great people. I met them once and they were one of the nicest bands ive ever met.

You should check out Butterfly Joe (side project from Milkmen) and Burn Witch Burn (another side project, this is really good closest sound description would be Medieval Irish Folk Punk Goth ;) ) There is also another recent project that i cant remember off hand now that arent too bad.

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Post by K-man » Nov 8th 2002, 2:13 pm

I love the Dead Milkmen. Just the other day I was breaking out the old tapes and rattling the walls, (landlady out of town) and I was blasting the Milkmen and They Might Be Giants till the speakers started smoking. :lol: -Build a little birdhouse in your soul ! :mrgreen:
Daddy sold the farm and they've killed my trees. K-man

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pgh kenny
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Post by pgh kenny » Nov 8th 2002, 2:18 pm

I'm not certain the list is in any order or not. It sure doesn't look like it is ranked. Much of the list is based on listener voting, so that might explain the lack of some of the better songs by particular artists versus more popular songs. i was impressed w/ list in that i haven't heard most of these songs on pittsburgh radio anytime recently.

As far as whether it is worth it or not... i think it depends on your listening habits. I stopped buying cd's because they're too expensive... one cd could pay for 2 months of xmradio. I don't download mp3's either since for me the hassle factor is too high. however if you had a large mp3 or cd collection, sat radio might not be worth as much to you.

I do listen to the radio a lot... however Pittsburgh radio stinks. It's beyond terrible. xmradio on the other hand has these features... no commercials on many of the music channels. 10 different rock stations including classic alternative, late 90s to current alternative and a 'college type' radio station. there is also a channel for unsigned bands which is surprisingly good. they will play your requests quickly. the playlists are not 'payola' like broadcast radio. it works anywhere including road trips(who hasn't cursed the one country station available on fm on the interstate in the middle of nowhere!)

the equipment is not cheap....

radio $130 (need to choose car and/or home base station)
base station for home $70
base station for car $70

but i think $10 a month is very fair.... there are 100 channels! and many are non-censored... i very much dislike censorship... for that reason i don't buy any media from walmart. it is very cool to hear songs the way the artist intended.

there is only one thing missing from xmradio for me and that is the talk show LOVELINE which I used to be able to listen to when i lived in arizona.

if you haven't done it, i'd at least check out the demonstration of the delphi or sony xmradio at circuit city. i waited for a year for the delphi xmradio because the sony is a lot more expensive and I didn't like the design.

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K-man
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Post by K-man » Nov 8th 2002, 2:20 pm

I used to listen to Loveline when I lived in Phoenix also.
Daddy sold the farm and they've killed my trees. K-man

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pgh kenny
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Post by pgh kenny » Nov 8th 2002, 2:23 pm

K-man wrote:The Dead Milkmen RULE!!!!!!!! 8)
For Sale:

Big Lizard.

Location:

My backyard.

Reason for Selling:

Can't afford to feed it anymore.

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Post by pgh kenny » Nov 8th 2002, 2:26 pm

K-man wrote:I used to listen to Loveline when I lived in Phoenix also.
I liked the radio version much better than the one that was on MTV. I used to listen religiously. Arizona was a good time.... it seemed like everything started an hour earlier there... wasn't prime time tv at 7 pm? I remember without daylight savings time in AZ it seemed like the sun came up at 3 am in the morning in the summer.

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Post by fnordboy » Nov 8th 2002, 2:37 pm

K-man wrote:I love the Dead Milkmen. Just the other day I was breaking out the old tapes and rattling the walls, (landlady out of town) and I was blasting the Milkmen and They Might Be Giants till the speakers started smoking. :lol: -Build a little birdhouse in your soul ! :mrgreen:
That is all my youth consisted of. I use to crank my vinyl of TMBGs Lincoln while playing my Super Mario Bros. on the NES.

Good times...

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Post by fnordboy » Nov 8th 2002, 3:03 pm

I bought a big lizard, only a dollar fifty, thats pretty neat, yeah its f***ing nifty....

The best song on that album hands down is The Laundromat Song

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Post by K-man » Nov 8th 2002, 3:16 pm

I don't know what time in the morning the sun comes up in Phoenix but all I remember was it came up in like March and didn't stop shining till what seemed like Nov. One big long summer that lasted for like 9 months. :wink:
Daddy sold the farm and they've killed my trees. K-man

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Post by Natasha (candygirl) » Nov 8th 2002, 5:52 pm

Every time someone mentions bowling, I always think of Camper Van Beethoven!

When I remember the Dead Milkmen video for Punk Rock Girl, it still cracks me up.

Loveline was always way better on the radio than on MTV. I listened on the radio when I was in college and then a few years later I went to a tv taping that totally SUCKED! For any of you who have ever done TV tapings, you know that they usually suck anyway, but this sucked A LOT.

Once they let us in, we had to stay for three or four episodes in a row. They had all these couches and chairs to make it look like a coffee shop type environment, complete with bowls of popcorn and magazines on the tables, but we got yelled at for touching them. The chick who walked around in the audience with a microphone was a total biatch. We froze our butts off for three hours. We were afraid that the insane applause man (whose job it is to pump up the crowd just as the show goes to a commercial break) would literally drop dead as a result of his overzealous arm waving. There was a line of people from the extras union waiting to fill the chairs. Some of them had different outfits in their bags so they could change for each episode.

The worst part of the entire experience was that as we were filing into the studio, some chick was asking people if they had questions for Dr. Drew & Adam. My friend said he had a question so they whisked him away to the lounge where he later reported eating shrimp cocktail while sitting in a moderately temperature controlled room (as opposed to the 40 degree room where we were being refrigerated). When the producers went back to the room where all the volunteer question askers were hanging out eating to their hearts' content, they told all the kids to rehearse their questions. Then they told one girl that her question wasn't interesting enough and that if she wanted to get on tv she should make up a better question. All the question askers then had a bonding ten minutes where they sat around making up ridiculous stuff for this girl to ask Dr. Drew.

Don't get me wrong - I know that there are people who call the radio show with made up questions too, but when I pictured all of these people in the shrimp cocktail room making up stories while the Applause Nazis yelled at us...grrr!

The funniest part of the whole experience: the celebrity guest (someone from Baywatch, I think) brought Adam and Drew a Party Pig. For those of you who are unversed in the products of your local Dirty Book Store, the Party Pig is an inflatable animal with orifices. They also have the Love Ewe. Anyway, the guest presented Drew and Adam with the Party Pig. Adam and the guest then proceeded to take the cordless microphone and insert it into one of the pig's orifices enthusiastically. The entire audience was roaring with laughter. Then the producers decided that was too racy for MTV (this was back before Christina Aguilera's "Dirrty" video and their "Undressed" series) so we had to retape the entire segment beginning with the guest entering the studio. Booooo!!!

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Post by Summoned » Feb 7th 2003, 9:02 pm

Regarding the list of songs --

Very confused. It's not singles, so any song should qualify. Stunned by the idea that there were no Sonic Youth songs pre-1988/Goo. That there were as many Icicle Works and Guadalcanal Diary (to use two examples of bands who had a song or songs that I like on the list, but consider to be nebbishes) songs on the list as Sonic Youth. That a song by Opal, of all bands, made it. That a LOT of bands/artists were included whom I cannot imagine being considered to be alternative. That the Cranes had a couple songs there.

That being said, alternative music is one of those things that lends to itself to a "more alternative than thou" attitude anyway. Just very confused.
Daydreaming days in a daydream nation

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