For the past couple months I have been hard at work on my first big post-Font Burner project. This one is called Phone Feedr and it allows anyone to create an iPhone optimized version of their web site. All you have to do is plugin the address of your site’s RSS feed and pick a custom .phonefeedr subdomain name. This is called a feedr. Think of it as an iPhone web app for your website. Adding it to your phone’s home screen even gives you a nice app icon that you can replace with any image you want.

The site is live, so head on over to phonefeedr.com and test it out. You are some of the first eyes to see it, so if you find bugs or mistakes please let me know!

As a side note, any visitors to this blog will automatically get redirected to my feedr. If you are curious about how to redirect iPhone users to friendlier versions of your site, you can find the script I use here.

For the technically curious, Phone Feedr was built using Wordpress MU. The RSS parsing is handled by Simple Pie and the iPhone interface uses iUI. I call the Simple Pie and iUI concoction Pie.ui and have made it available to anyone interested in reusing it.

The end of the year means it is time for the annual “Best Of” lists. It was a good year in music with some of my favorite bands releasing new albums (The Shins, Iron and Wine, Rogue Wave), some new groups (Maps, St Vincent, Patrick Watson, Yeasayer), and some bands that are just new to me (The National, Great Lake Swimmers, Rilo Kiley). If some of these are new to you, take a listen to the sample mp3 I link to. The titles link to Amazon and purchasing the music helps support this site.

1. The Shepherd’s Dog, by Iron & Wine
Mp3: House by the Sea

2. Wincing the Night Away, by the Shins
Mp3: Girl Sailor

3. Ongiara, by Great Lake Swimmers
Mp3: Your Rocky Spine

4. Boxer, by The National
Mp3: Fake Empire

5. Close to Paradise, by Patrick Watson
Mp3: Close to Paradise

6. All Hour Cymbals, by Yeasayer
Mp3: 2080 (also my vote for best song of the year)

7. Asleep at Heaven’s Gate, by Rogue Wave
Mp3: Fantasies

8. We Can Create, by Maps
Mp3: Lost My Soul

9. Under the Blacklight, By Rilo Kiley
Mp3: Close Call

10. Marry Me, by St. Vincent
Mp3: Now. Now.

Honorable Mention:
In Rainbows, by Radiohead
Mp3: Bodysnatchers

Icky Thump, by The White Stripes
Mp3: Icky Thump

Neon Bible, by Arcade Fire
Mp3: Black Mirror

I’m Not There (Soundtrack)
Mp3: You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere

Ears Will Pop & Eyes Will Blink, by Bodies of Water
Mp3: I Guess We’ll Forget the Sound, I Guess, I guess

Juiced, by The Cansecos
Mp3: Free download from website

Hopefully 2008 will be just as good as 2007. If you want to take a look back, here are my lists from former years: 2006, 2005 2004

I either buy music on iTunes or at independently owned record stores. If I am in Denver I visit Twist and Shout. If I am in visiting Lincoln, Nebraska I stop at Recycled Sounds. Here in Greeley I enjoy The Finest. You probably have a pretty good idea of what these stores are like. The walls are covered in concert posters. The walls are lined with old vinyl stuffed into cardboard boxes. An eclectic blend of music plays over the sound system. There is an intimidating alternative-looking guy at the counter. They all seem to have that smell of incense. I could probably buy most of the same music anywhere else: Best Buy, Wal-Mart, Target or even the grocery store. It just wouln’t be the same. It would feel cheap. It wouldn’t be any fun. Buying music is fun when it is tied to a memorable experience. Searching through a stack of LPs feels like a treasure hunt. It is fun to take a risk and take the recommendation of that intimidating chick behind the counter. It is nice to have the memory of hearing a song for the first time in a dusty old record shop. You don’t get that fuzzy feeling from dropping $17.00 at a Circuit City.

The funny thing is that the record store is my second choice for where to buy music. The majority of my music purchases happen on iTunes. It is convenient. It is automatically synced with my iPod. I can “discover” a band through an mp3 blog and instantly sample and purchase some songs. I can buy single songs or a whole album. It is still an experience even if it is nothing like the record store.

Since I am on the topic of music, maybe you would like to know what I have been listening to over the past couple weeks. Here are some bands that have been getting repeat listenings with links to The Hype Machine where you can download some mp3’s

Yeasayer - Check out “2080″ if you haven’t heard it.
Phoenix - I started listening to them based on a recommendation from Wes Anderson.
Sea Wolf - “Black Dirt” is a great track.

I had a lot of fun this weekend browsing through the massive collection of Live music on Archive.org. There is so much free music available there that it is a daunting task to sort the treasures from the trash. For your convenience I have made a list of some of the really good performances that I have been enjoying. In case you were wondering, this is legal and all the bands have given permission for these bootlegs to be distributed. I can’t really say this is “the best of Archive.org” because I know there must be a ton of other amazing recordings there, but you can’t go wrong with the following concerts. The following are some of my favorite artists and the performances and sound quality is nearly album worthy.

Calexico
Live at the Rialto Theatre in Tucsan, Arizona, December 2nd, 2006
Sample MP3: Cruel

If I could only recommend one band for you to check out on Archive.org it would be Calexico. The recordings I sampled were really impressive both in there sound quality and musicianship. Their performance at the China Theater in Sweden in 2003 was another one that you might want to check out.

Elliott Smith
Live at the Black Cat, Washington DC, April 17th, 1998
Sample MP3: Between the Bars

When an artist dies in their prime recordings of them playing live take on a new meaning. This acoustic set sounds great and catches Elliott early in his indie career.

Waterdeep
Live at the Venue, Olatthe Kansas, April 14, 2000
Sample MP3: Sweet River Roll

I have been a Waterdeep fan for years and was really happy to find so many of their concerts available on Archive.org. They are one of the few Christian bands that I really like. They seem to only tour in the midwest so I may have to make a trip to Kansas if I ever want to catch one of their shows.

Bela Fleck and the Flecktones
Live at the Singletary Center for the Arts, April 6th, 2004
Sample MP3: Something

If you have never heard of Bela Fleck, he is a banjo player. If that sounds lame you should give it a chance. It changed the way I thought about the banjo.

Rogue Wave
Live at Bimbo’s 365 Club, San Francisco, CA, March 30th, 2006
Sample MP3: Falcon Settles Me

This probably isn’t the cleanest recording or performance on Archive.org, but Rogue Wave is one of my favorite bands and this one is definitely worth a listen if you haven’t heard them.

Here is a list of well known bands that you may want to check out that have free recordings available on Archive.org:
Jack Johnson
My Morning Jacket
Jason Mraz
Tenacious D
Ryan Adams
Grateful Dead
Smashing Pumpkins
Ween
John Butler Trio
Keller Williams
String Cheese Incident
Yonder Mountain String Band
Moe
Andrew Bird
The Decemberists
Drive-By Truckers

The only downside to Archive.org is that many of the concerts are only available in .flac or .shn format so it can be a little tricky to get them into iTunes. (If you are on a Mac and need a way to decode .flac or .shn files to .aiff so you can open them in iTunes an from there convert them to mp3’s you can download Xact for free here.) It can also be cumbersome to re-label poorly named and tagged files but you can’t complain when the music is free. Enjoy, and let me know if you find any other treasures on Archive.org that you would recommend.

Introducing a new feature to my blog where I post 3 mp3’s. Here is the first batch from a few albums I have been enjoying lately…

Silver Lining, by Rilo Kiley
From their album, Under the Blacklight

Melody Day, by Caribou
From their album, Andorra

Small Town Crew, by The Brunettes
From their album, Structure & Cosmetics

I am already dreading a summer without the hit show on NBC, Heroes. For the past couple weeks I have found myself listening to my iPod and thinking, “Man, that would be a great song for Heroes.” There probably isn’t an official Heroes soundtrack, so I decided to make a mixtape of “heroish” songs. These are actually all really great songs, so don’t feel like you need to watch Heroes’ to appreciate them. Here’s the playlist and the lyrics that seemed appropriate. Hopefully it will help get you through to next season…

1. Now. Now., by St. Vincent
“I’m not your mother’s favorite dog. I’m not the carpet you walk on. I’m not one small atomic bomb. I’m not anything at all.” (With lyrics like that, it makes me wonder if St. Vincent was watching Heroes when she penned this great song.)

2. Eyes, by Rogue Wave
This is the only song on my list that was actually used on the show. A great song by one of my favorite bands.

3. Start A War, by The National
“Walk away now, and you’re gonna start a war.”

4. To the Sky, by Maps
“These things I know… They get into your mind. I guess you know the signs. Can only feel this way when silence comes.”

5. Last Stop: This Town, by the Eels
“Why don’t we take a ride way up high through the neighborhood, up over the billboards and the factories and smoke. I’m gonna fly on down for the last stop to this town.”

6. Strange Powers, by The Magnetic Fields
“In Las Vegas where the electric bills are staggering, the decor hog wild and the entertainment sachrin. What a golden age. What a time or right and reason… cause you got strange powers.”

7. Phenomena, by the Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs
“Something like a phenomena.”

8. I Believe, by Simian Mobile Disco
“I believe you can be what I need to believe.”

9. When it Flows, by Great Lake Swimmers
“When it flows from the fingers and turns to stone it shatters with the touch… Looked into your eyes and into your mind. You were laughing like a statue called to life.

10. Waitin’ For Superman, by The Flaming Lips
“Tell everybody waiting for Superman that they should try do hold on the best they can.”

11. The Greatest, by Cat Power
“Once I wanted to be the greatest.”

12. Nothing At All, by The Shins
“You gotta know what you want to be, but there’s no number to call… You cut your eyes so you can finally see, but there’s nothing at all. There must be a flaw in this fatal eye.”

13. Race For the Prize, by The Flaming Lips
“Two scientists were racing for the good of all mankind… They’re just humans with wives and children.”

14. The Sun is Burning, by Simon & Garfunkel
“Now the sun has come to dissappeared. All is darkness anger pain and fear. Twisted, sightless wrecks of men go groping on their knees and cry in pain.”

15. We Will Become Silhouettes, by The Postal Service
“And that’s when we’ll explode and it won’t be a pretty sight. And we’ll become silhouettes when our bodies finally go.”

For your convenience I bundled the entire playlist into a .zip file that you can download here. I hope you like it!

Here is a list of music that I really enjoyed in 2006:

Begin to Hope, by Regina Spektor

Wincing the Night Away, by the Shins

Magic Potion, by The Black Keys

Ben Kweller, by Ben Kweller

The Information, by Beck

Wolfmother

Sunlandic Twins, by Of Montreal

Electric President

Gulag Orkestar, by Beirut

Garden Ruin, by Calexico

End of Love, by Clem Snide

i, by The Magnetic Fields

Deep Cuts, by The Knife

Of all the genres that are continually invented to quarantine artists into new classifications, the one that I just don’t understand is “Americana.” Apparently Pinetop Seven falls into that category, but don’t ask me what that means. The Night’s Bloom is the fourth album from this band that you probably haven’t heard of. If you are like me, then you will be searching out their back catalog after you are introduced to this wonderful album. The ambitious arrangements and vocal style immediately brings to mind Calexico (another Americana group). While this officially came out in 2005, look for it on the best of lists in 2006.

Full of Light and Full of Fire is my introduction to the Mendoza Line although this recording is several albums into their career. The lead vocals bounce back and forth from Shannon McArdle to Timothy Bracy. Both singers do an admirable job and unlike other bands that try to pull this off, I don’t prever one voice over the other. Timothy sometimes adds a little Bob Dylanish whine, that I could do without, but it is bearable. Shannon reminds me of Neko Case’s vocal contributions to The New Pornographers, something I wish there had been more of. The New Pornographers is probably a good comparison for this band. If you are hesitant about buying this album, there are two free mp3’s available on Amazon that you should check out first. Overall, I really enjoyed this album and am looking forward to exploring The Mendoza Line’s back catalog more in the future.

Maybe it is my imagination, but it seems like this album has been making a comeback lately. Although it didn’t make my top ten of 2004, it was definitely in the running, and it has weathered my rotation better than several albums on that list. The Go! Team sounds like the theme song to the best television show that you never saw. I meant that to be more flattering than it sounds. They are almost completely instrumental except for some high energy chearleading sounding samples on a few of the tracks. Flute, harmonica, horns, piano, and guitar are all layered on top of some big beats. Not electronic beats, but a real drummer. There has to be some heavy studio work to this album, but it sounds like a real performance. I think that “realness” is what really allows this album to pull it off. Definitely a fun album you should check out if you haven’t already.