Alright, here we go with the new look! Lemme know (in the comments) what you think!
Andrew Vincent – Rotten Pear
I bought this CD on the strength of one excellent song I heard by chance on CBC radio, called Canadian Dream. The rest of the CD turned out to be just as infectious and beautiful, full of sharply smart songs, some acoustic and tender, some full band rock outs, all superbly done like an Eric’s Trip or a Hayden but also uniquely his own. Cannot recommend it enough, this Dude oughta be massively famous.
Andrew Vincent – Diane/D.I.A.N.E.
This 3-song single is available for free download on his bandcamp site. First is a band version of Diane that’s different enough and equally cool, then a sweet live version of Rotten Pear on electric guitar (versus the album version’s accordion (I think – or maybe it was a synth), and D.I.A.N.E. reprises the title track with almost-rapped, altered lyrics. Cool.
Andrew Vincent – Some Songs (1998-2011)
Available for free download on his bandcamp site, this collects tracks from seven of his releases, repeats the live Rotten Pear track from the Diane/D.I.A.N.E. single, and includes an unreleased track too. Listening to these sampler songs has made me want to go and order all of his awesomeness immediately! I love every song here. This guy’s great! Why isn’t he huge and everywhere? Good question!
Anjani – Blue Alert
Leonard Cohen collaborator Anjani offers up a very pleasing record of minimal lite jazz. She sings in a breathy, torch singer voice. Reminds me very much of Holly Cole, actually. Highlight tracks for me were the title track, and the sweet waltzing Thanks For The Dance. Cohen co-produced this, and gave her access to his writings for lyric ideas, so his influence is all over it so large one could be forgiven for thinking she was just singing his songs. This is late night gentle music, and very well done, at that.
Armed & Hammered – It’s About Fucking Time
I’ve owned this for years and love it every time I spin it. This is live off the floor punk from a band that is bloody, smart and tight. The original songs are fucking great, and the covers of English Dogs’ ‘Bastard’ and Motörhead’s ‘Ace Of Spades’ are great too. From the same Kensington Market (Toronto) scene as another fave of mine, the Bunchofuckingoofs, this band and this CD are punk brilliance. Go go go!
keepsmealive 
I like this. Would agree with the image suggestion … images are good. Especially to folks like me who can sometimes forget names of albums, but can always remember the album cover.
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Hm! I was just about decided to not do pics, and here’s a vote in favour of them! It’s a good idea, you’re right. Images help, and make it nice to look at… I’ll have to give this some more thought!
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I can always remember a piece of album art over the title and often rely on that connection when I’m out looking at records and such like. By artists that I’m not overly familiar with, of course.
That being said, if there’s no image and I read about something I go look at Wikipedia or Google …
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I get that, album art is definitely connected. If links get broken over time, and the artwork won’t go in (likely from my own inability), here’s hoping the text will send you in the right directions!
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Gonna call you Mr Clean….cool look …
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Haha matches my shiny bald head! Thanks Deke! I’m liking this, so far. I may tweak it as we go, will see!
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Hahaha…I never even thought of that!
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Oh yeah I get that a lot. But he’s not nearly as handsome as me.
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BINGO……
WE,GOT A WINNER!
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A WINNER IS ME!
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I read the posts out of order — I read this first before I saw the one about the new look. So I opened it and was like, “what the hell is this?”
But now that I know what you’re doing — I like it. I enjoy seeing multiple releases by a single artist that I might not be familiar with.
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Yeah, I scheduled them to post an hour apart. I guess I should have put up the teaser about the new approach and then had the first post go up at noon, or this afternoon, but I was too excited about getting the first one up there! I like that it surprised you, though! Hahaha never know WHAT you’ll get at the KMA!
Thanks, I’m glad you like it! There will likely be many posts with multiple albums per artist – I’m going through my iTunes starting at the top! I won’t be re-doing albums already done. I have too much else to cover to repeat myself! Can you think of anything you’d change/add/subtract at all? You guys are the readers, and we aim to please!
Did you find it said enough? Were you left wanting to know more about Andrew Vincent? Because I’d understand that. He’s awesome!
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This is great! Nicely organized.
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Great, thanks! I was going to put in pics like Scott does but decided to just go with the text and keep it simple. Can you think of anything to add or subtract, change?
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Other than adding pics for context like you’ve mentioned (which you can link to from other sites, not upload if filling up your data on wp is a concern), I like the brevity and how you have it organized.
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So you’d make, say, the title a hyperlink to album info? Like Wiki, something like that? I tried that on an old site I made to list all my stuff and it eventually ate itself. I dunno if it wouldn’t support all the external linking or what. Granted, that was thousands of links and all in one post, but in the long game the KMA would be the same number of links!
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I meant having pics on your posts, and instead of uploading a pic, you would link to a pic of the album you’re reviewing from google images. Of course, with this method, you run the risk of the images you are linking to disappearing…in which case they’d show up as a broken link.
I know you like to keep things as simple as possible on KMA, so this might be too much work. And if so, what you got going is decent.
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What Sarca said there about broken links is why I started using my own pics. I’ve been doing so steadily for about 2 1/2 years. My pics are actually pretty large, too. So far I have used only 1/2 of my allotted storage. More is available for a price, which I will do when the time eventually comes.
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Same here. I used to link in the early days, and stopped because of the broken links. And besides, it allows me to be creative too. I’d probably buy more space when the time comes, or look into linking from G+
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Yeah, I was going to say, you produce good quality pictures. Like 1537 your images are often part and parcel of the postings, they really add something. That in turn inspires me to try and do the same thing. Produce my own images that allow me to do something creative that doesn’t involve words.
I do in phases of creativity. Sometimes I’m writing, sometimes I can’t. The times I can’t, I like to switch over to doing pics and polishing up of posts that are ready to go. That’s like exercising a whole different creative muscle for me, and it gives me a chance to feel refreshed when I want to review some new music.
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I remember reading in the Stephen King book On Writing that when he’s stuck, that’s the time for editing. The act of editing usually (quickly) fires the creative juices back up! Thanks for the comment on the quality pics, but honestly they’re usually just snaps with my cell phone, so… Now, if I used my 40D for them, those would be super nice but also huge files!
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I read that book years ago! I think unconsciously, that’s where I got the idea from. That book was a real eye opener for me.
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Yup, it’s a great one, I still have my copy here. And just yesterday I picked up Ray Bradbury’s “Zen In The Art Of Writing: Releasing The Creative Genius Within You.” The title alone was hilariously worth the $1 I spent!
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Yeah, I may give the linking a miss, as I think about it now… I don’t wanna have to pay (I know it isn’t much), but we have 8 years’ worth of blabbering on here and it’s only at 3% allotted space. I figure, unless WP shits the bed (and it well-might, if they keep mucking with it) we can go for a loooong time on text with only occasional pics!
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I agree. Why mess with a good thing? Maybe make a conscious effort to do a few more pics. Like once a week, have a post that involves a photo, or something. I don’t know.
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I’ll still put up pics every now and then, usually of gifts or cool things or cupfaces! You know, the important stuff! 🙂
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Ah yes! And the you nailed the main worry – broken links. I suppose I could try to find small pics (say, 200 x 200, very few KB) and put those in, but then there’s no consistency in size or quality because it’s unlikely they’d all be static size… I dunno, maybe I’ll just stick with the text for now. Less time fussing, more time rocking and writing!
Did you find enough was said about the records? I mean, if that was all you ever read about any of those, was it enough? It’s tough to combine impressions and enough about it to give a sense of it in a short blurb!
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I think it was enough. If it wasn’t, you can always link to a youtube video. (Or we can look them up ourselves!) With youtube videos I run into the same problem, of dead links. Go back in time 2 years on my blog. Half the videos don’t work anymore.
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Cool thanks! As I was saying to Sarca, getting impressions and enough info in a short blurb proved to be challenging!
Even youtube. eh? Well, forget that then! 😉
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Yup dude, check it out…many of my old reviews don’t have working videos anymore. Usually taken down for copyright infringement. (Not my videos, I’m talking about music videos I found on youtube and embedded.)
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Are you gonna go back and fix ’em? Delete ’em? Or just leave ’em?
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So far I’ve deleted some but left most just because, meh.
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Aha! More fuel to the idea of no links! 😉
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This is great. Like the new format. Are you going to do it like this every day then?
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Hey thanks Scott! I’m glad it’s OK. I was gonna add in pictures of album art, like you do, but I figured I’d just bold and underline the title and get the job done! I may yet do pics but for now I’ll keep it simple with the text.
I dunno if it’ll be every day – it takes time to listen to 5 records! But many of these I’ve already heard lots of times so another spin is just reinforcing what I already know of them, so… maybe? That’d be cool if I could but I dunno if I’ll make it!
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I think pics are always a good idea. A lot of people find your blog that way, looking for album covers.
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The thing will be image size consistency. What do you use?
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Umm… I just add them to WP and our seems to work. When you pick the size it tells you what the dimensions are so I just make sure everything’s pretty similar.
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I’ll have to try it out! I just remember choosing alignment, and Small, Medium or Large. I don’t recall it allowing specification of image size but then again I didn’t look too closely…
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Haha and there I was earlier this morning saying I wasn’t gonna use pics, just leave it simple with text. And here I am entertaining the idea of pics! Clearly I am starting off 2015 with a firm mindset! Thfffpppbbtt! Yeah right. 😉
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Just sat here for a half an hour figuring out the pics thing and it’s still messing up the alignments even though I tell it what I want! It’s not looking good for me having the patience to f**k with this every day. The images look nice but I don’t think it’s worth the hassle for the one time most people will scan a post.
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Fair enough. If it’s too much hassle it’s not worth it. I think if I was posting everyday like you I wouldn’t want to be doing all that.
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Yeah I tried! And it looked really good!… mostly… Ah well. Less time fussing, more time writing!
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Oh yeah, and meant to ask, can you think of anything to add/subtract/change?
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