If anyone’s a big a fan of Danger Mouse as I am, you can check out the new collaboration with Shin’s frontman, James Mercer, called Broken Bells. They are giving away a sample song on the site.
Not sure how long this band has been around, but I just heard about the Cave Weddings, so its new to me. Pretty awesome.
Most of you have probably heard this already, but Neil Diamond has a holiday album with a cover of Adam Sandler’s Hanukkah Song. Besides the general strangeness of covering the song, it is very bizarre that he feels the need to change “tom cruise isn’t, but I think his agent is” to “…but Jesus Christ is.” Also bizarre that he felt the needed to say “don’t smoke your marijuanica.” But if that wasn’t enough, he does a song called “Cherry, Cherry Christmas” where he takes the names of all his popular songs and inserts them into a new song about the holidays. You can check them out at the hype machine or his myspace.
While not a holiday song, it would be a great gift for me: White Stripes Live dvd “Under the Great White Northern Lights.” You can now see the full version of “Let’s Shake Hands” on their myspace.
This might be a stretch, but Christmas just came early for a couple bands. They just released all the inductees for this the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this year.  For once, I am happy with all of the picks: ABBA, the Hollies, Genesis, Jimmy Cliff, and The Stooges.
This will probably not be the last time that I report about a site’s best-of-the-year list or best-of-the-decade list. Berkeley Place put up a list of the best independent albums put out this year. One I hadn’t seen/read before was #2: Frank Turner. The site proclaims him as the next Joe Strummer, and I tend to agree. Describing him as “Punk Folk,” couldn’t be more spot on. I couldn’t get his myspace to work, so check him out on the Hype Machine or with the song on Berkeley Place that turned me on to him:
