It’s been about two years since “First Impressions of Earth” was released.  The Strokes say that they are planning on having the followup released next year, and its wonderful of them to fit that into their busy schedule; they all seem to have side projects worth checking out.

Julian did a song not too long ago with Pharrell and Santogold for converse called “My Drive Thru” which is pretty good.

Albert Hammond, Jr. released his second solo disc “¿Cómo Te Llama?” which is not as good as the first bust still worth a listen.

Nikolai Fraiture has a side project called Nickel Eye with Regina Spektor and Nick Zinner from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

Nick Valensi has done some work with Devandra Banhart and Regina Spektor.

Fabrizio Moretti has been getting the most press lately.  Kevin is the one that first told me about this band, Little Joy.  Little Joy is made up of Fab, his girlfriend, Binky, producer Noah Georgeson, and Los Hermanos guitarist Rodrigo Amarante. Just like all the other projects, it doesn’t sound that far off from The Strokes.  Check it out a better story about it here.

When dj-ing high school and grade school dances, you need the latest jams.  Buy the latest NOW cd and download whatever the top ten songs are on B96 or KissFm and its covered.  Its usually a lot of crap, but a few are worth while or at least guilty pleasures.

I realize that I am treading on thin ice of being a big dork/nerd by writing on a blog to begin with, but I’ve been recently enjoying the blog Pretty Much Amazing.  It’s got a lot of these “jams” that I was talking about.  Today I found the new Beyonce song and remix of the new Kanye song mashing it with a ZZ Top song.