Random Musings

* Mark Bacino has a new album in the works and has made an mp3 from it available for download:

Happy (www.thequeensenglish.com/mp3s/Happy.mp3)

(Note: You'll have to cut and paste the link here due to some Blogger quirk I can't manage to figure out, as it kept putting extraneous stuff in the link when I tried to hyperlink it.)

If you're not familiar with Mr. Bacino, head on over to eMusic and sample his previous release, 2003's Million Dollar Milkshake, or his myspace page. Or better yet, grab several mp3s from that album and his first, Popjob, at his official site.

* If like me, you loved Ryan Adams circa 2001's Gold but grew impatient with his subsequent genre exercises, grab a hold of the latest Griffin House disc, Homecoming. It's available at eMusic, and the highlights include "Burning Up The Night" and the Adamsesque-titled "The Guy That Says Goodbye to You Is Out of His Mind". Three tracks from it are also streaming at myspace.

* In case you wondering whatever happened to Cotton Mather's Robert Harrison, wonder no more. He has a new band/project titled Future Clouds and Radar, and they're releasing a self-titled double disc on March 13. From what I've heard ahead of time, it's going to be more art pop than power pop, but you can judge for yourself from these two mp3s:

Drugstore Bust
Quicksilver

Meanwhile, nothing new to report on Stockton, the band formed by the other two former members of Mather, who gave us the brilliant track "Dreamworld" (still streaming at their myspace page). If you go to their myspace, it still states the debut album is to be released in "late 2006".