This weekend I went to the MFA to watch one of a series of screenings of the years best music videos. In the last couple years I have become much more interested in music videos as art and have loved the Director Series – a great DVD set that highlights different directors. The Michel Gondry
dvd is really incredible & I have probably lent that sucker out to more people than any other dvd I’ve ever owned.

Anyways, the screening was great, part of the Mirrorball Best of 2006 Animated collection – here is the setlist. I had seen only a few, so most of them were pleasant surprises.

The best of the bunch was definitely the video for Jason Forrest’s song “War Photographer” – I embedded the youtube video below. I had goosebumps the first time I saw it – it is that awesome.

1.) I’m Smarter Than You Radio direct link

I found this kickass radio station on Shoutcast a few months ago and have been glued to it since then. The music is a great mix of new stuff, old stuff that I have never heard and the occasional esoteric tune from beyond the spectrum thrown in. I don’t really understand if someone actively sets the playlist or if it is semi-random/shuffled, but I have found a lot of great music from tuning in. It also plays a lot of genuinely good music that I already have, which is the point of good radio, the delicate mix of old & new.

I first heard Girl Talk on this ol’ radiostation, bought the cds, I went to a Girl Talk show at the MiddleEast last Saturday. The live show was fantastic – the same concept of Night Ripper, but put together much differently with some longer pieces. I also really enjoyed the opening act, Dan Deacon – great “kinda hard to explain music” – had an awesome sing-along during the concert. Here’s an amusing piece about him in the Baltimore CityPaper.They closed a night with a Dan Decon/Girl Talk duet of Senseless Apprentice – most likely a once in a lifetime experience!

2.) The Roku M1001

Recently I moved my computer out of my bed room doing some fancy reworking of the living situation. The downfall of this was that my precious musics were trapped downstairs on my computer. While perusing streaming music solutions, this little device came onto my radar. Lots of streaming devices either look ugly or are impractical (they stream whatever is currently playing on your computer). Will looking at the M1001 on the Roku site they were offering a $50 off coupon, so I bit the bullet & bought it. Not only is this puppy a painless way to navigate your music library from another room, even with 7,000 songs, it actually looks pretty classy! Whoa!

It can pretty effortlessly switch between different peoples shared music library and rarely needs to buffer any thing, snappy. A big plus is that it streams internet radio without a computer turned on. So, I can flip it on and in under 5 seconds, it streams imsmarterthanyou radio right into my life, awesomeness.

3.) Shankly Mixes on Bittorrent

I have no idea who Shankly is but he makes some really kickass mixes. What I assume to be his lowly servant, Shankly’s Love Child diligently puts his mixes on Bittorent once a month. There is some really fantastic music in there that I have really enjoyed and actually purchased. The shear bulk of good music is a bit intimidating, tons of new music but lots of live/covers/mashups as well. Throw a couple months worth of mixes on random and you will be blessed with some really great tunes. I actually get giddy when acquiring the newest set. It’s a great balance to imsmarterthanyou – 99% of the stuff is new to me and