If conventional wisdom is our guide, writing that second album can be a real bitch for a band. We hear phrases like "sophomore slump" or "sophomore jinx" all the time, yet I can't help but feel that the emphasis on that phenomenon is a little overblown, perhaps a product of our cultural predilection for focusing on the negative. For today, at least, let's turn our attention to those bands who didn't flounder when faced with the challenge of making LP2, but stepped up the plate and launched one over the fence.

Here, I've selected some noteworthy nothin'-but-net second albums and...[read more]

I don't always know what I am going to write about for each week's Thursday Discussion. Sometimes there will be an event throughout the week that is just perfect for a starting point of inspiration for what I want to write about. Sometimes I'm looking at a bunch of random ideas I have stored in a notebook. This week my inspiration comes from a blog post I wrote late last night. I was trying to figure out what I wanted to say about the new read more]

For this week’s Thursday Discussion Jason has handed over the torch to me, so without further ado I wanted to discuss a topic which was inspired by a news submission from one of our users combined with an idea I’d had for this feature for a little while now. Imagine that the year is 2040, which albums do you think future generations and our future selves would consider “greats” from recent years. To put some sort of time constraint on it let’s just include albums released between 1990 and 2010, much like there are...[read more]

Last week I posted up a "demo day" post for our Thursday Discussion -- and you would be pleased to know that all of us on staff, and from the other sites, are pouring through the submissions to find the best of the best. Hopefully soon we'll have that completed and can move on to the next stage: voting. I'll let you know when that's ready. So, for this week I've decided to focus on one of our favorite AP.net arm-chair quarterback discussions: the bands that shoulda/coulda/woulda blown up.

There's not a day...[read more]

Today I want to try something a little different on the website. We get sent new music every single day -- which is awesome, I love music, I love finding new bands. With that, one of the cool things about AP.net is that we've got a fantastic community that's always talking about new bands to check out on. So, I was thinking about this and came up with a new idea that I want to try in lieu of a Thursday Discussion today. What I'm thinking is that I want to open up a thread for a "demo day." Basically, you guys will post...[read more]

Yesterday was a fun little walk down memory lane when we posted up some playlists and thoughts on the state of pop-punk in the music scene. I had a great time reading through all the comments, re-visiting a lot of the albums from my youth, and checking out some of the nu-pop-punk bands that are out there today. While I was getting lost in that thread, I started thinking about how much music can impact, change, and mean to all of us. It's one of those things that sometimes gets lost in the drama and gets overlooked in the...[read more]

At 5pm (PST) tonight we'll have the fine folks from Hopeless Records here to chat on the website. It's definitely going to be a good time, and I wanted to make sure I got my "Thursday Discussion" topic up before it gets too close to the chat. With that in mind, I thought it made sense to pick my top 10 favorite Hopeless Records' releases. While I'm not expecting this one to be quite as giant...[read more]

Well, as promised yesterday -- I've got a Thursday Discussion all ready for you. It's Friday, I know ... and we've got all kinds of crazy stuff going on today as well, but that doesn't mean we can't also talk about one of my favorite topics in music: lyrics. I'd say overall, lyrics draw me to a band more than just about anything else. I love a good vocal, sure ... but if the words are right, nothing else hits me in quite the same way. Now, we could discuss favorite lyricists (and this will be a future topic); however, for today...[read more]

Since we've got so much going on on the homepage today and an awesome chat coming up in just a few hours, I've decided to postpone my "Thursday Discussion" topic until tomorrow. I think it'll be a damn good one, but I really don't want everything to get lost with everything else that we have going on today.

Yesterday on twitter I was talking a little bit about my love for b-sides. Like most of you, I follow a few bands with an unbridled passion. With that comes the idea that I am adamant about collecting all of their songs and not missing out on a rare gem. My 140 character rant was basically about how it's more and more difficult to actually compensate an artist for these rare songs. Unless they end up releasing a rarities album late in their career -- most of the time you're stuck pirating the b-side songs. They're...[read more]

A few day ago, I was searching for something to listen to in the car ... doing one of those "scroll through everything in the iPod and still can't really figure out what I want to hear" things. I ended up putting on the Foo Fighter's live album, Skin and Bones. I've always loved the renditions of the tunes, and the sing-a-long-ness of the live recording. While listening - I got into a discussion with my wife about live recordings in general. Her take was that she just preferred to hear the studio recording, that while...[read more]

It's Thursday, my body and mind is still rebelling against daylight savings time. While other AP.net staffers are posting awesome videos, drinking a lot down at SXSW, and writing album reviews - I'm preparing my Thursday Discussion, and stealing glances at the March Madness games up in the upper right-hand corner of my...[read more]

I've spent the past few Thursdays focusing on bands and albums I have found to be "underrated." Two weeks ago I picked the top 10 underrated bands that are no longer around, and last week it was "underrated albums" from bands that also have classics. What I've enjoyed most about these topics is that it allows me to talk about bands that I adore, but don't get as much love as I think they...[read more]

Reading Patrick Stump's blog post earlier this week was particularly hard on me. It's always been difficult for me to see bands, or albums, that I adore - under-appreciated. It's one of the main reasons I started this website to begin with; I wanted to tell people about music I loved that no one else seemed to be paying attention to. Just last week, as part of our "Thursday Discussion," I posted about read more]

I've started looking forward to getting to post a "Thursday Discussion" topic each week. I wake up and try and get through all the news posting stories I can before mid-day. I then ignore emails for a little while just so I can write-up this post. I think that the discussions over the past few weeks have been great. This week I got an idea as I was posting about The Damnwells - I made an off...[read more]

We like to compare things. We seem, as a society, to enjoy taking the "new" and comparing it to "the old." When a new album comes out from a highly regarded artist, it takes only seconds until the comparisons are made. Is this as good as their debut? Why doesn't this sound like their most famous album? It's virtually impossible to escape it, and the idea behind it has inspired this week's "Thursday Discussion" topic. I wanted to branch out in a new direction with this column, and I was inspired read more]

I'm having one of those "fight off your colds" kinda days. Stupid common cold has me pouring tea down my gullet and wishing I could inject DayQuil directly into my veins. However, that doesn't mean I'm not going to power through with our "Thursday Discussion" for the week. The last two weeks have been a lot of fun as we've focused on the early days; we talked about Drive-Thru Records and we looked at the ridiculously awesome albums in the read more]

I'm unsure if we're ever going to be able to top last week's "Thursday Discussion" post, because that was definitely one of the highlights of the feature for me. However, it's a new day - and that means we aim big. Since we've been having a lot of fun with the "nostalgia-tinged" posts of the past few weeks, I decided to stay on that track. And since we've been having a lot of good discussions around the "2001-2003" era of music, I think that's where I'll...[read more]

Chances are, if you're over drinking age and you've been visiting this website for a while ... you're part of what I'm coining the Drive-Thru Records generation. For a large group of us - this label defined a good portion of our formative years. Reading over the past couple threads about the label showcases just what an attachment so many of us had with this label and their bands. This connection is part of the reason I think so many people are confused about just what the fuck happened to a label that seemed on...[read more]

I've never really wrapped my head around the idea that "EP" stands for extended play, and yet its the shorter version of an album. Extended seems, to me, to mean even longer than long play. Either way, you know the terminology, and I'm going to stop before I open myself up to too many jokes. The topic of today's "Thursday Discussion" post is: my favorite EPs. I feel like standing up for the little guy. The under-appreciated art of brevity. The brave souls that didn't stuff their albums with...[read more]

Last Thursday I broke out the nostalgia tinged "My Chinese Democracy List" feature for discussion. As fate would have it, this week brought us a healthy dose of yesteryear as we learned of reunions from At the Drive In, Refused, and The Receiving End of Sirens. For this week's read more]

As I was scrolling through my iTunes the other day, I rediscovered my love for Brandtson. And as I was realizing how good (and underappreciated) the band was, it made me start thinking about a variety of albums, and collections of songs, that have gone "unreleased" by different bands over the years. So, I decided to make a list of the top 5 I'd love to hear if somehow they could ever see the light of day. Of course, the ones I don't know about would probably dominate this list. Feel free to add your own "Chinese Democracy"...[read more]

Last night, I was able to catch Manchester Orchestra's Spring headlining tour. Not only was the band sharp, their openers were just as great. There was the gritty O'Brother, Chris Staples (Twothirtyeight, Discover America) and the jamming The Features.

It...[read more]

The "single" is a word that lost its worth at the beginning of the decade as its physical sales dwindled. As we approach the end of the same said decade, the digital medium certainly has changed that. With the ability to purchase the equivalent of a mixtape, some of us wonder what will become of the idea of the album - you know, all killer and no filler.

There's something intricate about an album that always messes with my brain when friends and work have the iTunes on shuffle. Is it me, or do you ever hear the end of a song and anticipate the breakdown, or vocal harmony or drum...[read more]

Happy Thanksgiving! What are you guys thankful for this year?

Neon shirts. Similar feminine haircuts. Synth screams. Crunkcore. Well, you can see where I'm going with this. The past decade, and especially the past year, has given us a bit of cookie cutting within our little community. Some of us eat it up, while others look past it. There's no denying that it is selling, and there is a support system somewhere out there.

Are these new blended genres of music just a fad? Is the fan base just a naive crowd? How did we get to a place like this? We've certainly seen a grand homogenization of influences that have really molded into something...[read more]

If you've regularly kept up with my blog or my interviews, you've noticed that I've been a bit obsessive with discussing what this decade had to offer, and what we can expect in the decade to come.

We've certainly scene a flood of artists and musicians take over our lives due to Al Gore's great invention mixed with programs such as Garageband and Reason giving everyone a chance to make their voice and instrument heard. The Internet has opened up opportunity for us to hear great new bands without having to catch them as openers, but has also saturated the market for some of us as...[read more]

If you've been to any festival, you've no doubt seen the ground littered with trash. Whether it's empty soda bottles, scene kids giving free hugs (sick burn!), or those little post cards advertising a band, it covers the ground, and you step all over it. However, you will often see sampler CDs in this same pile.

For some, sampler CDs are a great way to discover new music, while some think they make great projectiles during a live show. What do you think about sampler CDs? Do you listen to them? If so, do you ever hear a band on there and go search for their other stuff? ...[read more]

Your favorite band has just finished the last song from their set, said their goodbyes and thanks yous, and walked off the stage. The performance was great; you want more, as does the rest of the crowd. So you cheer and cheer and cheer, possibly chanting "Play more songs!" The band obliges to your demands and comes back on stage and plays a few more songs.

This is the encore, a way of a band to reward their fans for sticking around and to give them a little something more. Oftentimes a band will save some of their lesser-played songs in the encore so, while some are leaving...[read more]

There's no use avoiding the subject anymore or trying to pretend they don't exist--sites that leak music are out there and don't seem to be going away any time soon. The fans are aware, the record labels are aware, the bands are aware and for all of the policing that's possible once a record leaks, it's never enough to get a true shutdown of blocking the files from being seen. Simply put, once music is let out, it's always going to be out.

Music blogs that run on the intent that they are offering music as a trial for people to download and decide whether or not to purchase. ...[read more]