The first is The 99 Most Essential Beethoven Masterpieces for $2. Yes, you read that correctly, $2. And they aren’t just little 1:30 recordings, they are full length recordings.

The second is 50 albums for $5 each. Albums are from such artists as B.B. King, Coldplay, Beck, Radiohead, etc.

Enjoy the cheap, DRM-free tunes.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I became acquainted with the music of Sufjan Stevens a short while ago through the wonderful music genome project at Pandora. Well, before Aj and I headed out for the weekend she burned off a Christmas Mix CD that featured two Christmas songs by Sufjan. The whole album was good, but those two songs have been stuck in my head, so I did some searching today and found that he actually has a Christmas “box set.” The best part of it is that you can stream all 5 albums online! Click here to get to it. The song stuck in my head the most is “Once in Royal David’s City” on volume 2 (Hark!).

[tags]Scrubs, Charlie Brown Christmas, mashup, Sufjan Stevens[/tags]

via AppleInsider

[tags]The Beatles, iPod, iTunes[/tags]

**EDIT** You need to wath all of Erik’s videos here. Especially the one titled “Percusienfa.”  His official website is here.
[tags]Erik Mongrain, guitar[/tags]

Speaking of Chris Cornell singing other peoples’ songs, my bro-in-law and I were talking about Audioslave the other day, and he mentioned that they are playing Rage and Soundgarden songs at their live shows. Obviously Chris can pull off Soundgarden songs, and the rest of the band could probably do a decent job of achieving the Soundgarden sound, but there is NO WAY that Chris will ever be able to pull off anything that sounds like Zack de la Rocha. Zach is…well…Zach. Chris is too rock sounding to be able to pull off the anger, passion, and general pissed-off-ness that makes Zach sound how he does. I’m trying to imagine how Bulls on Parade or Bombtrack would sound with Chris singing it, and it just seems funny.

On my first listen I didn’t know what to think about it. The music was enjoyable, but it wasn’t what I’ve come to expect from them. When I think about the kind of music that drew me to DMB it was the jazzy, jam laden tunes that could go on for 35 minutes in improvisational bliss. Before These Crowded Streets was the epitome of this jammie sound.

The more I sat and listened to this album the more I realized that those parts are still there. My brother-in-law’s roommate made a comment about the latest Weezer album that I think is very fitting to this offering from DMB. Stand Up is a really good album that falls victim to the recent studio history of DMB. To quote another review by a DMB fan, “Stand Up is literally Everyday dressed up in Before These Crowded Streets’ clothing.”

In 2000 we saw the failed Lillywhite Sessions. 2001 brought us Everyday, an over-produced studio album that was on its own merit a good album, but in no way what hard core DMB fans wanted to hear. Some of the Lillywhite tracks reappeared on Busted Stuff in 2002. I feel like, if you remove the albums from 2000-2002, Stand Up is an appropriate follow-up to BTCS, but with the studio happenings of the last few years I sense that many fans don’t know what direction the band is trying to go in.

Go check this album out. It is definitely worth the $12 on iTunes – yes, the full album is out on iTunes, and comes with a digital booklet and promotional video. I give it 3 out of 4 stars.