Kevin Purdy

Want to help me round this out? I’m not a Buffalo/Rochester native, but a (nearly) 10-year veteran; this is just a quick thumbnail I dashed off. Leave your track suggestions in the comments, and I’ll update the playlist embedded above. Click the upper-right corner button for a bigger view.

What am I looking for? Songs that ring true with the WNY experience; hence “Livin’ on a Prayer,” which I’ve never seen fail at a Buffalo bar or concert, and which has lyrics that, sadly, resonate pretty well. Local artists and directly-related songs are great. Nearby Canadian stuff is cool, too. But I’m just looking for a wide net to cast around the music that defines the region.

Edit: Commenter Knile points out that this came up on MetaFilter last month, unbeknownst to me (but awesomely helpful).

(Disclosure: This awesome app was made by my boss at Lifehacker)

Sarah and Samuel Beam, on-stage at Asbury Hall/Babeville, Nov. 12, 2008. Photo by LibraRonin.

Iron & Wine is one of the very few music acts the wife and I have Absolute Agreement on, so we snapped up tickets to their Nov. 12 gig at Ani DiFranco’s Babeville, a.k.a. Asbury Hall, as soon as we knew about the gig.

Samuel Beam walked onto the stage of the renovated church hall, looked out from heavy eyes and said, “Wow. I didn’t know there were this many people in Buffalo.” At that moment, it seemed a bit like … everything anyone’s ever said about Buffalo after spending some real time here (or so I tell myself). Listening to it now, though, it seems more in line with his general shyness and modesty, to see that many people lining the halls of the arching space.

I teased PlayedLastNight.com a bit about the literalness of their releases, but, one week later, you can preview, buy and download the whole 18-song, 1-hour-35-minute Iron & Wine set from that show. The basic $9.95 package gets you MP3 files with a 160 kb/s bitrate–decent enough for headphones and non-audiophile enjoyment. $3 more gets you (via email, two days later) FLAC files that haven’t lost any audio quality in compression.

Quick tip on the sly: One YouTube user has posted three full song videos from the Asbury Hall gig. Consumer-cam quality, but pretty neat angle.

Only Thom Yorke can properly express the disillusionment
generated by his recent headlines.

I didn’t really notice that I had an AM station on my car radio while I was driving home tonight … until I heard a CBS News announcer say this:

Well, those looking to escape the “Karma Police” have their chance … the band Radiohead is asking fans to …

And you probably know the rest of the story, despite head-scratching lines like that. It’s cheesy and kind of sad, yet somehow not the worst one out there! Inspired Sickly fascinated, I ventured into the relevance-clutching music journalism (and blogging!) to see if there was anything even better worse. Here’s the bounty:

• OK, Now What, Mr. Computer?: Cinema Blend reaches just beyond the lengths of anything relevant to the story to pull out this gem. Saved only by the fact that it is, after all, a pretty ridiculously great album.
• What’s at the end of Radiohead’s Rainbows?: Points for actually mentioning the underlying news that the world’s most critically-acclaimed band is releasing a new disc. Demerits for making the boys from Oxfordshire into leprechauns.
• RADIOHEADING IN A NEW DIRECTION: NY Post headlines are like fresh guacamole — you always forget how good they are until the next time you sample one.
• Radiohead’s digital album: Priceless: What a clever, funny headline.
• Radiohead’s Rainbows Ready to Shine: Much like E! itself, it’s kind of phoned-in and doesn’t really tell you anything you didn’t know. So, in a way, kind of perfect.