Music You've Never Heard: Anam Kara

When CNET bought MP3.com and deleted all of its songs back in late 2003, it made a lot of music, for lack of a better term, 'extinct'. Many artists had only uploaded their music to MP3.com before breaking up, and when CNET removed all of the old content on the site in preparation for their relaunch, it removed the only proof that many of these bands ever existed, leaving the music lost forever.

A good example of this is the pop-rock band Anam Kara. A precursory search for "Anam Kara" reveals that there is indeed a band that shares the name, but it's a Celtic Rock group, not the same band. The pop-rock Anam Kara released 2 songs to MP3.com, posted nearly no info about themselves, and broke up (hard to tell when, exactly), leaving behind next to no evidence, save a review for one of their tracks on the now defunct GodsofMusic.com (itself a valuable site that seems to have disappeared with only archive.org to carry its torch).

Of their two tracks, "Soul Disguise" is the most immediate, seeming like an attempt to cash in on rap-rock's quickly dwindling popularity. The twist is, the verses are sung, whereas the chorus is rapped. "Remember", on the other hand, has (so far as I can tell) never been mentioned anywhere. It's a more straight-forward pop-rock song, and while the words are a little tough to make out at times, it packs some emotional punch.

Neither track is mind-blowing, they both sound pretty rough and are in need of a couple of retakes that will obviously never happen; but they have managed to give me a reason to keep coming back to them years after the rest of the internet forgot they existed.

Anam Kara - Soul Disguise
Anam Kara - Remember

Worth Noting.

Thirty degrees below zero is COLD. Even if that were "just" the wind chill, it would be brutal, but when it's the air temperature, it's murder. We hit thirty below yesterday for the first time in five years.

...and it's supposed to be colder tomorrow.

As Noel Gallagher said while bantering with the crowd at the Oasis show I saw recently, "you guys do know there's a place called 'California', right?"

Top 30 Most Listened To Songs of 2008

30. Mogwai - Friend of the Night
29. Ladytron - Black Cat
28. Cold - With My Mind
27. Vampire Weekend - Oxford Comma
26. Gob - 18
25. Garry Schyman - Bioshock Main Theme (The Ocean on His Shoulders)
24. Gnarls Barkley - Run (I'm a Natural Disaster)
23. Reed KD - You Can Call Me
22. Children 18:3 - Homemade Valentine
21. M.I.A. - Come Around (feat. Timbaland)
20. ...And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead - Let it Dive
19. Why? - The Vowels, part 2
18. Lupe Fiasco - Go Go Gadget Flow
17. Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson - Buriedfed
16. Children 18:3 - Time and Wasted Bullets
15. Why? - The Hollows
14. My Bloody Valentine - Only Shallow
13. Shiny Toy Guns - Don't Cry Out
12. Broken Social Scene - Almost Crimes (Radio Kills Remix)
11. Crystal Castles - Air War
10. TV on the Radio - Wolf Like Me
9. Crystal Castles - Knights
8. The Hold Steady - Constructive Summer
7. Modest Mouse - Florida
6. Okkervil River - Our Life is Not a Movie or Maybe
5. Crystal Castles - Untrust Us
4. Children 18:3 - LCM
3. Grizzly Bear - While You Wait For the Others
2. The New Pornographers - The Bleeding Heart Show
1. The Magnetic Fields - Three-Way