Music

Prince has always held a special place for me. I spent my summers growing up with grandparents, an hour north of the suburbs of Milwaukee, where I lived. In 1984 I was 11 and I still remember walking to the record shop to purchase my first record, Prince’s Purple Rain. Years later, I would joke that if my grandparents or parents knew of some of the lyrics on that album, I would never have been able to buy it.

As a transplant to Minnesota from Wisconsin, I’ve now spent over half my life here. I’m a cheesehead through and through, but if there is one thing that Minnesota has that Wisconsin has never had, it’s the music. The first album I ever bought was Prince’s Purple Rain and my first ever trip to Minnesota I actually met Prince, which is another story for a different time. A few years later I was living here and I won tickets on Rev105 to a local music showcase at First Avenue.

A few weeks ago I was out watching football with some buddies. I was talking about my new car and how I was disappointed it didn’t have Radio Data System built in, which shows you the song name and title when listening to the radio. “Who still listens to the radio?!” he said. I replied, “I listen to The Current! We have one of the best public radio stations in the country!

[http://www.flickr.com/photos/silwenae/11061236153/in/set-72157638067918784/player/] With 2013 now in the books, I’d like to share some of my favorite albums of 2013. After Polica dropped their debut album digitally on December 20th, 2011, I’ve learned to wait until the year is over to share my favorite albums – don’t want to miss one! These might not be the critic’s choices, but these are albums I like, and almost all of them I’ve bought on vinyl this year.

Best of Bootie 2013 is out! And just in time for Christmas, too! Featuring 22 of the year’s best mashups from some of the best DJs currently in the business, Best of Bootie 2013 is available as one big MP3 file or 22 tracks in one convenient zip file. Curated by A Plus D, aka DJs Adrian & Mysterious D, founders of Bootie, they didn’t just stop with their 22 favorite mashups – there are also 10 bonus mashups available for download, too.

Summer is the slow time for new music releases and August saw a number of great new releases, with even more coming later this fall. Here’s some of the new releases I picked up on vinyl in August: Superchunk – I Hate Music: The alt rockers have been around since 1989(!) and I Hate Music is their tenth album. The album is short and sweet, clocking in at just over 37 minutes.

One of the albums I’ve been looking forward to the most this year is finally out today. The Bones of What You Believe In by the Glasgow band Chvrches has had singles released all summer long and the wait has been killing me. I’m only half way through my first listen on Rdio and it’s everything I wanted and more. UPS will be delivering my vinyl copy later today and I can’t wait to give it a spin.

[http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mattlunsford/help-us-save-our-office/widget/card.html] You can’t turn around these days without hearing about Kickstarter. From movies, music, books or technology products, it seems everyone is using Kickstarter to raise funds to start a project. Over the course of the next week, I’ll be blogging about some of the projects I’ve backed, reviews, and thoughts about how Kickstarter may be used in the future. What is Kickstarter? From their frequently asked questions: _Kickstarter is a funding platform for creative projects.