Rocktoberfest music, part two

So I'm blogging to you live from the Mazda dealership waiting room, where they have power strips, wireless internet, Ellen on TV and popcorn -- hot, buttered popcorn. It's amazing the things they've done with customer service.

But I digress.

As you might recall, I'm on a new music binge as part of my Rocktoberfest celebration, buying a new CD for each week this month. But I'll get to that in a moment. First, I want to share with you a pretty cool, almost awesome website.

NuTsie (I don't know why the random capitalization) is a site where you can create virtual playlists by either pulling from the site's database of music or uploading your iTunes playlist (sorta). You then have the option of nuTsie suggesting new tunes that fit with your current playlist, kind of like Pandora. The bonus over Pandora here is that you get to actually select some tunes you want to hear rather than just hearing what the website wants you to here.

In addition to all of that, you can play your list on your mobile device, share your list with others, watch music videos, view song lyrics and download ringtones.

So why am I not 100 percent sold, jumping up and down about this? Because the site is not the most intutive site to use, and I can't seem to find a link that explains how it works -- only a link that says what it can do. Besides that, I wanted to use nuTsie to share with you a playlist of Rocktoberfest music that I'm going to be sampling next week, but I couldn't find a single one of the songs in the database, so I'm guessing their musical pockets aren't that deep. After I created a very short and basic playlist, it didn't have the most creative suggestions of new music, just more songs by the artists I already had on there.

Anyway, it's still worth checking out.

Now, about the Rocktoberfest music selection of the week. On the recommendation of The Modern Beau's sister, I bought an album by The Killers. I knew the song When You Were Young from my close and personal relationship with Guitar Hero and kind of dug it, so I bought the album Sam's Town.

I'm not going to even go to the trouble of offering my own review and instead just quote the Rolling Stone review (which I wish I had read before buying the album).

"So why is it (When You Were Young) the single? Because it's the closest thing to a good song on the album.

"All over Sam's Town, the Killers leave no pompous arena cliche untweaked in their quest to rewrite "Born to Run" - even though one of the reasons Springsteen's a genius is that he's never tried to rewrite "Born to Run" himself.

Exactly. Every song on the album is pretty much the same dang thing. Starts soft and emo, slowly builds and then WHAM! CRESCENDO! and then fade out and el fin. How's that for some innovation?

I've decided to take my musical search in a new direction for the coming week. The local entertainment agency -- that is, the one that brings you Bonnaroo each year -- has created a monthly live radio show called Tennessee Shines, akin to the Grand Ole Opry, but a little more East Tennessee bluegrass than Middle Tennessee country music. They posted some selections from the upcoming show on their myspace page, and it's freakin' awesome stuff, so go check it out. Seriously. Go listen.