The XX – Islands – 2:41
The Mary Onettes – Puzzles – 4:31
Phoenix – 1901 – 3:13
The Temper Trap – Sweet Disposition – 3:54
Nickodemus – Sun Children – 4:16
Balkan Beat Box – Adir Adirim (Nickodemus Remix) – 5:23
Ancient Astronauts – Everybody – 4:51
The Asteroids Galaxy Tour – The Golden Age – 3:50
U2 – Magnificent – 5:24
White Lies – E.S.T. – 5:02
Silversun Pickups – Growing Old Is Getting Old – 5:54
Say Hi – November Was White, December Was Grey – 3:04
Cassian – The Fuck Song – 3:40

Social networking hit the music space a few years ago. Blip.fm & Last.fm are two ventures that have tried to address the difficulties around the social sharing of music. The problem is that DRM gets in the way. The song libraries are limited, finding quality links that work is even more spotty.

I find much of what I listen to from music blogs. They have become one of the primary ways that I discover new music. They are also a perfect medium to share music with others. However, I’m not an expert on music, more of a connoisseur, and while I don’t feel qualified to start a music blog I still want to share tunes I like with others.

So I’m going to get back to using opentape and try to keep it up once a month. Going forward, I’ll share a few songs each month. Some times I’ll try to organize them into a theme. Just trying to have a little fun, share some tunes, & get a little feedback from others about what they like. Maybe if I’m lucky, I’ll discover some new stuff through this effort, so please share your thoughts in the comments.

~ Cheers – JB

2010 – July Edition – Chillax

• Storm Across The Sea    Chuck Prophet    2002
• Another Noon    Jon Roy    2008
• Giving Up    One Eskimo
• Kim & Jessie    M83    2008
• Ecstasy    JJ    2009
• House Of Cards    Radiohead    2008
• Three Seed    Silversun Pickups    2006
• Mirror    Supreme Beings Of Leisure    2008
• The State Of The Union    Thievery Corporation    2002
• B.I.B.L.E. (Basic Instruction Before Leaving Earth)    GZA    1995
• Take Five [Live]    Rodrigo Y Gabriela    2008
• B Minor (From “Elm Street”)    Lanterna    2008

Saw The Beautiful Girls open for O.A.R. in Chicago this past summer. The Shins originally hail my hometown, Albuquerque, NM. Ghostland Observatory, The Kooks, & The Raveonettes round out the Top 5.

Bonus: The Raveonettes song is free right now in the Amazon Store. 243kb of DRM-free goodness for your collection. Click the link.

All the songs are in my opentape at http://jbinfrisco.com/opentape/

The Beautiful Girls – “I Thought About You”

The Shins – “Phantom Limb”

Ghostland Observatory – “Over Again”

The Kooks – “Naive”

The Raveonettes – “Dead Sound”

• Listen to the songs on my OpenTape at http://jbinfrisco.com/opentape/
• If you dig the song, click the link below to buy it. Amazon sells DRM-free music at great prices. The bit rate is higher than iTunes and the music is playable on any device that plays mp3′s. DRM-free is the best way to build your personal music collection. I’ll plow any revenues back into more music in 2009.

My near obsessive lust for discovering new sounds resulted in almost 1100 additions to my iTunes library. Here are five from January, 2008. Regards ~ JB

The Ting Tings – “That’s Not My Name”

Finger Eleven – “Paralyzer”

Okkervil River – “Unless It’s Kicks”

Vampire Weekend – “Oxford Comma”

The Damnwells – “Down With The Ship” - Not listed by Amazon

The scripts do nothing until you visit a particular website that recognizes the code as a script that it needs to interact with. All of this is handled behind the scenes.

One word of caution for newbies, Greasemonkey can lead to security issues so use a trusted source. Don’t be the first to install a script if you don’t know or trust the developer. Stick with well-known and recommended scripts until you feel more comfortable with how it all works. Learn more at Greasespot, the weblog for Greasemonkey.

Why should you spend time on this?

The benefit of Greasemonkey is that a user can enhance their favorite websites creating a more efficient or enriching online experience.

Give me an idea of what the heck you are talking about?

There are hundreds of add-ons at Userscripts.org. Despite being a relatively new service I found four scripts written for Blip.fm. Blip.fm Comments Hack 0.2 was written by Lius Fontenelle Carneiro. The script allows comments to be made on any blip (see picture below). Currently this feature isn’t available for regular users. With enough adoption, the Blip.fm developers may look to the GreaseMonkey community for inspiration as new features are baked into the network.

Here is a screen shot. It’s been modified a bit to render in English as the developer coded in good ‘ol Espanol. Aside from that no other tweaking necessary.

Greasemonkey + Blip.fm Commenting Script

Steps involved:

• 1. Get Firefox
• 2. Install Greasemonkey plug-in
• 3. Sign up for Blip.fm
• 4. Install Greasemonkey + Blip.fm commenting script.
• 5. Comment away. Be pithy. Be nice.
• 6. Did anyone catch the title reference?

• The Mugs – Broken Signals
• The Airborne Toxic Event – Sometime Around Midnight
• Reckless Kelly – Wicked Twisted Road
• New London Fire – Different
• The Police – Walking in Your Footsteps (Derangement remix – by Stewart Copeland)
• The Kooks – Naive
• k-os – Fly Paper
• Blitzen Trapper – Furr
• Silversun Pickups – Rusted Wheel
• Papadosio – Polygons
• Mike Doughty – Looking At The World From The Bottom Of A Well

I thought it would be fun to put up some songs currently unavailable on Blip.fm. These songs deserve an audience. I’ll have a new list every few weeks so bookmark http://jbinfrisco.com/opentape and swing by for a listen. And if you start blippin too, come check out my profile and say hello.

Volume 2

• The Getaway People – Six Pacs
• Sweatshop Union – Try
• Toad the Wet Sprocket – In My Ear
• Sneaker Pimps – Tesko Suicide
• Stabilizers – One Simple Thing
• Pleasure Thieves – My Favorite Drug
• On Second Thought – Wait Up
• Sublime – What Happened
• P.M. Dawn – In the Presence of Mirrors
• R.E.M. – Let Me In (Live October 21 2001)

Did you ever own a tape recorder when you were a kid? Well if you are 30 something you probably did. First were the big bulky one-speakered GE models, then the boom boxes, and then the Sony walkman. I remember listening to my radio and waiting for songs I liked to come on the radio so I could record them. The idea of being able to play music “on demand” enthralled me.

Well one look at this site and I think you will agree that we have moved out of the dark ages. This nifty little web app brings back a simple concept, the mixtape. You can upload up to 12 songs (10MB each) and then send on to friends. No more burning discs and shipping around the globe.

I can think of dozens of ways to ‘socialize’ this site. Can’t wait to see what develops here. Check out this months first effort from moi. Silversun Pickups, Frightened Rabbit, Kooks, & more.

JBinFrisco’s 1st Muxtape

You can use your right and left arrow keys to go thru the songs, return pauses. Awesome.

Update: It appears you can’t share the muxtape link directly. Still trying to figure it out. Too bad, this mix I made is BA!!!!