What Could Be Better than a Magical Bin of Free CDs?

Last Thursday, my friend and I ditched school for the afternoon to partake in a unique, exclusive educational opportunity to learn inside info about radio production and the music industry ( and yes, using this line will make Shindel let you out of class). We won tickets to "chill out" with Secondhand Serenade, and while this experience was more interesting (and educational!) than we ever expected, I would like to take this opportunity to tell you the story of my experience listening to the free CDs I picked up at the radio station.

LAME! you say. I WANT TO KNOW ABOUT SECONDHAND SERENADE! To which I say, no, you really don't. But also, this story is not that lame. It is filled with fear, love, disappointment, and betrayal. Yeah, I could like make an action movie about me listening to CDs.

When my friend and I first arrived at the radio station (Hot 99.5), the receptionist waved us over to a group of couches where I learned why I am in love with radio stations: their reception areas have magical postal bins filled to the brims with FREE CDs!!!! *o*

Upon discovering that the CDs in the bins were free for the taking, I let out an exalted exclamation of "Sweet!" and dug through them like a pirate with a treasure chest.

It soon became clear that most of the discs weren't as gold as the signed singles decorating the walls of the reception area, but I soon found about 10 pieces of musical treasure buried in the chest.

The disc that stood out the most to me was one of the only ones not in a plastic jewel case. It was just an inauspicious 700 MB CD-RW from Staples with End State Let's Get Living! written on it in Sharpie, but what warmed my heart about it was an adorable picture of a castle and three clouds drawn on the disc. I absolutely loved the disc because it was hand-decorated. I mean, what if these End State guys hit it big soon and I'm one of the few people with a first edition, homemade, hand-decorated version of their first single??!

Sadly, I think End State (local band from Stafford, Virginia, fyi) has a long way to go before hitting it big... Their pop-punk instrumentals were great, but their lead singer left a bit to be desired. I'm totally cool with bands with poor vocalists (see Hellogoodbye and Millionaires), so I was okay with the vocals until he started screaming. I am not a huge screamo fan (except for the screams on "Admit It!!!" by Say Anything - gotta love it), so this was a bit of a turn-off. When he started creepily rasping something that sounded like "Lindsay, what are you doing?", I started wondering if there were any axe murderers in the area... Okay, it probably wasn't scary enough to freak a normal person out, but I just picked up this CD for free from a radio station; who knows what could be on it...

All in all, I can see why Hot 99.5 was giving it away for free. I would love to give it away for free. If I ever go back to Hot 99.5 headquarters, I may return it to its rightful place in the Magical Free Bin. Or maybe its rightful place is the trash...

So, after End State was a dead end, I decided to save my other spur-of-the-moment picks for sometime when the sun was shining and listen to something more on the safe side. And who's safer than acclaimed indie band Tokyo Police Club? "Tessellate" and "Your English is Good" aren't exactly anything you haven't heard before, but it was cool knowing that the CDs I got them from might actually have been popular enough to played on Hot 99.5... And I've never been a big enough fan of Tokyo Police Club to buy any of their music, but their nasaly Canadian voices sounded like heaven after creepy-raspy-screaming-off-key-NoVa guy. I actually listened to their songs three times in a row I was so glad they weren't some punk/screamo band. Then I realized that "Your English is Good" is not just good; it is amazing, and I totally should have bought it before this. But, I have it for free now, so it's all good ^^

Next two singles I checked out were "Graduation Day" and "Beating Heart Baby" by Head Automatica. Though repetitive, "Graduation Day" was pretty fun to listen to. "Beating Heart Baby" wasn't so fun, but my patience was wearing pretty thin by this point. I barely registered the next single I picked up, "Strange Times" by The Black Keys, except to note that their sound is a lot more hard rock and less cutesy indie than I previously thought.

After listening to "Your English is Good" again for the fifth time, I decided to call it a night and check out the rest of the CDs later, preferably when the sun was out so I would be sure no crappy NoVa punk bands would lead the axe murderers to me. The next day brought no sunlight (just a few weak snow flurries), but I felt safe enough to check out the CD with the best cover art, one whose title was simply "LIGHTS" but whose covers were decorated with colorful pictures of a girl and a gun... Yeah, the gun freaked me out a bit, but she was a really cool-looking girl...

When I opened the case, I realized there was no disc inside! Great cover art, some contact info, and a list of who wrote each song, but no disc! Feeling a bit dumb, I decided to go to the MySpace listed inside the cover to see what I was missing.

In contrast to End State's adorable album art and creepadelic songs, Lights had slightly creepy art and beautiful pop music. Her MySpace's tagline "To err is human; to forgive is interplanetary" clued me in to the fact that the guns were meant more for shooting fictitious aliens than like, actual people... Oh.

Turns out, Lights is the work of a Canadian chick (full bio in comic form here) who strongly reminds me of Skye Sweetnam (like, freakishly, like, wow) and will be performing at my fave sketchy Baltimore club Sonar next Tuesday (another unfortunately scheduled concert, but I recommend you go & tell her your supercool blogger friend adores her! ;) ) Her pleasant pop music isn't as bold as her album art, but its production is certainly as pretty as the EP's pink & purple cover. So now I am quite bummed because I will actually have to pay money for these songs. But I have no reason to be bummed; I discovered a supercool new Canadian chick & have a pretty decent story to tell about it!

Also, I may buy the album on pink vinyl, which will make it soooo much cooler...

Another single I picked up was +44's "155". The pleasant pop-punk song with its chorus of "Let's go down to the water" totally blows End State out of the water but is not quite good enough to keep the song afloat when compared to blink-182's stuff. Mark Hoppus, I expect better.

Having gone through all the CDs by bands I've actually heard of, I had to check out another pick based solely on cover art: The Becoming by After Midnight Project. Their album looked almost as dark as their name, but their first track, "Take Me Home," was still ten times more fun than any song by End State. Gee, I love having my standards lowered. These bands all sound so professional compared to End State... Sorry for the constant End State abuse. I still think the picture of the castle they drew was adorable... and... okay, that's the nicest thing I have to say about them...

AMP (love the abbrev) got a bit screamy on "The Real Thing." More metalheads should visit Hot 99.5; they'd get some great deals.

Third track "Digital Crush" reminded me of "Party in Your Bedroom" by Cash Cash in that both seem to be about guys who are enamored with girls who do dirty things to their webcams without explicitly saying that the girls do dirty things to their webcams. Sonically, of course, the songs are totally different - AMP is not exactly an electro-pop-punk boy band in highlighter yellow skinny jeans. But I wonder if their songs about love online are just a coincidence (especially since neither of them are exactly a big deal) or if they're an indication that we'll be hearing about more musicians' crushes on girls who make their own softcore porn... Then again, "I.M. Me" by Nikki/Brittney Cleary didn't exactly spawn a bunch of hits about AOL...

I think I'm going to listen to that song now. It was kind of hilarious when it was released; I can't wait to hear what it sounds like now that AIM has ttly been replaced by G-chat... Besides, "Words" and "The Becoming" are nothing special either.

TTYL
No time to spell
Oops, there goes that little bell
Bye, bye for now
BBFN

Ahahaha, that song was even more unbelievable than a magical bin of free CDs...

[In case you are not familiar with this glorious example of early-2000's pop songwriting, read these free scrolling lyrics:]

I.M. Me Lyrics

[Note: OMG I was lyk so ttly sad I could not find "I.M. Me" on Rhapsody or YouTube or ANYTHING, but after 3 pages of Google results, I found this crappy lil mp3 of it. Maybe it's just my computer, but I've only been able to hear about 30 seconds of music form it. Either way, I wanted you to have the link and the knowledge that it was not worth 10 minutes of searching for this obsolete little pop song. Crappy early-2000's pop is crappy early-2000's pop, no matter how innovatively tacky it seemed at the time.]

[Edit: JK! I managed to get about 2 more minutes of audio out of that crappy lil mp3, and "I.M. Me" is so horrible, it's fabulous. I recommend you listen to it for as long as your ears can stand. It is more hilarious than half the skits on SNL these days...]