The power of 3

It’s the power to get done early.

KKCK:

Usher “Papers”
This one is more “Confessions” than “Yeah”.  Songs about the end of a relationship take many forms, but few pull off the emotion and acceptance of the situation that this one does.  As someone who’s never been the biggest Usher fan, I can say this one really impressed me.

Breaking Benjamin “I Will Not Bow”
Sometimes, a band just doesn’t click with me.  Breaking Benjamin is one of those bands.  They certainly click with a lot of our audience, as their stuff always gets a lot of calls on KARZ or on the occasions we’ve played them on KKCK (“So Cold” for example).  I wasn’t sold on this one crossing over, but I spotted a few other stations that were giving it a shot, so I thought I’d throw the listeners who yearn for a bit more rock a bone.

Uncle Kracker “Smile”
Kid Rock’s old pal has been puttering around the lower reaches of the charts with this one, but lately we’ve had an influx of calls for it.  Uncle Kracker’s songs have always done well for us before, so why not give this one a shot.

Pick to click: Usher

Boy, I sound very “ah why not” with the adds this week.  New single releases are slowing down a bit, and there isn’t much in the top half of the chart that we aren’t already playing.  The next few weeks will be a good time to make any suggestions you might have.

The life and times of Russ are pretty average of late.  Kate is well, Russ 2.0 is well, and the cats are behaving as well as they always do.  I DVR’d the new “V” tonight, but I probably won’t have time to watch it until Wednesday night.

I haven’t felt like sharing as much of my personal life on this blog of late.  Recently, somebody was copying and pasting a few of my tweets (twitter.com/russ4life if you’re wondering) on a radio message board, and at times posing as me.  Another time somebody posed as me, and ran through all the places I’ve worked and exactly how long I’ve worked there.  It was a bit jarring.  I’ve never made this blog private, but sometimes I wonder if that’s the right choice.  The odd thing is that the old me would have never written a public blog.  In college, I clung to any air of mystery about me.  I went from that to where I’m at now, with social networking info up with virtually no filters on who can view my content.

Enough about the paranoia that runs on my mom’s side.  How about some actual music content?  Here are a few quick takes on some CD’s I’ve recently heard/enjoyed.

Tegan and Sara’s Sainthood was very enjoyable, almost to So Jealous levels.  It sounds better as a collection of songs rather than individual tracks, which doesn’t work for how most people listen to music nowadays.

Rammstein’s Liebe Ist Für Alle Da reminds me a lot of their breakthrough release Sehnsucht.  That’s a good thing in my book, but I don’t want to make it sound like I haven’t enjoyed all of their other albums.  Sehnsucht just has that certain something, and this album comes close to recapturing whatever that was.

Electric Six’s Kill is more of what Electric Six fans love.  There aren’t any tracks that specifically grab me, and I don’t think it’s as strong as Flashy.

Bowling for Soup let me down a bit with Sorry for Partyin’.  It was better on a second listen, but it still comes across as their weakest effort to date.  The silver lining is the track “This Song Sounds Like a Dance Song”, which is frakkin’ brilliant.

Dewey recommended Fake Problems and Late of the Pier.  Fake Problems sounded pretty average in my head, but Late of the Pier sounded quite keen.  I might have to dig deeper.

Sonic Boom by Kiss sounds like a really good 1980s Kiss album.  I think I’ll leave it at that.

Regina Spektor’s Far didn’t stand out for me, but on the flip side I finally heard her 11:11 album, and that might be my new favorite Regina album.

I’m sure Muse fans love The Resistance, but I’m indifferent about it.  I still have it on my iPod, which is more than I can say for other Muse albums I’ve heard.

Then there’s Vancouver by Matthew Good.  This is currently near the top in my album of the year rankings.  Yes, it’s that good.

I think I’ll stop there so I can still get this posted on a Tuesday.  Have a good Wednesday.