Robin Pecknold, covering Joanna Newsom’s “On a Good Day”:

Original:

Does the removal of Pecknold’s harmonic partners in Fleet Foxes render this acceptable to the Cheap Monday set? Is that acceptability just as quickly replaced by virtue of it being a Joanna Newsom cover? Is there someone out there willing to waste breath disliking a simple (gospel troped) song sung sweet in a little room? More than likely.

Lil’ Wayne ft. Eminem “Drop the World”:

As this is written Lil’ Wayne finds himself adjusting to coarse prison clothes and a cold bed (they keep it around 55-65 Fahrenheit in prison, for budget concerns, rehabilitation purposes, or both). Eminem, while no stranger to court, has 6,000 thread count pima sheets and a room temperature glass of scotch (horchata?) to dread instead. This may explain the disjointedness of the verses in this song: Weezy in rainy day mode (“You keep the sunshine / Save me the rain / I search but never find / Hurt but never cry / I work and forever try / But I’m cursed so nevermind”), Shady projecting a bombast fuck-you-never-left, the chorus left to reconcile the two while the beep-boop fuzzed-out beat provides an antiseptic blank canvas for them to hash out some journal entries. Easily written off? Or just as easily over thought?

Randy Rhoades’ isolated guitar track from “Crazy Train”:

Listening to “Crazy Train” minus Ozzy, Daisley and Kerslake (finding out who drummed on this track was depressingly internet-difficult, by the way) is an exercise is musical nerdry and a sort of adorable frustration. Rhoads is obviously The Metal Man, credited for pretty much inventing the genre and providing an entire decade (the 80’s, natch) of nancy boys something to aspire to (they never quite did). So, Rhoads’ most famous – not best – track isolated and lonely leaves you in awe, in bored, and in desperate need of the original. So here it is. Oh and children, forget not: study up.