Disco Stew's Alien Audio Blog

2011 Stew Music Awards

2011-12-07T13:17:00.000-08:00

It was a fine year, indeed! Perhaps 2010 was a tough act to follow... however I am pleased with the both the long time favorites and new discoveries. Many of these albums / singles I pointed out on Facebook so no big surprises. The album list for this year goes back to just 10 and I will also post videos of the top 20 singles for 2011. Now with Spotify links!

10) The One AM Radio - Heaven Is Attached By A Slender Thread

9) Bombay Bicycle Club - A Different kind of Fix

8) The Sea and Cake - Moonlight Butterfly

7) Strfkr - Reptillian

6) Cut Copy - Zonoscopy

5) Phantogram - Nightlife EP

4) Ivy - All Hours

3) Low - C'mon

2) Bon Iver - Bon Iver

1) Fiest - Metals

And the picks for great singles in 2011 (not in order):

Lucy Rose - Scar

M83 - Midnight City

Bjork - Crystalline

Bombay Bicycle Club - Lights Out, Words Gone

Bon Iver - Holocene

Euan Cross - Babylon Holiday (Mashup)

Congorock & Dizzee Rascal - Babylon Holiday (Euan Cross Bootleg) *DOWNLOAD IN DESCRIPTION* by Euan Cross

Lips - Everything to Me

Loquat feat. Del The Funky Homosapien - Song of the Siren

Low - Try to Sleep

Rob Crow - Scalped

Beastie Boys - Don't Play No Game I Can't Win

Beach Fossils - Adversity

Cut Copy - Hanging On To Every Heartbeat

Cut Copy - Hanging Onto Every Heartbeat from Sam Sanders on Vimeo.

Deadmau5 - Raise Your Weapon (Madeon Remix)

Robotanists - On/Off the Ledge

Phantogram - Don't Move

The Sea and Cake - Monday

The One AM Radio - In a City Without Seasons

Friendly Fires - True Love

Friendly Fires - True Love (Pala) from António Gonçalves on Vimeo.

Ivy - I Still Want You

2010 - A Great Vintage for New Music!

2010-12-29T06:15:00.000-08:00

Wow. I thought 2009 was pretty strong... 2010 was a blockbuster. I don't know if it is just easier to find new bands that have the sound I like or if the musical genres I love are more popular. Certainly all the retro 80's new wave influence is helping. Anyway, here is the top 20 list for 2010 - yup, I wimped out and couldn't narrow it down to 10. I hope it helps you find some great new music. Not in order, here they are:

1) Andreya Triana - Lost Where I Belong

2) Two Door Cinema Club - Two Door Cinema Club

3) Sun Kil Moon - Admiral Fell Promises

4) Land Of Talk - Cloak and Cipher

5) Savoir Adore - Loveliest Creature

6) Minus The Bear - Omni

7) Massive Attck - Heligoland

8) Luisa Maita - Lero Lero

9) Phantogram - Eyelid Movies

10) The Hundred In The Hands - The Hundred In The Hands

11) Girl Talk - All Day (NSFW)

12) Local Natives - Gorilla Manor

13) Badly Drawn Boy - It's What I am Thinking

14) Crystal Castles - II (with Robert Smith of the Cure)

15) Joy Formidable - A Baloon Called Moan

16) Small Black - New Chain

17) Bonobo - Black Sands

18) Foals - Total Life Forever

19) Thieves Like Us - Again & Again

20) The Go Find - Everybody Knows Its Going To Happen...

And a few usual favorites launched failures this year (IMHO)

Club 8
Bassnectar
Azure Ray
Sufjan Strevens

Enjoy!

2009 New Music List-o-rama

2009-12-05T08:43:00.000-08:00

Unlike 2008, this year was a real treat for new music. SOOO good in fact, that I am going to make two lists! Best Albums and Best SIngles.

Best 2009 Albums

Kings of Convenience - Declaration of Dependance
Mirah - (a)spera
Shannon Stephens - The Breadwinner
Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeous Phoenix
Silversun Pickups - Swoon
Passion Pit - Manners
Crystal Method - Divided by Night
Washed Out - Life of Leisure EP
East Star Allstars - Easy Stars Lonely Hearts Dub Band
The XX - XX
Other great new bands I discovered this year:

Club 8, Ladyhawke, Lake, Gemma Hayes, New Young Pony Club, Grouper, Loquat, Deltawave

Best 2009 SIngles

Shannon Stephens - The Summer In Heat
Kings of Convenience - 24-25
Fiest + Ben Gibbard - Train Song
Phoenix - 1901
Mirah - The World Is Falling
Grouper - False Horizon
El Perro Del Mar - Change of Heart
Bon Iver - Blood Bank
Lake - You Are Alone
Passion Pit - The Reeling

Honorable Mentions:

Washed Out - Feel It All Around
Grizzly Bear + Fiest - The Service Bell
Silversun Pickups - Substitution
Deltawave - Lost In Music
Crystal Method - Smile
Bassnectar - Cossa Frenzy
Dirty Projectors - Stillness Is The Move
The XX - Islands

2009-03-24T07:18:00.001-07:00

I am speaking at the UVM Networking Event tonight to about 200 people and figure I better practice what I preach, so I am posting my notes for tonight.

My Question for the Panel discussion:

"How can one be proactive about creating a “personal brand” or a snapshot of oneself on the web? What should every professional consider when using new technologies as a networking advantage, especially the internet?"

Opportunity:

SEO / Brand Management: People are identical to businesses today when it comes to search engine optimization and managing brand reputation. If it is well done, it becomes an asset that will help differentiate you from a vast sea of options available to prospective employers.

Thought Leadership: Allows a professional to establish a reputation as a thought leader in a particular category or discipline. Shows passion, initiative, and experience that supplement a strong resume.

Publish or Perish: Use blogs, threaded discussions, personal websites, twitter, and answering questions on existing community tools like LinkedIn to leave a trail for prospective employers to discover through searches. May also lead to solicitations from competitors, headhunters, and lead to other new opportunities. If done well, you may create followers who subscribe to your blog and twitter feeds and can become a valuable source of advocates who can bring leads in a job hunt.

Purpose Built Tools: Some tools, like LinkedIn are specifically designed to facilitate networking and can offer great ways to connect with broad groups of peers, or make very targeted inquiries about specific companies by leveraging friends and identifying friends of friends with connections.

Liability:

Web Tattoos: The flip side of the web is that it is that your comments are often an indelible and traceable. Any number of examples of employees making disparaging comments about employers that have been discovered and led to termination. Google alerts make it very easy to track mentions of a company online and who is talking about them.

FaceSpace: At some point you are likely to have business contacts / coworkers / bosses start to request friend status on tools like Facebook, so be very prudent about what you want to have made public (and when you are posting updates – employers will see this!)

Recommendations:

Start a blog or contribute to an existing work blog. Buy your name as a URL if you can still get it. Be very careful about what you post, data can live a long time online. Try to get credit on organizational websites for any pro-bono or community involvement to maximize the PR value. Set up a Google alert for your own name so you can monitor and manage your online reputation. Add your LinkedIn and Blog address to your professional email signature to increase contact professional points and promote your brand.

December... Top 10 Time

2008-12-06T06:01:00.000-08:00

It wasn't a stellar year in music IMHO. Top 10 for 2008 Releases in rough order:

Sun Kil Moon - April
Aimee Mann - @#%&*! Smilers
The Headlights - Some Racing, Some Stopping
M83 - Saturdays = Youth
The Kooks - Konk
Cut Copy - In Ghost Colours
Crystal Castles - Crystal Castles
Santagold - Santagold
Girl Talk - Feed the Animals
Kaskade - Strobelight Seduction

Honorable Mentions:

Nightmares on Wax - Thought So...
Thievery Corporation - Radio Retaliation
Nine Inch Nails - The Slip

I did discover some great new stuff older stuff in 2008 worth mention (thanks Pandora!):
Maritime - We the Vehicles
Sufjan Stevens - Multiple Albums (I had Illinois & Michigan but bought his whole back catalog... Seven Swans, The Christmas Album, The Avalanche)
The Headlights - Kill them with Kindness
Maggie, Pierce, & EJ - Silver Album
The Album Leaf - Into the Blue Again
Feist - Monarch (From 1999 Only 3000 copies made - That was not easy to get!)
Just Jack - Overtones
Felix Da Housecat - Virgo Blacktro & the Movie Disco

Lets hope for better in 2009!

Best BTV Concerts / Shows (thus far)

2008-06-22T17:57:00.000-07:00

Lisa asked me to make a mix of bands we used to see in college and in our carefree (kid free) post college years. It has been fun pulling tracks together to represent the 88 - 95 years in Burlington. We had some seriously fantastic bands back then. As an offshoot, I started thinking about the best shows I have seen over the years here in town. So, in roughly chronological order, here goes my top ten:

1) R.E.M. - Patrick Gym. Halloween 1986.

Freshman year... UVM... band in costume... trippiest video backdrop I have ever seen. Wow. Very altered states and very fun.

2) Suzanne Vega - Flemming Museum / CBW green. Earth Day 1987.

Free show. When she sang the line "And the bells in the cathedral...." from Tom's Dinner, the UVM bell tower actually rang as if on cue. Suzanne was so amazed she couldn't go on.

3) The Cuts - Halverson's Upstreet Cafe. Summer 1990.

Anytime we saw a Cuts show it was fantastic (Border, Hunts, The Front, Metronome), however I guess I have to pick one. Dave Danaught jumps on stage in a loin cloth covered in war paint and leaves in his hair. The rain starts coming down (only trees to provide cover for the band in the back deck those days). We are getting drenched but keep dancing since the band isn't stopping.

4) Sara McLachlan - Club Toast. Fall 1992.

Sara and her band came to Burlington on the the last stop of a crazy 300 day long tour for her first album and put on one of the craziest shows I have ever seen. It started with Sara and a fellow female band mate came out stood in front of the opening band in trench coats and proceeded to flash them. When Sara and her band came on stage, her keyboard player was dressed in a cloth diaper with a conical Madonnaesque bra on.

5) Aimee Mann - Club Metronome. Summer 1993.

Aimee came to play burlington to support her first solo album, "Whatever". Played mostly acoustic solo and the song "Fourth of July" is one of the most beautiful things I have ever heard.

6) Dag & Rusted Root - Club Metronome. Fall 1994.

It was a free show by The Point. Might be the single best show I have ever seen, period. I can't remember who opened for who, but both bands gave it everything they had. Rusted Root had like 10 people crammed on this little stage and I have never seen a group that seemed to enjoy being on stage more.

7) Belizbeha - Club Toast. Fall 1995.

OK. I have never seen a bad Belizbeha show. However I do have a bootleg from this show and they killed it (two nights at Toast and I went to both). When the band had the full horn section (Grippo, Chris, Joey) the sound was even better. Gee Wiz showing up was always good as well. I was a bit of an unintentional groupie for a while and had the good fortune of catching shows in Boston (Paradise, House of Blues, and the Beachcomber), LBI NJ (The Tide), and NYC (The New Music Cafe). I missed them in Vail by a few weeks. I can't hear the opening notes of "Hey You Guys" on Charlie's Dream and not still break into a smile.

8) Moby - Club Toast. ??? 1997.

Went to this show by myself. Couldn't believe nobody would come see him in a room that small. Juno Reactor opened up and it was Epic! 250 people might have fit in Toast? I saw him in Boston a three years later on the Play tour and he sold out Avalon.

9) Jussagroove - Club Metronome. Halloween 1997.

I went as Disco Stu from the Simpsons. The lead singer pulled me on stage at one point and exclaimed "Disco Stu doesn't advertise". An alter ego was created. Danced so hard I had trouble walking the next day. I wish I had pictures scanned to share.

10) Fiest - Flynn Theater. Fall 2007.

Front row center seats. BFP called it the best show of 2007. Can't disagree.

Other good shows that didn't make the final cut:

Pure Pressure-ish band that played at the Warren 4th Parade every year
Maceo Parker at Jazzfest
"til Tuesday at the Pickle Barrel
Steel Pulse at the Reggae Fest Oakledge Park
7 Seconds at the Border
Dead Milkmen at the Border
The Jones & Lambsbread at Hunts
James Brown at Patrick Gym
Billy Bragg at the Flynn Theater
Johnny Clegg at Memorial (Nothing sounds good at Memorial)
Bonnie Raitt & CSN at the Stowe Performing Arts tent
Samples at the Front
Wildest Dreams at Kingsland Bay State Park (Jensen / Paulsen Wedding)
Laurie Anderson at the Flynn

Valdez AK Ski Safari

2008-04-10T12:30:00.000-07:00

Wow! Just got back from a 10 day trip to Valdez Alaska for some back country skiing. Check out the photos and video...

Photos at Flickr here.

YouTube Video:

Stew Interviewed at the Vermont 3.0 Creative/Tech Career Jam

2008-02-02T04:24:00.000-08:00

Top 10 2007 Albums (Rough Order):

2007-12-18T07:29:00.000-08:00

1) Pinback - Autumn of the Seraphs
2) Fiest - The Reminder
3) Bassnectar - Underground Communications
4) Kevin Drew (Broken Social Scene) - Spirit If...
5) Iron & Wine - The Shepherds Dog
6) Bebel Gilberto - Momento
7) Dalminjo - One Day You Will Dance For Me Tokyo
8) VHS or Beta - Bring On The Comets
9) De - Phazz - Days Of Twang
10) Modest Mouse - We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank

Nice Effort:

1) Fields - Everything last winter
2) Winterpills - The Light Divides
3) Benzos - Branches
4) The Shins - Wincing The Night Away
5) Elliot Smith - New Moon
6) Gontarian - Cacophany
7) K-Os - Atlantis: Hymns For Disco (I think he wrote it for Me)

Failures:

1) Bjork - Volta
2) Zero 7 - The Garden
3) Low - Drums & Guns

X-Mass Card Photo Shoot 2007

2007-12-07T08:06:00.000-08:00

A few cute out takes of Lars & Erik:

It is hard to believe I, Stewart Jensen, had anything to do with the genetics of these two kids.

More recent musical nuggets:

2007-11-29T05:29:00.000-08:00

OK - This mix was created about 8 months ago and a few tracks are old. I had just discovered Pinback and bought the entire backlog. The Kooks are fantastic as well. Like a better newer version of The La's. More to come!

Modest Mouse - Dashboard
Bright Eyes - Four Winds
Umphrey's McGee - Memories Of Home
Pinback - The Yellow Ones
Rob Crow - Taste
Kenna - Better Wise Up
M Ward - Hi-Fi
Ari Hest - Bird Never Flies
Low - Murderer
Winterpills - Lay Your Heartbreak
A Shoreline Dream - Ukraine (edit)
Aqualung - Pressure Unit
Stars Of Track And Field - With You
Fields - If You Fall, We All Fall (radio edit)
Albert Hammond, Jr. - Everyone Gets A Star
The Kooks - Ooh La
Feist - I Feel It All
The Good, The Bad & The Queen - Northern Whale
Pacha Massive - Don't Let Go
Swayze - Buzzin

The Ultimate '79 - '86 New Wave Playlist?

2007-11-13T18:13:00.000-08:00

Well, I lived through the 80's and spent nights trying to tune in that faint college radio station to hear something new and different than the classic rock garbage that everybody else seemed to worship. Hearing Whip It by Devo back in 1980 was transformational for me. It opened the doors to so many great new wave bands and a life spent trying to find something new and "left of the dial".

What early new wave gems did I miss?

Train in Vain (Stand by Me) - The Clash
Good Girls Don't - The Knack
Money (That's What I Want) - The Flying Lizards
Popmuzik - M
Fade To Grey - Visage
I Will Follow - U2
De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da - The Police
Jackie Onassis - Human Sexual Response
Turning Japanese - The Vapors
Private Life - Grace Jones
Somebody Got Murdered - The Clash
Antmusic - Adam & The Ants
Whip It - Devo
Private Idaho - The B-52's
867-5309 (Jenny) - Tommy Tutone
That's When I Reach For My Revolver - Mission Of Burma
Just Can't Get Enough - Depeche Mode
Computerlove - Kraftwerk
New Toy - Lene Lovich
Never Say Never - Romeo Void
Tainted Love - Soft Cell
Don't You Want Me - Human League
Talk To Ya Later - The Tubes
Should I Stay Or Should I Go - The Clash
Mickey - Toni Basil
Der Kommissar - Trio
Who Can It Be Now? - Men at Work
Shock The Monkey - Peter Gabriel
The Look of Love (Part 1) - ABC
More Than This - Roxy Music
Save It For Later - The English Beat
Reap The Wild Wind - Ultravox
We Ride Tonight - The Sherbs
Destination Unknown - Missing Persons
Forever Now - The Psychedelic Furs
I Could Be Happy - Altered Images
Da Da Da - Trio
Open Your Eyes - Lords Of The New Church
Let's Go To Bed - The Cure
I Love a Man in Uniform - Gang Of Four
Love Plus One - Haircut 100
I Melt With You - Modern English
I Ran (So Far Away) - A Flock Of Seagulls
Hungry Like the Wolf - Duran Duran
Promises, Promises - Naked Eyes
Mad World - Tears For Fears
Girlfriend is Better - Talking Heads
TRUE - Spandau Ballet
In A Big Country - Big Country
Red Skies - The Fixx
Is It Love - Gang Of Four
Sunday Bloody Sunday - U2
The One Thing - INXS
Age Of Consent - New Order
Walking In L.A. - Missing Persons
Sex (I'm A...) - Berlin
Let Me Go - Heaven 17
Always Something There To Remind Me - Naked Eyes
99 Luftballons - Nena
Too Shy - Kajagoogoo
One Thing Leads To Another - The Fixx
The Walls Came Down - The Call
Just Got Lucky - Jo Boxers
I Will Dare - The Replacements
Wouldn't It Be Good - Nik Kershaw
It's My Life - Talk Talk
Cruel Summer - Bananarama
Tenderness - General Public
Throne of Gold - Steel Pulse
Tesla Girls - Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark
In Between Days - The Cure
Take on Me - A-Ha
Don't You (Forget About Me) - Simple Minds
Things Can Only Get Better - Howard Jones
Everybody Wants to rule the World - Tears for Fears
I'm Falling - The Comsat Angels
Appetite - Prefab Sprout
What You Need - INXS
Supercharged - X
West End Girls - Pet Shop Boys
Something About You - Level 42
Voices Carry - 'Til Tuesday
Life In A Northern Town - The Dream Academy
Running Up That Hill - Kate Bush
Number One - Chaz Jankel
We Close Our Eyes - Go West
Cities In Dust - Siouxsie & The Banshees
Infected - The The
Human - Human League
Rat In Mi Kitchen - UB40
I Can't Wait - Nu Shooz
Rise - Public Image Ltd.
Why Can't I Be You? - The Cure
Under the Influence - The Comsat Angels
Running In The Family - Level 42

My first time

2007-11-13T13:19:00.000-08:00

Hello world.... Well, Dave Gibson finally talked me into having my own Blog. We work together at Propeller Media Works in bucolic Burlington Vermont. So why am I doing this (other than the guilt factor)?

I guess I can use this forum to let friends know what new music I have discovered and am spinning down in the lounge. I use the name Disco Stew when I mix playlists under my pseudo-label Alien Audio Labs. I will post the amateur CD art I have created as well.
I may use this as an update tool for friends and family about the travails of the Vermont Jensen clan.
I hope I will dominate all the other Stewart Jensen's vying for #1 position in the search engines. Stewart Jensen Stewart Jensen Stewart Jensen Stewart Jensen (that should do it). Oh yeah.... Stewart Jensen.
For those who want to figure me out on a professional level, you can link to my LinkedIn Profile.