≡ Category: Music | ≅ Leave a Comment
Alex Ross, the New Yorker music critic who recently won a MacArthur Genius grant and published The Rest is Noise, a widely praised work that makes sense of 20th century classical music, lists his favorite classical music recordings of 2008.
≡ Category: Music | ≅ 1 Comment
Thanks to some digital hocus pocus, John Lennon is back and helping promote One Laptop Per Child, a charity working to bring cheap computers and internet access to children in developing countries. Done with the approval of Yoko Ono, the commercial stitches together old recordings of Lennon’s voice and adds at least a couple of new [...]
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This weekend’s New York Times ran a piece detailing how the record industry has dithered and continually failed to release several long-awaited Beatles’ projects. It also mentioned how fans and collectors have forged ahead and put together unauthorized bootleg projects, some of which the Times calls “curatorial masterpieces.” In particular, the article highlights the Purple Chick label, which [...]
≡ Category: Music | ≅ 4 Comments
We take you back to 1977 and what The Washington Post calls “one of the most successful duets in Christmas music history — and surely the weirdest.” The ’40s-era crooner meets the glam rocker, to be precise. Get the backstory here. (And, yup, we’ve added the clip to our YouTube Favorites.)
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Right in time for Christmas Eve…
World War I was a relentlessly grinding and brutal war. Europe had never experienced anything like it. But there was one notable moment of respite, a brief moment when humanity showed back through. Christmas Eve, 1914. The moving story of what happened that night gets recounted in John McCutcheon’s touching [...]
≡ Category: Music, Video - Arts & Culture | ≅ 1 Comment
A couple of big blogs recently highlighted a clip of the Muppets doing Ode to Joy from Beethoven’s Ninth. It’s cute, and I was hardly surprised that the video logged 3.6 million views on YouTube.
Not far behind, at 3.2 million views, is a long video showing Herbert Von Karajan leading a live performance of Beethoven’s Ninth. [...]
≡ Category: Music | ≅ 1 Comment
Let me indulge in a brief bit of nostalgia for a sec. Somehow my once wayward friends and I scored tickets to Live Aid back in 1985, which meant that we got to spend a scorching day at Philly’s JFK Stadium, watching live acts that included Led Zeppelin, Eric Clapton, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young [...]
≡ Category: Music | ≅ 1 Comment
Hat tip to Bob for tipping us off to this collection put together by The Mirror in the UK. They take Leonard Cohen’s classic “Hallelujah” (listen below) and then bring you the ten best cover versions. On the list, you’ll find versions by Bob Dylan, John Cale (founder of The Velvet Underground), Rufus Wainwright, Jeff Buckley, among [...]
≡ Category: Music, YouTube | ≅ Leave a Comment
YouTube has had the mass market locked up for some time. But, during the past year, it has been giving a little nod to more “highbrow” viewers. We’ve seen channels sprouting up on YouTube that feature content produced by universities and other high-value content providers. (See our collection Intelligent Life at YouTube: 80 Video Collections.) We’ve [...]
≡ Category: Music | ≅ 1 Comment
Just a quick heads up: Amazon.com is running a pretty good looking deal on a box set of Mozart’s complete works. The package includes 170 CDs of music. And it also comes with a cd-rom containing essays on his works, artist bio’s, text and libretti’s. User reviews suggest that the recording quality is quite [...]
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Two American icons got together in Nashville in 1969 and recorded at least 22 tracks together, including some well known classics: Ring of Fire, I Walk The Line, Girl From the North Country, and You Are My Sunshine. You can listen in on the historic collaboration for free here.
via BoingBoing
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≡ Category: Music | ≅ 2 Comments
The Beatles’ White Album turned 40 last week. And that put the classic album back in the spotlight, leading critics to revisit the band’s most experimental and controversial work. Was it their masterpiece or biggest mess? (Feel free to post your thoughts in the comments below.) For one look back, you can listen to this [...]
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Mitch Mitchell, the last surviving member of the Jimi Hendrix Experience, died late last week. Here we have him soloing in concert in Sweden, 1969. More on his passing here.
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Classic!
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≡ Category: Music | ≅ 1 Comment
Until November 24, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, based in the Netherlands, is offering 10 symphonies as free downloads. You have to register, but once you do, you can download high quality performances of Beethoven, Mahler, Brahms, and more. Hat tip to Metafilter for pointing this one out.
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I’m not sure if Muppet versions of ”The Blue Danube Waltz” exactly count as culture, or at least the kind that we usually present. But it’s good for a laugh. In the meantime, I figure it wouldn’t hurt to add some depth to this post by pointing you to our collection of classical music podcasts where [...]
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Not to be too pessimistic …
(PS You can find other remixes here and here.)
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≡ Category: Music, Video - Arts & Culture | ≅ Leave a Comment
The 2008 MacArthurs were just announced. And one goes to Alex Ross, the New Yorker music critic who recently published The Rest is Noise, a widely praised work that makes sense of 20th century classical music. Below we have Ross talking about his musical background, the New York music scene and the general gist of [...]
≡ Category: Music, Uncategorized | ≅ Leave a Comment
Courtesy of Metafilter:
“AOL Sessions has live videos from more than 150 different artists specially recorded for the series. Here are just a few of the artists on offer: Paul McCartney, Brian Wilson, Modest Mouse, Tom Petty, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Weezer, Sarah McLachlan, Bonnie Raitt, Iggy Pop, and more. To the left of the videos [...]
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To the tune of the Inspector Gadget Theme. So far viewed 14.5 million times. Pretty amazing. Take it away (and check out the musician’s CD here) …
Added to our YouTube playlist.
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≡ Category: Art, Literature, Music, Video - Arts & Culture, YouTube | ≅ Leave a Comment
One of our British readers turned us on to this post by the Guardian, noting that they took a page from our general playbook. The post features 50 of the best YouTube clips from across the arts, some of which we’ve featured here in the past. Among the videos, you’ll find vintage performances by John [...]
≡ Category: Music, Video - Arts & Culture | ≅ 2 Comments
We lost another good one:
≡ Category: Music, Video - Arts & Culture | ≅ Leave a Comment
In Radiohead’s new video for “House of Cards”, no cameras or lights were used. Instead “3D plotting technologies collected information about the shapes and relative distances of objects.” And the video was made entirely with visualizations of that data. You can watch the video below and find out more about the making of the video [...]
≡ Category: Music | ≅ 1 Comment
Tinysong.com offers a service that’s rather impressive. You go to their homepage, search for a song, and then you can listen to it online and share it with a friend (via a specially created url). Just how it all works (copyright included), and just how deep the collection actually goes, I am not totally sure. [...]
≡ Category: Music, Video - Arts & Culture, YouTube | ≅ Leave a Comment
The Roller Coaster…
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≡ Category: Music | ≅ 3 Comments
YouTube is highlighting today a video that features a young girl playing Mozart around the world. Hence, the video’s title “Where in Heaven is Mozart?” Now, the idea is nice. But why is Pachelbel’s Canon the soundtrack for the clip? Is Eine kleine Nachtmusik no longer recognizable enough? Kind of suggests that we’ve officially achieved [...]
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Pioneering guitarist Bo Diddley passed away yesterday at 79. You can find a nice video tribute here. Among them, you’ll find this good old chestnut:
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≡ Category: Music, Random | ≅ Leave a Comment
File this under “Random” …
Contribute to The Power of Dreams Music Education Fund at www.detroitsymphony.com and click on Education or go here.
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≡ Category: Music | ≅ 2 Comments
The always handy Lifehacker has pulled together resources that will teach you to play guitar, drums and piano. Some of these lessons are taught via video, others with podcasts. And if you’re looking to teach yourself music theory, then head over to Musictheory.net. They’ve got you covered.
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≡ Category: Music | ≅ 2 Comments
FirstSounds.org has gathered some of the earliest sound recordings. This clip, dating back to 1860, features someone singing the French folksong “Au Clair de la Lune” on April 9, 1860, and it “is the earliest audibly recognizable record of the human voice yet recovered.”
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Jazz fans, here you go. A list of the most essential jazz albums compiled by David Remnick (editor of The New Yorker) and Richard Brody.
And, for the fun of it, I’m throwing in a video of David Brubeck playing the classic “Take Five” circa 1961. (Also find it on our YouTube playlist.)
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Surviving members of the Grateful Dead announced Thursday that they will be donating their archives to UC Santa Cruz. This podcast (Feed - Web Site), featuring Bob Weir and Mickey Hart (among others), gives you insight into the thinking behind this move…
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A nice little find for Dead Heads: The Internet Archive hosts a large collection of the Grateful Dead’s live music. Some concerts (usually recorded by members of the audience) can be downloaded. Other audio (usually taken from the soundboard) can be streamed. You can access the overall collection here.
A few items worth sampling include: Live [...]
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Below we have an outtake from one of the earliest rock mockumentaries, which paved the way for the venerable This is Spinal Tap. Co-produced by Eric Idle (Monty Python) and Lorne Michaels (Saturday Night Live), “All You Need is Cash” traced the career of “The Rutles,” whose resemblance to The Beatles was “purely – and [...]
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With the recent 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth, there has been no shortage of podcasts dedicated to Mozart’s masterpieces. First, Radio Sweden (iTunes - Feed - Web Site) reissued a digital archive of Mozart recordings by the Royal Swedish Opera from the 1940s and 1950s. And, along very similar lines, Danmarks Radio (Feed - Web [...]
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Sir Paul talks about his classical album “Ecce Cor Meum” (Behold My Heart). It was performed live at Royal Albert Hall, and it’s now being released on DVD.
via The New Yorker’s Goings On blog
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≡ Category: Music, Video - Arts & Culture | ≅ Leave a Comment
It’s right up there with the Ukulele Orchestra performing ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit.’ Both are added to our YouTube Playlist, which now has 130 subscribers, which is not bad for a fledgling collection.
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≡ Category: Music, Video - Arts & Culture | ≅ 2 Comments
Is this blogworthy? Amusing? You be the judge:
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“Across the Universe” was written by John Lennon in 1969. On Monday, NASA will beam “Across the Universe” literally across the universe, straight to Polaris, the North Star. According to Wired Magazine, the song traveling at the speed of light will take 431 years to reach its final destination, which is a mere 2.5 quadrillion [...]
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This looks like it’s the real deal — Yoko Ono’s tribute to John Lennon on YouTube. Among the video clips housed in the collection, you’ll find footage that recaptures the “bed-ins” that John and Yoko famously staged in Montreal and Amsterdam in 1969 to protest the Vietnam War. As Lennon puts it, there’s no better [...]
≡ Category: Music, Video - Arts & Culture | ≅ 2 Comments
Astoundingly good footage of Hendrix playing Voodoo Chile live. The date is 1969, in London. (Video is added to our YouTube Playlist.)
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This creative bit has been making the rounds in the world of web 2.0. If it holds appeal, you can also check out the George Bush version of U2’s Sunday Bloody Sunday and Tony Blair doing the Clash’s Should I Stay or Should I Go?. All videos have been added to our YouTube Playlist. [...]
≡ Category: Music, Video - Arts & Culture | ≅ 1 Comment
In August 1971, George Harrison and Ravi Shankar staged two benefit concerts at Madison Square Garden in NYC to raise money for refugees in Bangladesh. (More on the concert here.) Also appearing on stage were Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton and Ringo Starr. Below, we’ve posted some footage from the show, and also included it in [...]
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Last night in London, Led Zeppelin played its first full show together since 1980 (though they did play a short set at Live Aid in 1985, which I was fortunate enough to see). Here’s the first video clip to make its way onto YouTube.
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I just picked up a copy of the new Robert Plant & Alison Krauss album (CD - MP3), and I’m frankly hooked. As Amazon put it, only “King Kong and Bambi could be a more bizarre pairing,” but the results are brilliant. More on the new collaboration below.
≡ Category: Music, Video - Arts & Culture | ≅ 2 Comments
First there was the folk Bob Dylan. Then came the electric Bob Dylan. And it all happened one night at the Newport Folk Festival. The date was July 25, 1965.
In the clip below, you can see how the transition was received. In a word, not well. Appearing in front of a folk audience that lamented [...]
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What’s Thanksgiving without Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant?”
The video is below. The lyrics to the song, originally released in 1967, are here. An interview with Guthrie is here (use Real Player to listen).
Have a good holiday. We’ll be back on Monday (maybe sooner).
Arlo Guthrie Alice's Restaurant
≡ Category: Music | ≅ 1 Comment
Today, U2 is releasing a remastered version of the album that turned a popular band into a super band. Commemorating its 20th anniversary (how can it be that old already?), the Joshua Tree is being re-issued in four versions — 1) a remastered single CD, 2) a 2-CD set that features the remastered album [...]
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With last year being the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth, there was no shortage of podcasts dedicated to Mozart’s masterpieces. First, Radio Sweden (iTunes - Feed - Web Site) reissued a digital archive of Mozart recordings by the Royal Swedish Opera from the 1940s and 1950s. And, along very similar lines, Danmarks Radio (Feed - [...]
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It’s the number one song on Rolling Stone Magazine’s list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. But could a magazine with its name say otherwise?
As a quick PS, check out the new Bob Dylan Podcast (iTunes - Web Site). Hosted by Patti Smith, this podcast looks at Dylan’s friends and early influences, and [...]
≡ Category: Music | ≅ 1 Comment
In mid-October, Radiohead released its latest album, In Rainbows, and began a fairly novel experiment. They cut the record labels out of the equation and let fans download the album directly from the Radiohead web site, for whatever price they saw fit. A few weeks later, some financial figures are coming out, giving us a [...]
≡ Category: Music | ≅ 3 Comments
Head over to Wired and you’ll find a “How-To Wiki” that lists web sites where you can stream or download music online for free. As you’ll see, Wired is not shy about admitting what it’s trying to accomplish here. The wiki page is called “Cheat the Music Industry: Never Pay for Music.”
To access more online [...]
≡ Category: Music | ≅ 1 Comment
If you’re looking to build your jazz collection, this site offers some sound guidance. It features 100 top jazz CDs. Although inherently subjective, the list includes many indisputable classics that belong in any respectable jazz collection. (Note: if you click on the link for each album, you’ll find some background information that’s often worth reading.)
For [...]
≡ Category: Music | ≅ 2 Comments
In case you missed it, Radiohead released today its new album In Rainbows. What makes the album remarkable, in part, is how it’s being distributed. Buyers can go straight to the Radiohead web site (it’s not available on iTunes) and download the album as DRM-free MP3s. And, what is more, they can decide for themselves [...]
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WFMU’s Beware of the Blog has no shortage of good mp3s for music fans. This one is a little different: Here, in a clip called Run For Your Life, all of The Beatles’ UK albums are compressed at 800% into a one-hour MP3. It’s rather unlistenable, but nonetheless conceptually interesting. As for speed summaries, the [...]
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In 2004, Danger Mouse released The Grey Album which layered the rapper Jay-Z’s The Black Album on top of The Beatles’ White Album. Black and white makes grey.
Now, on YouTube, you can find The Grey Video, which experimentally brings Danger Mouse’s concept to video. The video, created by two Swiss directors, meshes clips from The [...]
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Martin Scorsese is on a rock ‘n roll tear.
In 2006, he released No Direction Home, an acclaimed documentary on Bob Dylan (long after he filmed his first rockumentary, The Last Waltz in 1978). Next April, he’s set to release another documentary on The Rolling Stones, tentatively called Shine a Light. (Watch the already released trailer [...]
≡ Category: Music, Uncategorized, Video - Arts & Culture | ≅ 1 Comment
Mark October 1 on your calendar. That’s when Bob Dylan will release a new box set of his “greatest songs.” Now, cut over to the website designed to market the album, and you’ll find a couple notable pieces of video. First up, you can watch the video that accompanies Mark Ronson’s remixing of “Most Likely [...]
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at least according to Rolling Stone. (Get the list here). Yes, these lists are always highly subjective. But if I were the arbiter of musical taste, I’d pick many of the same, so here it is.
≡ Category: Music, Video - Arts & Culture | ≅ 1 Comment
Below we have “R.E.M. Live, recorded on the Around the World Tour, which promoted Around the Sun, a studio album from 2004. It is to be released October 16.” (Thanks to Justin for the clarification.)
Source: Stereogum. (For more music, check out our collection of MP3 Blogs.)
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≡ Category: Music, Video - Arts & Culture | ≅ 2 Comments
We’re hardly breaking any news by mentioning that Luciano Pavarotti has passed away. But we wanted to offer a little media tribute nonetheless. It would be easy to post a video of Pavarotti singing with Plácido Domingo and José Carreras. Yet, we’re going to take things in a slightly different direction. Pavarotti sang with many [...]
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Quick fyi: Bruce Springsteen’s next album, Magic, will be released on October 2. To whet appetites, the lead single, “Radio Nowhere,” has been released. You can download the mp3 here. (PC users, right click ’save target as’; Mac users, control and click, then Download Linked File.) To watch the free music video of the single, [...]
≡ Category: Music | ≅ 2 Comments
We’re taking you back to 1980, to the evening when John Lennon was shot in New York City. This sound file lets you listen in on what New Yorkers heard that evening — December 8 — as they switched from one radio station to another. The event was covered across the radio dial, and you [...]
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Here’s a quick fyi for classical music lovers…
OnClassical.com has just relaunched its website, and you may want to give a look. If you don’t already know about it, OnClassical is an independent classical music label based in Italy that features internationally-acclaimed artists. They offer a “maniacally high sound level” and produce their recordings without sharing [...]
≡ Category: Music | ≅ 2 Comments
“Subtract the following 2,400 hours from history and you’d have no mp3s, no LSD, no hip–hop, no soul–sucking corporate rock — actually, can we erase that last one? Blender presents the most earth–shakingly important days in music, ever.”
Here are the top 10. Make sure you see the full list.
10.) April 26, 1977 - Studio 54 [...]
≡ Category: Music | ≅ 1 Comment
We talk a good deal about virtuous podcasts here. But this episode of The Brian Lehrer Show (iTunes - Feed - Web Site) coming out of NYC, focuses on the downright embarrassing songs that you have hidden on your iPod. And they talk about it with Kelefa Sanneh, the pop music critic from The New [...]
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Podcasts often have a nice way of bringing the past back to life. Beatles fans will undoubtedly appreciate several audio files dedicated to the Fab Four. Let’s start with a particularly good one. Rolling Stone Magazine, as part of a web feature called Lennon Lives Foreover, has released a podcast (iTunes - Feed - Web [...]
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A quick heads up for Elvis Costello fans: In this ten-part podcast (iTunes - Feed - Web Site), Elvis reflects on the first 10 years of his career, taking listeners on a tour that looks back at “his childhood, musical influences, singing, songwriting, changing his name, recording, Nick Lowe, the Attractions, the hits, the misses, [...]
≡ Category: Current Affairs, Music | ≅ 1 Comment
Unless you’ve been living in a bunker somewhere, you’ve probably heard about Live Earth, a 24-hour, 7-continent concert that’s been organized to raise awareness about global warming and to inspire action on the environmental front. You can watch these shows live by clicking here. The concerts in Asia are already underway, and the Western Hemisphere [...]
≡ Category: Music, Video - Arts & Culture | ≅ 1 Comment
One of our readers tipped us off to a couple of vintage jazz clips on YouTube. First up is footage of Miles Davis and John Coltrane playing a nice rendition of “So What,” the leadoff tune from Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue (1959), an album that ranks at the very top of the jazz canon. [...]
≡ Category: Music | ≅ 5 Comments
Numerous MP3 blogs, otherwise called “music blogs” or “audio blogs”, have sprouted up since 2003, offering listeners the chance to get exposed not only to forgotten music and out-of-print albums, but also to new music being put out by new bands and indie labels. Below, we have collected some of the more well-regarded MP3 blogs [...]
≡ Category: Film, Music, Video - Arts & Culture | ≅ 1 Comment
The 60th Cannes Film Festival is in full swing. It’s all film for ten plus days. But last night, music – or really U2 – took center stage. Before the midnight screening of their new rockumentary, U23D, the Irish band played a two song set (Vertigo and Where the Streets Have No Name) [...]
≡ Category: Music | ≅ 1 Comment
Next up a series of music blogs, all of which figure into our growing collection of Culture Blogs. As always, these lists are a work in progress, and if you feel that we’ve missed something great, please feel free to email us and let us know.
Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise: A blog by the [...]
≡ Category: Music | ≅ 3 Comments
Smart music at no cost. Hard to beat.
An Intimate Tour Through the Music of Yo-Yo Ma iTunes Feed Web Site
Each episode of this podcast delves into the history of his career, and what led him to record each of the tracks of his current release Appassionato.
Bach Podcast from Magnatune.com iTunes [...]
≡ Category: Music | ≅ 4 Comments<