Idle Ramblings

A MacJams Primer

In order to satisfy requests coming from the vast audience for this blog i.e. David, I'm putting together a "starter" list of what I consider some of the best home-brewed music MacJams has to offer. These are in no particular order and are taken from my "Favorites" list on my MacJams artist page.

I Love My Mac by Daphna (Daphne Kalphon). A must for Mac users. Apple should use this as their theme song. The song is going to be included on the next (I think) MacAddict CD.

A Hundred Million Times by rmaclema (Richard MacLemale). Doesn't have much posted on MacJams, but his first album, "Florida Songs" is available through iTunes and he is currently working on his second album.

Stars on My Ceiling by pgreenstone (Peter Greenstone). One of the finest tunes on all of MacJams and my personal favorite. Peter is about to release his first album through Simig Media Records.

American Plain by atwood (Tom Atwood). This is a breathtakingly beautiful orchestral work in four movements (large file). Tom also has a CD, Songs from the American Plain, available from The Lost Records, which is another independently produced record label started by several MacJammers.

The Unquiet Grave by Rebsie and Mandoliquent (Rebsie Fairholm and William Shaw). Rebsie and Mando, both together and separately, do some great traditional and modern British folk music.

Superhero by cjorgenson (Christopher Jorgenson). Since so many of my friends just love poetry, they'll really dig the spoken word tracks available on MacJams.

Fernvale by Nolan. One of the first tunes I came across on MacJams. This song mainly uses altered GarageBand loops, but the rest of his music is mostly him and his guitar. Sounds very much like Neil Finn.

With Words Let's Take Them Down by mikkinylund (Mikki Nylund). Mikki is one of my all-time favorites on the site. It's hard to get a representative song from his catalog because he is very diverse and very prolific. Like me, Mikki has a great appreciation for punk and new wave. Definitely check out some of his other stuff.

The Blue Elephant Song by dane (Dane Obuchowski). Fairly new to MacJams and only has a few songs, but what he has posted is very impressive, especially for a 19-year-old. Sounds like he could hold his own against Ben Folds.

Doing the Eggshell Walk by jiguma (Neil Porter). Neil is from Australia and has a very smooth, folksy sound and some incredible lyrics. We origonally discovered one another because our site names are so similar.

This is just a small sampling to get anyone interested started. All songs on MacJams are available for streaming and download. You can sign up to be a member of MacJams whether you post music or not. Membership allows you to use features such as voting, commenting and chat.

Enjoy!

posted by Joseph @ 11/30/2005 10:24:00 AM