Today on Josh’s Big Box O CDs I played a Carpenters cover song by Sonic Youth. It’s from a 1994 compilation called If I Were a Carpenter. The song they covered is Superstar. Pretty nice video:

Here’s some things you might not know about U2’s Bono:

?????????? In the year since it was founded, his Red campaign (licensed to Gap, Motorola, Apple etc) has raised $18 million ? but companies have spent $100 million to market it.

?????????? Bono doesn’t invest his own money in Red.???

?????????? Apple sells a Special Edition U2 iPod. Its profits are not donated to Red.??

?????????? U2 made $389m from the recent Vertigo tour. Its revenue was then funnelled through companies mostly registered in Ireland and structured to minimize taxes.???

??????????? U2 moved its music publishing company to the Netherlands from Ireland in June 2006, six months before Ireland ended a tax exemption on musicians’ royalty income.???

??????????? Richard Murphy, adviser to lobbying group the Tax Justice Network, says “This is somebody ?who’s exceptionally rich taking the opportunity to shift his tax burden to somebody else, but then asking governments around the world to spend that tax take in the way that he would like.”

Today in Josh’s Big Box O CDs we featured?white blues duo The Black Keys. They’re from Akron, Ohio and recently toured as the opener for Radiohead. Right now they’re working on a project being produced by Danger Mouse (half of Gnarls Barkley) where they’ll be the back-up band for Ike Turner. Seriously. Pretty weird I know. They put out a pretty sweet album called Magic Potion this year, but my favourite is still Rubber Factory from 2004. They get compared to the White Stripes, and count Robert Plant,?Arctic Monkeys and Metallica among their fans. They were named one of the?10 Best Acts of 2003 by Rolling Stone magazine and appeared on the soundtrack to?School of Rock.?

The song I played is called 10 A.M. Automatic.

The Black Keys on MySpace

Watch the Video

It’s called Young Folks?by Peter Bjorn and John.

I like it. Lynch and my boss don’t. It’s catchy dammit!

There’s actually a funny blog called Stop Peter Bjorn and John.

What do you think?

Today we played something from one of my Top 3 all-time albums. The band is now called dios (malos). Before they were called just dios. Ronnie James Dio, the hard rock meathead, sent the band a cease-and-desist letter because he thought the name was too close to his band’s name?Dio.

The first album blew me away. Pure genius. I waited and waited for a second album - hoping for more gold. The album came out, I bought it same day…and cried myself to sleep. I didn’t really cry, but I was really disappointed. They went from this interesting mix of folky, Beach-Boyish, electronic spiced music, to a fairly average sounding rock band. The third album marked a slight return to the style of the first, but it’ll be tough to top their debut.

The song I played was You Make Me Feel Uncomfortable.

Dios on MySpace

A video from a song on the same album.

Todays track was from The Pale, now known as The Pale Pacific. We played the song Gravity Gets Things Done from the 2003?album of the same name.

Pale Pacific MySpace

A little live performance video of the song

Today we debuted a new feature, Josh’s Big Box O CDs. Happens weekdays at about 4:45PM. These are great songs that have slipped through the cracks. Some are?cool indie tracks, others might be tracks from artists you know - but something a little different.

Today I played?Grandaddy and a song called Now It’s On.

Grandaddy Wikipedia

Here’s the video:

Queens of the Stone Age are finishing up their new album and released this demo of them in the studio…

Last week, Lynch proclaimed Singles the best soundtrack in movie history. I disagree. Right off the top of my head, I’d say Garden State is a stronger soundtrack. Singles might be the best of the 90s, but that’s it. What do you think? Best soundtrack - not including movie musicals or concert films? Sound off!