Nikki Sixx of Mötley Crüe is an interesting dude. Sure, a lot of 1980s hair metal/glam rock guys can say they partied to excess with women, booze, and drugs. Not many of them can say they died. If they died, they aren't saying anything anymore, because... yeah. Sixx can, because he died of a heroin overdose, but was resuscitated. So, did he actually die, or... was he just really close? I dunno. I'm not a doctor. I'm just over here spinning records. But I do know that Sixx took it a lot further than his contemporaries. And, ten years later, he wrote a book about it called The Heroin Diaries.

In the following decade, Nikki Sixx made a band, Sixx:A.M., with himself, of course, and two guys who toured with Crüe; IIRC their initials are A and M, not sure if that's first or last, but, that's how the band was named. And, a decade after the book, the band released their debut album, The Heroin Diaries Soundtrack. The album was a companion piece to the book. I've tried reading the book, but nonfiction really isn't my jam. (Currently working my way through the Dungeon Crawler Carl series, so if I come across sounding like Mordecai... well, that's probably why.) Though the book didn't click with me, I was a big fan of the album when it came out. Mostly because... as you can guess... I heard this song in Rockband. As a song, it's absolutely worth listening to, and it's one of my favourites, and it's fun to sing as well. The album in its entirety though, is something else. The best tracks don't stand on their own very well, but are essential to the album, like the intro (Xmas in Hell), and the song about when he quit heroin for good and the two weeks or so without it (Girl With the Golden Eyes).

After The Heroin Diaries Soundtrack, Sixx:A.M. went on to be just a normal hard rock band. They released some good stuff, but they didn't really talk much about addiction, to the best of my recollection. They may have, I dunno, but it was no longer the focus.

That all changed in 2020 with Maybe it's Time, when they got up with half a dozen other bands and rock stars, and wrote a song about getting clean, and made it a fundraiser. This may be their best song, but my pick is still Life is Beautiful. It's absolutely worth mentioning and listening, so I'll link to it as well:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9LKBhktTAM

If the lesson here isn't obvious, it's that you can be defined by something bad. In the 1980s, Nikki Sixx was the bar by which every partying rock star was measured. Then he was the guy who cheated death and got a second chance. Now he's the guy who is helping others get clean. While you absolutely must take responsibility for your actions and choices, you don't have to be defined by your mistakes for the rest of your life. It can be anything, it doesn't have to be drugs. So if you feel you are defined by one big mistake... "maybe it's time" to move on.

I've been hearing about an Xbox 360 softmod that runs off a flash drive. I have an Xbox 360, and I have an iPhone, and an Android phone, and I have Macs, so it should be enough to put the softmod on a flash drive and stick it in the 360, right? Well, the instructions I'm finding (on various YouTube videos about it) all say I have to run a .EXE file (in Windows). The only access I have to Windows is at work, and we can't bring flash drives in, or run executable files there (that aren't approved). All this sounds real sketchy anyway. So, is there any truth to this softmod or are various YouTubers (none of them well known, trustworthy sources) just trying to get people to install ransomware on Windows machines?

Is there an actual package that can simply be extracted to the flash drive?

Just wondering if anyone here knows anything about it.

Edit: For what it's worth, my interest isn't even piracy, per se. The disc drive on the 360 took a shit on me, so I figure I can load the games we have on the flash drive. We're actually only concerned about one, Rockband 3, because we have a shit ton of custom songs for it. We could play via the disc if the disc drive worked. So I'm thinking we find the disc image online, if the one already on the flash drive isn't good enough (it was "ripped" or whatever using the Xbox itself, you know where it lets you copy a disc to the internal drive or a flash drive, and play it off that, but it checks the disc first. Furthermore, there's a mod for Rockband 3 called Rockband Deluxe that adds some nice QoL features. So basically we're thinking of making it a dedicated Rockband player.

Any other Xbox games I'd just play on my fully working Series X. Rockband 3, however, is not backwards compatible, and Rockband 4, which was released for the XB1, doesn't support custom songs. So the hundreds we've bought are in there and playable on the XSX. We really just want the 360 for customs. Though, I suppose it would be cool to find a download with all the DLC ever released, and just sort out the stuff we don't want.

This is one of the songs I always wanted to post when I envisioned this community. I hoped by the time I did, we'd have a few hundred subscribers, and this song would reach someone. I still hope that it does. This is the 70th song I've posted daily (except one day when the instance was down, so I posted two songs the next day).

"I used to fall, but now I get back up" is just one of several lines that, if they speak to you, they cut right down to the bone.

Looking at singer Justin Furstenfeld, you'd think he did hard time somewhere. I can't find anything about incarceration on his Wikipedia page; however, it does mention some real hard time he did with addiction, and this song is absolutely about addiction, but it's about overcoming your demons, whether it's addiction, illness, being incarcerated, or whatever you're going through. He's been there, and if you listen to his words here, he will not help you get through them — he will help you help yourself through them. He can't fight your battles for you, but he can give you the tools you need to fight them yourself.

I believe, back when I posted Clock Strikes by ONE OK ROCK, I made it clear that while it was my favourite song by the band, I did not consider it to be their best song. That song is called Be the Light, which is thematically similar to Fear. In Be the Light, Takahiro Moriuchi is singing (entirely in English!) about a national tragedy — it was written for the nuclear plant meltdown in Japan, but it was written to apply equally well to anything — whereas Fear is about personal demons. However, both are about overcoming overwhelming situations through personal strength and perseverance. If you're going through some shit, you should listen to both of them. And I am sure there are others. Those are the two I know.

I really hope this song reaches someone, either because I've mentioned this comm a couple times, or maybe someone sees this, listens to it, and sends it to someone who could use a helping hand.

C-C-C-Combo breaker! Not another Japanese song today. Today we're going to, depending on who you ask, North America or North America... I mean Canada or the United States. Vancouver, British Columbia or Seattle, Washington; again, depending on who you ask.

Heart's best work arguably came out in the 1970s and 1980s, but this song in 1990 is my pick, not because it's their heaviest song, or even my favourite to listen to, but it's the one that really stuck with me. For years I just accepted it at face value of lovers meeting on the highway. By the time that last verse comes around, you're not really paying attention, but once you hear it and get what she's saying, I don't think the song is really fooling anybody who paid attention

For anybody who's heard the song and never really gave it a second thought, and don't want to listen to it again (lest it get stuck in your head again), if you look at it from the ending, it's about a married woman whose husband is sterile. He might not even know, the song isn't clear, but for the sake of their marriage, she goes out and gets pregnant and lets him think it's his. However, she meets the baby's actual father at some event and begs him to not reveal himself as the father and instead just hang onto the memory of the night they spent together. So it's kind of bittersweet. The fucked up things people do to each other. The fucked up things people believe they have to do for whatever reason. And that poor child who will never know her or his actual father. You just have to hope the guy raising them is a decent man, and that cheating on him is the only really bad thing their mother did to their father.

Also, men do this kind of thing all the time, or at least that's what scorned women and the Lifetime cable TV network would have you believe, but let a sister go out and have a night of passion and there's gotta be a whole song about it, followed by people questioning her morals 36 years later (yes, Millennials and Gen-Xers, it has been that long since 1990).

Maybe this time, we can just call it a good song and not look too deeply at why we are like this, and why society makes us do these things?

In lighter news, I was once told that after Led Zeppelin split up, their bassist, John Paul Jones, cofounded Heart. I was going to talk about that, but something told me to look it up — it's not true. That being said, John Paul Jones did produce their 1995 live album The Road Home. So he has been involved with them, but he was not a cofounder, and the Wikipedia page for the band does not list him as a former (or current) member. It's funny, because now a claim like that is easily verified to be true or false, but back then, we just didn't know.

Have you ever had a class or work assignment you weren't really qualified for? Maybe you talked yourself into it and wound up over your head. Maybe it worked out and you learned something. Or maybe your teacher or boss found out you're nothing but smoke and mirrors. Hopefully not. This song comes from a similar story where it all worked out in the end. Sort of.

Thirteen years ago, a Japanese film was released called 言の葉の庭. If you can't read kanji, it was released outside of Japan as The Garden of Words. This movie was only about 45 minutes long, and was about a guy with a foot fetish. Not really, but also technically the truth. He was actually a shoe maker, and meeting a woman in the rain under a bus shelter, he decides that her shoes aren't working for her, and vows to make her good shoes. She falls in love with him. The movie was okay, but where it excelled was its beauty. The film went viral, with the Internet calling it "Anime Wallpaper: The Movie", because virtually every frame of it was worthy of being your desktop wallpaper, and there are some outstanding Garden of Words wallpapers out there.

Makoto Shinkai, the writer and director of 言の葉の庭 was so humbled and awed by the West's reaction to his film, that he decided that his next film would not only be fully translated to English (as the others had), but if you watched in English, the music would be in English as well. This is not something that was commonly done, but he was gonna make it happen. He found Yojiro Noda, a Japanese singer who claimed to be bilingual. Shinkai hired him and his band, RADWIMPS, to do the entire soundtrack for his next film, 君の名は。 . (Isn't it weird how the full-stop has a different glyph in Japanese? The English one is just a dot. The Japanese one is a tiny circle.) Oh, this film was called your name. outside of Japan, though the more literal translation of the title is "what's your name?". Don't ask me why it has a full stop instead of a question mark.

So the trailer released, and if you watched the English trailer, you got the characters' voices in English... and the song was in English. That song, Zenzenzense (lit: "the way, way back") would play in Japanese if you watched the Japanese trailer. And when the movie came out in theaters, if you watched the English dub, the songs all played in English.

That's not why it's the best animated film I've seen, nor is it the reason it's the best film overall that I've seen, but it's pretty damn cool.

Anime purists generally don't like Japanese media being translated to English at all, because that invites more casual fans. The bigger a thing is, the less the purity of its fans, those who love it and believe in it, you get a lot of casuals who could take it or leave it. On top of that, the companies start marketing to these fans, and not the "pure" fans. So there will always be pushback against translation of anime, mostly from basement-dwelling, moon-faced assassins of joy. And so 君の名は。 got extra pushback for the music.

Also, the translation was not very good. Those of us who know English and watched the film in English know the lyrics were not very good. It pushed us to watching the Japanese dub with English subtitles. (I personally prefer to watch the Japanese dub with no subtitles. I've seen it enough that I know what's being said, and I just enjoy the sheer beauty of the film, and I'd rather hear the Japanese voices, because it is a quintessentially Japanese story. At least, until fan subtitles (fansubs) hit the Net. Those were REALLY good. For example, there's a scene where a girl slowly opens her hand to reveal something written on it that she didn't have time to look at before (context would be massive spoilers). In the official subtitles, the entire thing is written out before she opens her hand, killing the pacing the director intended. In the fansubs, the message is slowly revealed as she sees it, so we share her surprise.

So, Europe kind of got shafted in that they were the last ones to get a release. However, because of the pushback against the English songs, they got an option the Americans didn't, they got an English dialogue track with Japanese songs. That made American fans a bit jealous.

I don't think Noda or RADWIMPS were particularly bothered that people didn't like their English songs for 君の名は。 . They got paid, and the movie accomplished what it set out to, it was an amazing film you should absolutely watch, and it reached way more audiences than its predecessor.

Three years later, Shinkai released a new film, 天気の子, or, Weathering With You outside of Japan (but the name literally means "The Weather Maiden"). RADWIMPS returned to do the soundtrack, only this time, watching the movie in English did not get you the songs in English, except for today's song of the day, which still played in Japanese during the film. However, over the credits, it played in English if you watched the English dub. You could also switch to the English dub after watching the film in Japanese if you wanted to hear it both ways.

And, unlike any song in 君の名は。, Is There Still Anything That Love Can Do? had amazing English lyrics.

Here's the English version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Oz8gCJy2-Q As in, 100% of the lyrics are in English. It's a Japanese song in that it's written and performed by people from Japan, but it's an English song in that it's in English.

Noda has gone on to say that it takes about twice as long to say anything in Japanese, so the English translation would have a lot of dead air, so he has to say more to fill that space. It's an oversimplification to compare any two languages that do not have a common base (like say, Italian and Spanish both come from Latin), but his point was that when singing in English, he has to say more, so he's either going to repeat himself, or he'll elaborate (word salad) on a point, and covering that up and making it still sound good is a challenge.

RADWIMPS have other songs that are in English, some of which do not even have a Japanese version (that I know of), such as Light the Light.

And, for the record, Japanese is considered the most "alien" language to English, and vice-versa. Anyone translating between these two languages is doing a heck of a job. There's a reason computers can't do it in real time yet. Like Apple and Google advertise that their earbuds and phones will translate some languages in real time. No one's translating Japanese to English in real time yet. Maybe ChatGPT could do it, but that would be expensive. The free tools absolutely cannot do it right now. So, if you hear Japanese people singing in English, please respect the amount of work they put in to make it so you could understand their words without having to read along with subtitles.

It's hard to pick a favourite MAN WITH A MISSION song, especially when, IMO, their four best songs all start with "M". It was either this, or Merry-Go-Round, or Memories, or More Than Words. They have plenty of other great songs, but it was gonna be between those three and My Hero, which I chose mostly because the lyrics are mostly English. But all four of them are top quality.

MAN WITH A MISSION is one of those bands with a fictional back story. As I recall, they were created by Jimi Hendrix, frozen in Antarctica, and then discovered by a Japanese fishing boat. They are also one of those bands that wear masks. In this case, wolf masks, with different expressions. It's just the masks though, they're very obviously people. They make no effort to hide the rest of their bodies. They aren't full fur suits. They aren't furries, but, they kind of do have fursonas.

Musically, they're kind of like the rap/metal hybrid days in the late 90s, early 00s in the west, with a bit of symphony thrown in. If you've heard them, it's because a lot of their songs have been licensed to anime. This one was licensed to Inuyashiki: Last Hero. Please, make no mistake, I did not say Inuyasha, which is a children's anime about a demon dog (who is the bestest boy, like all dogs). I said Inuyashiki, which is something else entirely.

Inuyashiki tells the story of an old man who feels useless because he can no longer meaningfully help his family, and a young man who wants to be feared by everyone, but he's just a petty criminal. The two both happen to be in a park (and AFAIK aren't even interacting), when they are both instantly killed by a flying saucer which crashes into them. The aliens didn't mean any harm, so they rebuild both men in super-powered android bodies, and then they bugger off to wherever. As the two men realise their powers, they begin to do things. The old man becomes a hero, helping people in need. The young man becomes a terrorist, just randomly killing people for fun. Ultimately, they have to fight each other. It wasn't great, but it wasn't bad, either. The violence was kind of over-the-top.

Here is the opening theme featuring a shorter version of My Hero: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYciY8Y8Y8s

For reference, this is Inuyasha's opening (NOT the same thing!): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6UWhb9dGHQ (There's no official stream on YouTube, so a fan upload is the best we can get here.)

Suerte is Spanish for luck, but you probably know this 2001 Colombian pop song as Whenever, Wherever. I prefer the Spanish-language version, not because I know more than a couple dozen words in Spanish, but I just like how the words sound more here.

If you want the song in English, here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weRHyjj34ZE

Shakira gets a lot of credit for her dancing, but I feel it's never quite enough. She doesn't just dance, it's the whole way she moves, it's almost supernatural. It's almost like she can touch her own elbow (of the same arm), or one of those people who are double-jointed and can do weird things, but not quite weird and in fact mesmerising to watch.

I remember when the English version of this song was all over the radio. You couldn't get away from it. What was funny was how they censored the line "Funny how my breasts are small and humble so you don't confuse them with mountains." The very idea that a woman could be content with a body that didn't quite fit the mould of what society considered beautiful had to be censored, lest young girls think they could live happy lives if they didn't have double-D's by middle school. This fucking society, sometimes.

You don't have to have the body of a goddess (or a god) to be content in life, but I do, and I am also content. Granted, that god is Buddha, but I'm still at peace. I hope you find yours.

I can think of at least half a dozen songs by Japanese pop rock singer LiSA that deserve the spotlight more than Shirushi, but I saw this live performance last night and can't get it out of my head.

First thing to note: for a live performance, it's very true to the studio version, at least for the first 90% of it. Second, she fills stadiums in Japan, but as far as I know, has never toured in the US or Europe. Japanese bands don't command such big audiences abroad, so they tend to stay home, and the rest of the world is poorer for it. Third, at the end of the performance, she legitimately breaks down in tears. The band tries to cheer her up with a more upbeat tune, and she tries to hold it together, but ultimately leaves. I'm not sure if this was the last song in her set, but she clearly needed a break after performing it.

The whole song is in Japanese, so if you don't know Japanese, you might not understand why she cries at the end. But, you might if you watched some anime that is in English. LiSA got her start in anime music with the anime series Fate/Zero and her song Oath Sign, but it was Sword Art Online and her song Crossing Field that made her famous. She made the opening theme for what would be, for a few years, the biggest anime series out at the time. The ending theme was done by Haruka Tomatsu, who voiced the main girl in Japanese. (The voice of the main girl in English didn't sing anything for the series, but she voices the protagonist of Cyberpunk 2077 opposite Keanu Reeves and Idris Elba, so not too shabby!) For the second and third arcs (end of first season, beginning of second season), they had two other singers do the openings and endings. One did both endings, the other did both openings, and they were good. For the fourth arc, the end of the second season, they brought back the first two singers, but they switched them around. Haruka Tomatsu got the opening, and LiSA got the ending, and that ending theme was Shirushi.

Both of them poured their hearts into their respective themes. Tomatsu, because the arc was focused on the character she voiced, and, to be absolutely clear, we're talking about the adaptation of Sword Art Online, Vol. 7, Mother's Rosary, the peak of the series to date (there are about 25 volumes now). If Mother's Rosary was its own, standalone anime, it would either be my favourite anime, or it would be top 3. As it is, it's a big part of the reason I rate Sword Art Online as high as I do.

Anyway, I'm pretty sure LiSA knew the story before writing the song. The book isn't long, and while I don't understand Japanese and I don't know what she's actually singing, the song will forever be tied to that story, and if you knew the story, you'd probably understand why, however many years later, performing the song brings the singer to tears.

What I will say is that while the main guy is off doing main character stuff, the main girl hears about this woman challenging anyone to a duel, and after more than 50, she hasn't been defeated yet. She's quickly becoming a legend, so the main girl decides to head on over there and see what all the fuss is about. She faces the duelist in battle, and gives it her all, but the duelist calls a draw when she's down to just a sliver of life. (The whole story takes place in a virtual reality video game. They can leave at any time, and dying in the game, unlike in the first arc where it's a death game, just means they start over in town.) Then takes her and they run off together. The duelist tells the main girl she's actually recruiting for a quest. The quest isn't that important. What is, is when the duelist calls her "sis" a couple times, catches herself, and leaves. The second time, she stays gone, and everyone tells her to not pursue it. But, her boyfriend is a national hero, and a hacker, so he's able to track her down in the real world. Then he tells her to stay away, but she can't. And that's when shit goes sideways.

In addition to that, the main girl is dealing with her mother, in real life, who is telling her that online connections don't matter, and she needs to focus on her school and professional lives. That story plays out to a very satisfying conclusion, inspired by the events of the first story.

The show (I mean, those seven episodes that adapted the book) was excellent, but somehow, the book was just a little better. I didn't physically read the ink on paper; rather, I had Cherami Leigh (who voices the main girl in English) read it to me, via the audiobook. There's ever so slightly more to the story in the book, though I wouldn't say the show missed anything important. I wonder if she was able to make it through the reading without shedding a tear. I certainly wasn't, and I wasn't voicing the characters.

If you have Crunchyroll, or some other service that carries it (Netflix used to, not sure if they still do), do yourself a favour and watch the fourth arc of the anime. You don't have to watch the stuff that comes before, though, it can be helpful as background. Maybe watch a recap of the first season on YouTube. Anyway, go to the second season and watch the 18th episode, Forest House.

Maybe someday, someone will adapt that book into a standalone film, somehow. I'd love to see how that looks.

And on a much lighter note, the author wrote a prequel to Mother's Rosary in Sword Art Online, Vol. 22, Kiss and Fly, which is a collection of short stories. It starts with Yuuki, the duelist from Mother's Rosary, playing a different game. They call it Serene Garden, but it's basically Animal Crossing in VR. Except for the name, that's literally exactly what it was. Plus multiplayer. There's... a bit more to it than that, but you should not read the prequel (it hasn't been animated yet) before reading/seeing the main story, since, you know, it kinda gives up the main story's twist, since it assumes you know it.

So hey, there's your homework. Read Mother's Rosary or watch the anime adaptation and get absolutely wrecked (thereby learning why LiSA breaks down in tears at the end of the live performance)... or go play some Animal Crossing and heal your soul while you work for Bells to pay the capitalist swine raccoon for your home loans... or just go fishing and bug catching.

Was gonna skip today because I slept in, but I just learned that the bassist for L7 passed away recently (side note: fuck cancer). This was a song I enjoyed singing in Rockband. I don't have anything else to say about it, but this song probably would have been posted eventually just because it was so fun to sing, and it's fun to listen to; I always like when it comes up on the playlist.

Addendum: I saw another music comm posted this song (I browse /all, so I see all), and I'd already kinda decided to skip today, maybe post before bed or something. So it immediately got upvoted just because I like the song. I briefly thought of just crossposting it here, because it's a great pick. Then I kept scrolling and saw that Jennifer Finch had passed, and then it was kinda a done deal. There's no official stream of the music video, which is why we just get the audio here. The other post didn't have it in HD, anyway.

Been too long since I posted a song from the 1970s. Any day I post a song from after the 1970s, it's been too long since we looked at the 1970s. The 80s is my favourite generation of music for pop and rock (90s for R&B and country), but there's something special about the 1980s.

I almost didn't post this song after all. I generally prefer to post official streams because I believe the artist should get the money from the stream, not some rando who reuploaded it. However, in this case, apparently there was some controversy over Journey's change in vocalist (I was not aware of this until today), and they re-recorded all their classic hits with the new guy... and pulled all their classics, replacing them with the new versions. The new guy sounds good and I wish him/them all the best, but that new Wheel in the Sky ain't the one I grew up with. I could enjoy it on its own merits, but it's still not the one I grew up with. The one I linked, is. This one is the one they recorded with Steve Perry in 1978, and it will forever be the definitive version. I'm all for bands remastering and reimagining their old music, but don't take the old version from the old guys. That will set you at odds with the fans every single time. The exception is if a band member did something bad and you want to cut them out of the royalties. I discussed this at length in the Song of the Day post about Lost in Paradise by Japanese band ALI, but also referencing Lostprophets. That's different. To the best of my knowledge, Steve Perry did nothing wrong. So his version is the one we're talking about here.

Going back to the late 70s, through the 80s and into the 90s, Journey was one of those bands that was always there. They had songs that were good, and they had songs that were great. A few of them were timeless. If you want to make the argument that Don't Stop Believin' was their best song, I wouldn't fight you on that. It's another of the great ones and I absolutely love it. It's also very slightly overrated, having been practically mythologised. It absolutely deserves every bit of praise it receives and I will not argue against it being their best song, but I like Wheel in the Sky a bit better. If I hear either of them, though, my day's gotten a little better.

When Rockband 2 came out, when music became interactive in the late 2000s, I was not really surprised they went with Any Way You Want It. That was kind of the big single, but I wouldn't call it great. It's a crowd pleaser and it probably sounds great in the stadium, but it's not one I'd pick if I could hear just one Journey song in a day. It was okay. As the designated singer (I did not have the coordination to play even a plastic guitar, or the stamina to do drums, let alone the coordination), I never complained about Any Way You Want It getting picked. I may have even picked it once or twice, because again, you have great Journey songs and you have good Journey songs. This was a good one.

We got a Journey 3-pack later, but no Wheel in the Sky. I never found out why they didn't get it. I imagine it had something to do with the licensing. We got Don't Stop Believin', which was great because that's widely considered their best song. We also got Separate Ways (Worlds Apart) and I forget what the other one was. We didn't play those two as much (too slow for our drummer). I certainly bought the whole pack, though.

I wanna say one of the Guitar Hero games got Wheel in the Sky, but I couldn't swear to it. Guitar Hero was made by Harmonix, the people who made Rockband, but they left the franchise after Guitar Hero 2 because they wanted to add drums and vocals, and the publisher, Activision, said no and put their foot down. Guitar Hero made at least two more guitar-only games: Guitar Hero 3, and Guitar Hero: Van Halen. After Rockband ate their lunch, they begrudgingly added drums and vocals to Guitar Hero World Tour and Guitar Hero: Metallica, but they poorly implemented them, and from what I recall, vocals never quite worked, and drums weren't that much better. Most plastic drummers and singers stuck with Rockband. So, I think Guitar Hero World Tour or the fifth one had Wheel in the Sky, but if I couldn't sing it, I wasn't interested, and singing never quite worked in Guitar Hero.

Oh well. We still have the song. Until Journey copyright strikes this and we're stuck with the remake on YouTube.

Here's the remake, if you're curious. It really is quite good... and it was recorded in 2007. It's a modern Journey song. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gmf4OVHhc9g The new singer is Filipino, and I don't know much about him, but he really does nail Steve's tone. He didn't have to lean that hard into the old style. He's not doing us old heads any favours, we're just gonna listen to the original. Still, I'm thankful they kept the spirit of the original. I'm not at all mad that it exists. I'm just never gonna reach for this version. Listening to it now because I may never listen to it again, just because the original exists.

Note: This is the Song of the Day for 18/7/26. The other one is for yesterday when dbzer0 was down, at least it was down when I was able to get online, so I was unable to post one. I had one in mind, I just had to wait until today to post it. This one is today's.

I've been waiting to drop this song for a while. YouTube saw I was playing a lot of female-fronted rock bands, like Nightwish and Within Temptation, and a lot of female Japanese singers, and maybe Google got wind of me saying that all the best rock music was coming out of Japan these days since the west has collectively ignored rock in favour of pop and rap.

I've watched a few videos by this band, and I like what they're doing. They're having fun, and they aren't selling their sexuality. They don't wear makeup (or, if they do, it isn't excessive), they aren't showing a lot of skin, they're just having fun and playing good music, like it should be. I don't like girls who rock because they're hot, I just like hearing the words they write from their perspective, and I like the sound of a girl's voice more than a guy's.

I don't much like their name though. They call the band "Kid Sistr" (like, little sister) and they're saying things like "Told me bout the girls you wish you dated, while I’m lying with you naked, memorize the posters in your room" (second verse of the song). Little sister where? West Virginia? Alabama? The name doesn't fit the tone of the music. Or I'm missing something.

Either way, I like the music and I would definitely see them live if they came to my area. They sound like 90s alternative rock from 1994, right after Kurt Cobain effectively disbanded Nirvana and everything was kinda influenced by grunge but also kinda not grunge, like Counting Crows and Collective Soul. Most of their songs would fit in just fine on my 90s playlist. We all woulda loved these gals when I was in high school.

So, here's to good music that takes you back to a simpler time.

CW/TW: Domestic violence, spousal abuse

Note: This is for yesterday, 17/7/26, because dbzer0 was down the whole time I was online, and was unable to post.

Have we done country yet? I don't think we've done country. I don't really like country music. I could go into why, but it wouldn't scratch the depths of the entire genre of country music and I'd likely alienate some people, and I want everyone to feel welcome in the music comm. But that's not why I'm posting a country song. Truth is, there are quite a few country songs I do like. But this isn't really one of them. Not exactly. Because what I do like quite a bit more is Southern Rock. Lynyrd Skynyrd is the obvious one, they're like the free space on the Bingo card, or Free Parking on Monopoly. Everyone likes Skynyrd, right? Figured as much. But I thought Green Grass and High Tides by the Outlaws was a better Freebird, though they're both good. There's Allman Brothers, there's CCR even though they're not really southern. Then you can kinda lump John Mellencamp in as well, though he's more midwest. Think of southern rock as a great big lawn, it doesn't matter where exactly you are on it, southern rock is a pretty broad brush. However, that lawn has a fence, and on the other side of that fence is country music. Close to that fence on the other side is country that rocks a bit, and that's where today's (yesterday's) song of the day can be found.

The Thunder Rolls is an interesting song. It's an even more interesting video... now that you can watch it. See, this video got banned from CMT (Country Music Television, the music video station that played country music) for its portrayal of domestic violence. It's even more interesting because the video tells more of the story than the song does... if you're listening to the studio version of the song. Which is what plays over the video. So to catch you up (the "tl;dw" crowd who don't like looking at videos for whatever reason), it's about a man who cheats on his wife. She's up late waiting for him, and she's bruised, meaning he's beaten her before. And she's getting plastered. Oh, and their daughter is watching, and she's little, like 7-9 years old. He comes home, she smells the other woman's perfume, she calls him out, he beats her... and that's the song. The video shows more, though, and that's probably what got the video banned.

For the rest of the story, we need the live version. This is taken from his Double Live album, and this is the way I've heard it. You'll want to jump to around 3:30 in the video, if you just want the extra bit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-bl4HAqKdQ

You'll notice the crowd goes nuts when he starts singing again, because this part's not on any (other) recorded version of the song. After being beaten, she runs into the bedroom, takes his gun from the dresser drawer, and shoots him dead.

Also note, Garth Brooks doesn't really like technology much, so there aren't official streams of any of his music on any service. For a minute, he was exclusive to Amazon Music, but I think he's even pulled out of that. I have Garth Brooks on Apple Music, but only because I have a handful of his CDs. I have Double Live and a few others. So I've just dropped the .m4a files onto Apple Music, and I can stream them and put them in playlists and it all just works. There's a trick to doing that with Spotify (maybe it's gotten easier?). Not sure about other services. Garth Brooks is a solid argument for having your own copy of music you love. Don't let a musician decide you can't hear their music after you've paid for it. Learn how to back up your CDs, and, for fun and completion's sake, those of your friends and family; share, and share alike. When I was a kid, once I got into backing up CDs, I demanded that my mother and brother hand over all their new CDs so I could back them up. They did, because it only took breaking/scratching one CD and having to buy it again to learn the lesson. Half of my mother's CDs are burned, but they're in the packaging of the legal copy she bought. She's just old, and takes shitty care of her discs. So she gives them to me to back up, then enjoys the music. When the disc gets damaged, I replace it, because the studio won't. Not even for the cost of the disc and shipping and handling. They want you to buy a second copy at full price. That's madness to me. How many times do you need to pay for something? When others get things for free? You paid for it, you should get to enjoy it on your terms, not theirs. I'm an iPhone guy, and I subscribe to Apple Music. I also have an old Android phone with a memory card that is full of music, and the internal storage has a lot, too. (I do have Apple Music on that phone as well.) Of course I also have the music on my Mac. So I have backups. And portability. The Android phone has a headphone jack, so I can jack straight into most cars and play the music directly. Suffice it to say, that old Android phone holds its own against the much newer iPhone.

Technology should work for you, not the other way around. Own your devices. You decide what they do and when, not the other way around.