If you love music, but don’t know about SomaFM yet, you’re really missing something special.

Based in a warehouse in San Francisco, SomaFM broadcasts 14 unique channels of listener-supported, commercial-free, underground/alternative radio.

But SomaFM isn’t a station that you listen to on a regular radio. They stream their music over the Internet, and you listen on your computer. (More about how to do that in a minute.)

SomaFM’s founder Rusty Hodge started the station in 1999 with one channel, and they now broadcast 14 unique channels of music, 24 hours a day. SomaFM’s commercial-free streams are listened to in over 200 countries around the world!

Listening to SomaFM gives you access to music and formats that aren’t available on commercial radio, or formats that are “not being done right” as Rusty puts it.

To listen to SomaFM you use a music (or media) player program on your computer. Mac (and Windows) users can use iTunes. Winamp for Windows plays both aacPlus and MP3 streams. Windows Media Player users can get the Orban aacPlus plugin to hear aacPlus feeds right in Windows Media player.

Just go the SomaFM listen page, to see the different music channels, and get links to the different players and streams.

Here are the 14 fabulous channels they have:

1. Groove Salad: A nicely chilled plate of ambient beats and grooves. (My favorite!)
2. Secret Agent: The soundtrack for your stylish, mysterious, dangerous life. For Spies and PIs too!
3. Drone Zone: Served best chilled, safe with most medications. Atmospheric textures with minimal beats.
4. Indie Pop Rocks!: New and your favorite classic indie pop tracks.
5. cliqhop idm: Blips’n'beeps backed mostly w/beats. Intelligent Dance Music.
6. Beat Blender: A late night blend of deep-house and downtempo chill.
7. Tag’s Trip: Progressive house / trance. Tip top tunes.
8. Illinois Street Lounge: Classic bachelor pad, playful exotica and vintage music of tomorrow.
9. Space Station Soma: Tune in, turn on, space out. Spaced-out ambient and mid-tempo electronica.
10. Doomed: Dark music for tortured souls
11. Boot Liquor: Americana Roots music for Cowhands, Cowpokes and Cowtippers
12. Lush: Sensuous and mellow vocals, mostly female, with an electronic influence.
13. Digitalis: Digitally affected analog rock with a DIY mentality.
14. Sonic Universe: NuJazz + avant-garde EuroJazz. Transcending the world of jazz with experimental takes on tradition.

SomaFM is the soundtrack to my day here at TheoreticalKen. For example, Groove Salad, Secret Agent and Illinois Street Lounge are medium/up-tempo energy, great for listening during the day. Space Station Soma, and Drone Zone are great for those quiet post-midnight working hours!

But try ‘em all! You’ll hear an amazing diversity of music, artists and genres!

WOW!

The Baby Janes rocked the house at La Mama for the past two weekends!

This aerial, singing, dancing, musical holiday celebration was put together by Kristen Olness, and starred The Baby Janes: Kristen Olness, Michelle Dortignac, Angela Jones and Laura Witwer, with special guest Terry Beeman. Sara Moore was the eccentric hostess in her character, Pearl Claus.

SEE LOTS OF PICTURES from the closing night performance on Sunday, after this…

Click on the first image below, and then just click the RIGHT-SIDE of each large image to advance through the pictures.

Matt Keating played next door at the Brooklyn Lyceum on Sunday night. The set featured songs from his upcoming release, QUIXOTIC. I took a few pictures, and above is a slide show of those shots. It’s built using the cool flickrSLiDR, and the images come from my new Flickr account. I’m totally new to Flickr, but loving it so far. I’m such a tech/photo-head that I can’t believe I never checked Flickr out before.

For anyone who does not yet know; Flickr is a place where you can host and share all your images online. But the really great part is that you can embed slideshows and galleries of your pix in your blog or website. All of the image are stored on Flickr, and just show up in your web page. Enjoy!

BTW: Matt Keating was great! You can hear samples (or even buy some) of his current and past records here.

Chris Brown, Canadian musician-singer-songwriter-producer extraordinaire, has just released OBLIVION, his second solo album.

But this is far from Chris Brown’s second recording; he has been making great music for over 20 years. Chris was a member of the Bourbon Tabernacle Choir (1985-1995), a Canadian alternative rock band that formed in Toronto, Ontario. Since then, he has recorded and performed steadily with singing partner Kate Fenner as Chris and Kate (1997-present). In 2004, Chris formed “The Citizens’ Band” as a vehicle for his solo material. Joined by Kate Fenner on vocals, The Citizens’ Band features Anton Fier (drums), Tony Scherr (bass), and Teddy Kumpel (guitar). Chris has played with numerous other musicians, including Ani DiFranco, Barenaked Ladies, Broken Social Scene, Crash Test Dummies, DJ Logic, Po’ Girl, Rheostatics, The Tragically Hip and Tom Jones.

My wife Michelle discovered Chris Brown for us. He was a student in one of her Yoga classes here in Brooklyn, and had given her one of the Chris and Kate CDs to listen to. One day, I heard the most beautiful, powerful, soulful music coming from our living room; “Who is this?” I asked. It was Chris and Kate, from the CD, O Witness. I was blown away.

Chris’s songwriting is stunning. His are not the oh-so-typical “she broke my heart, and I want her back” songs. Not even close. Chris writes poetically, philosophically, and strongly about life, love, frailty, family, duty, God and politics, all from a spiritually human standpoint, not a self-centered one. Even I, who never “listens to the words” in songs, am moved by Chris’s lyrics. Supporting his lyrics are wonderfully crafted songs (acoustic folk, funk, rock, blues and/or gospel inspired ), which deliver the perfect aural context for his words.

OBLIVION is much more than a collection of 10 individual songs–it is a true album. OBLIVION’s songs combine to create something magical and unified as a whole; you’ll definitely want to listen to this record all the way through in one sitting.

I HIGHLY recommend getting OBLIVION, the new album from Chris Brown & The Citizen’s Band. You can purchase it directly from Chris, over at the Chris Brown Music Store.

——–

“Amen” from OBLIVION

Was it the old sun that turned you around?
Did you begin to love the river’s sound?
What woke you up? What changed your plans?
Who knew beneath all your success and failure
lay a different man…

Seeds in the old husk, put them to use
It’s time to build useful things
It’s time for the truth
You feel the danger in living free
But now every stranger opens his heart
and presents a key

This love exists
Now hope does too
This thought insists
You follow through
It might be silence
It might be space
It might be the end of you
and the dawn of grace

When the architect of light
To the birdsong, gives reply

It was the old sun that turned me around
Then I began to love the river’s sound
It woke me up and it changed my plan
And it knew beneath all my success and failure
lay a better man.

“The Return” from OBLIVION

The door is open wide and you step in–
Shake the snow and ice outside, leave it to the wind.
Feel the warmth and kind relief
As all the fear that was love’s thief rescinds

There’s a quiet light around you and me
On this quiet night

Winter frozen like a lock
Beneath the ice the old lake knocks
Wind is weaving through the trees
Moonlight on the snow agrees

With this quiet light
Around you and me
On this quiet night

Oh the falling snow
As gentle as your breath
Moments come and go

You tell me we’ve met before
But not this night and not this shore
And not this conversation’s spark
To hold your profile in this dark

Not this quiet light around you and me
On this quiet night

I’ve been holding out
Waiting for some spring
To melt this wanting into giving
And melt this longing into living

The door is open wide, and you step in.

“The Gates” from OBLIVION

The rapture came, and it only let them down.
Questions remained in the cities and the towns
What had they wanted? An end to everything they scorn–
Now nothing’s over, but capacity to mourn

The lie was total- society was spent
We did as we pleased, while the soldiers came and went
I took a lover, but all she wanted was my fear
I know to some people, it’s the only thing that’s clear.

Did you march here, or were you dragged here on your knees?
Compelled by orders, or the shackles at your feet?
Was it in a dungeon, or on the highest floor,
that you received these sacraments of war?

The streets were filled, long before the towers fell,
and most presumed that it was meant for us as well.
Kind people pray, poor people do what you must do–
What’s really wretched in this world is letting others sin for you

Freedom came my way in the form of nervous friends
who felt they had less to betray than to defend.
Love is no burden, love is no sentence, love is no trial–
Love is the final freedom

So did you march here?
Or were you carried by the chain
that links every stranger’s cruelty to every martyr’s name?
Satan and St. Peter tend to dress the same.
Through these gates–
everything and nothing are exchanged.

Rocky Roberts, long-time guitar technician for Neil Young (and many other fine musicians) has just released his debut album, Rocky Roberts & Friends.

Produced by Rocky Roberts and Canadian musician/producer Chris Brown, Rocky Roberts & Friends features performances by Nils Lofgren, Bill Kirchen, Sarah Harmer, Mickey Rafael, Matt Johnson, Tony Scherr, Anton Fier, Luther Wright, Jane Scarpantoni, Michael Blake, Diane DeWitt, Gary Pigg, Rosie Goodman, Michael Mazor, Ben Rubin, Jason Mercer, Teddy Kumpel, Chris Brown and Kate Fenner.

I am involved in this project in two exciting (and related) ways:

1. My web design company, KPFdigital, has created and built the website for Rocky’s new album. The website’s visual theme, based on the CD artwork, was created by our graphic designer Michael Kroll, and I hand-coded the site (as usual) in nice clean xhtml/css. We are hosting the site on our dedicated server.
2. The Music Store section of Rocky’s site is powered by IndieKazoo, a company that I co-founded with Eric Schwartz of Cactus Media in Austin TX. (Using IndieKazoo, any independent musician or band, with no web skills at all, can create their own full-service music download store just by following some easy instructions; and most importantly, receive 100% of their sales revenue, and receive it the same day. Oh, and it’s totally FREE for the entire first month.)

Check out Rocky’s website at www.rockyroberts.com, where you can be one of the first to purchase the CD directly from Rocky’s personal Music Store — powered by IndieKazoo!