I think they’ll take away my indie snob decoder ring if I don’t report on these Neutral Milk Hotel demos which have suddenly surfaced, like so much early Christmas presents for the indie kids. Basically, the story is as follows – Skipgoshannon moved into a house formerly occupied by one Jeff Mangum, and came into possession of a number of cassettes featuring demos by the future King Of Carrot Flowers. Eleven years later, it has dawned on her what she has in her possession, and the tracks are slowly being converted into digital form for sharing. What a lovely story, no? She has some of the tracks available to download, as do NeutralMilkHotel.org, My Old Kentucky Blog and You Ain’t No Picasso. I’m sure that before long, all the tracks will be happily converted to 1s and 0s and collected together in an easy to carry bit torrent form. But if you like doing the whole scavenger hunt thing, go to it. Those tracks are out there. Somewhere.

Harp puts one Mr Neil Young on their cover of their new issue, and the world is a better place for it. The extensive feature article is now online. Also in the new issue, Jeff Tweedy ranks his top-ten greatest all-time live albums… and topping the list is one Live Rust, by the aforementioned Mr Young. I had a copy of that CD taped from the library way back when I first started getting heavily into music, and damn if I didn’t wear that thing out.

Popmatters talks football, Noo Yawk and Harry Potter with American Analog Set’s Andrew Kenny.

The Mountain Goats’ John Darnielle pays tribute to The Days Of Our Lives for Nerve.

Largehearted Boy has unleashed his year-end list on the world. I have finalized my top 10, and am going to start on the writeups, um, soon. I’ve set a personal deadline for getting that finished though, so barring catastrophe it should be ready in the near future. Meanwhile, the wet blankets at Pitchfork wonder why we even bother. Easy – to get out of having to write new content for a day.

LA Weekly considers the role of blogs in breaking new bands. Via Coolfer.

Londonist has what they claim is inside information on NME fixing their year end list, and a wonderful shitstorm ensues. Now considering how high I hold the NME‘s journalistic integrity, I’m fully prepared to believe the story, but Londonist does themselves no favours by offering no evidence or proof of their accusations. It’s still an entertaining read, though.

Ooh, more random award nominations! Gridskipper, allegedly an “urban travel guide”, is running something called The Urbs: 2005 Urban Blogging Awards, and I’m nominated for World’s Best Urban Music Blog. Hear that? THE WORLD. Oooooh.

np – Bruce Springsteen / The Essential Bruce Springsteen