Sadly, the greatest current rock ‘n’ roll band broke up went on hiatus earlier this year. Just after they announced the break up hiatus they recorded a concert for the NPR series “All Tunes Considered” at the 9:30 Club in D.C. The results are great… I’m no bootleg expert, but the sound quality seems good to me and all the songs really rock (both the band and the crowd seem to be savoring the last moments). You can get a copy of that concert from NPR’s website, but it’s a single, 2 hour-long track… for 24 songs! Annoying, to say the least.

So I took that track and used the excellent (but command-line only, at least on Windows) open-source app MP3splt to break it into 27 separate tracks, including the intro and two intermission breaks. You can download it via BitTorrent.

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First, out of all the songs on Rolling Stones’ 100 Best of 2006 list I would not have expected that my favorite would be a Carrie Underwood song, “Before He Cheats.” (This is the song she sang during halftime of that Thanksgiving football game, right?) I loved, loved, loved Carrie when she was on American Idol, but I never expected to really like her actual releases. Regardless, it’s awesome.

RS is wrong about the best cover of Gnarles Barkley’s “Crazy” (the original is number one, natch. Can’t really argue with that.) Clearly the best is the version by the Kooks, with Nelly Furtado in second. The Raconteurs do a good job, as do the Twilight Singers, but those versions just don’t hold up.

As an honorable mention, “Gin & Milk” by Dirty Pretty Things is really awesome.

If you want/need any of these songs please email me and I’ll hook you up.

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I “found” a torrent for a bunch of unreleased outtakes from the sessions for the Rolling Stones’ classic album “Exile on Main St.” You can get it here. The original files were found on the excellent blog aquarium drunkard, but they’re no longer available there.

(If you happen to have access to digital copies of the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion’s “Controversial Negro,” would you please share? I found a good torrent for it, but I’ve been stuck at 92% with no seeders for a week.)

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