Sorry I slept on this.

Hey, Young Man's Boy EP is available for free download from Noisetrade.

It was one of my top ten releases of 2010. Kindof like the acoustic parts of Animal Collective, but without a lot of the annoyingness that has turned a lot of people off of Animal Collective. Sounds like you can stream the whole thing from the place, too, so you can sample it before you download. The first song, "Five," is my favorite on the album, so if that's no good for you, you might as well forget it.

Spit yr wicked randomness.

For the cost of your e-mail, SPIN magazine* will let you download an MP3 compilation with track-by-track coverage of Nirvana's Nevermind, which was released 20 years ago. (Oddly, it seems older than that to me.)

*which I haven't really read since Charles Aaron stopped writing his "Singles" column a dozen-plus years ago**
**Yes, I missed the Klosterman years.

The results vary widely, but two are worth the inconvenience of having to unsubscribe after you get the first unwanted e-mail, and a two more are interesting:

1. Meat Puppets "Smells Like Teen Spirit". Almost sounds like it could be a well-recorded acoustic demo. Curt sounds a lot like Kurt, or actually, I'm first realizing how much Kurt was sounding like Curt. If ever a story came out that Kurt had Curt co-write his songs for him, I could now totally believe it. "With the lights out, we're less dangerous... I feel stupid, and contagious": Totally Puppets lyrics.

2. Titus Andronicus "Breed". I've tried listening to TA before, and I just haven't been able to get into them at all. But this sounds great, the vox are all treble and aren't aping Kurt, yet still get some of the intent across.

3. Charles Bradley & the Menahan Street Band "Stay Away". James-Brown-type funk with some Summer-of-love distorted guitar for color. Reminds me of Sharon Jones' Janet Jackson cover, which made it sound like Janet was actually covering a long-lost classic. Only this "Stay Away" is clearly the cover.

4. EMA "Endless Nameless". This is the noisy hidden track. EMA does alright, but I think she could have done better on one of the actual songs than some of the other jokers did. And this just makes me miss Dave Grohl's drum thump at the end of the original, over which Kurt's guitar squealing staggers. It's here, but it doesn't feel like it should go on forever.

Not all of the other tracks are necessarily worthless, and I haven't listened to them that carefully. Some are really bad though, even worse than Tricky's cover with incorrect lyrics of "Something in the Way". A better list of contributors could have helped, but I really don't know where SPIN is right now or which bands who would have done well.

OK, that's not true. Bobby Bare Jr.*, Ha Ha Tonka, and Will Oldham definitely could. And I'd love to see what these folk could do: Frank Ocean, The Weeknd, Low, Rocky Votolato, Grinderman, The F--- Buttons (only for Endless, Nameless for them though).

*He did a fantastic cover "Ocean Size" from Jane's Addiction for a complilation.

Anyways, those are my thoughts for today. What's randomly running to your ears?

Share a list of ten random tracks from your digital music player or streaming music service. Or just start a conversation on music.

U2 is playing at TCF this weekend? Are you going? Would you have gone were it cheaper?

Can summer already be half over? What a fool I've been with my time.
Share your lists, I've got nothing but regrets.

I was going to finalize my summer mix, and share it with all y'all, but I ran out of time.
I might have something here after a while. Watch this space, it may be coming. Or maybe later this weekend.

To bide time, please share with us ten or so of your finest random tracks.

I'm almost done with my summer mix. I've got about 105 minutes and CDs are only 80 minutes long. I might do like one 60 minute disc and one 35 minute disc to cover songs with cursing (like the Weeknd and Shabazz Palaces). Then I won't have to cut so much.

When previewing some of the songs last night, CER asked me about rapping. What is rapping? How is it different from singing? &c. I didn't really know how to explain it: singing without melody but more rhythm, talking with a beat. I figured it'd be easier to show her, so I filtered my iTunes to Hip-hop*, sorted by year. The earliest I have imported is Eric B and Rakim's Paid in Full, and that's all I have for the 80's (somewhere, my Slick Rick is sitting on a shelf, waiting to be imported). So I pulled up the title track and showed her the prototypical rap flow. After that, I skipped forward to Das EFX "They Want EFX", the Pharcyde "Passing Me By", and Cypress Hill "Loco en el Coco"**.

*I'm very diligent about genres in my iTunes. I keep it under a dozen. So, no distinctions between indie rock, classic rock, country rock, lo fi rock, prog rock, punk rock, folk rock, modern rock, etc. Just rock. (Though country rock might end up in country.)

**No need to screen for lyrical content if it's in Spanish.

I'd like to share more with her, maybe with a CD I could burn, or an iPod playlist (she borrows my wife's iPod -- full of P&W and folk-rock -- from time to time). It should all be clean in lyrics and subject (so nothing like the radio edit of "I Want to Get High"). I'm not even sure if what I played was halal enough. You got any suggestions? (It doesn't need to be stuff 20 or more years old like my first few there, newer stuff is just as good, I just don't know any of it by heart enough where I can make it to the skip button about two lines before the cussing, violence, drugs, or sex begins.)

Or, if you've got nothing (Cheaptoy, Rob, Beau), just drop your own random dozen.