Wednesday, September 5, 2007

Manually through the automatic door

Today I've been enjoying The Automatic Door, the new album by Anton Barbeau and Su Jordan.

Anton has released 3.5 albums in the past year (counting the one with the Loud Family as a half and this one as a whole since the songs are all his), which is kind of overkill, but each album has at least three or four brilliant tracks that discerning listeners can assemble into their own killer Anton album.

I've had The Automatic Door for a few weeks, but it took me awhile to finally listen to it, since the tracks didn't come up when I tried to import the CD into iTunes, and I was too lazy to type in the tracks myself. I could have listened to it the old-fashioned way, on my car stereo, but I decided to wait until someone else submitted the tracks to CDDB. Someone was sure to add it eventually.

That someone turned out to be me. I waited and waited, then finally gave in and typed in the tracks last weekend. The CD is credited to "Anton Barbeau with Su Jordan", so I typed that into the artist field, typed in all of the track names, and even uploaded the cover from his website. After I was done, I hit the submit, so save future listeners from the trouble.

Before work today, I played the first track ("Staring at the Sun") on iTunes, which created an "Anton Barbeau with Su Jordan" artist entry on last.fm. This artist only has one play scrobbled currently, but should eventually have more, given my efforts to spread the word and standardize the "Anton Barbeau with Su Jordan" name on the internet.

There are currently separate last.fm entries for "The Loud Family and Anton Barbeau", "Loud Family And Anton Barbeau", "The Loud Family & Anton Barbeau", and "Loud Family with Anton Barbeau". Also for "Anton Barbeau With The Bevis Frond", "Anton Barbeau W/ The Bevis Frond", and "Barbeau, Anton With The Bevis Frond" .

Anton Barbeau may be one of the most cataloged artists on last.fm, but The Automatic Door is really good and everyone should get it. It's only out in the UK, but is available through the usual place in the US. A few Anton albums, including his last pre-AD (BC?) one Drug Free, and his collaborations with the Loud Family and the Groovie Ghoulies were also added to emusic recently. Now everyone on emusic can sample, download, and enjoy the genius that is Anton!

2 comments:

2fs said...

Don't know if it was this one, but I entered the database info for one of the online services for some recent CD purchase. Might have been this one - but for a different service. Anyway: I think all three of the last Anton CDs are pretty strong (AD, DF, and ITVOTAS) - but I hadn't heard of this Groovie Ghoulies thing. More info please? (e-mail me if you don't think it's of general interest)

Steve said...

Anton appeared on a record by the Haints (GGs side project) a couple of years ago, playing guitar and piano and singing backing vocals. The album Hurt & Alone includes a cover of Love's "Message To Pretty" and is available on emusic.