If you've been on the website for five minutes, you've probably seen something like this before.

The irony contained herein is that I rarely pay any attention at all to lyrics until I am fully acquainted with the musical structure and rhythmic workings of a song. But here you go - you ought to know how this goes by now, 40 songs that came up on shuffle, I'll provide the first lyric and a list of artists (one song each) and you guess the songs. Italic lyrics are guessed lyrics.

1. On candy-stripe legs the spider-man comes, softly through the…

I just chose the time when I most need to be doing other things.

Well, here goes nothing, folks. You know the drill: top 50, where I found them, first song, song that inspired love, favourite song.

50. Billy Talent
Discovered: because my mother likes them
First: River Below
Loved: River Below
Favourite: Standing in the Rain

49. Cake
Discovered: when I stole my friend Dave's entire music collection
First: Short Skirt/Long Jacket
Loved: Long Line of Cars
Favourite: Arco Arena

48. Big Heavy Stuff
Discovered: through this fabulous website
First: Wide Eyed & Open
Loved: One Day In Your…

Hey fellas, it's another complete stranger's 'varied music' quiz that you clicked on because the journal linked to some artist you like. I'm only posting this because I wasted the time to do it and my music is varied, and I want people to know these things.

Right-o. Roll the current top 20, Johnny.

Damiera
Kevin Gilbert
Gentle Giant
Incubus
Kaddisfly
Steely Dan
Minus the Bear
Crash Test Dummies
The Cure
Oceansize
Sponge
Mae
Barenaked Ladies
This Day & Age
Tally Hall
Genesis
Relient K
Copeland
Tool
Frank Zappa

And now compiling the top 8 similar artists of each, the…

I'm putting off studying for an exam I have tomorrow by writing about some musical observation. Good job, Mooseh.

So I was in a restaurant with a couple friends when this song started playing. It sounded incredibly familiar to all of us, but none of us could put a name to the song.

"It's Franz Ferdinand," I said. "This song has that distinct sound of theirs."

"But that's not their singer's voice," said a friend.

So we asked the waiter. It was Interpol. Except it sounded exactly like Franz Ferdinand with a different singer.

I hadn't heard of…

Say it isn't so. Please. Someone.

I just came from a concert where I saw Russian Circles and Fear Before the March of Flames. There was supposed to be a third band performing, and that was the band I consider to be finest band in existence, Damiera. I hesitate to say 'considered', as their future seems somewhat in question.

The concert ended earlier than I anticipated and Damieraless, so naturally my reaction was to start singing Slow By Still, hoping to lure the group out of hiding if they were backstage somewhere. Hearing this, Mike Sullivan of…

Okay, perhaps I am not fully outraged, but last.fm has done something enough that I have been inspired to write a journal for the first time. Seems the fellows running the site decided to do a bit of 'cleaning up' and eliminated a lot of track pages that they didn't have information for. So when I play a song that the site hasn't heard of, it just plain does not show up. Which is all fine and good to prevent people from filling their lists with other songs that they've tagged as Your Face, but when I want to…