Just in case anybody is curious, I've started using ToVid to upload songs to YouTube. It seems to work with a minimum of hassle, the only drawback being that I sometimes need to convert songs to MP3 before uploading them. For that job, media.io seems to work pretty well. Between the two of them, it means I don't really need to do very much to get things uploaded. As for today, let's hope today's songs are a better bunch than yesterday.
COLOSSUS, "The Clouds"
Instrumental hip-hop act that funded this album through Kickstarter. It's the kind of small artistic project that I love, and is the sort of thing that makes me really love that platform. The album itself is an interesting listen, so give it a whirl.
Talib Kweli, "Africa Dream"
Talib Kweli was part of the incredible Black Star, whose one album under that name is a bona fide classic, one of the best hip hop records ever made. After that one record, Kweli and DJ Hi-Tek (two-thirds of Black Star) made Reflections Eternal, an album which comes close to Black Star, but does suffer a little from a lack of another MC to provide a change of pace from Kweli. Kweli remained prolific after this album, but never really reached the same peak as his first two records.
HELL ORBS, "Ultimate Dad Intro"
Can't you just picture the album that would follow this intro song? It would be the ultimate!
J Church, "What Should I Do?"
Incredibly prolific, J Church is the band Lance Hahn started after being in Cringer. In many ways, they're the prototypical Bay Area punk band, complete with being named after a bus route in San Francisco. Like many of their counterparts, they played melodic punk, distinguished primarily by how long they managed to last, and how many great songs Hahn wrote in that time. While most of their peers made a few albums and disappeared, or hung on and turned into arena rock acts, J Church kept going admirably well. I have 15 releases from them in my library, and that's not all of their output. They'll show up again, so I'll just leave the suggestion that the singles collection Nostalgic For Nothing might be the best place to start.
(NB: the version of this song I linked to appears to be the 7" release of the song under the name "What Will I Do?", but is the same song.)
Voodoo Glow Skulls, "The Kids Will Have To Pay"
Pretty far towards the "punk" end of things for ska-punk bands, the Voodoo Glow Skulls were really pretty much just a punk band with a horn section. You can see that approach on this song - you could rearrange this song without the horns pretty easily and just have a normal hardcore song.