Play Ball! Preview Podcasts for the New Baseball Season

If you want to get up to speed on the upcoming baseball season, iTunes has a couple of free video podcasts to give you a concise preview. There's a page in the iTunes store where you'll find two special preseason MLB baseball podcasts.

One is an MLB 2008 season preview that looks at all 30 clubs, hosted by Peter McCarthy. Running at an hour, this special gives divisional overviews, reports from Spring Training, and a segment that features beat writers from all the teams.

The other MLB preview podcast is the Fantasy 411 Season Preview show. It looks to tell you what players will be pleasant surprises and which will be major disapointments. It also features two rounds of a mock draft and goes position by position to help you create the ideal winning team.

Sahara Hotnights Heats Up Knitting Factory NYC

Anybody whose knowledge of Swedish rock and pop is limited to Abba is missing a lot of great music... such as the all-female band Sahara Hotnights.

At New York's Knitting Factory last Thursday the four women played an enthusiastic (if short) set of their older rockers and more mellow ballads from their newest album, “What If Leaving is a Loving Thing.”

Mind you, this show came less than two weeks after I saw another of Sweden's rock and roll exports, The Hives, at New York's Terminal 5 with The Donnas. The state of Swedish rock and pop is indeed strong, especially when you include the pop trio Peter, Bjorn, and John; the rock group The Soundtrack of Our Lives, and other groups.

Sahara Hotnights reminded me of The Donnas, in fact, besides the obvious fact that they are both all-women rock foursomes. Both started out at about the same time, in the early 1990s, and both began playing a rough-edged style of rock that has grown more polished in recent years.

Some fans have complained that “What If Leaving is a Loving Thing” is too mellow compared to the band's earlier material, and it definitely is more melodic and more ballad-oriented, with some dance rhythms thrown in. The same has been said of The Donnas, which started out sounding much like the Ramones, with loud, hard, fast two-minute songs.

But it's inevitable that a band's sound is going to change over the years, if only because the members have become better musicians. And in the case of both The Donnas and Sahara Hotnights, being being together as a band for more than 15 years is definitely going to naturally result in growth and change.

Having said that, if I were to recommend one Sahara Hotnights album to someone it would be their second disc, 2001's “Jennie Bomb.” It features their harder, more aggressive power-pop sound and plenty of catchy tunes, including “Alright Alright (Here's My Fist, Where's the Fight?).”

The only complaint I had about the Sahara Hotnights show was its short length. At 43 minutes, it was even shorter than a Donnas show (the ones I've been too have clocked in at anywhere between 50 minutes and an hour).

Bob Mould Live in NYC: Husker Du, Sugar, and More

After rocking hard most of his career, Bob Mould stepped back away from the world of rock and touring, as indicated by the title of his album “Last Dog and Pony Show.”

He still put out solo albums, though, and recently came out with a new album, "District Line." A couple of weeks ago he brought his new tour to New York's Irving Plaza. If he's lost any intensity or guitar skills since the last time I saw him live with Sugar a few years back, he sure didn't show it. (I never did see Husker Du when they were around, so I can't make a comparison to those days.)

Mould and his band ripped through a solid, hard-rocking set with no lulls. As a review of his recent show in Philadelphia noted, "Mould proved he could bring the rock whenever he felt like it - very loud, very hard and very fast." He played a number of tunes from the new album, District Line, as well as from Mould solo albums (including one of my favorites, “See a Little Light” from the Workbook album), Sugar (including “My Favorite Thing” and “Hoover Dam”), and of course some old Husker Du favs such as “Makes No Sense at All” and “Divide and Conquer.”

“District Line” is a solid album, and while it has the familiar Bob Mould guitar-driven sound, it also includes some sounds that reflects his work experimenting with electronic music and spinning DJ sets with Richard Morel (who's playing keyboards in Mould's current band).

Watch Every NCAA Tournament Game Free with March Madness On Demand

You can now watch every game of the NCAA Tournament FREE online with March Madness on Demand (MMOD). In past years the NCAA has offered MMOD, but not for every game. It's completely free to watch every game, and you don't even need to register.

(Yeah, I know, this doesn't have to do with podcasting or music, but it does involve streaming and archived Web content. And lots of people want to know this info!)

March Madness on Demand streaming games include an exclusive halftime show. The downside: demand for some (many?) games is high, so you may have to wait until you can view the game. The MMOD Web site says that each game will be archived shortly after it's finished, so you'll be able to keep up with the action later if you want.

Check the official March Madness on Demand Web site above for FAQs, system requirements, etc.

If you can't watch, you listen to live streaming audio from the Westwood One network, according to the MMOD Web page.

R.E.M. News: "Accelerate" Streaming; NY Tour Dates

It's less than a couple of weeks until R.E.M.'s new album "Accelerate" comes out, and the band has announced that the entire album will be streamed free on the iLike Web site. Also, a free video of the video for their song "Living Well is the Best Revenge" is available for download from the iTunes Music Store. (This isn't the official video; it's an acoustic version from the "Take Away Shows" people, filmed playing in what looks like a van!)

Previously I announced R.E.M. has released its tour dates, but the venues for the two New York tour dates were not listed. These dates have now been supplied: according to the tour page on R.E.M.'s Web site, the June 14th date is at the Nikon Jones Beach Theater on Long Island, while the June 19th show is at Madison Square Garden.

The Hives and The Donnas Rock NYC

The Hives and The Donnas are two of the most high-energy garage-rock bands around, so it's only appropriate that they recently played a venue in New York that resembles, well, a big garage.

The cavernous new venue Terminal 5, said to be the first large concert venue to open in Manhattan in years, hosted The Hives (from Sweden) and The Donnas (from Southern California) on March 7th, and it was probably one of the best values in concert-going I've had in years (except for free concerts). For $22.50 I got to see The Donnas, favorites of mine who I catch every time they come to NYC, and The Hives, who I just became familiar with when I knew I'd be seeing them.

If The Donnas are high energy in concert, The Hives are absolutely manic. Singer Pelle Almqvist roamed all over the stage, jumping and scissor-kicking his way through the show and even wandering into the audience. Guitarist Nicholaus Arson was similarly frenetic, urging the crowd on and periodically putting guitar picks onto his extended tongue and spitting them out into the audience.

The two bands' joint tour has ended now, but it was a very entertaining twin bill. The bands will continue touring separately (in Europe and Australia, respectively) supporting their new albums: "The Black and White Album" (The Hives) and "Bitchin'" (The Donnas).