Release date: March 2000
Description: The packaging triumphantly declares that it has “over 110 songs!” You know what this means, right? It has 111 songs. Weirdly enough, two of the other items in this museum also have 111 songs. It’s a good-looking number, I suppose. (And you can’t fit many more on a CD-ROM at 128 kbps.)
The songs
With six song suppliers instead of three, this is presumptively the pinnacle of this kind of disc. That said, because 4.3 was the one in my childhood, I don’t know this one as well as I do that one. But with a whopping 7 hours and 50 minutes of music, if you’re going to buy any one of these CDs off eBay, this one is the best combination of quality and quantity. Plus, it’s before MusicMatch switched to its blobs logo, so you get the lovely M-compass thing that looks like the Seattle Mariners designed it.
eMusic.com (17 songs – ones with an * had been on MMJB discs already; ones with an ! were on May 2000 Hewlett Packard software installation CDs)
| Artist | Song | Notes |
| The Apples in Stereo | Strawberryfire | *! |
| At the Drive-In | Rascuache | |
| Buddy Guy | Try to Quit You Baby | *! |
| Bugs | About You | *! |
| Dave Pike | Touch the Moon | *! |
| Eddie Harris | Listen Harris | ! |
| Francisco Aguabella | Agua de Cuba | *! |
| Gene Loves Jezebel | Gorgeous | ! The .mp3 is at an absurdly low volume. |
| Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros | Tony Adams | |
| Johnny Blas | Mambo 2000 | *! |
| Lightnin’ Hopkins | Gamblers’ Blues | *! |
| Mark Bacino | Inside | ! |
| Mark Pistel | Skin Up | *! |
| Meg Lee Chin | Swallowing You | It’s a startling track. |
| They Might Be Giants | Older | *! (but it skipped 4.3) |
| Tricky Woo | Fly the Orient | ! |
| W | Calabazita (Jason Mouse Mix) | ! I remember this song, but not owning MMJB 5.0 growing up. So where do I remember it from? |
Epitonic (21 songs that were completely different from what they gave to 4.3)
| Artist | Song | Notes |
| Burning Airlines | Carnival | |
| Carl Cox | Phuture 2000 (Deepsky Remix) | |
| Carl Cox | Phuture 2000 (Hybrid Remix) | This is a classic breaks track, better than both the original song and the other remix of it on this CD. Yahoo! Launchcast let me know about this one a few years later. |
| DJ Dan | Needle Damage – That Zipper Track (Needle Dubbage Remix) | A long name for a generally irritating track. |
| Ex Self Conception | How the Gloom May Be True | Hyper, dark, electronica from a band with almost no record left on the internet. Super-interesting. |
| Ex Self Conception | I Am Fated to Shake | This song is not as interesting. |
| Heather Duby | September | Slow acoustic rock. It’s all right. |
| Holland | Vari-Speed | |
| Lali Puna | 603 | Both from the Tridecoder album. I see they’re still going and reasonably popular, which makes sense off the quality of these lo-fi bedroom electronic tracks. |
| Lali Puna | Everywhere and Allover | |
| Love As Laughter | Margaritas | |
| Puracane | Things We Should Leave Alone | If you wanted Kelli Dayton of the Sneaker Pimps to sound 12% more like Bjork, you’d land here. |
| Soulstice | Tenderly (Acetate Remix) | Soulstice is another Launchcast recommendation. Not off these remixes as such, but I like htem. |
| Soulstice | Tenderly (Kevin Yost Remix) | |
| Tagging Satellites | Waiting to Come Down | 1 monthly listener on Spotify. But this is some nice, tense dirge rock. |
| Terra Deva | Fresh Start | If you look up a lot of bands like Lamb, you get recommendations for Terra Deva’s album a lot. It’s pretty good stuff, and some of the easiest to find out of these compilations. |
| Terra Deva | Lethal | |
| Terra Deva | Pulled Apart | |
| The Go | It Might Be Bad | |
| Those * Souls | Good Luck Split Town Today | Middle word redacted. But these songs aren’t that good anyway IMO – like they’re trying to be Beck or Marcy Playground without knowing what that means. They would fit in some collections well enough. |
| Those * Souls | The Train from Terminal Boredom |
mp3.com (18 songs – anything involving mp3.com is happy for me)
| Artist | Song | Notes |
| Agent 51 | Red Alert | Shouty nervy punk. |
| Althea | Magic Touch (Club L’Amour Mix) | It’s like a European remix of a cute J-pop dance track. |
| Anet | Tortured | Loud guitars with a touch of electronics. They probably liked Curve. If you like grrrl stuff, this is on Spotify. |
| Anomos | Why Live | |
| Blizz | La Vida Es | Latin dance that switches between English and Spanish. |
| BlueTonicWorld | Music Will Save Us [Code 3] | It’s like several ambient styles merged into a suite. You can find this on YouTube and some of their other stuff on Spotify. |
| Boxcar | The Complete Guide to Home Bartending | Punky thrashy stuff. |
| Deepspace5 | Hall of Justice | I had this song from the mp3.com days – a rap among a bunch of superheroes. It’s pretty entertaining. |
| Jenna Music | Wait for Me | |
| Kevin Montgomery | Your Kind | |
| Liar’s Club | Someday | |
| Ric Sandler | Dream Around Every Corner | |
| Rye | Silly Games | |
| Sarah Lentz | No Going Home | Of the infinite midtempo singer/songwriters in these compilations – the Paula Cole/Shawn Colvin wannabes – this is the most memorable to me. The album’s on Spotify. |
| Sector Seven | On a Fence | |
| ThePride | Slow Motion | |
| Undaground Therapy | Sundown | A feel-good dance track. A little generic – rarely for these sorts of things, it could have used a singer – but you could get away with it in a vibe-based DJ mix. |
| Waddy Wachtel | Gone U R |
Riffage (17 songs, all of which were from a label compilation called Jet Set: Airport Lounge, and all of which were on MMJB 5.1)
| Artist | Song | Notes |
| Audionuts | BeAtCrEaToR | It’s annoying to type that song name. |
| Codeine | Sabertooth | |
| Dead End Cruisers | Around This Town | |
| DJ Batman | Fascinating Destroyer | |
| Dora Flood | Envy’s Angel | Sounds a lot like “The Rolling People” by the Verve. |
| The Erics | Flowers Waking and Sleeping | Their bio on a seemingly defunct, but still up (and with a desirable URL) at indiemusic.com, is all I could find on them: “Residents of NYC, this 4-piece ensemble has accrued a loyal following with its experimental and a hard-grooving sound. A indie rock noise combined with jazz sensibility, this band’s lyrics are fresh, eclectic, and pleasing to the ears.” It’s a nice mix of female vocals, dirty and clean electric guitars, and lovely and tense passages. It’s easily the best Riffage track on 5.0. |
| Genosha of KFMF | Abstain Like Me? | Part of the tracker software community. Look it up – it’s fascinating and a genuinely important part of music history. |
| Infinite Buddha | Yucateco | |
| Kevin Seconds | The King of Everything | |
| Lael Leroy and the Loved | Diary | Sounds like Jason Mraz’s indie uncle. (As opposed to a major-label uncle.) |
| Plastic Machine | Can’t You See I’m Dead | |
| Red Edna | Downward Spiral | |
| Red Engine Nine | Disease | |
| Rock Paper Scissors | Love Yourself | Sounds like Scott Weiland determined to be more electronic than people think he should be. |
| Scout | There I Go Again | |
| Seeds of Labor | Broken Vinyl | Given the language in this song, I’m surprised it made it on a mass consumer product. Seeds of Labor showed up on multiple of these compilations (and from multiple mp3 providers in 5.0), and their submitting these says to me that quality control wasn’t a big thing for these. |
| Stara Zagora | Dust-Bin Parade |
Rollingstone.com (18 songs, all new versus 4.3, although some of the artists are the same)
| Artist | Song | Notes |
| 54 Seconds | Wanted | A Pink Floyd sort of thing. |
| A Techno Kid, Torley Wong | What I Couldn’t Have | Like a Mega Man 2 remix but with saxophone. |
| The Alexandria Kleztet | Willard’s Freylekh | |
| Ben Wakeman | Space | |
| The Boswells | 7 Wonders | |
| Castroman (Fernando Castroman) | Palmar (Bajo el Palmar) | Word (A similar phrasing but in parentheses) |
| The Daisies | Holly Styrene | |
| Doug Hoekstra | Cottonwood Tree | |
| Emoticon | Ocean of You | That was a cutting-edge band name in 2000. |
| Helva | Someone’s Out to Get Me | |
| The Jackpot Band | Just for You | |
| Kitusai | Innocent | Some harps, some late ’80s electric guitar leads, and some other random things. It’s quite a listen. |
| Pretty Mighty Mighty | Media King | |
| Seeds of Labor | First Things First | |
| Violet Scene | For a Second | |
| The Virgineers | Floating | Very Beatles-influenced. |
| The Walking Monuments to DNA | Miss B Haviour | This song shows up in my media player as 6:45 long with silence after 5 minutes, but then my player goes to the next song after 5 minutes. It seems the mp3 properties are off in some way. |
| Weak Lazy Liar | Bright Yellow Bucket | A good deep cut for ’90s female-led power pop. |
Spinrecords.com (20 songs)
| Artist | Song | Notes |
| Acid 9 | Rage | Rap-rock with a singer who’s clearly a female adult when singing, but she sounds like a teenage boy when rapping. I bet it was interesting live. |
| AciDa | Moda | Goes through some nice indie electronic developments – it’s interesting. |
| Belly Puddle | Decide | |
| Brett Ellis | Minuet No. 7 in A Minor | A solo acoustic guitar piece. |
| Carlos Olmeda | Power and Motion | |
| Hyphen | Softer Seems the Pavement | |
| Kenochamp | It Often Has a Meaning | |
| Kiron J | Samurai | Another Mega Man type of tune. |
| Lisa Sanders | Queen of My Castle | |
| Los Infernos | Cryin | |
| Natasha’s Ghost | Falling Up | |
| Pillowhead | Auto Induced Drama | |
| Randi Driscoll | What She Said | An adult contemporary ballad. There aren’t as many of these on these compilations as you might think. |
| Rascalin and the Roots Rockers | Lyin Eyes | Dub! |
| Slapbak | A Wonderful Day | |
| Soulcracker | Face | |
| Squeeze | Confrontation | Not the famous band Squeeze. This is some rap. |
| The Color Red | Smile | |
| Todd Stedman and the Fat Tones | Still the Same | |
| Wei-Wei | A Woman Like Bird | Chinese urban pop? |
Next: MusicMatch Jukebox 5.1
restlessmosaic.com 