Had a bit of a rough day today that involved getting a parking ticket, paying up $140 for a parking permit for the right to park at my place of work (lol, joys of being an adjunct), and having to go to the UPS Depot in Hialeah (btw, that's the last place Amelia Earhart was before she vanished in the Bermuda Triangle, so I'm lucky to be alive, I suppose) to pick a package that apparently was not there and had been returned to Amazon (never getting that hour of my life back).

So needless to say, I find myself in need of the therapeutic powers of music.

The first song is by one of my favorite metal bands, Swedish viking metal powerhouse Amon Amarth. This is one of my favorites of theirs, and one of the songs they, regrettably, did not play when I saw them in concert a few years back. This song, "Across the Rainbow Bridge" tells the story of an aging viking warrior who fears he will die of old age and infirmity and thus be barred from entering Valhalla, as only one who dies a warrior's death can enter. His problem is he was always too good of a warrior ("Countless armies have I attacked / Not once have I backed down / And though I've spilled a lot of blood / I never once received a mortal wound") and while his friends all died he survived. But now he's getting old, so he prepares to ride out for one last battle where he hopes he can find his warrior's death. But he's so weak and close to death now, will he even make it to the battlefield?

Up next I have a live video for you from one of the best Indie bands out there, bar none, Modest Mouse. This is one of their more understated songs reflecting their more classic brooding sound as showcased in the album "Building Nothing Out of Something." This is "Broke."

This video just dropped a few days ago, from rap duo extraordinaire Run the Jewels. This song, from their newest album RTJ3, is probably the best song from the album. The video satirizes police procedure and the criminal justice system, as we see some police detectives using every trick to try to get the unseen witness to a crime to implicate Killer Mike and El-P (though there's a suggestion at the end of the video that they're actually the only people in the lineup who aren't guilty). This is "Legend Has It."

All I can say about this next song is that it's...different. It literally defies any categorization. Is it electronica? Is it some kind of weird death metal variant? Is it Indie rock? Is it some combination of all three? (I promise you, the sudden shift at around 2 minutes in you'll never see coming) The video is a must watch--whoever directed it should have received some kind of award. If you're going to watch one music video on this medley, make it this one. This is "Nephicide" by Jogger:

The last song is a tribute to a musical icon who's (incredibly) already been dead for over a year. This is one of his lesser known songs, but one I've always found absolutely brilliant. The regret from years ill-spent, a lifetime of mistakes and embarrassments is laid bare by a retrospective narrator, now older and wiser, who'd love nothing more than to see his younger self (The Disco King) and give him a talking-to or more. This is "Bring me the Disco King" by David Bowie, featuring Maynard James Keenan of Tool.