I killed about 4 hours the other day catching up on good stuff I've missed this year via Spin Magazine's 30 Best Albums of 2009 So Far. It's a hot list, with albums like Two Suns from Bat For Lashes, this decade's answer to Kate Bush, and much much more. It's a damn fine primer to get current with.

My one complaint: is spin.com so desperate for pageviews that they had to do these one sentence blurbs on thirty separate pages? C'mon guys. We're all web professionals these days and can see right through that trick.

Spin magazine weighed in with their 15 Worst Album Titles of The Year list, and most of it's pretty on point. I can't get behind an album called "Raditude" (Weezer) or "Loudest Common Denominator" (Drowning Pool).

None of this years list is as bad as the worst album title of all time, which is of course Guns N' Roses' "The Spaghetti Incident". It is only August, though.

See their list.

Update: Sometime LNMC contributor Spencer Kent sent me this list of the worst album titles of all time from Cracked.

This is totally awesome:

For this summer's 25th anniversary of Prince's classic movie and album Purple Rain, SPIN is excited to announce the release of Purplish Rain, a tribute album made up of nine tracks commissioned by the editors of SPIN.

One very special note: Among the nine songs is a version of "When Doves Cry" performed by the Twilight Singers, featuring Apollonia, who costarred with Prince in the movie, and Greg Dulli -- check out SPIN.com's exclusive stream of the track!

The downloadable album looks to be much better than most storebought tribute discs, with Prince covers from Craig Wedren, Of Montreal and the Riverboat Gamblers. And, it's free -- all that's needed for download is a clue from the magazine.

And I've read some dumb things this year.

Yeah, I'll dignify this with a link, because it could use some dignity. David Marchese at SPIN's piece, "5 Bands Kurt Cobain Would Love", published on Cobain's would-be 42nd birthday, would be totally righteous if it were called "5 Bands David Marchese Thinks Are Authentic" -- or "5 Bands Most People Who Still Like Guitars and Have Their Ear to the Indie-Rock Ground Think Are Authentic" for that matter, but to say somehow that Cobain would've championed these bands because he liked CCR and the Vaselines? Give me a break. He liked Jawbreaker too, but you don't see me saying he'd love Fall Out Boy, despite the obvious influence.

Anyways, rock pundits clearly have been watching too much "Abraham Lincoln would've ___" on cable news, and need to stop getting ideas.