Google's New Music-Search Engine Will Be the Death of Us All

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This past week, Internet search-engine giant Google introduced a new music-search tool that immediately opens a pop-up window for people searching for a song, where either the entire song or a snippet will play for them. It's still in the beginning stages, so not all songs are available.

We started off trying our current fave, Husker Du's Flip Your Wig track "Makes No Sense At All" and we heard 30 seconds of the song, almost instantaneously. For Rocks Off, this will undoubtedly be a very useful tool, especially when writing blogs or reviews. Plus, it can always handily settle bets, like Wikipedia does. We can't count how many times we hear "Wiki that shit, yo!" being yelled around our house during a pop-culture dispute.

Songs are either available in their entirety or in just the aforementioned snippet; it seems to depend on the service they are culled from. MySpace let us play all of Devo's "Whip It," while we only heard the first half-minute of Metallica's "Sad But True." Sound quality also varies, as does the date of the recording. When Googling The Association's "Windy" you will hear a newer recording by the band, with tinny '80s sonics.

As for Texas and Houston bands, we dialed up the Wild Moccasins' "Fruit Tea," and were quickly hearing a version as clear as the one on our Microscopic Metronomes disc. This one came from online store Lala.com and played for the entire duration. We chilled out to Lightnin' Hopkins "Mojo Hand" soon after, also in full. Ditto for Benjamin Wesley's "Have You Ever Died" and Mitch Jacobs' "Jukebox Fool."

MySpace gave us some Insect Warfare right when we asked, and "Mind Ripper" was in our headphones in seconds. The Homopolice's "Assfucker" was nowhere to be found. And yes, the Geto Boys are most def all up on this new thing, with "Mind Playing Tricks On Me."

The good thing about this new Google feature is that you don't have to wait for a MySpace page to load, nor do you have to sift through someone's lame YouTube handiwork of their own "cover" of the song. Plus, this way you won't be lured into watching more videos of people getting hit in the nuts.