As promised, here’s the first installment of my brilliant idea. It’s a there-and-back-again music set using the same artists on the way back as on the way out, in suitably reversed order. I cheated in one particular case, but it was a case of “close enough” as well as “look, he just didn’t put out that many albums, okay?”
So. Enjoy, if you’re so inclined.
[audio:PMMP-1.mp3]If the gods are kind, I’ll have the second half posted tomorrow night…
The guy who draws Dork Tower posted a silly meme a few days ago, and I decided to hop on board. (Hey, I haven’t done one of these in a while. I think I’m allowed.) Mind you, I don’t use iTunes (no Ogg Vorbis support) so all I can do is make Winamp jump through the hoops. Luckily I’m already in the habit of using the Media Library…
So here goes:
How many songs total: 5,028
How many hours or days of music: 15 days, 2 hours, 37 minutes
Most recently played: Dodo/Lurker by Genesis
Most played: Integral by Pet Shop Boys (10 times) *
Most recently added: “Version 2.0” (album) by Garbage **
Sort by song title:
First Song: #1 Crush by Garbage
Last Song: Zoot Suit Riot by Cherry Poppin’ Daddies
Sort by time:
Shortest Song: Vitamin C by Yoko Kanno (Cowboy Bebop OST #2 “No Disk,” 0:06) ***
Longest Song: Sasha’s Voyage of Ima by BT (“Ima” CD#2, 42:45) ****
Sort by album:
First album: “10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1” by Midnight Oil
Last album: “Zone Of The Enders OST” *****
First song that comes up on Shuffle: I’m With Stupid by Pet Shop Boys
Search the following and state how many songs come up: ******
Most Represented Artist: Genesis (233 tracks) *******
Footnotes:
* I’ve only recently gotten into the habit of using the Media Library. Otherwise there’d be songs with much higher play counts.
** I had to find this the old-fashioned way: Doing a date search in the file directory. Winamp seems not to track my “recently added” very well for some reason.
*** I’d have found the shortest “proper” song in the list, but I ran out of time this morning. The first dozen entries were “non-songs” of one sort or another. So I gave up.
**** Which beat out Genesis’ “Supper’s Ready,” the previous (three) contender(s) (original and two live renditions), by almost twenty minutes!
***** Last studio album, not a single, by a proper band: Worldillia by Porno Graffitti
****** In Winamp, file path and album are included in all searches. These numbers are therefore inflated a little bit. Yes, this annoys me but there seems to be no way to search only in the title of a song. (Argh.)
******* By no means is all of my Genesis music ripped to MP3 or Ogg. The same is true for most of my other favorite artists, actually. That first number (~5000 tracks) would be much, much higher if I really wanted to go crazy with the digital music library…
I’ve not yet left the United States to see foreign parts, but my music collection has gone far and wide. In a bit less than an hour you can visit the Congo, Amlapura, Kashmir, Beirut, London, Leipzig, Moscow, Bangkok, swing through California (domestic and yet alien), and end up in a couple of very cold places like the mountain K2 and the continent of Antarctica.
Have you packed your bags, or at least your headphones? Okay then, enjoy your trip!
This post is part challenge, part present to you, my faithful readers. (The rest of you schmucks are just getting lucky. Hah!)
Several times during the last few weeks I’ve answered the question, “What kind of music do you like?” Rattling off a list of musical artists provides a clue, perhaps, but I think the only way to make sense out of the mish-mash of names is to hear what kind of sound puts a tap in my foot and a smile on my face. And so, I’ve carefully assembled what amounts to a broadcast hour of solid music. No commercials, no chatter, just tunes I love by some of my favorite musicians.
It’s up to you to a) see if you can stand listening to every song and b) try to discern who, if not what, you’re hearing. Ready? Steady? Go!
[audio:FortyEightOhSeven.mp3]Good stuff, eh?
Since I’m not prone to writing actual reviews, I’m renaming the “Reviews” category to simply “Media.” That way I can talk about movies, games, music and what-not and have somewhere to put such specific (yet still pointless) ramblings.
What? This is the sort of thing I lose sleep over, folks.
Anyway. I just thought I’d mention that Peter Schilling’s “Major Tom” is one of my all-time favorite songs. I like David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” too, of course, but that song isn’t on my portable music player. There’s just something perfectly 80’s-pop-music about “Major Tom” (aka “Major Tom’s Return”) that suits me right down to the ground.
As it were.
This is the album that my old buddy Steve and I bought solely because of a tiny article in Tower Records’ “Pulse” magazine. It told of a new band whose writers’ chief influences covered the gamut of everything Steve and I liked.
Oddly enough, we weren’t disappointed. “Toy Matinee” is a great pop record. It’s got some of the snappiest lyrics anywhere, it’s chock full of catchy beats and nifty hooks, and it tugs at your emotions. “Last Plane Out” and “Turn It On Salvador” are brilliantly smirking pieces. “The Toy Matinee” is a gorgeously sad song, and one of my all time favorites all on its own. “Queen of Misery” and “There Was A Little Boy” are a bit dark, while “We Always Come Home” is gentle and homey in a non-tacky way.
I love this album, and I always intended to save the best for last. (Sure, nobody’s awake to see it. It’s the principle of the thing, donchaknow?) The promo contains parts of “Last Plane Out,” “Queen of Misery,” “The Toy Matinee” and “We Always Come Home.” Enjoy, please, won’t you?
