Journal of a Music Junkie

Jet: Shine On [MP3, advance]
New Order: Get Ready [MP3]

The official details on Microsoft's Zune are out.  $249, November 14.  $14.99 monthly subscription for unlimited music, or individual tracks for keeps for  ~$1 (79 Microsoft Points).



The device itself looks good.  iPod-esque with a nice larger screen.  Sweet-looking UI with giant-sized album art (YouTube video link).  Built-in FM tuner, WiFi music sharing to other Zunes, with more features to be added via firmware updates later.  It's an iPod with extra features that I may or may not use, at the same price as an iPod.  Not too shabby!

The questions that remain for me to make my decision:

• How is the Zune desktop application?  Does it have a Smart Playlist analogue?
• How does the device feel in the hand?  I'd like to see it first-hand, or at least read a decent review.

I am totally on board with music subscription services, despite my abhorrence to all things DRM.  Unfortunately, DRM is the only thing that makes subscription services remotely possible.

30GB Zune, or 30GB iPod?  I hope my existing iPod can drag on long enough for me to perform the necessary research and comparisons.

Beck: The Information [MP3, advance]
Impressions: Haven't given it a full proper listen yet, but seems like a more analog version of Guero, which is definitely a good thing!

My trusty 4G 20GB iPod is on its last legs.  75% of the time I dock it, iTunes says "iPod is updating" indefinitely and nothing ever happens.  The battery can last 2-3 hours between charges, on a good day.  Skips and freezes are occurring with increasing frequency.  The hard drive makes audible and palpable clicks.  The end is inevitable.

At first I was a bit angry.  "I've barely had this thing longer than two years!  Why is it falling apart so quickly?!"  Then I started to reflect a bit more.  This iPod has experienced more than some people will in a lifetime.  It's travelled the world, visiting Ireland, Italy, the Caribbean, the Pacific Northwest, Colonial Williamsburg, and many points between.  It has been dropped - repeatedly - proudly exhibiting its dings and dents as a survivor's set of credentials.  Virtually every day, it has pumped a steady 6-hour stream of tunes and talk while being shuffled with casual nonchalance from pocket to automobile to briefcase to desktop and back again.  It has endured the sweltering interior of my car's glovebox on a summer day.  It has shrugged off being doused in rubbing alcohol in the aftermath of a tragic keyboard-cleaning accident.  It has accompanied me as I have moved to a new apartment, been married, taken my honeymoon, moved to another apartment, adopted a puppy, bought a house, and returned to church after an absence of over a decade.  By proxy, it has lived a very full life indeed, and been my steadfast companion through it all.

And even as it begrudgingly starts to reflect its exterior condition with internal failures, it has withstood my poking, prodding, and prying as I've cracked it open to perform inelegant electronic surgery in a vain attempt to incite the tiniest postponement of its well-deserved rest.

Really, I should be surprised - and even moreso, grateful - that my iPod has endured this long, and provided me with such unwavering service.

So as I bid a sad farewell to my little white buddy, one question lingers in my mind like the tiniest whiff of dissipating ozone...

What should I get to replace it?! ;)

[Clap Your Hands Say Yeah: Clap Your Hands Say Yeah [mp3, heard on 3G12S]
First Impressions: I like this a LOT.  Totally up my alley of fun, different, quirky indie rock.  Listened to it on the way to work, and will listen on the way home as well!

The Fiery Furnaces: Blueberry Boat [mp3, recommendation from scdemandred ]
First Impressions: Haven't listened yet...

R.E.M.: Document and Life's Rich Pageant [mp3]
I've been on an R.E.M. kick recently - rediscovered my love for Automatic for the People - and I've always wanted to go back for the R.E.M. I've never heard... which is pretty much anything prior to Green. Considering they are Josh's favorite band, I don't know why I haven't already heard/acquired every album yet.  Listened to Life's Rich Pageant yesterday and enjoyed the hell out of it.  I think I prefer pre-Monster R.E.M. nowadays.

Yesterday, Apple announced a bunch of iPod refreshes and new models.  Simultaneously, they released iTunes 7, which is incredibly slick.  Upgrade now, please.  I have also been using Hamachi for some time now to create an encrypted VPN between my work computer, home server, and home desktop.  I typically use things like FTP and VNC over the Hamachi connection, the usual IT guy kind of stuff.

A couple months ago, I had iTunes open at work, and noticed that "fade's music" was appearing in the shared libraries.  I was a bit baffled... then I realized that Bonjour (Apple's zero-configuration network stuff) must have been working over Hamachi!  I VNCd home, and saw that yes, iTunes was running on my desktop.  Excitedly, I switched back to iTunes at work and clicked on the library... and waited... and waited... and after about 2 minutes it timed out.  I was a sad panda.  My library must have been too large, or Hamachi and iTunes weren't quite as friendly as I thought.

Every week or so I would try the test again.  Every time, iTunes would time out while trying to read my home library.

Until yesterday.

Both my home and work computers are at iTunes 7 and the latest Hamachi build.  I can browse and stream my shared home library over the Internet, through Hamachi, as easily as if I was plugged into the home network.  I was streaming 320kbps tracks without any dropouts!

I don't know whether it was iTunes 7 or a recent Hamachi update that brought new kung fu to the party, but I'll take it.  I left my iPod in the car this morning, because I no longer need it to listen to my music at my desk.  iTunes+Hamachi gives me simple, seamless access to my entire 40GB+ library.

Screw Shoutcast.

The Rapture: Pieces of the People We Love [CD]
First Impressions: Great! A lot less schizophrenic than Echoes, in a good way. A little less disco.

TV On the Radio: Return to Cookie Mountain [CD]
First Impressions: Strange.  Dense.  I need more time with it.  At this point I like the music much more than the vocals, but time will tell.

James Figurine: Mistake Mistake Mistake Mistake [mp3, friend recommendation]
First Impressions: Outstanding!  I like this much better than mister Jimmy Tamborello's last project, the way-too-poppy and emo Postal Service collaboration.  Can't wait to listen to this a few more times.

Stay tuned. This place is going to relaunch soon. For a little bit, at least.

While shopping at Urban Outfitters with Mrs. PokySharpy, I spied a most promising tome: The Pocket DJ.  After thumbing through it sans spectacles, I came away with both a splitting headache and a new musical bible.  The author, Sarah Lewitinn AKA Ultragrrrl, is a former Spin magazine writer and editor, and a kindred musical spirit.  The book is nothing but juicy playlists by genre, essential artist, activity/mood, and some "celebrity" contributions.  Her taste is strikingly similar to my own, and I have already assembled her Nine Inch Nails, Bjork, Electronic, and Indie Dance Party playlists to my immense satisfaction.  She has a refreshing no-cred approach to music - if you like it, who cares if it isn't "cool?"  At the same time, she really has a grasp of music history and its important artists.  I'm looking forward to constructing her playlists for artists that I've always wanted to dig deeper into: David Bowie, Led Zeppelin, James Brown, reggae, Guided by Voices, The Who...

At only $10, it has already shown worthiness greater than its diminutuive size.  I can't wait to explore some more.  I've already bought about 50 new tracks (hooray for AllofMP3!) just to fill the gaps in the above playlists, without regret.

If anyone's interested, I can toss up some of her sample playlists in the comments.  Just give a holler.

Underworld are a whole lot more generous than I knew. I was perusing Underworldlive.com - because of my recent purchase of the two new web releases - and stumbled upon quite a cache of music. It seems that once you register (which is free), you gain access to their free online archives. I have since downloaded 46 tracks, collected across 5 different live shows and various "web only" bits. The two 2005 shows are not yet released in their entirety. They each have 4 tracks available, and will eventually work up to 12 and 18 tracks! Wow!

Lots of new stuff for the Underworld fanatic. Granted, a lot of these are multiple versions of the same tracks, but who cares? I'm cranking it up right now, awaiting what will be revealed...

So Underworld have been busy in the studio with something they have dubbed "The Riverrun Project." They have over 100 snippets and songs that they've polished up, and they are going to be releasing mini-suites of music on their web site Underworldlive. They've already made two of them available (for purchase, of course). The first one is called Lovely Broken Thing, and the second is called Pizza for Eggs. They are about 6-7 individual songs mixed together to form a single suite, with "movements." The releases include cover art and an HTML photo gallery / art piece, consisting of photos taken from Karl Hyde's cell phone. Supposedly they fit the theme of the music piece... I can't vouch for that one though.

On the official Underworld forums at dirty.org, intrepid fans have already split the suites up into individual tracks - and done a fantastic job, I might add.

I'm thoroughly enjoying the new material, and can't wait for further releases in this capacity. Yes, I paid for them.

Blatantly stolen from Pewtey and Demandred:

1. put every song you own on random.
2. post the first line from the first 20 songs that play.
3. let everyone guess what song (and artist) the lines come from.
4. no googling!

I'll put the list as comment #1. This might be a little tough cuz I have a bunch of obscure stuff, but there will be a few gimmes in there, I guarantee. =)

I know, it's been too long. I really really suck.

Time for the annual "Best of 2005" list that everyone makes. This is gonna be quick and dirty, and in no particular order for the first four.

Bloc Party - Silent Alarm
M.I.A. - Arular
Doves - Some Cities
Thievery Corporation - The Cosmic Game


The best album of the year by a mile, and one of my new favorite albums ever:
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - Howl

Trust me. It's absolutely fantastic.

Yesterday I found out that the band Longwave had released their latest album, There's a Fire ...back in June! I have enjoyed their previous album, The Strangest Things, quite a bit, but they're a fairly small band so they have been cruising below my radar. I've gotta track down that new album!

During my morning commute, this situation got me to thinking. Are there any centralized services on the web where you can input a list of your favorite bands and view a "summary" page of their latest and upcoming releases? Perhaps get some email reminders when they release new material? Have links to more detailed information about the individual artist - maybe to something like an allmusic page...? Man that would be sweet. You'd never miss another album.

All of this could be consolidated from publicly-available info from record companies, music stores, and the like. If such a service provider wanted to get really fancy, they could examine a user's list and do some rudimentary recommendations of new artists.

This would be a great idea. Does it exist? If it does not, how hard would it be to make?

And could I be involved in its creation?

Pinback - Summer in Abaddon
Thrice - Vheissu
Depeche Mode - Playing the Angel
Editors - The Back Room - really good, a nice hybrid of Interpol and The Killers

Changing the clocks seems to kickstart something inside me. It's like an excuse slash opportunity to take stock of things and start anew. So here I am, trying to abort my self-fulfilled prophecy.

I can't hope to keep up with "releases I'm anticipating," so it has been changed to Heavy Rotation, a list of albums I've been cranking recently.

I find that my ear for music seems to change with the seasons. Summer afternoons with the convertible top down, 311, Incubus, and Tool carrying me down PCH... blend into lazy summer nights with Thievery Corporation and Jack Johnson. In autumn I invariably fall back into 90s rock: Pearl Jam, Live, The Smashing Pumpkins. As the days get shorter and cooler, my tastes aim for England; Winter is my absolute favorite music season, where I listen to practically nothing but Britpop and Trip-Hop: Radiohead, Super Furry Animals, Blur, Bjork, Massive Attack, UNKLE. Of course there's variation here and there, but every single year the same general patterns emerge, unconsciously. I'll even try to break myself out of it - throw on some Thrice or Nine Inch Nails in mid-December - and I might be happy for a few tracks. However, it never sticks. I'm halfway through Kid A before I even realize I changed albums.

So here's to change. I hope I can ditch the procrastination and make this a worthwhile page to read.

Boards of Canada - The Campfire Headphase [ADVANCE]

Sorry, I told you I would be really lazy about this. I stumbled onto something particularly cool - a service powered by the Music Genome Project called Pandora. It is a streaming music application specifically designed to help you find new music based on songs or artists that you already like. As you listen, you rate the suggested songs with a thumbs-up or thumbs-down, and it dynamically updates its criteria.

To me, the most impressive part is that everything is based of musical elements; instrumentation, production, vocalization, tempo, tonality, etc. For example, my "seed" artist of Radiohead led to Interpol, and then to David Bowie because of "mild rhythmic syncopation, a vocal-centric aesthetic, minor key tonality, mixed acoustic and electric instrumentation, a subtle use of vocal harmony."

The "first 10 hours" are free. I'm assuming it cookies you because it has saved my Radiohead playlist between sessions. After that, you subscribe for 3 months ($12) or a year ($36).

I'm now going to seed it with my absolute favorite song - "Let Down" by Radiohead - to see where it takes me. Please give it a spin and let me know how it worked out for you! =)

SMART PLAYLISTS are my secret love. I cannot live without them, without their auto-updating goodness. Without their (to quote Ron Popeil) set-it-and-forget-it magic. SPLs are database queries to your music collection, which allow you to do incredible things. Let me show you some of my mojo.

This collection of SPLs creates a master playlist (faderadio) that is an assortment of my favorite songs, new music, stuff my iPod hasn't played at all yet, and the rest of my music. It is weighted to favor new tracks. It is always changing because each list has a "not played in the last X time frame" condition, which simulates my own personal radio station very effectively. The asterisks on the names are a way to remember which playlists are auto-synced, and the arrow on the master playlist sorts it at the top on my iPod.

The best part - all of this updates automatically each time I launch the playlist on my iPod, or each time I plug it into my computer.

(The *z_iPod playlist referenced in all of them is a list of all the music that is stored on my iPod. Since I have more music than space, I do have to manually add and remove albums to that playlist, which syncs to the iPod.)

*Favorites (top rated songs)
match ALL of the following rules
- My Rating is 5 Stars
- Last Played is not in the last 2 weeks
- Playlist is *z_iPod
limit to 30 songs selected by random
live updating

*Just Added (new stuff)
match ALL of the following rules
- Date Added is in the last 3 weeks
- Last Played is not in the last 2 days
- Playlist is *z_iPod
- My Rating is not 2 stars (2 stars = don't want song in rotation, i.e. skits & intros)
- My Rating is not 1 star (1 star = track damaged, i.e. pops/skips)
live updating

*The Rest (the rest of my collection, on a loooong no-replay timer)
match ALL of the following rules
- Playlist is not *Favorites
- Playlist is not *Just Added
- Playlist is *z_iPod
- Last Played is not in the last 5 weeks
- My Rating is not 2 stars
- My Rating is not 1 star
limit to 30 songs selected by random
live updating

*Unheard Of (stuff I still haven't heard on my iPod)
match ALL of the following rules
- Play Count is 0
- Playlist is *z_iPod
limit to 30 songs selected by random
live updating

*^faderadio (the UBER PLAYLIST that I listen to 90% of the time)
match ANY of the following rules
- Playlist is *Favorites
- Playlist is *Just Added
- Playlist is *The Rest
- Playlist is *Unheard Of
limit to 50 songs selected by random
live updating

KABOOM!

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - Howl
Franz Ferdinand - You Could Have It So Much Better [ADVANCE]