Random five, describe:
- U2 - Seconds. A marching martial tune about ... well, bombs and puppets; war is bad. Something like that. At the very end, though, when that very last "say good-bye"s echo away and the opening notes of "New Years Day" start playing in my head, in anticipation - that's the best part of this song. But, this being shuffle, I get...
- J Geils - I Do (live). Catchy! OMG, so catchy. I bet this could be distilled, bottled and weaponized. Spray it on rowdy crowds and they'd instantly start snapping their fingers and doing the "doo-doo-doo DOO-DOO-DOO doo-doo-doo DOO-DOO-DOO" backups. Wonder if the CIA has already tried this.
- 10 Ft Ganja Plant - Jah Teach I A Lesson. Classic roots reggae. Could've been written 40 years ago. If it wasn't for little modern touches in the recording, I'd think it was recorded in the Bob Marley era. Very nice. Plus, ganja.
- Hank Williams - My Heart Would Know. Two seconds in, you know this is a Hank Williams tune: that steel guitar, the bittersweet melody, the shufflin country drums. And then Hank comes in with his achey-breaky sangin'. Not one of his better-known tunes - it was the B-side to "Hey Good Lookin", and never released as a single of its own. But it's still good in the same way most Hank Williams songs are; he knew how to make em.
- Cat Power - Kingsport Town. Cover of a Bob Dylan song. I don't know the original, and don't hear any Dylan in this sleepy, sleepy, sleeeeeeepy cover. I'm not sure there's more than one chord in here. Sleepy.
Make it so.
My playlist currently has 41 songs on it, unknown title and artist.
Sorry about all the failed wget attempts, it took me a lot of tries to get the right combination of -options.
for a total of, what, two and a half minutes? must get a lot of repetition there…
Sorry about all the failed wget attempts
didn’t even notice. i don’t check the logs unless there’s a problem.
Windy Monday. Moved my iTunes library to a NAS so here is the first playlist from my home network.
Kim Wilde – Kids In America
Woah. Miss Wilde was smoking hot! Chart-tastic track from 1981 with a catchy chorus that still sounds pretty cool in a guilty-pleasure sort of way. Never made number 1 though and I was sure it had.
Beck – Sissyneck
From 1996’s ‘Odelay’ which is a really good album. Quite a funky number this with a nice repetitive rhythm. Not sure what a ‘Sissyneck’ is though.
Bright Eyes – I Must Belong Somewhere
Love his voice, love his guitar playing, love his lyrics. About as alt-country as my collection gets. I think. His album ‘I’m Wide Awake It’s Morning’ is one of my all-time favourites. This is from 2007’s ‘Cassadaga’ which is also worth listening to.
Radiohead – Jigsaw Falling Into Place
Cracking tune from 2007’s ‘In Rainbows’. About going out and getting completely wasted on a Friday night apparently (“all blurring into one, this place is on a mission … words are a blunt instrument, words are a sawn-off shotgun”).
Chairmen Of The Board – Finder’s Keepers
It doesn’t get much funkier than this. Almost too funky to handle. Everything about this track is funky – vocals, backing singers, horns and bass. Brilliant stuff.
iTunes over 802.11g is a bit sluggish. More powerlines are on their way!
iTunes over 802.11g is a bit sluggish.
and a bit of a nightmare
Haven’t come across that bug yet. My .itl file is also on the NAS. It was actually simple to move it. I moved the entire library, changed the iTunes folder location and did a File|Library|Consolidate and it updated everything OK. I let iTunes manage my library which helps.
I have a 5 year old PC (AMD Sempron at 1.8Ghz, 1GB ram) running Ubuntu which shares all the externals hooked to it to the Windows 7/Linux Mint laptops via Samba and running Media Monkey and it is as fast as if they were attached to the machines. We even stream video from it to a little media pc hooked to the TV.
And by the by, how am I in the lead in the music quiz? Seems like I have barely answered half of them!
1. Manic Street Preachers – You Stole the Sun From My Heart
What a great song! Really nice melody in the verses and the chorus has a nice, grungy crunch to it. This brings back memories of being newly married and living kid free.
2. NIrvana – Rape Me
A fine song, which does everything I want Nirvana to do. It sounds really good live too.
3. The Fixx – Red Skies
Not the best Fixx song, but not too bad. Sounds rather generically 80’s. The best part of it is the middle part with the guitar solo and the weird deep voice. I’ve always liked the singers voice for some reason.
4. Propaganda – Duel
Nice little synth-pop song. I liked their more edgy dancy stuff better (like this particularly the last minute) but this was just fine, for the 80’s. The video though is laughable, highlighting everything that was wrong with the 80’s.
5. Idlewild – Let Me Sleep (Next to the Mirror)
Really good song from these Scots. I’m the only one I know who likes this band. To me they are just a really good slightly alternative guitar band. Their early stuff is really fast and bracing, sort of like Jimmy Eat World crossed with a good britpop sensibility, like Ash maybe.
10 Ft. Ganja Plant is now on my “to get” list. Nice retro reggae.
We even stream video from it to a little media pc hooked to the TV
an off-the-shelf PC? i’ve been thinking about getting one. i use netbook for iTunes, but it doesn’t have a video out.
And by the by, how am I in the lead in the music quiz?
well, i’m only updating the positions once a day. things might have changed since last night. or, maybe not!
but, this is apparently a tough quiz.
but, this is apparently a tough quiz.
That it is!
an off-the-shelf PC?
We bought a little thing called the Sapphire Edge HD. I can’t find a link to anyone in the States who sells these things. Tiny little guy that sits next to our TV, has wireless and HDMI out and I have a logitech mouse hooked to it to run the thing. Wish it had a remote but the mouse works from the sofa. Plus, I can surf from it in a pinch and the kids like playing web games on the big TV. It’s basically a netbook without a screen and HDMI out. Only cost like $250 bucks too.
I just bought a Western Digital Live TV HD streamer for £70 and it’s connected to the TV via HDMI and to a 200Mbps powerline adaptor. It can handle any format I throw at it – even ISO files. It’s working flawlessly so far plus we can coo over old pictures too as all our 15,000 photos are on the NAS now (had a digital camera since 2000).
I’ve got a 2TB NAS and am steadily ripping my DVD collection (mainly as ISO files which I can use as a source if I want to convert to other formats). I’ve ripped a few DVDs as AVI, MKV and MP4 but the conversion process is slow (ripping a full DVD as an ISO takes 30m, AVI/MP4 1h 30m).
I use DVD Shrink to convert to ISO and if you just rip the main move you end up with a file between 3 and 4GB. Ripping a 1h 30m movie to AVI gives for a full about 1.5GB. For AVI/MP4 conversion I’ve tried both Handbrake (free but slow) and DVD Magic ($15 and faster).
The only thing I can’t figure out is how to remove the protection from the kids TV shows we bought on iTunes.
Interesting always what turns up on shuffle…
1. John Lennon, “You Can’t Catch Me”
Bootleg outtake likely from the Phil Spector-produced 1975 Rock ‘n’ Roll. Sound not particularly good (what do you want, it’s an outtake), performance not particularly inspired either.
2. Pentangle, “A Maid That’s Deep in Love”
From the 1970 Cruel Sister album. Pretty. (Can you tell I haven’t studied my Pentangle very closely yet?)
http://youtu.be/iKfnBi0yuNw
3. John Cale, “Emily”
One of the lesser songs from Cale’s 1974 Fear album, but the album is so good it lifts everything pretty high. This is very nice, lulling, and I would bet Eno has something to do with the sounds of waves crashing that power it along.
http://youtu.be/PN2yIeUcJco
4. Tad, “Hollow Man”
A consummate wave of bulldozer sound much as everything is on his underrated 1989 God’s Balls album, which is badly in need of a remastering. Not even sure where I drug this up from, but glad to have it ever since my turntable went south. Oh look it’s on YouTube.
http://youtu.be/kkc2PMQVjG0
5. Beach Boys, “Caroline, No” (Stack-O-Vocals)
These Stack-O-Vocals tracks from the Pet Sounds Sessions set tend to be short (this one’s actually all of 1:54) but they are sweet, vocal tracks only. This is even more unadorned, just Brian Wilson hitting the notes on the lead vocal track, no harmony tracks let alone instrumentals. Really remarkable how rich it is all by itself.
My sometimes favorite Dylan song has only a single chord. As far as I can tell. Never heard “Kingsport Town”.
“Breakdown in G”, Henry Reed. Reed is awesome, here he is playing a pretty standard fiddle lick. I could probably do that. I would not be Henry Reed though.
“I Saw Nick Drake”, Robyn Hitchcock. Mournful. Rhythmic.
The emcee introducing Phil Ochs. Short and to the point — Ladies and Gentlemen, here he is.
“Pins and Needles in my Heart”, The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. There’s a version of this song that I heard a lot of in my childhood; I’m not totally sure but I think there’s a good chance it’s this version. It seems more likely it would be Hank’s version; but this one sure sounds like what I remember.
“Moon Goes Down”, Rev. Gary Davis. Mournful. Rhythmic.