6 posts tagged “music”

For our little downtown Raleigh festival, we were supposed to get the Drive-by Truckers, and wound up with Eddie Money. That's tough news to take.

Based on my last.fm profile:

1. Old 97's
2. Johnny Cash
3. Minutemen
4. U2
5. Chuck Berry
6. R.E.M.
7. Neko Case
8. Jerry Lee Lewis
9. Alice in Chains
10. Whiskeytown

These numbers are as much a function of how many tracks from each artist are in my music collection as they are a description of how much I like the artist in question.

I am rather particular about how my iTunes playlists are set up. I rate all of my music one through five stars, and then I have a separate smart playlist for each star rating. I combine all of those into one playlist that I listen to most of the time. The frequency of how often a song can be played is set based on its star rating, so I can hear a five star song every week, a four star song every two weeks, and a three star song once a month. I also have it set to play recently added songs any number of times for the first 30 days after they're added, and not to play any song I've skipped for two weeks. The system isn't perfect, but it works for me.

My biggest problem is a Johnny Cash boxed set. I like Johnny Cash pretty well, but since I imported the boxed set, Johnny Cash tracks are overrepresented in my library. I don't like the man in black enough to have him come so much more frequently than any other artist, but because I have so many of his tracks, that's what ends up happening. I could push the ratings of my least favorite Johnny Cash songs to two stars, but I'd hate to do that. It's just a shame that he's the main thing standing between me and song shuffling nirvana. (I have a similar problem with the Minutemen, but their songs are so short that their too-frequent appearance is tolerable.)

One thing's for sure, I'm going to think twice before buying any more boxed sets.

I've been listening to The Who and David Bowie lately for educational purposes, and now whenever a White Stripes song pops up, I think, "Man, that's some derivative stuff."

The number one song when I was born was "How Can You Mend a Broken Heart," by the Bee Gees. I honestly don't think I've ever heard it. The number one song when I turned 21 was "This Used to Be My Playground," by Madonna, which I don't think I've ever heard, either.

Wow, that's kind of surprising.

I tried to sell everything too embarrassing to various used CD stores, but I believe that there's a Too Short CD that nobody would take that I still have around. It's particularly embarrassing because I got it from Columbia record club so all of the profanity has been excised. Not pretty.