bookmark_borderiTunes Meme

Meme alert. Yes, always a sure sign that I’m too busy to be bothered actually putting some effort into posting here, it’s meme time. This one was stolen from Neil and has scared me a little, particularly the first set of stats. Who the hell needs that many tracks?*

How many total songs?
11,937 songs, equal to 35.3 days or 59.38 GB. And I’ve still got a few CDs left to rip, need a new hard drive first!

Sort by song title – first and last?
   First: ’39 by Queen (album track from A Night at the Opera) – a lovely banjo lead ditty about space travel.
   Last: Zuton Fever by The Zutons (album track from Who killed the Zutons?) – slightly narcissistic, no?

Sort by time – shortest and longest?
   Shortest: Reprise by Queen at 4 secs. However shortest actually track is probably Passive Manipulation by the White Stripes at 34 secs long (short).
   Longest: Beethoven’s 9th performed by BBC Philharmonic, 1 hr, 7 mins and 24 secs. Bizarrely the longest non-classical track (excluding mixes) is Reprise by Queen which runs to 22 mins and 33 secs. I’m thinking that’l

Sort by Album – first and last?
   First: ’64-’95 by Lemon Jelly
   Last: Zooropa by U2

Sort by Artist – first and last?
   First: !!! – or 10,000 Maniacs if yer fussy about your alphabetised lists
   Last: ZZ Top – of course!!!

Top five played songs?
   1. Future Proof by Massive Attack, from the album 100th Window
   2. She Will Have Her Way by Neil Finn, from the album Try Whistling This
   3. All I Need by Air, from the album Moon Safari
   4. Think Twice by Carl Craig, from the album Detroit Experiment
   5. Train by Goldfrapp, from the album Black Cherry

Find the following words. How many songs show up?
Figures in brackets are song titles only
   Sex: 66 (32)
   Death: 30 (14)
   Love: 657 (512)
   You: 1344 (997)
   Home: 102 (63)
   Boy: 319 (88)
   Girl: 178 (124)

Interesting. And I can highly recommend all the linked albums, blimey I’ve got great taste! Go on, show me yours.

~

* Ok, this has actually made me stop and think. I’ve slowly been ripping all my CDs to the PC, entire CDs, whether I like every track or not they are all there. I don’t delete tracks just because I don’t like them. I wonder, am I thinking of this the wrong way? Surely iTunes should only hold music that I will listen to and not be used to store hundreds of tracks that will never get played? And don’t even get me started on the perplexing issue that is duplicated tracks.

An example: The version of Fat Bottomed Girls on the album Queen Rocks! has been remastered from an old recording and sounds much better than either the original version from the album (Jazz) or the version from the Greatest Hits album. What I SHOULD do, is delete the two other versions I don’t listen to, but then I wouldn’t have the complete albums…

Is it just me? Is it an age thing where an ‘album’ is still a definitive piece of work that should be kept in it’s entirety or should I be switching to a new digital model where I can create my OWN albums, featuring versions of songs I like and ditching the rest? Ohh this could keep me up all night. What do YOU do?

bookmark_borderStereophonic

One key advantage of wearing a good set of headphones whilst working (other than drowning out the voices and distractions of the office) is that you suddenly realise that the backing singer on the song Turn and Run, from Neil Finn’s excellent album One Nil is Sheryl Crow. Going back to her roots?

bookmark_borderRediscovering

I own, ohhh that’s wrong to start with..

LOUISE owns an iPod, but as she drives to work and I get dumped onto our wonderful transport system, I get the iPod to use most of the time. It holds a couple of varied playlists of mine, several favourite albums, some music-snob albums and a few of those albums that you always never listen to.

You know the ones, you scan by them on the shelf, pausing briefly thinking “I really should listen to that” before heading back to safer ground and listening to The Bends, or Dummy, or Mezzanine for the four hundred and twenty second time (ohhh OK, Police Greatest Hits or Aerosmith Big Ones, you found me out).

I have several albums like that, some bought via recommendation (Emperor Penguin, Gavin Bryars), some bought because of the artist (Neil Finn, Pearl Jam), and some picked up cheap for no reason other than the evil that is FOPP.

So a quick scan of the iPod this morning and “Neil Finn – One Nil” caught my eye. I think I’d listened to it once a few months back but couldn’t recall anything about it (so probably not listened to it at all). The album is typical Finn, glorious harmonies, smooth sultry melodies with the occasional jarring moment to remind you that what you are listening to is very much alive and riddled with emotion.

I think this could be a new usage trend for me and my (sorry her) iPod. Limiting the “known” music in favour of the unknown or “least listened to” albums, something I can easily find out thanks to iTunes smartlists.. .why it’s almost as if those clever Apple chappies put some thought into this!

Current least listened: Neil Finn – One Nil
Current music snob choice: Photek – Modus Operandi

What are you listening to at the moment, and why?