mp3s

I am a big fan of Bloodhound Gang. They had two big radio hits — “Fire Water Burn” (1996) and “The Bad Touch” (2000) — so I guess it’s not fair to call them one-hit wonders, but generally they’re not exactly “pop” music. Most of their songs are painfully sophomoric — “The Ballad of Chasey Lain“, “I Wish I Was Queer So I Could Get Chicks”, and “Foxtrot Uniform Charlie Kilo” come to mind. (One of my favorites is “A Lap Dance Is So Much Better When The Stripper Is Crying”, although I don’t play that one in the office very often.)

If you can somehow manage to ignore almost all of the lyrics, the song Pennsylvania has a refrain that I think is actually pretty beautiful:

You are the heart dotting “i”
In the word “apologize”
Scribbled drunk on a postcard
Sent from somewhere volcanoes are
I am the heart with no name
Airbrushed on the license plate
Of a Subaru that was
Registered in Pennsylvania

While we were waiting for the Olympics to start out here on the West coast, we caught the end of an old Entourage episode on HBO. The track playing over the end credits was Sinnerman, by Nina Simone. That song is also played during the conclusion of The Thomas Crown Affair remake with Pierce Brosnan, which has been on television a few hundred thousand times lately, and I really like it. This time I remembered to email a note to myself from my iPhone to download it.

Since Phelps isn’t racing until 10pm, I decided to grab the song. I’ll gladly pay $.99 for a track on iTunes, so I fired ‘er up and … ugh … Of course that’s one of the “album only” songs. For some mysterious reason every now and then Apple (or the record label, or who knows) sets it so that some songs cannot be downloaded individually. You have to buy the whole album to get the track. While I’m okay to shell $.99 for a great song, I’m loathe to drop $9.99 for an album when I only want one song.

So of course I flip iTunes the bird and fire up Limewire. But for some reason, even though there are apparently hundreds of copies of that song available, none of them will download. (I suspect my ISP is blocking Limewire, actually.)

Torrents to the rescue. I found a copy on torrents.to, fired up Transmission, and should have the whole Thomas Crown Affair OST in about twenty minutes. This is why I love the Internets.

Lifehacker posted an article today about VidToMP3.com, a site which will convert any online video to mp3 format for you for free. How cool is that? Now there’s finally a way to get the soundtracks to Planet Unicorn and Show Me Your Genitals on your iPod. Radical.

If I knew where it was
I would take you there.

Tricia and I went to see The Cure on Sunday night at The Shrine. We had dinner at The Foundry on Melrose first and got to the show at nine, about an hour late but just in time to catch most of our favorite songs. Just Like Heaven was first, which was the song I played non-stop through most of high school and my absolute favorite Cure track, so that was awesome. I assume that the show started with mostly songs from the new album, because we got to hear almost all the classics. They played four two-song encores, including Tricia’s favorite song, the heartbreaker Plainsong, and the rocker Killing an Arab. I managed to get a few great photos, too.

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Just about everyone that uses iTunes has a hella hard time keeping their music files organized. This is a shame because (a) it’s actually pretty simple and (b) it is a colossal pain in the ass to move your library if it’s not organized correctly. (Note that I’m talking about the organization of your actual music files and not the appropriate tagging and categorization of your music library.) The bummer of the thing is that the folks at Apple unwittingly made this more complicated and difficult by trying to make it simple and easy. It happens. Trust me. I have been building software for just over a decade now and it happens all.the.time. Don’t get mad at Apple for this one. Let’s just fix it.

First I’ll tell you what you need to do, and then I’ll explain why.

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It’s been ages since I posted an mp3 for you. Here’s a great one for today »
Song of the Moment

Yes, I know not always. But some days it would just be nice if you felt like every now and then you could.

We went to see Mr. & Mrs. Smith tonight at the AVCO on Wilshire in Westwood. It was great! I wasn’t expecting much, but (a) the trailers were funny, (b) both stars are dead sexy, and (c) LA has been deluged with posters, and we — as simple drones — just can’t resist such a zealous marketing campaign. (Pay attention for the many homages made throughout the film; for example, a supporting character is wearing a “Fight Club” t-shirt at one point.)

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Gee, I haven’t been involved in a meme in quite some time, and I’m currently nursing a wicked sinus infection and suffering from post-Sith syndrome, but I’ll play along. It’s a music meme, and everyone knows I’m a sucker for both. I should note that my copy of iTunes has 6811 songs, some 500+ of which were puchased via the iTunes music store in the 18 months since I got my first iPod. (The other 6300 or so are ripped from my own personal CD collection.) Anyone who thinks mp3s are the death-knell of the music industry is a moron. I should also note that I ripped all of the original soundtrack anthology about two weeks ago and have been listening to almost nothing else lately.

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Aaarrghh. I have just got to get the new one. My iPod quickly became my favorite toy. My girlfriend gave me a 20gb one for Christmas. I upgraded to the 40gb in January, and I listen to it daily. iTunes is even a damn good WinAMP and / or MusicMatch replacement, and Apple did an amazing job with the iTunes UI. Anyway … Can anyone tell me any sob stories about switching from a 40gb 3rd-gen to a 40gb 4th-gen? Was it shmoove? What happens to all my m4p files? Are there issues with migrating “authorized” songs? Talk to me, kids.

If you’re sitting there with a new computer and scratching your head trying to figure out how to get all your music from your iPod and iTunes library on your old computer, scratch no longer! This is how you do it.

Update: And if you want to get your playlists on your new computer, you have to do this.

And you should also read this tip on Keeping iTunes Organized!

Time for a little poll. Every now and then I upload a mystery song to my Song of the Moment blog. Does anyone ever download it? Should I bother to keep doing that? I never get any feedback, and I’m wondering if it’s worth it. So here’s your chance to make an impact on the content here. Let me know. Should it stay?

Last week I used some SSI and MovableType trickery, by the way, to include the two most recent songs at the bottom of the sidebar over there on the right.

Tag&Rename is a powerful, easy-to-use program for organizing and archiving your library of music files. It’s solid design handles both the .mp3 and .vqf music formats. With Tag&Rename, you can quickly and easily rename your music while also editing the embedded tag data used by popular music players - both ID3 and ID3 v2 formats.

I finally finished making my Burn Baby Burn Weblogger CD Exchange mixes (previously mentioned here). I’m late. They were supposed to be in the mail on the 15th. I’ve already received CDs from three other participants: unusuallysuspect.com, cultofdarian.com, and Sophia H. I am really digging the one from unusuallysuspect.com. It’s ultra-mellow. And Sophia stuck Springsteen’s Rosalita in her mix! This was such a cool idea. I’m probably going to play the Mix of the Month exchange at crabwalk.com next month, too.