I just finished reading Mark Hertsgaard’s excellent book, A Day in the Life: The Music and Artistry of the Beatles and I loved it. My father-in-law — who, in 1974, was actually kicked out of the Troubadour with John for heckling the Smothers Brothers — gave it to me a few weeks ago after he’d read it. It’s an awesome read for any Beatles fan. Instead of the typical biography drudgery, Hertsgaard writes the story of the music that was created. So although there’s a little bit of the same old “Lennon was born in Liverpool … They played at the Cavern Club a zillion times …” it is mostly an analysis of how the songs themselves came to be created. Hertsgaard managed to gain access to the archived Abbey Road recording studio tapes and gives blow-by-blow accounts of which of the artists added this line or that chord to each song. He also chronicles the often hysterical banter between the lads from Liverpool as they worked.
Posts tagged as:
songs
A Day in the Life
{ 0 comments }
2006 Top Ten New Songs List
You’re asking me, “What are the ten songs you played the most in iTunes this year, David?” Unfortunately I’m not going to tell you that. I’d love to do it, but I can’t. See, the thing is that iTunes doesn’t store meta data in a true RDBMS; it’s just a flat XML file. There’s no way to determine which songs you’ve listened to the most in the last X number of days. In order to do that you’d have to be able to cross-reference the time you heard each song as a separate data point. iTunes only stores the timestamp of the most-recent instance of listening to a song. Bummer.
But I can tell you which songs I added to iTunes in 2006 that I heard the most. And I know you want to know that. And — because I love flirting with disaster — I can also let you download an mp3 of each one. Shhh! Don’t tell the RIAA!
{ 2 comments }
Goodbye in Gasoline
I‘ve decided that Goodbye in Gasoline has overtaken How’s My Driving, Doug Hastings? as my favorite Less Than Jake song. It’s a tough call to make. I’ve had How’s My Driving posted here for download since early 2000. That is a seriously long time to have been awake late every night, nervously waiting for the RIAA to take me away. My site actually continues to receive an R rating (from the sort of people that rate blogs) purely because of the F word in the lyrics.
{ 0 comments }
Alphabet Tunes
Here’s another silly music meme. This one’s from A Small Victory. Take all the songs in iTunes (or your music player of choice), alphabetize ‘em, and tell the first song of each letter. Yes, it’s lame. Yes, it’s fun. I got more than 26 because I couldn’t resist including numerals and non-alphanumeric characters. And I also win the dork award because I had to take the time to give you an appropriate link to find the songs on your own.
{ 1 comment }
Pass the Baton …
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.
{ 1 comment }
My Radio
Because I know you’re dying to know, I present my top fifty most-played tracks according to iTunes:
- Title: Woke Up This Morning - Artist: A3 (PlayCount: 116)
- Less Than You Hoped For - Gunmoll (108)
- My Friend Peter - Alkaline Trio (72)
- Open All Night - Bruce Springsteen (66)
- Whatsername - Green Day (64)
- How’s My Driving, Doug Hastings? - Less Than Jake (64)
- Mr. Chainsaw - Alkaline Trio (63)
- Sweet Happy Life (Sambra de Orfeu) - Peggy Lee (62)
- Holiday - Green Day (61)
- Creeque Alley - The Mamas & the Papas (61)
{ 0 comments }
The Covers Project
Amazon XML? Google API? Web services? You want some cool web services?
The Covers Project … building a database of cover songs (songs performed by an artist other than the original performer) with the intention of creating cover “chains.” A cover chain is a set of songs in which each song is a cover of a song by the band who covered the preceding song.
So far, we have 6,075 songs (4,188 unique) and 2,960 artists catalogued. The longest “chain” we know about contains 43 songs.
{ 1 comment }
more foo …
more foo … can’t help it
Run when it hit’s the ground, I’m good at escaping
But better at flaking out
{ 0 comments }
