After living for some time with my iPod only holding a dozen or so of my favourite CDs (plus that great Billy Bragg paid concert download), I’ve finally embarked on loading everything up, in alphabetical order. So far I’m up to B. Thus my iPod currently has an inordinate amount of Area 7, Bragg and Beatles, and rather less Yothu Yindi or ZZ Top. (Actually I own none of the latter.)
(via Doug)
I could tell you about how I got halfway to work yesterday and decided I didn’t feel well and I was going home to spend a lazy day resting. But I won’t. Instead I will present you with a hypothesis:
That listening to the iPod makes doing the dishes go faster.
I also spent a little (just a little) time yesterday sorting out my CD collection. No, not some kind of High Fidelity-type sorting out session. I was pondering the CDs I’ve been putting onto my iPod, pondering those that I never listen to, pondering the lack of shelf space in the CD part of the bookshelf, and pondering if I might find some CDs that I can ditch, sell, dump, donate, lose, or otherwise get rid of.
While there are quite a few I haven’t listened to in some time, there were less that I felt comfortable in getting rid of. I did find about a dozen, however, which is a good start. The question then becomes how I get rid of them. I’m not sure I’m willing to suffer the humiliation of a secondhand record shop rejecting them.
If I can’t summon up the courage for that, maybe I’ll look through the selection and send a couple of carefully targetted emails to possible grateful recipients.
As I’ve started ripping my CDs onto the iPod, I’ve been viewing and playing more of my CD collection than I have in quite some time. Here are some of my favourite obscure CDs:
Doug Anthony Allstars - Icon — the DAAS at their irreverent and musical best, with a lot of tracks being studio versions of songs from their original appearances on The Big Gig. People keep telling me how rare this is on CD, maybe because when it came out (1990) not that many people had CD players, so as it’s out of print, not many copies are around secondhand. If I dig around among the VHS tapes, I might even find the film clip of I Want To Spill The Blood Of A Hippy.
Eric Clapton (with Michael Kamen) - Edge Of Darkness — the soundtrack for the remarkable, subversive, addictive, eco-terrorism TV series. The one time I played LaserTag, we got them to play this during the game, and boy did it suit it. Eighteen minutes of sometimes frenetic but always atmospheric piano and electric guitar bliss. It’s one of those tiny CDs too, you don’t see too many of them around, though virtually all CD players can handle them.
Simon Fowler and Oscar Harrison - Live on the Riverboat — their band Ocean Colour Scene is obscure enough outside the UK, but this is an acoustic concert of theirs, recorded on a boat, which curiously doesn’t include their Riverboat Song. The disc came in a thoroughly annoying plastic cover with simulated blue water (actually jelly stuff) inside.
Jellyfish - Spilt Milk — another band pretty much unheard of outside their homeland, the US, and probably not overly prominent within it. I’m not sure why they appealed so much when I saw their New Mistake video clip on Rage years and years ago. Maybe it’s validation of video clips as a marketing tool. A curious mix of rock, Queen-like harmonies and orchestration, and… ummm… oh, I don’t know. He’s my best friend sounds so innocent until you realise what it’s about. And I’d love to know who Ghost At Number One is taking a swipe at. Sadly the band vanished after a couple of albums.
And yes, all these are now on my iPod.
Around this time last week, I checked the Apple web site for the status of my iPod repair. It proclaimed that they’d sent it back to me, and had a link to a rather nifty Australia Post parcel-tracking web site. Which didn’t work.
But no matter, once Easter was out of the way, I got home on Tuesday to find a card from the post office in the mailbox. “Congratulations!” it said. “The moment you’ve been waiting for has arrived! Your iPod has been repaired and is ready and waiting for you right now, just down the street!” Or words to that effect.
I normally work a short day on Tuesday, and as it was about 4pm, I convinced the kids to stroll down to the post office with me to collect it. We triumphantly entered, plonked the card down on the counter and … the woman pointed out that the card said it would be there for collection “after 10am pm Wednesday”, and apologised.
D’oh! Cue complaints from the kids about wasting time and energy to walk down there and back. An icecream from the freezer when we got home placated them, but I continued to grumble for some time about my iPod spending the night in some delivery van.
One of the problems with my local post office is that it’s open strictly business hours: Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm. And of course because this is business hours, it happens to co-incide with the times that most people are at work. Because of my short work days on Tuesdays, I can easily get there then, but — pah! — wait an extra week to get my iPod back? Never!
So I took a 9am detour on Thursday morning to pick it up. The note in the package said they’d replaced it, not repaired it… hopefully it’s a brand new unit, not a refurbished one… though how to tell, I don’t know.
Now to get some music loaded onto it. I’ve started with a range of various CDs, and will gradually put all my discs onto it. By the end of the day, the following will be on it, representing perhaps a sample of my possibly elcectic (or some might say “wierd-arse”) taste in music:
Don’t worry, I’m not going to continually subject with updates about which songs I’ve put on the thing. I just thought listing the first few might be of interest to somebody. No? Okay. I’ll just go and stand in the corner, out of the way then.
Pic: René Jonas / www.finnatics.de/Crowded_ House/
Update 8:30pm. I first read about this in the paper this morning. It didn’t quite sink in until later. It’s one thing when a musician much older than you passes away… it’s another matter when it’s one who is almost your own generation, and at only 46.
I never saw Paul or Crowded House play live, but I did see him some years ago, laughing and smiling, at the Elwood Beach House Cafe, which I think he co-owned with some other musician friends. I assume he lived around there; it was quite close to where he had gone to walk his dogs, and was later found, in Elsternwick Park.
To the slight indifference of my offspring, I dug out some Crowded House CDs and videos this afternoon to play them. The cover picture of their first album caught my eye, in the circumstances.
He will be missed.
Is it just my imagination, or are an increasing number of concerts for established acts in the big cities taking place on weeknights - “school” nights to be precise, Sunday to Thursday? It’s like the promoters know they can fill a venue in Melbourne, any day of the week, so they go for the weeknights. And they save the weekend night slots they aren’t sure they could fill during the week — lesser-known acts, and performances in smaller towns.
I’m not complaining about a specific concert… it’s just that it seems like there’s been a few recently scheduled on inconvenient nights. Oh well.
I finally succumbed to that iPod I’ve been covetting. Bye bye $449, hello 40Gb and my entire CD collection on a single tiny electronic gizmo.
Uhh, that is, it’s a portable storage device… it’s a work tool, don’tcha know. For moving big files around. And for drowning out the ambient noise when I’m trying to concentrate. Yeah.