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Archive for July, 2006

Pizzicato Five: Hi guys! Let me teach you - Surprisingly good

Sunday, July 30, 2006
I'm on record in the comments as having said Pizzicato Five's pre-1994 material is of questionable merit. Well, I have to take it back a little, because I forgot completely about 1991's Hi guys! Let me teach you. It's an über-smooth instrumental set, with a jazzy groove and a relaxing downtempo lounge feel. It was recorded as a soundtrack to a japanese tv show and is ...

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huzzah, progress!

Friday, July 28, 2006
just a note to say that i crossed the half way threshold for song count this afternoon. the lucky song was nine inch nails' 'terrible lie' from all that could have been (halo 17). of course, as i add and remove songs from the library, that metric will change. but for now, let's all congratulate our winner.

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Stereolab - Ping Pong: Geo-political Rock

Friday, July 28, 2006
Ping Pong is an unusually uptempo, rockin' song from Stereolab's mars audiac quintet. It's one of my favorites from the groop and the increase in tempo gives its lyrics a stronger visceral impact. Though released in 1994, the lyrics show a degree of timelessness, given the current geo-political situation. it's alright 'cos the historical pattern has shown how the economical cycle tends to revolve. in a round of ...

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John Williams - Jurassic Park: Hold on to your butts

Thursday, July 27, 2006
Since the mid-1970s, John Williams has never been lacking in notoriety. Jaws, Towering Inferno, Close Encounters, Superman, Star Wars... these film scores made him a household name, gaining fame and respect for work that is generally restricted to devotees and cultists only. The Star Wars album even managed to break into the public's consciousness, becoming best-seller on the Billboard charts for 1977 and inspiring an awful ...

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Yoshinori Sunahara - Pan Am: The Sound of the 70s

Monday, July 24, 2006
I recently had the pleasure of reacquainting myself with a little record called Pan Am: The Sound of the 70s, a dazzling example of late-90s downtempo shibuya-kei from producer Yoshinori Sunahara. Some truly funky beats, lush arrangements, and (surprisingly for an offshoot of electronic music), some engaging songcraft grace this remarkably enjoyable album. Sunahara, who has an obsessive fascination with air travel demonstrates that ...

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this midway island earth

Monday, July 24, 2006
I reached another tunequest milestone today at 7:48 pm, officially crossing the halfway point of this journey. Pictured above are screenshots of the playlists i use to keep track of my progress. even though the song count is off by 364, you can see that the total time for the played group is slightly higher than the songs remaining. Unless I end up adding significantly more ...

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Rock for Choice: Pearl Jam in Pensacola

Saturday, July 22, 2006
On the evening of March 9, 1994 I attended my first and only Pearl Jam concert at the Pensacola Civic Center in, you guessed it, Pensacola Florida (where PJ guitarist Mike McCready happens to have been born). I was a freshman in high school at the scampy young age of 15 and, having just discovered the full breadth of grunge six months before, I reveled in ...

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The tunequest half way point

Saturday, July 22, 2006
So today, July 22, marks the half way point of tunequest in terms of calendar days. And while I'm a little behind overall, it doesn't look as bad as I was projecting a couple weeks ago. The count shows a deficit of roughly 500 songs, which seems like a lot. However, the time count shows about a 10 hour deficit. Some quick math tells me that the ...

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iTunes Statistician for the iTunes Stats Obsessive

Saturday, July 22, 2006
There's a new program in town (for Mac users) to help you gather more nuggets of information about your listening habits as reflected by your iTunes library. it's a nifty little piece of donation-ware called iTunes Statistician and it analyzes your library data to calculate your top 100 songs, artists, albums and genres, based on playcounts (and optionally weights for star rating as well). additionally, it ...

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