tunequest

A short seven months after the release of his debut record, Diplomatic Immunity, the unfathomable intergalactic negotiator and groove machine has returned with a most urgent message. You see, The Phantasmal Farm is in danger and in need of saving. The pull of the 8th Dimension has that place of transcendental epiphanies in its grasp and only you, yes you!, can save it. The Polish Ambassador implores ...

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This past weekend, I saw The Simpsons Movie and must declare that I thoroughly enjoyed it. I know it's become a bit of pastime to bemoan the show's decline, but honestly, you won't find much cynicism coming from me with regards to the movie. The plot is straightforward, but fittingly expansive and engrossing for a motion picture. The jokes are actually rather good, largely avoiding the ...

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNNzGhzIAVo From the album Pixel Revolt (2005). Download MP3. Man, I am obsessed with this song. Seriously, it's been on repeat in my head for the past seven days. I can't decide what I find more compelling, the musical arrangement, melody and composition of the song or its fascinating subject matter. I heard it for the first time a week ago, while partaking in my weekly Podcast Friday™ podcast ...

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From the soundtrack Singles (1992) This song is among the earliest in The Smashing Pumpkins catalog, recorded in 1992 for the motion picture soundtrack Singles. The film takes place in Seattle and heralds the coming of that city's grunge music, using the local scene as a persistent backdrop the personal and professional turmoil of a bunch of twenty-somethings. Allusions and references to the burgeoning scene abound within ...

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When Travis covered ...Baby One More Time as tender British comfort rock, it was cute. [audio:070715BabyOneMoreTime.mp3] When Jonathan Coultan did Baby Got Back as a singer/songwriter folk troubadour, it was funny. When The Gourds played Gin n' Juice in up-the-mountain bluegrass style, it was just bizarre. Play:

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I've spent the past couple days playing around with Alex King's iTunes Stats program. It's written in PHP/MYSQL and requires a web server to run. With the MAMP one-click server running on my PowerBook, I had little trouble installing the program (though I did have to substantially increase the PHP timeout setting so it could handle my large library). iTunes Stats reads XML files, one can load ...

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As of today, my active library contains 15,601 songs. Of those songs, 7,501 have been given star ratings, leaving 8,100 unrated. So, just as I spent last year listening to every song in my library, I will spend the rest of this year working to completely rate my library and assign stars to as many songs as I can. The effort I'm putting into this is substantial, ...

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This song is perhaps the greatest mystery in the entirety of my music collection. It's a fairly sophisticated remix of the song Twift Shoeblade from Mouse on Mars' third album Autoditacker (1997). The tempo is a little faster, the arrangement has a little more punch and it has been resequenced slightly. Not to snub the original at all, but I must say I pretty much prefer ...

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A number of people pointed out to me recently that Radiohead's seminal masterpiece, OK Computer, turned ten years old a couple weeks ago. That's right, it's been a full decade since the band began to cement its reputation as "world's greatest rock band." Where does the time go? It seems like just yesterday, my friend Dan was imploring me to give Radiohead a shot. At this ...

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