tunequest

I just pulled in from midtown Atlanta, The Loft, specifically, where The Breeders just put on a hell of a show. I've been a big Breeders fan since the Last Splash days (14 years ago). Yet due to the band's somewhat sporadic history, tonight was my first opportunity to see them play live. And what a great performance they put on. The band was in good form and in good ...

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Sorry for the relative quiet around here lately. I've been on a bit of a holiday. Here's a review posted from a small island ~10,000 miles from home. :: After nearly six years in the musical wilderness, alt-rock godfathers The Breeders are back with a disc called Mountain Battles. And boy is it a good one, but its quality may not be readily apparent on the first few listens. The record, ...

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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 an entire iTunes ...

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One cold night, during the very cold December of 2000, I found myself at the original Handle Bar myspace warning in downtown Pensacola. Dilapidated doesn't even begin to describe the place, but its rundown condition gave it the perfect character to be a favored destination for the town's surprisingly robust hipster set, until it burned down in 2001. don't worry, the handle bar was rebuilt in a new larger ...

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aka "rhythm by arithmetic" The Breeders disappeared for a very long time, taking nine years to release a follow up to their 1993 breakthrough Last Splash. But when they returned, they did with gusto, submitting a stellar album that proved that Kim Deal could still write some compelling music. The following is a mellow groove, its steady rhythm demands your attention. It's unlike anything the band had attempted before and, I ...

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One minute and 44 seconds worth to be precise. And the subject of this perfection is The Breeders' Fortunately Gone from their 1990 debut record, Pod. The song is a paragon of simplicity, with a gentle, upbeat, bobbing rhythm and seductively playful singing that doesn't hesitate to draw you in. My only complaint is its length. It is so perfect, yet so tantalizingly short, that I can't help but want to ...

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so i broke the 3000 mark recently (which incidentally was the posies 'open every window' from the legendary dgc rarities compilation), and it occurred to me just how big a project this is and just how large, in practical terms, my iTunes library is. yeah, i know 14,000 songs is a lot, but really, in my head, it's just been a number. though i am prepared to complete this ...

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