Soundtrack for yardwork and car mechanicry

Ah, sweet weekend, the first without rain in about 2 months. Naturally it’s time for yardwork. I can finally finish my fall raking, just in time for spring. Even though I actually loathe doing yardwork, it does present much opportunity for music listening. Too bad I didn’t get to take advantage of it; I was too busy fighting an alternator.

Curse those who designed the 1997 pontiac sunfire–my hand got stuck in the freakin’ engine!

Still, I did manage to get in some Add N to (X) [add insult to injury] and mad season. no, not the drivel from Rob Thomas’ band–my library may not always reflect it, but I do have a modicum of taste. I refer, instead, to the worthwhile 1995 grunge side project of Pearl Jam‘s Mike Mcready and Alice in Chains‘ Layne Staley. I literally hadn’t heard the album in years and for the most part, it has held up since i bought it in high school. It’s an order of magnitude better than the much more publicized Temple of the Dog side project.

progress-wise, it seems that recent slacking is taking its toll. I now have to listen to 45 songs per day (up from 44). with an average song length of 4:05 minutes, by my calculations, I should finish with three days to spare. then I can gear up for tunequest 2007!

March 3 – 30 songs played. 2 removed.

I had a short day at the office, so i only managed to work in about 2 hours of music. no albums today, just handful of singles. highlights include stayin’ alive [bee gees], a couple tracks from velocity girl’s¡simpatico! and the hand that feed [nine inch nails] (i’m kinda bummed that i won’t get to hear it again for the rest of the year.

oh well, on with the mission.

i also dumped 2 boards of canada tracks from a few old tunes, vol 2.

Live Music Thursday!

One of the effects of loading the iPod alphabetically by album is that I’m getting a refresher course in live music. The tagging scheme I use for live performances looks like this:

year.month.date venue, city

Thus, all the shows are listed chronologically. As far as iTunes is concerned, each show is just an album that starts with a number.

Today found me listening to a 1995 Soul Coughing show in New York City, a completely rockin’ Toronto 2004 performance by Mouse on Mars who I’ve managed to see, twice. If you get the chance, go! and a 2001 show by Air [french band] in Los Angeles.

Also sandwiched in there was A Data Learn the Language, an uber-smooth postrock record by The Mercury Program. Good stuff that.

The first tunequest post

Highlights: John Williams score for A.I. Artificial Intelligence is a breathtakingly moving film score, particularly The Mecha World suite. The man was on the mark with that one.

In a similar vein, I also enjoyed movements I. and II. from Mahler’s 6th Symphony performed by the Philharmonia Orchestra as well as some groovin’ Les Baxter.

I removed a dull number by Hooverphonic and a non-song by An April March.