so, i just finished listening to nin's pretty hate machine which i had on audio cassette a million years ago. and in addition to "taking me back some" 13 years, it made me feel pretty insignificant in my life's accomplishments. :/
to clarify: not because of the success of nine inch nails, but like i should have something to show for my (almost) 30 years on the planet. a house or something? a pulitzer prize? i dunno.
i think i'm just, as colin said it, terrified of becoming 30.
i received my first monthly charge from lala this morning. $29.75 for 18 cds (you get the first one free for signing up) is surely a square deal! now to get rid of the ones i don't want to hold on to anymore...
the awesomest boss* has been a member of la la for a while and finally convinced me to check it out today... so i weeded through my ipod looking for music i rarely, if ever, listen to or enjoy; and still retain ownership of the actual disc, and added those to my "have it" list. immediately, the number of cds requested from my "haves" started adding up... out of the 25 haves that i'm willing to part with (after a 20 minute scan through my music library), 10 of those will be going to new homes. this means i am qualified to receive 10 cds from my "want" list, if available, for $1 per disc plus $0.75 shipping.
so, i cleaned up my amazon wishlist, and (if i do get the 10 cds that i want) i'll have saved over $75 or something crazy like that. omg.
*he doesn't read my blog, so this is not considered sucking up.
i've been using this guy's smart playlist theories for about two weeks now, and i think it's made all the difference. you see, when you have 15 gigs of music at your fingertips, it's like being at woodman's trying to find the right orange juice; there are too many choices.
so, to summarize (he gets into a lot of detail), you spend a couple days making sure the cddb got their data right the first time by being pretty deliberate about your music's genre. of course, this is only necessary for specific collections.. say you dig on the techno, well iTunes files everything under electronica/dance by default. and anyone who's anyone knows there's more to it than that (this goes for country, classical, folk, etc). after you've scrutinized your albums, you make several smart playlists (details available at first link above), and a final "uberplaylist" which you combine with your genres, resulting in several smart playlists by genre; allowing you to listen to a smattering of reggae that you just added to the library in addition to ones you haven't listened to in 6 months. it opens up the experience of listening to music that you thought worthy of loading onto your computer in the first place, but may have forgotten about.
it's just short of saying outloud, "i feel like some drum n bass but i don't remember which artists or albums i have, will you play whatever, iPod?" i<3 it.
i have one of those 92 capacity cd thing and it's chock full; with about 30 cds still hanging out in their cases on a shelf taking up room. so i bought a 264 capacity cd thing and need to figure out how i'm going to arrange my music.. the "pages" are removable, so that sort of helps with alphabetizing, but i think i'll just stick to filing them by genre and leave it at that.
so i got all those cds that i ordered from amazon in lieu of the video ipod a couple weeks ago. so, i've been kinda geeking out on the thievery corporation, which is a random selection of reggae, d'n'b, jazz, spanish, and dub all mixed together. i now own five of their albums. i also bought another rockers hi-fi, and four dub albums; one of which has some live stuff at the end which i don't really care for. if you're interested in listening to samples, i've linked to the amazon products below:
Disassemble Dub
DJ Kicks: The Black Album
Quango: Dub Selector, Vol. 2: A Global Adventure
Dub Selector
The Richest Man in Babylon
The Mirror Conspiracy
The Outernational Sound
The Cosmic Game
Exploring The Dangers Of