Showing posts with label Ska. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ska. Show all posts

19 June 2009

Juke Box Hero

Since 2006 I've been titling posts with either lyrics from a song or an actual song title. I thought it'd be nice to document these choices; I'll keep this entry updated with info from new posts going forward.

Update: Starting with posts in 2010, I'm now listing the song reference at the bottom of the post, instead of updating a huge table. I've gone back and appended song reference information to all the earlier posts as well.

(Full disclosure: the iTunes buttons at the bottom of each post are encoded with my affiliate ID, so I get a cut if you buy anything.)

Overall I'm pleased with the range and diversity represented, but I'm a bit surprised at how much Zeppelin is listed. Guess I'm a child of the 70s after all.


PostReferenceMore Info
Juke Box HeroSong by ForeignerForeigner - 4 (Expanded) - Juke Box Hero (Single Version)

06 January 2009

Free Yourself

Apple announced today that all 10 million songs available in the iTunes Store will be in the iTunes Plus format; eight million available immediately with the other two million later this month by the end of this quarter. This means the tracks are encoded in higher quality and are not governed by the FairPlay system that restricted use of the music to certain methods and numbers of computers.

This represents a significant change of world-view on the part of the music labels, one that should be celebrated and encouraged. So head right over to the iTunes Store, click the iTunes Plus link in the Quick Links list on the right side, and upgrade your music library today!

But remember, just because there's no digital-rights management restrictions on these files does not mean you should redistribute them beyond your own personal use. Don't Steal Music!


PostReferenceMore Info
Free YourselfSong by The UntouchablesThe Untouchables - Free Yourself - Free Yourself

30 July 2005

Doddering Shuffle.

Driving home from work last night I was listening to my iPod shuffle. Jake was sleeping; despite all his attributes he's rather indifferent to music it seems.

The shuffle is currently holding 280 ska songs. I leave it set on shuffle mode and let it wander through the range of first-, second-, and third-wave ska on-board. Sometimes it plays successive songs from the same artist or group, but last night it did something odd: it played the same song twice in a row.

First it played "Meat Dance" by Slow Gherkin off the split CD Invisible Tank. This caught my attention because it's a more up-tempo cut of the song, released in 1998, that I hadn't heard recently.

That was immediately followed by the original cut of "Meat Dance" off the 1995 comp This is Raj...and This is Ska. Weird. Out of 280 songs, what are the odds the shuffle would play two version of the same song, one right after the other.

Even stranger is that I randomly Autofill my shuffle from my ska library, currently holding 681 songs. (Raise your hand if you didn't thing there were that many ska tracks in the world. Now put your hand down; you look like a fool sitting in front of a computer with your hand raised.)

So out of the random Autofill where only a third of the songs will be selected, these two tracks made it into the shuffle, then while being played randomly, they end up back-to-back. (Well, technically back-to-front, but that's not the expression.)

If I didn't know better, I'd say the Universe is trying to tell me something.