Thursday, June 22, 2006
A Proposition
by Tom Bozzo
It's not for want of trying. In an effort to get my FireWire CDRW drive out of the kitchen and to push my iTunes library over the 3,000 song mark (mission accomplished!), I imported a batch of rarities.
A 3" CD, given away with the defunct record collector magazine Spiral Scratch, containing a Pixies demo and a nice live version of the Mighty Lemon Drops' "Inside Out" — no problem.
Another 3"er, a Sire Records promo disc with tracks from Ry Cooder, 54-40, Erasure, and the pre-trip hop Soup Dragons — no problem.
Savage Republic's "Tragic Figures," 1994 edition of 1500 copies with a lovely Independent Project Records letterpress sleeve — no problem.
I give up. The database, containing nearly 63 million tracks, is just not in the league of the iTunes Music Store, which remains eminently stumpable with my collection of a few thousand songs selected for rarities centered on eighties indiepop.
I haven't posted one for a while, so without further ado, here's a Random Ten:
1. Ride, Kaleidoscope, Nowhere (1990)
2. Wire, Sand In My Joints, Chairs Missing (1978)
3. The Feelies, Everybody's Got Something To Hide Except Me And My Monkey, Crazy Rhythms (1980)
4. The Undertones, See That Girl, Cher O'Bowlies: The Pick Of The Undertones (1980)
5. Catherine Wheel, Show Me Mary, Chrome (1993)
6. The Chills, Rain, Brave Words (1987)
7. The Family Cat, Springing The Atom, Magic Happens (1994)
8. Serge Gainsbourg, Je suis venu te dire que je m'en vais (1972; title track)
9. Lida Husik and Beaumont Hannant, Starburst 7, Evening At The Grange (1994)
10. Lush, Baby Talk, Gala (1989)
This random ten has a higher-than-expected iTMS esoterica index of 60%.
Merely mortal record collections cannot stump the Gracenote Media Database. (That's the source of the disc and track metadata that iTunes fills when you import a CD.)
It's not for want of trying. In an effort to get my FireWire CDRW drive out of the kitchen and to push my iTunes library over the 3,000 song mark (mission accomplished!), I imported a batch of rarities.
A 3" CD, given away with the defunct record collector magazine Spiral Scratch, containing a Pixies demo and a nice live version of the Mighty Lemon Drops' "Inside Out" — no problem.
Another 3"er, a Sire Records promo disc with tracks from Ry Cooder, 54-40, Erasure, and the pre-trip hop Soup Dragons — no problem.
Savage Republic's "Tragic Figures," 1994 edition of 1500 copies with a lovely Independent Project Records letterpress sleeve — no problem.
I give up. The database, containing nearly 63 million tracks, is just not in the league of the iTunes Music Store, which remains eminently stumpable with my collection of a few thousand songs selected for rarities centered on eighties indiepop.
I haven't posted one for a while, so without further ado, here's a Random Ten:
1. Ride, Kaleidoscope, Nowhere (1990)
2. Wire, Sand In My Joints, Chairs Missing (1978)
3. The Feelies, Everybody's Got Something To Hide Except Me And My Monkey, Crazy Rhythms (1980)
4. The Undertones, See That Girl, Cher O'Bowlies: The Pick Of The Undertones (1980)
5. Catherine Wheel, Show Me Mary, Chrome (1993)
6. The Chills, Rain, Brave Words (1987)
7. The Family Cat, Springing The Atom, Magic Happens (1994)
8. Serge Gainsbourg, Je suis venu te dire que je m'en vais (1972; title track)
9. Lida Husik and Beaumont Hannant, Starburst 7, Evening At The Grange (1994)
10. Lush, Baby Talk, Gala (1989)
This random ten has a higher-than-expected iTMS esoterica index of 60%.
