music

Last Guy on Earth to Subscribe to Spotify

This is how I used to feel about music 2.0. Now I’m more than will­ing to spend $10 a month to lis­ten to what­ev­er I like, give or take. I will say that the playlists fea­ture is pret­ty great, espe­cial­ly now that I’m not a music edi­tor who would’ve been tasked with assem­bling them. Tedious work, that. That said, I’m enjoy­ing the Pitch­fork Top 100 songs playlist right now. Point me toward good playlists and I will add them.

I’d love to see them add a book­mark fea­ture so I could cat­a­log titles I find as I surf around the web. Think Instapa­per, but for music.

Taking Ripfest to the Next Level

You know what makes this blog great? It’s always remind­ing me of my short­com­ings. No, not that I post once a month; that I post res­o­lu­tions every year and nev­er ful­fill them.

This year I planned on rip­ping all my CDs to my Mac­Book. Did­n’t hap­pen. It’s tedious, there’s nev­er time, the litany of excus­es goes on and on. That changes next year. 

Why? Because if we’re plan­ning on buy­ing a new home in 2013, I need to shrink my por­tion of dig­i­tal goods con­sid­er­ably. There’s no excuse to not have every­thing loaded onto a com­put­er that can be accessed via home shar­ing. Flip­ping con­tent from com­put­er to oth­er devices in the home is real­ly awe­some and I’m final­ly see­ing that potential.

What does it mean? I need an iMac. While every­one is going small­er — whether that’s iPads or Mac­Book Airs — I’m real­iz­ing that I need a machine that can com­fort­ably store all the CDs and DVDs I own local­ly that I can then access on mobile devices. My Mac­Book just won’t cut it. I want some­thing that can whirr qui­et­ly upstairs and be the clas­sic home com­put­er. I think iMac fits the bill.

Wish me luck in 2012 in get­ting our dig­i­tal life togeth­er! (Do peo­ple still even buy used CDs and DVDs?)

In Praise of Spoon

I know peo­ple have cooled on their steely grooves, but I don’t know how I would’ve got­ten through 2002–2007 with­out steady dos­es of Spoon. Two songs in par­tic­u­lar that gal­va­nized my will when it was bent near the break­ing point: “That’s the Way We Get By” and “The Underdog.”

Can’t lis­ten to either of these tunes with­out being trans­port­ed back in time. The for­mer reminds me of a sweaty sum­mer spent in Brook­lyn, punch­ing F5 on craigslist or inter­view­ing for jobs for which I was but one of hun­dreds of appli­cants. I’d turn this all the way up as I sat on my futon, scrap­ing by on adjunct lec­tur­er’s wages and what­ev­er was left on my stu­dent loans. The lat­ter takes me to a bet­ter place: final­ly back on the job after near­ly a year out of work. It was their brand new album at the time and I had a hard time believ­ing that “The Under­dog” was­n’t my per­son­al anthem that summer.

A few years on and I keep find­ing myself com­ing back to these records. I can’t think of a band whose body of work has more close­ly fit my moods over more than a decade of fandom.

Who Needs Birthday Presents?

Once upon a time, I used to be a guy who com­piled lists — obses­sive­ly, even — of the movies and music I want­ed to acquire in some phys­i­cal for­mat. It made birth­days and Christ­mases so easy for every­one in my life. Dis­trib­ute the list and — voila — instant gifts!

Now it’s not so easy. I still real­ly enjoy music and film, but there’s just no press­ing need for me to “own” any of it. Does this mean I’m fac­ing a future of ties for every gift going forward?

#ripfest

If you want to see a Cliffs Notes ver­sion of what I’m rip­ping and tak­ing to AKA some time in the next month or so, fol­low the #ripfest hash­tag on Twitter. 

I’m going to be pret­ty aggres­sive about what I’m ditch­ing, so we’re talk­ing about some 600+ cds or so. If you’re inter­est­ed in any and are will­ing to stop by the house to have a look, they’ll be sold for $3.50 a piece, give or take.