Resetting my history thanks to resetting iTunes. Migrating libraries from a Mac to Windows is a pain in the ass, expect to take a full day, expect to lose all your ratings and play counts, expect the Red Sparowes to refuse to play nicely, and most of all, expect any and all pieces of hardware involved to refuse to function from time to time.

But… On the other hand I mysteriously gained a couple thousand songs from my OS X backups (most of which were deleted long ago for good reasons). I also get to claim to be mostly Mac…

A review of the"Russian Circles/Daughters", because I'm bored.

First impression, The Clubhouse does all-ages shows much better than usual, either that or this attracted a better crowd than the last all ages show I saw, Tortoise, at the Rhythm Room, which was just an unmitigated mire of suck. This is both because there as some degree of air conditioning, and because they allowed me to be a lush, without being disturbed by puppies (I'm guessing the feeling would be mutual). The only odd thing was that the puppies weren't allowed to leave. As if being under 21…

The new Dillinger Escape Plan album, Ire Works is good, but disappointing. It follows the progression of which Miss Machine was a symptom, meaning it plunges more into the melodic than any of their previous offerings, and includes more Pattonesque moments of quasi-melodiousness. Yes the Faith No More cloning only exists on a track or two, but it still manages to distract me from what I like about DES, getting hit in the head with violent sounds, wrapped in razor blades, and perhaps coated in… coated in… er… something nasty. Sometimes the combination of two goods doesn't quite equal another,…

At around 15,000 due to creeping crud. One lesson learned though is that Radiohead is rather mediocre popcorn, haven't had much desire to listen to it since college, but I can never tell its on to skip it. It just plays and doesn't move me enough to quickly skip it, or listen to it even, it just passes by. Radiohead is my sonic blind spot.

To the best of my recollection the top bands were Radiohead, Nine Inch Nails, Clutch, and the HorrorPops. Telling me that I have rather pedestrian taste in music, even with the diversity.…

So… 10,000. Does this mean I should go and clear my music, or not? I am tempted, I must admit, I miss being able to see artists fight for dominance, or fall into obscurity (no matter how much I claim to like them), but on the other hand isn't it within the idea of this service to build as accurate a list as possible?

I'll ponder this a bit longer. Feel free (oh random readers) to chip in your opine at will.

The meat of this journal is me just preserving, for "posterity", my tastes, as they stand, at 10,00…

It's been awhile since I bitched about how last.fm handles things. I was trying the "my recommendations radio", and was kept in a state of shock of the amount of pure crap it kept streaming at me. So I decide to see what last.fm actually thinks I want to listen too, and this is what I find:

Modest Mouse
Muse
Sonic Youth
Gorillaz
The Strokes
Interpol
Weezer
Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Foo Fighters
Coldplay
Green Day
The Flaming Lips
The Killers
The Arcade Fire
The Smashing Pumpkins
Red Hot Chili Peppers
Pixies
Bloc Party
The White Stripes
Depeche Mode

Damn missing the Asylum Street Spankers. Thank you strep throat. Yet another inconvenience due to some arrogant malign bacteria (not that I can complain too much, it has allowed me some good time to bond with my Wii, and the various epochs of Zelda).

I was even going to write up the Sleepytime Gorilla Museum/Secret Chiefs 3 gig in warm, sunny (fah!) Tucson. But I think the grotesque weather, and obscene amount of leg work weakened my immune system. A further pox on Tucson (another of the many uttered over the course of last weekend). To be…

Fantômas 66
The Clash 59
DeVotchKa 59 (tied for second)
The Red Elvises 56
Tool 54
Isis 50
Clutch 49
Deerhoof 47
Tortoise 45
The Dillinger Escape Plan 44

Or by time:

Isis 6:04:21
Tool 6:02:04
Godspeed You! Black Emperor. 3:57:37
Tortoise 3:53:13
The Mars Volta 3:34:37
Explosions in the Sky 3:28:31
Devotchka 3:25:37
The Red Elvises 3:24:36
Clutch 3:17:10

Not sure how to think of a rational (in both senses) system to weigh both time and count, to make a true top ten list. Any mathematically inclined folk want to take a crack at this?

Roughly 2483 tracks…

Sun 4 Mar – Deerhoof, Macromantics, a review, or perhaps an anthropology lesson, one can never be quite sure when one gets home at 6am, after a long night of music and bar hopping.

So, arriving at the Rhythm Room I knew that the evening would be interesting. This is the first all ages venue I've been to since I was 17 or so, I forgot how young kids look, immediately I felt old. The crowd was full of young hipsters in all forms of purposely eccentric dress, the younger they were the tighter their pants were. Fashion definitely…

So I finally decided to give the band Isis a try, it has been a recommendations from Amazon for years, but the write ups always make it sound like yet-another metal band. Emusic was offering a free trial, so I decided might as well try them. I am throughly disappointed, not by them, but by the fact I never discovered them earlier. As I said ealier, they are like Tool had sex with Cannibal Corpse (or such) and their offspring raised by something post-rock, like GY!BE, or Explosions in the Sky, which is oddly complimentary. I even made…