In celebration of Mom’s birthday and without any Wynnona to offer, I made her a mix CD. It is based on some of the songs I got around the time I made Dad’s Mix which consisted mostly of pre-rock 50’s songs. I really don’t know what Mom would like any more than what Dad would like, but I put some later pop songs like Captain and Tennille, Righteous Brothers, and Neil Diamond on this one.
Category: Music
Dad’s Mix
I saw a commercial for Time Life Romantic Classics. It’s an 8-disc set of oldies (plus 2 discs free if you buy now) for $120. It’s a long commercial and they have a lot of great old songs featured. Rather than spend that much money I got on their web site to see the complete list of songs, figuring I could buy what I liked off of iTunes and wind up getting maybe 30 songs or so.
U2’s iPod Song
Apple has a new iPod song featuring U2 doing the song “Vertigo” from their album to be released this week. They said there was no way they could do a $20 million ad campaign promoting their album, but Apple didn’t mind so much apparently.
eMusic conclusion
Just a brief follow-up (see first and second posts). I finished all my downloads. I looked in the Soundtracks section and found Charlie Brown Christmas. That’s a good one so I downloaded the whole album. I also found Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf. I remember liking the the different themes for each character so I downloaded the whole 20-minute track. Honestly it was disappointing, not really a complete work but just those few themes over and over again plus the narration of the story. Other than that I continued as before, downloading a few more Pixies B-sides, Peter Murphy, Pavement, Rancid, Charlatans UK, The Church, and NOFX. It’s a challenge finding 100 songs you will like, but I was very pleased with discovering Pavement (“Grounded” “Cut Your Hair” and “Trigger Cut”) and NOFX (“Bob” and “Linoleum”) and I like some of the Peter Murphy tracks (“Cuts You Up” “Sweetest Drop” and “Low Room”), Pixies (“Manta Ray” “Dance the Manta Ray” and “Into the White”), and Rancid who have a strong Clash influence (especially on “Time Bomb”). If you’re interested in trying the service out you don’t have to buy Dockers. They offer a free month with 100 songs to anyone with a credit card.
eMusic (cont.)
I’m a little over halfway through my 100 free songs from Dockers and eMusic (see first post). It’s been a challenge to find things I want and also a lot of work researching groups that I might like. Because they have so few artists you’ve heard of you pretty much have to stumble across them by finding a few bands and then seeing the recommendations based on what other people have downloaded who downloaded songs from that band. Then I go to AllMusic.com and see what they say about them and which albums they like and which are the best tracks from those albums. Then back to eMusic to see if they have that album. Sometimes they will only have early or later albums when the band wasn’t as marketable and was on a smaller label. For instance they have some very new Rickie Lee Jones but not her famous stuff from the 70’s and 80’s. Still, I downloaded a nice cover she does of The Beatles’ “For No One,” which I’d never heard of but sounds better than the original.