The Delicate Sound

Those who know me understand, or at least acknowledge my belief that the first Stone Roses record (The Stone Roses, 1989) is the finest pop album ever made. Many records are good, a few are spectacular, none reigns supreme like The Stone Roses. Let me qualify this statement by saying that I am referring to the work, not the artist. As a band, the Stone Roses left much to be desired - they were together in their most significant form for several years prior to getting signed and did their best to irk nearly everyone who came within fifty yards. Ian Brown, the singer, has had a respectable if not admirable solo career in the years since. Truncated by the occasional arrest and jail term, Ian has put out three records and a handful of decent singles. He is currently touring in support of the third. This brings me to the blog check . Let me know what you think of this...

In the old days, i.e. when cassettes were still a viable medium, I used to make mixes all the time. Everybody did it. You made mixes for road trips, a mix for the party Saturday night, a mix for your hangover Sunday morning, a mix for that new girl. I spent lots of time working on the things, mostly because I honestly enjoyed the effort and the creativity required. References to High Fidelity notwithstanding, a good mix tape is a work of art and needs to have a theme and a significant song. This song didn't have to be a big hit or even be a known song - it just had to be significant to the theme. It may even be the inspiration for the the theme and the tape. Think of it as the anchor tenant in the mix tape mall. The order had to be right and unfortunately, each side had to be just under 45 minutes. That is if you were using a 90 minute cassette and who used anything but? Side note: I used to use the Maxell XL-II 46 minute tapes because I liked the whole "A side/B side" or...

I may be the only person in my age group and industry that does not yet own an iPod. This does not preclude me from being an ardent fan of iTunes. If there were a perfect job for me it would probably be product manager for iTunes. I use it continuously and I use it well in my opinion. I bought a used Powerbook on eBay last fall and it came with a ton of music in an iTunes library. I threw away half of it right off the bat because I knew I would never ever listen to it - not even in an alcohol induced search for "that song." Britney, Christina, Justin and all the other mouseketeers went into the trash. It was very liberating. The rest of the music I decided to keep for personal use. The problem with it was the previous owner wasn't as "meticulous" as I am: songs were mislabeled as to title, artist, genre you name it. The music itself was fine, it just wasn't very well organized. I chucked the entire iTunes library and started at the file level. After I cleane...