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Year: 2005

A Flat Hierarchy for Subjective mp3 Tags

I’ve always been anal about the way my mp3s are tagged. Before the iPod, Audioscrobbler, and foobar2000, it was an irrational obsession, since I keep my music well-sorted on my hard drive. But there’s something so “official” about mp3 tags that I find appealing.

A few years ago this fixation extended to a program called MoodLogic, which applies a user-maintained database of really specific information about songs to construct playlists to match particular moods. In the end it proved more work than it was worth for me, so I abandoned it, but I’ve always wished for a similarly intuitive method of music browsing and playlist creation (come on, alphabetically?).

The genre tag has always been the most elusive. The subjective if not totally baseless distinctions between “Pop/Rock,” “Rock,” and “Pop” are enough to aggravate even the mildest case of OCD. I never bothered with this kind of categorization until recently when I realized that foobar2000 can handle multiple values for one tag field. Interesting…

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$61.48

6 records

Five factory sealed and one from Mars. Thanks to Used Kids Records, Magnolia Thunderpussy, and Johnny Go’s House O’ Music, all on High Street in Columbus, OH. Demoted CDs soon to appear on eBay. The bike is not resting on Aeroplane.

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The Unicorns Diffuse

The Ghost of Creaky CraterUPDATE, APRIL 12: Added mp3

Late, late, late last night I learned that Alden Ginger recently released his own 7″ under the moniker Alden Penner. The A-side is brand new, recorded on some leg of The Unicorns’ epic 2004 tour, and the B-side is old favorite “We are fighting the demons of Côte St-Paul” (mp3, 3.34MB), originally released by Alden via New Music Canada, presented here as “L’Espair.” Read this hilarious review on Cokemachineglow.com, then order the single from the link at the bottom of the page; it’s $15 US (including shipping), comes with a box of crayons, and is limited to 100 pressings.

If for some reason you care what Nick and J’aime are up to, read this article. mp3s of “Th’ Corn Gangg”-curated shows become more readily available on SoulSeek every minute.

Be sure to visit The Secret Unic-c-corns Forum while you’re at it, the not-so-underground replacement for the official site, which has met the fate ordained for all things Unicorn: a sudden and mysterious death.

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Vinyl

In reading about iTunes and why it’s a disease, I was reminded that mp3 compression is an abomination of sound quality. Inspired, and looking for a place to get tickets for The Grog Shop‘s Minus Story show, I bought Destroyer’s This Night on CD at Music Saves, a tiny and tidy little record store next to The Beachland Ballroom (15801 Waterloo Rd., (216) 481-1875). Small as it is, their vinyl selection includes The Unicorns and Panda Bear, which is enough to suggest how perfectly suited they are for me. How it took me so long to hear about this place is a mystery.

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Hunting Unicorns

All Makes Parts & CollisionDid you think the Unicorns saga could possibly continue? Neither did I. But thanks to the always-amazing Internet Archive, I discovered that Alden Ginger’s New Music Canada site (which is also defunct) was once the All Makes Parts & Collision site. I know, I thought they were on ZeBOX too. Anyway, in addition to conclusively settling the ampersand as the proper conjunction, the site reveals some brand new song titles, including “id didnt know” and “Let’s Get Strong.” Chances are I already have these, but I’m anxious to apply the titles to two of the five still untitled AMP&C songs I have. But when the songs have been pulled from NMC and there are no track durations listed, what do you do? You’re forced to email the given address. This isn’t The Unicorns’ address, so it’s either sitting idly, going unchecked, or it will actually allow me to reach Alden Ginger.

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MST128K

Talk to JOEL!My life in the past few days has been overtaken by MST3K. I discovered that there’s a video version of Winamp’s ShoutCast, with some channels streaming tv shows 24 hours a day. Two of these channels stream MST3K, and though the streams are usually maxed out on viewers, for $4 my IP is on the VIP list of this stream, which means uninterrupted MST3K until March 31.

When a KTMA-era mini-marathon was scheduled last weekend, I knew I had to “tape” it. I probably could have guessed that these episodes are readily available via various p2p outlets, but I also would have guessed (rightly) that the files are kept extremely large for the sake of quality. Ideally I wanted to save video from the stream in very low quality; nearly all of an MST3K episode is silhouettes and bad movies anyway, so this could hardly be considered “compromise.”

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Firefox, video, MST3K

Joel

I still don’t get why Firefox is better and more popular than Mozilla ever was, but okay, I’ll play along. Especially given these enhancements:

  • Cookie Button: one of the best features of Mozilla that inexplicably didn’t make it to Firefox.
  • Flashblock: Only see Flash when you want to! This is a miracle.

Finally found a video player to be happy with: Media Player Classic. It’s also bundled with Real Alternative, which allows you to play Real format files without relying on the nightmarish RealOne player. This week I also discovered Net Transport, which does the best (i.e., quickest, easiest, and most free) job of saving streaming video I’ve seen so far. And finally, MST3K is still kicking: there’s this gigantic reference site, the still-existent info club, and a legally ambiguous ShoutCast video stream. Shhhhhhhh.

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