Tagging MP3s

One of the things that I love about Flickr is tagging. Let's say that someone happens to take a picture just as I moon them. After they upload that picture to Flickr so that they can scar the eyes of their friends and family, they can attach a bunch of tags which helps to categorize the picture. That way, if someone is looking for a picture of a hairy ass, they can search through all of the pictures that have been tagged as such. Or, if you have gigs and gigs of pictures, the tags make it easier to find the ones you are looking for.

One of the unique things about tagging is that you can attach multiple tags to any picture. So, if you have a picture of my naked ass at an Indians game, you might attach: hairy ass, Cleveland Indians, Jacobs Field, etc.

I wish that I could tag MP3s like that. Right now, I use the genre metadata to organize my gigs and gigs of MP3s. But what if a song or an artist really is in between two genres?


For instance, above are the MP3's that I have from the Cars Soundtrack. Ideally, I would like to have a bunch of those listed under "soundtrack" and "rock". Or "soundtrack" and "country". That way, all of the appropriate tracks would be loaded when I tell my MP3 player to play all of the Country songs that I have stored. And when I switch to playing just Soundtrack songs, it'll play the ones that are appropriate for that list. Instead, I have to choose one or another pigeonhole to put each and every MP3 into.

Remaindered

• I really need to get out more. The last band that I saw play live before this week was a Queen tribute band a few months ago.
  
  A few days ago, I had the pleasure of seeing Sarah Fullen and The Gregory Brothers rock out in concert. They have a great sound - they kind of have a funk/folk thing going on. It was a very entertaining show, and I hope that I will get to hear them again. Apparently, they were all playing separately until recently, and their sound has really come together on this tour. I would love to buy a CD from them if they put one together with their current band members.
  
  They were playing in a venue (Bela Dubby) that is probably about a mile away from my house (even though I hadn't heard of it before this week). I am no longer surprised when people mention a place that is within a mile of my house and I have never heard of it before. There are too many great neighborhood hangouts, and I clearly have no life.
  
  I need to resolve to go out and hear all of the great bands that are playing in venues in my town. I have so many opportunities to hear live music, and I rarely take advantage of them. And I need to do that before I become that creepy old guy hanging out at the bars.



• Bidding ends today for the chance to spend a day in Howard Stern's studio, and other celebrity auctions for charity on charitybuzz.com. The last time I checked, the bidding for spending a day in Howard's studio was up to $91,000!



• This weekend are the championship bouts of the Burning River Roller Girls 2007 season.

Beatboxing with Musical Instruments

Last week, I discovered that there are a bunch of videos on YouTube that feature musicians beatboxing while using musical instruments. So, I started wasting tons of time, looking at beatboxing videos.

For instance, here is one in which Greg Patillo is beatboxing while playing the flute:


And here's one of someone beatboxing while playing the harmonica:



Pretty amazing stuff.

Lithium 24

I've discovered a new satellite radio station (I subscribe to Sirius) that I have fallen in love with. All they play is 90's alternative rock -- Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, Nine Inch Nails, Foo Fighters, Lenny Kravitz, etc.

In other words, shit music.

That's right, it's like a whole marathon of shit music. And I love it. I have spent most of my life listening to crap like that and Guns 'N Roses, Weezer, Queensryche, Black Crowes, etc. I'm basically admitting to all of you that I have no taste in music whatsoever.

I mean, if I were a music snob, I probably would insist that my MP3 player only contains songs from the Ramones, and whatever else. But screw that. Anytime I hear some shit song by Liz Phair or Soundgarden playing, I'm a happy man. My MP3 player is chock full of just total crap music. I know every word to every Motley Crue song ever recorded, and I'm proud of it. I own every Oasis CD. I even own a Hole CD, and I LIKE IT.

Bring it on. It's going to be a shit music marathon at my house this weekend.

Almost Queen

So, last week was actually a big week for us with live music performances. On Friday night, we went to see a band called Almost Queen [almostqueen.com], which is a Queen tribute band.

They had a very entertaining show, and a song list that was a mile long. It just kept going and going... On the whole, they were very good. The lead singer sounded *exactly* like Freddie Mercury (although he seemed to have difficulty hitting the really, really high notes). The drummer was also very entertaining -- lots of flair and he was constantly breaking or flinging drumsticks everywhere.

About the only thing that I could complain about is that the singing ability of the other band members was lacking, so the multiple part harmonies didn't really sound like Queen. Still, a very enjoyable show.

On the other end of the spectrum, we also attended the Case Concert Celebration [case.edu], where we heard the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra perform Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet (which was definitely the highlight), Falla's Suite from Three-Cornered Hat, and one of Tchaikovsky's piano concertos.

I'm not really qualified to critique that performance in detail, but I thought it was very enjoyable. I haven't had many opportunities in the past year to attend musical performances, but that is something that I would like to do more often.