Freitag, 17. Feb 2012, 10:01

I was so looking forward to the threshold of reaching 5000 artists in my last.fm library. My music library on my hard drive lays claim to 7095, but I know that at least a couple hundred of these are bizarre naming variants from files I have picked up. Like a cold from a stranger, when you shake hands by exchanging files, sometimes you get unhealthy results.

Attaining 5000 was thoroughly anticlimatic. I had been hanging in the neighborhood of 4980 for what seemed like months. Each new artist added seemed to represent a long stretch of listening without encountering anyone new–new to me anyway–and so, one day about three weeks ago, I stopped looking at my last.fm tally. Screw it. It was gonna happen or it wasn't, no big deal. Gone was the imagined thrill I had built for myself, wondering which gem would emerge from the accumulation of some 40+ years of collecting music, and the last 15+ collecting most of it digitally, either by transfering my vinyl & cd collections to digital magnetic storage or buying from CDBaby, eMusic, Squidco, and other online merchants.

What happened? One Saturday, I was slaving the morning away cleaning up duplicates using the (imo) awesome dupeGURU music edition, I realized that I had 20-30GiB of music files gifted to me by my son in LA, honestengine, which coincidentally included music he had at one time or another recorded from my files/lps.

I took a break to do some other stuff around the house, & just let the Banshee wail. (For the unwashed, Banshee is an open source media player that is the default player in ubuntu 11.04 and after.)

Instead of poetic, mystic insights about myself gleaned from the final 10 artists from 4991-5000, I got new entries from such unrelated artists as Cornish in a Turtleneck, The Long Blondes, Indian Jewelry, and Big Star. OK, so some of these aren't exactly new to me–I know I've been overdue to listen to Big Star, but I still don't see what the whole furor is over their music. I liked Alex Chilton's solo work more than Chris Bell's and Cornish in a Turtleneck reminds me that WCBN-FM has been rockin' the free-form for about 35 years now.

As I look at my top 20 most played artists overall, I find that there are a couple that I rarely listen to anymore (Joe Maneri, Frank Zappa), and a bigger handful of artists that are in MY top 20 because holgagirl NEVER logs in under her own name & just hits the genre=hiphop button (MIA, MIA/diplo, Mos Def, Gorillaz, Astronautalis). I'm thinking of doing a clean slate, reset the controls for the heart of the sun, cleansing of the last.fm palate to see what if anything would change.

I guarantee that Warren Defever's ever-changing (syn. quixotic, chameleon-like) vehicle His Name Is Alive will be at or near the top, along with current co-leaders Miles Davis and Sun Ra. Can't get enough of that.

Not that this should be of interest to much of anyone but me, I still would be interested to hear from friends whether they think I ought to pull the reset lever or not.