Category: tunes

Music. Bands. Songs. Concerts.

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hey! all i have to type is ‘y’

Monday, and a hectic one at that. One of those stupid-busy days where you get a invitation at 8am to a 2hr meeting that starts at 8:30am – and every usable minute of time until 5pm is otherwise booked. A frustrating day where you can barely run one task to completion before getting derailed onto something else. And now I have only an early wakeup and flight to the Bay to look forward to… not much in the way of comfort. OK… OK… get ready for some boring crap, you can glaze right over if you don’t care about music and MP3s and whatnot, but you’re not gonna get much otherwise.

As I sat thinking this past Sunday night about my recent CD offload, my mind drifted back to the amount of work that’s stiff unfinished in my CD ripping project. Thus far, I’ve converted nearly 600 CDs to MP3 format, subsequently selling off the now “redundant” physical discs. However, I’ve got that many over again, slightly more actually, left to rip – consisting entirely of bootlegs (the majority being Beatles bootlegs). I chose to rip commercial CDs first because they are commonly available and their information can be located online, merged into most CD-ripping programs, and auto-added to the resultant MP3 files’ ID3 tags. This automated tagging process is great. Bootlegs, however, are by nature unauthorized recordings and therefore not commonly available – and they just don’t auto-tag nicely via CDDB or any other large online database. This leaves he who desires to rip his bootlegs to manually add ID3 tags to his bootlegs – a grueling, arduous process to which I was not looking forward. However, back to my Sunday night thinking…

I started thinking how great it would be if I could auto-import ID3 tag info from the great bootlegzone.com website. Bootlegzone contains album details for nearly every Beatles CD in existence, bootleg or not, as well many other artists. Too bad common MP3 tagging softwares can’t parse that database and grab information… or can they? The Godfather, a completely freeware MP3 tagging application, supports Delphi script add-ons which can be used to parse webpages and import information over already-ripped albums. Could I write a Godfather add-on that could parse bootlegzone.com pages and import the data onto ripped bootlegs? You bet I could, and did. Four hours of tinkering later, and I had a script that reads in bootlegzone.com pages and imports album title, artist, song titles, year, label, and even album artwork in JPG form. You have no idea how much time this will save me. Now I can just give a disc a placeholder title (for later ID) when I rip it, and run the resulting folder through the Godfather/bootlegzone script as post-processing – and all my files are tagged instantly. Sure beats entering song titles and information one-by-one off the back of the CD.

If you’re interested in my Godfather script to read in MP3 information from bootlegzone.com, you can always get the latest version by clicking this link. Note: Before you use this script, please read the 11/11/06 update below and make sure you grab the “automate.scl” file that solves a potential Windows-related filenaming problem.

A general update history for the script is as follows:

  • 5/2/06, Script complete; grabs artwork, track number, track name, album name, artist name, comments, year, and label information from bootlegzone.com disc pages.
  • 5/3/06, Fixed the script to remove the trailing periods after track numbers, tracks now tag-up in the preferred ‘0x’ format. 5/3/06, Fixed an issue where not all tracks were being grabbed (ambiguous string compare), and added some extra error handling to track string ops.
  • 5/4/06, Added “intelligent” support for ‘various artists’ albums. Script will compare album artist to each track artist, and determine if the album is of the ‘various artists’ type. If so, tracks will be named accordingly (i.e. artist_name – track_name).
  • 5/9/06, Fixed a bug in “intelligent” support for ‘various artists’ albums where a track could be skipped if no track artist was specified.
  • 5/14/06, Added support for medley-type tracks (track titles which are simply placeholders for multiple sub-titles). Track grabbing now comprehends sub-tracks of a single track, and combines them into a single track name string. Looking at adding a switch to turn this and the various artists feature off, in case that’s desired.
  • 5/23/06, Added a bit of code to strip underscores from track titles (bootlegzone’s automated entry system relies on underscores, but they do ugly things to TGF’s tag/file case matrix).
  • 11/11/06, Discovered and interesting issue with the script. If you use the bootlegzone.com grabbed ID3 info to rename the corresponding file under Windows, and the combination of the number of characters in the filename and its containing folder are greater than 256 (for NTFS filesystem) – you’ll get a completely unusable file. It’ll rename itself to be longer than 256, and then you won’t be able to rename or delete it. I fixed this bug by changing the “automate.scl” script that I run on the “post processing” after scraping the tag info from bootlegzone. So, here’s the important bit: If you’re going to be renaming files as well as ID3 tags – make sure and use the modified “automate.scl” to avoid the >256 character filename issue. You can download my modified “automate.scl” by clicking this link.
  • 03/12/07, Sadly, www.bootlegzone.com is dead. Unfortunately, all my work is now for naught. I hope that you got some use of the script while the great site that was bootlegzone was around. Thanks for the good years, tilleul.
  • 04/14/07, Bootlegzone has risen from the ashes, and my script is once again useful. Enjoy.
  • 06/01/07, Just a little helpful hint for basic Godfather configuration. I like to name my files with a “track# tracktitle” formatting – no dash, no artist name, no album name. Whatever your preference for filename (we’re not talking ID3 info here), I encourage you to incorporate the track number. This way, you’ll avoid “unable to rename file” errors when an album may contain two ore more versions of the same song (especially common with bootlegs). You can set your renaming mask preference in the “Use Variables” entry-box under The Godfather’s “Rename” tab. I know The Godfather can be overwhelming at first, but this should help avoid confusing errors.
  • 11/25/07, The script now grabs two additional pieces of BootlegZone track information: the “version” and “sub-version” strings (when available). This is a nice improvement, as you’ll get detailed information about the tracks, such as take-number, live venue, etc., embedded in the ID3 tag and filename. The version/sub-version information is appended to the track title string in parentheses. An example of the improved information this addition provides would be as illustrated below:

Previous naming scheme:

01 I Am The Walrus
02 I Am The Walrus

New naming scheme, with version/sub-version data included:
01 I Am The Walrus (Take 2, Overdub)
02 I Am The Walrus (TV, David Frost Show)

Grab the latest version from the link above to get these changes.

  • 06/17/08, Fixed a small bug in the medley track naming routine for the case when there are more than 10 sub-tracks in the medley.  Also refined the naming scheme to account for some bootlegzone medley naming irregularities.

Enjoy it!  Goodnight.

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the sun kicks into gear


Woke up early Saturday morning, as I had Mr. Mom duty while Sharaun was at an all-day seminar. Keaton and I sat and watched a couple TiVo’d episodes of Andy Griffith while the sun warmed cracking and popping sounds out of the windows. It’s nearing 2pm now and I’ve done a tall pile of nothing all day. Did manage to sneak out and fiddle with the backyard sprinklers, which were acting up when I did my Spring-is-coming test during mowing the other day. Turns out I’ve got some annual repairs to get done before the sun kicks into gear… as there are a couple broken heads and some adjustments needed here and there. Other than that brief spurt of arguably productive time, I’ve been sitting around like a stone… listening to the iPod, clicking through random articles on Wikipedia, playing with the baby when she’s awake, and snacking on some prunes.

Oh my word folks, I’m smitten with this album by Wolfmother. This Australian band is Black Sabbath’s Paranoid reborn in the 2000s, with Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin all thrown in the blender for good measure (really, just check out the band’s webpage if you don’t believe me on the comparison here). Right now, I’m simply infatuated with the entire album, but the standout tracks for me are Pyramid and White Unicorn. Actually, I could see how this album might be lumped with the whole “joke, or not?” metal-reborn stuff that The Darkness kicked off a couple years back – I mean, some of the lyrics literally sound like lines from Spinal Tap or Jack Black’s character in School of Rock. With song titles like Tales from the Forest of Gnomes, rolled Rs, and freakin’ flute solos… this is the real deal. These kids make rock, plain and simple. Really, listen to that song I linked above and tell me it’s not 100% ass-kickin’.

If all goes well, I should be first- and business-classing it over to Munich while you read this. Expect potentially odd posting times this week, I mean… in case you’re charting them. See ya.

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steerage no more


Mowed the lawn after work today, by the grace of daylight savings time. I had been looking forward to it, not only because it was badly needed, but because I would get to try out my new E2c headphones in a situation where it’s notoriously difficult to hear music over ambient noise. I was amazed… the normally overpowering rumble of the mower’s motor was reduced to a barely audible background drone. I could hear every note of even the softest songs the iPod shuffled up – it was like I was sealed off from the world. Man, I love those things. Getting out in the sun with crisp tunes in my ear and a brown bandana tied ’round my head really helped to force the cobwebs of work out of my head. Work has been… cruel… lately, neverending. I’m ready for my trip to Germany, but only because I won’t be in the office every day.

I feel like a fool, y’all. All this time I kept wondering why my VIP 100k mileage status on United hasn’t been garnering me more upgrades. Then, today, I was browsing my mileage account on United’s website and I noticed a link called “E Upgrade Summary.” Hmmm… what’s that all about, I wondered. Turns out, I have this massive stockpile of e-upgrades just sitting there… accruing with me being none the wiser. They are wholly separate of my miles, different animals altogether – just plain old “free” upgrades. Turns out I have 14,000 miles in “bump one service class” upgrades for domestic flights, and 6 “bump one service class” for international flights. I was stunned. All the time, these things have just been sitting there. I flew three times last week, and could’ve been 1st class every time, had I only known. Needless to say, I used one of my international bump privileges to get into business and 1st class on my trip to Germany next week. What’s more, because I’m a 100k flier they don’t disappear when the expire, United actually converts them into miles straight up… I’ll never fly coach again.

I had stuff written last night, but it blew – and I worked until midnight.

Tonight, I didn’t do that. Goodnight.

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all the better to hear you with


Almost 8pm on a Monday night and it’s still light out. I love this time of year, when I can still have light enough to mow the lawn after work. In fact, I think I’ll do just that tomorrow evening – get this jungle of a yard under control before I leave next Monday for Munich. It’s hard to stay on top of a yard when unending rain not only prevents you from mowing, but also works like grass-steroids.

I was actually hoping for a slight respite at work this week, maybe a break from the pace set by my last pre-travel week. Looks like I’ll have no such luck. Things are intense, and look like they’ll remain that way for a while actually. Being a manager is starting to become a little easier, I think I’m getting slightly better at it. I still have a lot to learn, and I think I’ll only take the lessons to heart when they’re real-world things, as all the training and scenario-play can’t really build experience like real experience can. Good at my job or not, I’m certainly consumed by it of late… I think this week will be another storm right up until Friday. I am, however, excited about the trip to Germany… work or not, I’m planning on having a grand time regardless.

Germany! Too bad I’ll be one week too late to miss this show where one of my favorite bands of last year is supporting the Stars, who I’d love to see again too, consequently.

I learned something in recent travels-by-air: I hate my current iPod earbud solution. Having quickly abandoned the ubiquitous stock white iPod earbuds, I’d been using an over-the-ear pair a friend bought to replace a pair he’d lost. They were nice, but they hurt my ear after just a short while. I must have sensitive ears, or not understand how to use traditional earbuds properly… because the vast majority I’ve tried end up leaving my ears sore in short order. Previously, I thought I’d found the solution in those over-ear foam ones (not in-ear, they just rest round foam speakers against the ear). However, on a plane, or mowing a lawn, or doing anything where ambient noise is a detracting factor – they just don’t cut it. You really need that in-ear isolation that earbuds can give to get rid of the outside stuff. And, with my long flight to Germany looming – I figured it was time to get serious and drop the requisite dough to get a decent pair of earbuds.

So, having some Best Buy gift cards stored up – I hit the web to check the reviews. Confident in my research, I went in today after work fully intending to buy the reasonably-priced Sony MDR-EX71SL earbuds. I instead left with a pair of $100 Shure E2c earbuds. I know, $100 for earbuds? But man, let me assure you these things are amazing (and I only paid $30 for them after the gift cards anyway). When they are wedged in, you hear absolutely nothing – Shure’s “sound isolating” tagline isn’t just marketing fluff. I had Sharaun scream at me while listening to the Allman Brothers belt out “Dreams” live at Ludlow – and heard nary a peep, just watched her mouth open in a wide, soundless wail. The bass response is amazing for such little things, and they’re surprisingly comfortable for how “stuck” in your ear they have to be to work right. It is taking me a little while to get used to the increased pressure in my ear, which is a product of the tight seal they rely on – and I can actually “feel” the flex of the small waves of air in my ear canal. But man, even as I sit and type this while doing an extended-listening comfort test, I can’t hear a single keystroke over whatever Deep Purple track the iPod has shuffled to.

Goodnight friends, I’ve no more in me this evening.

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out of dry dock and recommissioned


Saturday saw me forgoing my regular weekend cleanup, instead spending hours prying compact discs and their artwork out of jewel cases, rubber-banding them together between two slabs of cardboard, and packing them for sale. It was a bittersweet moment, as years of my life were wrenched from their comfortable plastic homes and piled neatly in stacks. Soon I’ll send them away for good, banish them to the “used” shelves at some NYC secondhand shop. I think they knew we were about to part ways, as their colorful artwork and shiny finishes silently asked me, “Why, Dave? After all this time, you’re just selling us off? We though we had something together, an arrangement, as it were… what happened to the Dave that blew his paychecks to get us? You’ve changed man… you’ve changed.”

I’ll be sad to see ’em go, but if I end up using the money as I plan (for Lasik), I’m sure I won’t regret it. Funny thing is, even after selling off some ~600 discs, I’m still left with an overwhelming amount that I didn’t sell (didn’t sell any of my Beatles & related bootlegs, which total about ~600 in and of themselves, and didn’t sell anything that was a traded-for CD-R copy from my old swappin’ days). The occasion was so momentous, that I decided to capture it for posterity – check out the pictures. (I’ve also decided that I’m going to start using the image gallery to store any future blog-supporting images, as it’s nice and cleaner than just posting images inline here).

Sunday morning I awoke to find the Easter Bunny had visit the night before while I slept. In my multicolored woven basket, he’d left the oddest array of Easter trinkets I’ve yet to see: a green plastic egg filled with Snickers, I carton of bubblegum eggs, lingerie, a bottle of champagne, tingly condoms, and KY “warming liquid.” I tell ya what, waking up to that kind of Easter basket after a proverbial “40 years in the desert” can do wonders for a man’s faith. With any luck, I’ll be able to celebrate two “resurrections” today.

This weekend, the hip-hop station Sharaun kicks most of the time was doing an all-gospel Easter Sunday. This got Sharaun and I talking about the stark dichotomy of the hip-hop culture: fuckin’, shootin’, and boozin’ on one side of the fence, and the Lord God on the other. Hip-hop folks may love their Lord, but they sure seem to love freakin’ and hustlin’ just as much. I’ve always got a chuckle when hardcore rap folks win awards for songs like “Take This Dick” and get up to thank Jesus and their grandmothers. I could never thank my grandmother for being my inspiration if my output was all about “gettin’ sloppy head in the back of a Benz,” and I’d be afraid Jesus might throw a lightning bolt at me if I did. For a good example of what I’m talking about, peep some lyrics to the new Nick Cannon song (for the record, I have no idea who Nick Cannon is – Sharaun brought this exemplary nugget to me this weekend and it fit perfect here):

Who you know a gigolo and still Christian?

Here, Mr. Cannon is stating that he’s not only a gigolo, but is also a Christian. That’s good, because without that setup, one might not catch the Godly undertones throughout the remainder of the song:

Cuz you know da Cannon be flashin, I’m gettin’ more head then an aspirin
At the strip club got me throwing singles tonight
Now she a born again vixen with some dick in her life
Sex real loud next room they can hear us
I’m lookin for a dime who can take the whole 9″
Check the sex tapes if you think I’m lyin’

“More head than aspirin?” Am I the only one who thinks that doesn’t make any sense? Must be some obscure biblical reference, Mr. Canon being the fervent Christian he is.

Goodnight my friends, until tomorrow.

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fireside romps inside circled multicolored wagons


Sitting in a cramped conference room, the multiplied body heat of 20-some individuals making the air thick, warm, even oppressing. I’ve got my khakis on, matching brown socks with my fancy brown loafers. Nearly too-tight shirt tucked in and cinched with a brown belt. My face is greasy from sitting in this swampy room, and the hotel breakfast buffet has turned into liters and liters of gas bubbling around inside me… shifting through my intestines with audible groans on its way out those khakis I mentioned earlier. I’m uncomfortable, but obnoxiously confident as I feel I’ve been doing a great job addressing customer questions. It’s part of my personality, you know, being overly confident and cocky when I’m hot, and completely defeated and sulking when I’ve been trounced. I’m peak-to-peak with work, but in life I’m more middle of the road… taking things in stride.

Yeah… at the customer, things going rather well, in fact. Austin seems like a nice town, hoping to be able to head out tonight and take some of it in. Sharaun hid some pictures of her and Keaton in my suitcase, with little Post-Its attached. Attached to this picture was a note that said, “Even with these glasses, I can’t find my daddy. Come home soon, we miss you.” I think I actually squealed with glee upon opening my carry-on and finding them last night. Seeing that little girl made me miss her so much, I’m looking forward to my less-than-24hrs hometime between this three-day Texas visit and Friday’s Colorado one more than ever.

Today my brother drove up from Ft. Hood to spend an evening with me. It was a good time: we ate a nice leisurely dinner, bought a pack of Camel Menthols, had some beers, and talked life. Even though he could only stay a few hours, it was great having some time to catch up. I miss my brother, there’s so much I don’t write about there… some things just don’t belong on the blog I suppose. Maybe one day, when all the stigma has gone away, I’ll try and write what I mean – but for now it’s relegated to conversation between close friends and family (where it belongs, I think). I’ve told my brother, in semi-seriousness, that I’d like to author a story about his life thus far – as I think it’d be one hell of a human-interest piece. I guess you’ll just have to wait for the book, eh?

Y’know, in almost every one of my entries here on sounds familiar, I try to reference other entries I’ve written previously. This is somewhat of a strategy on my part, half selfish, half lazy. One the one hand, I have this idea in my head that folks actually click through to my supporting links, and perhaps re-read an entry written long ago, thus leaving the blog with the overall impression that I’ve got a lot more substance than just what I wrote the night prior. On the other hand, referring to old junk saves me writing time, helps me remember how I’ve described things in the past and fall back on them for reference. I guess one good thing about having written so much over so long is that there’s a pretty decent base from which to draw material. I find that I rarely have entirely new ideas…

For some reason, on the plane over I decided to set the iPod on a random mix of all albums by The Silver Mt. Zion, who also go by The Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra-La-La Band. Y’know, I’ve always known I like their music – but I just realized on this trip just how much… these albums, although likely repulsive to some, are simply outstanding to me. Some kinda crazy stringy beatsy mess, often invoking a feeling of stark loneliness or some kind of “knowing evil,” plotting, perhaps; or fireside romps inside circled multicolored wagons, I have no idea how to describe this shit. All I know is, it’s perfect for traveling… especially when the feeling of being away from home is magnified for a first-timer away from his daughter. Right now, I’m sitting here in the hotel listening to the vocal/piano breakdown that helps close God Bless Our Dead Marines, and it couldn’t be a more poignant soundtrack: When the world is sick, can no one be well? But I dreamt we was all beautiful and strong. I’m telling you, the implied evil, or solitude, or desperation, or whatever it is that gets to me in this music – perfect (much better than the new Radio Dept., a leak which I was eagerly anticipating based on their previous effort, and which I can’t seem to get into).

Goodnight my friends, heading to Houston tomorrow… next post from there.

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all aboard


Seeing as work-related duties brought sounds familiar to a grinding halt last week, causing me to miss both Thursday and Friday, I figured I better write Monday’s entry on Saturday (which I’m now doing). I’ll be leaving tomorrow (Sunday, for those still not grasping the temporality here) for Texas, the beginning of my US-tour of customers. Like I said in an earlier entry, I’m not actually presneting the material Monday, nor am I presenting Wednesday (the second visit), nay – I don’t present until Friday. However, I’m still sweating the visits as if I were presenting – since I have a feeling I won’t just be the guy in the back of the room. Either way, I don’t really want to leave… not looking forward to being away from the baby, even if for just a few days. Speaking of the baby, this seems like a good spot to link to her freshly-updated gallery: Keaton’s gallery.

The work continues on my MP3 library: I’ve established a process that works well to ensure all the new stuff I rip/get is up to standards – normalizing them to 89dB with MP3Gain and importing album art using the aptly named Album Cover Art Downloader. The album art application is actually outstanding, as you can take any image you can find online and simply drag if from a webpage onto an album. This means that pesky albums like bootlegs and obscure releases can be manually tagged with artwork by simply googling and dragging. As part of the my library improvement, I moved all songs off my iPod (using SharePod, because *#&^$#*!! iTunes only sees the iPod about 20% of the time, on good days), normalized them, added artwork to them all, and then put them back on. A little reorganization with the help of Tag & Rename and the Godfather, and my tunes are now better off than they’ve ever been. Time to backup the RAID array… just in case.

While waiting countless hours while my music library was tweaking, I decided to pop in the Neverending Story DVD Sharaun bought for me months back. I never realized how damn awesome the soundtrack to that film is. It’s one thing to have a radical fantasy story with flying dog-monsters and super-hot chilld empresses… but to have a kickass soundtrack on top of it is almost too good to be true. Sounding like the inspiration for everything M83’s recently put on wax, the backing music paints a fantasy soundscape that’s unmistakably 80s with it’s flat, hollow digital percussion and synthesizer. I need to get that crap on the iPod, it’s freakin’ timeless I tell ya… timeless.

Well, that brings us to a close my dear friends. Not much substance I’m afraid, but at least you can check out Keaton’s gallery. Until Tuesday…