Monday, February 02, 2009

Modern dilemmas

My beloved fiancée bought me an early birthday present earlier tonight (er, yesterday night): a new MP3 player to replace the somewhat dated one I got several Christmases ago. So I've of course been up all night loading music on the comparatively-whopping 8 gigs it affords me. Problem: I'm not actually that interesting, nor are my tastes in music varied or knowledgeable enough to fill 8 gigs with stuff I would call my favourites. So I apply a more liberal standard of what I want on my MP3 playlist: basically, anything I've been able to scrounge up over 10+ years of downloading and ripping music to my computer (I almost never delete anything, ever) that's even barely listenable.

Sure, I've got Arcade Fire, Feist, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and other hipster-cred-earning tracks on there. But then there's the worse stuff.

Bryan Adams? Sure. Abba? Abba-solutely. Sonny and Cher? I got that, babe. Old school GNR? Let's just say, I'll be the dude mouthing "nothing lasts forever, even cold November rain" on the TTC tomorrow morning.

Results: An 8 gig player that's only half full, and 1/3 of that is stuff I'd probably skip through if it was on the radio.

Our grandparents didn't have these problems.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ummm...16 Horsepower? An acquired taste, granted, but brilliant...Amon Tobin's Supermodified...Swell's Well?...the Dandy Warhols' Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia?

Steve Muhlberger said...

So next you'll get hooked on podcasts. Problem solved.

Jon Dursi said...

I was in the same boat. And I agree with Muhlberger above: podcasts.

In particular, for music, I strongly recommend CBC Radio 3, at the very least the new track of the day feed: http://radio3.cbc.ca/podcasting/podcastabout.asp

It's a pretty broad swath of music. No one will like all of it, but you'll probably discover stuff you do like a lot -- from bands that you could then actually go see in local clubs if you care to. And within about a year, without really ever trying, you'll find yourself scarily knowledgable about the Canadian indie music scence.