dianaschnuth

We were supposed to go to see Bob Mould at the Grog Shop in Cleveland on Saturday. Alas, Cleveland was under a Level 3 Snow Emergency. So, instead of getting ticketed, fined, or stuck in Cleveland, we just wiped our asses with the $45 we spent on two tickets.

Had the Grog Shop cancelled the show, we could have gotten our money back. However, as with the couple other times we got denied by inclement weather, the venue held what was probably an awesomely intimate evening with Bob and friends, since the band did manage to make it there in time and one piece.

It’s always a crapshoot, buying concert tickets at this time of year, as Aaron has pointed out. I was really looking forward to seeing Bob again — we hadn’t seen him since October 2005.

Ah, well. There’ll be another time. Someday.

These days, it seems that VH1 shows two things: reality TV and retrospective shows. By retrospective, I mean stuff like I Love The 80s (or 70s, or 90s, or whatever). I’m not much on reality TV, but the retrospectives? Those are a freaking time sink. Black hole. I accidentally flip to an I Love The 80s Strikes Back marathon — and the next thing I know, it’s two hours later, and I’m wondering where my evening went.

My latest VH1 addiction is the 100 Greatest Songs of the 90s. Watching this show is like remembering all the highlights of high school and college on random. I started high school in August of 1990, and I graduated college in December of 2001, so the 90s were really where I came into my own. I know probably 95% of these songs (I’m not hip to the more hip-hop or rap tunes from the mid to late 90s), and all of those are associated with some time in my life. The Cranberries remind me of being home from college for a semester. Oasis reminds me of the early years of my relationship with Aaron (who used to say I was his Wonderwall, while he was my one Natural One).

You know what this means, right? Hell, yeah. New iPod playlist.

Luckily, they have the entire song list posted on their website. So far, I already have about 30 of the top 100 in my iTunes, anyway.

Some of the songs are kind of WTF — “Oh, God, I hated that fucking Spice Girls song!” — but I’ll probably put them on my iPod for completeness’s sake. And for the amusement factor.

OK, show’s back on. Gotta go. 🙂

Since I fussed with my iTunes library earlier this week, I’ve been rediscovering some of the music I’ve downloaded and ripped over the years. Until Aaron got me my 30GB iPod, I didn’t have enough room on my 8GB iPod mini to just add my entire mp3s folder. After he got me the new iPod, I didn’t really think about it. Actually, I didn’t think about it until I started running out of room on my C: drive, and needed to finally move all my music to my external USB drive.

The result is that I’ve been listening to songs I haven’t touched in years. Remember the days of Scour, around the year 2000 or so? When you could think, “I’d really like to hear this song I haven’t heard in years,” then you could go online and download the mp3 from Scour, over the web, with no fuss? I still have so many songs from those days.

The RIAA’s gonna come and get me. Probably shouldn’t blog about how many mp3s I have on my computer, eh?

Anyway, I have my iPod/iTunes set up with Smart Playlists, so I can listen to either my favorite songs or songs that I’ve just put in my library and have only listened to once or twice. My “New / Unloved” playlist has suddenly ballooned from about 600 songs to over 1400. Hell, my old mini could only hold 600 songs total! Damn. But I’ve been listening to that playlist for the last couple of days, and have been rediscovering songs I hadn’t realized I’d missed. Lots of Folk Implosion, some Catherine Wheel B-sides, pretty much my entire collection of awesome ’60s and ’70s songs (Strawberry Alarm Clock, Chicago, The Association, et al.), plus a bunch of albums I’d forgotten about, like Dashboard Confessional and Chris Botti and Dream Theater.

This is fantastic. Great background music for writing.

The Flaming Lips at the Agora Theatre, originally uploaded by dianaschnuth.