Drinking whiskey clear!
Songs and bands I love!
God save our gracious Queen,
Long live our noble Queen,
God save the Queen:
Send her victorious,
Happy and glorious,
Long to reign over us:
God save the Queen.
Sigh. She’s so beautiful! Katy Perry is America, and America is Katy Perry. I mean, can’t you just imagine this beautiful countenance on our currency, the same way Elizabeth II appears on British money? I know I can.
Let the haters hate. They’re just jealous.
From the home office in London, here’s the Top 10 song chart for the week ending February 12, 2012:
1) Marsheaux – “Stand By”
2) Saint Etienne – “Tonight”
3) Marsheaux – “Summer”
4) Marsheaux – “Thirteen/True”
5) Marsheaux – “Destroy Me”
6) Parralox – “Supermagic”
7) Psychedelic Furs – “Into You Like a Train”
8) Freezepop – “Pop Music is Not a Crime”
9) Cloetta Paris – “Secret Eyes”
10) Foretaste – “The Prototype of Love”
From the home office in London, here’s the Top 10 song chart for the week ending February 5, 2012:
1) Saint Etienne – “Tonight”
2) Marsheaux – “Thirteen/True”
3) Freezepop – “Pop Music is Not a Crime”
4) Two Door Cinema Club – “Something Good Can Work”
5) Marsheaux – “Stand By”
6) Ambra Red – “It’s Just A Dream’
7) Rolla Scape – “Heaven is Real (feat. Marsheaux)”
8) Ladyhawke – “Black, White and Blue”
9) David Sylvian – “Waterfront”
10) The Jody Grind – “Eight-Ball”
From the home office in London, here’s the Top 10 song list for the week ending January 29, 2012:
1) Saint Etienne – “Tonight”
2) Ladyhawke – “Black, White and Blue”
3) Marsheaux – “Thirteen/True”
4) Freezepop – “Pop Music is Not a Crime”
5) Cloetta Paris – “Secret Eyes”
6) Ambra Red – “It’s Just a Dream”
7) Marsheaux – “Stand By”
8) Katy Perry – “The One That Got Away”
9) Marsheaux – “Eyes Without a Face”
10) The Sound of Arrows – “Into the Clouds”
iTunes is supposed to keep track of the songs you play on both your computer and on your iPod. Unfortunately, this feature seems to break early and often for a lot of people: songs played using iTunes on your computer will update their “last played” dates and “play count” totals, but songs played on the iPod simply do not.
Frustrated users at the Apple Support message boards report that this is a persistent and intractable problem. Folks there say the problem happens on both Windows and Mac, so it’s not OS-specific. Every version of iTunes seems affected, although version 10.x seems worse than others. It can happen on any model iPod, although Nanos and Touches seem to be the most affected. This started happening way before Apple released iTunes Match, the cloud-based service which backs up your songs (and complicates the play count process, since plays can come from multiple sources). Users have uninstalled and reinstalled iTunes, gone back to previous iTunes versions, and reset their iPods. A couple of people even went out and bought new iPods to see if that would fix the problem. But sadly, nothing seems to fix the issue.
But board member MVLaing came up with (what appears to be) a solid workaround… and it’s bizarre that it actually works! He (or she) suggests that before you sync your iPod to your computer, briefly play anything (on your iPod) that’s not a song, such as a podcast or an audiobook. 30 seconds is enough. Then connect your iPod… and be amazed that play counts are updated! Hooray!
Try it out and tell me what you think!
And lastly, a bit of a rant here. I went to several message boards looking for help with the problem, and was surprised by the amount of ridicule directed towards people who asked for help. Many responses were along the lines of “OMG! What a moran! Why do you even care when you last played a song! Your a tight-ass! LOL!!1!11!!”.
Well, Internet Tough Guy™, I can give you two good reasons why people care about play counts.
The first is Last.fm. It’s a website that keeps track of which songs you play, and offers streaming radio stations based on that info. It can also hook you up with other users who have similar music tastes, and you can see what music they listen to. It works so much better for me than either Pandora or Spotify. In fact, neither of those services have ever offered me a single new band that I liked. Not a one. Last.fm has introduced me to 14 new bands in the last month alone. And guess what? The whole thing stops working if play counts aren’t updated.
Secondly, there’s “Smart Playlists”. iTunes has a nifty feature where you can create a playlist consisting of (for instance) “every song I’ve added to my library in the past 60 days and played more than three times in the last 30 days”. And such playlists are dynamic, so they automatically update themselves as time passes. And guess what, Internet Tough Guy™? If iTunes isn’t updating the play counts on songs from your iPod, then this feature doesn’t work, either!
“Moran”.
From the home office in London, here’s this week’s Top 10 song list!
1) Marsheaux – “Thirteen/True”
2) Katy Perry – “The One That Got Away”
3) Ambra Red – “It’s Just A Dream”
4) Blouse – “Videotapes”
5) Teddybears – “Cobrastyle” (feat. Mad Cobra)
6) Marsheaux – “Summer”
7) The Raveonettes – “Hallucinations”
8) Marsheaux – “Breakthrough”
9) She & Him – “Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want”
10) Marsheaux – “Exit”
From the home office in London, here’s this week’s list of Top 10 songs!
1) Lana del Rey – “Video Games”
2) Marsheaux – “Pure”
3) Marsheaux – “The Promise”
4) Nina Gordon – “Straight Outta Compton”
5) Marsheaux – “Summer”
6) Marsheaux – “Stand By”
7) Marsheaux – “Destroy Me”
8) Joy Division – “Disorder”
9) Freezepop – “Pop Music is Not a Crime”
10) Marsheaux – “Faith”
I’d never even heard of the Greek electropop band Marsheaux until the middle of last November. But since then I’ve listened to them 304 times according to Last.fm, an average of five songs a day. Heck, I’ve even become one of their “top listeners” on Last.fm:
So… what’s the appeal? Well opinions about music vary, of course. But if you’re a fan of female-led, throwback 80s electropop, Marsheaux is Leonardo Da Vinci, Babe Ruth, Michael Jordan and Albert Einstein all rolled in to one. Check out “Summer”, the track that initially caught my ear:
Beats, beauty, atmosphere… it’s all there! The music… almost seems like a musical security blanket. Or a pair of comfy slippers. Or a favorite old sweater. Or a hot bowl of chili on a cold winter’s night (substitute your favorite soup as needed). Check out this tune, “Stand By”, also from the album Lumineux Noir:
Cool, hip, beautiful… what more is there to say? The band also does a few covers, too. Here’s their version of When In Rome’s “The Promise”:
Here’s one last tune, an older song of theirs called “Dream of a Disco”, which sounds like a beautiful, updated Flock of Seagulls:
The band, whose name comes from the first syllables of the band member’s names – Marianthi Melitsi and Sophie Sarigiannidou – really is all kinds of awesome! Check out their MySpace page here and their Last.fm page here.
Here are my Top 10 songs for the week, courtesy of the good people at Last.fm:
1) Lana del Rey – “Video Games”
2) Ambra Red – “Killer Princess”
3) Marsheaux – “Stand By”
4) Marsheaux – “Summer”
5) Blouse – “Videotapes”
6) Ambra Red – “She’s a Model”
7) Ambra Red – “Game Over”
8) Marsheaux – “The Promise”
9) The Sound of Arrows – “Into the Clouds”
10) Ambra Red – “It’s Just A Dream”
As 2011 draws to a close, it’s time to look back at the year in music. Below is my list of Top Ten albums for the year; following that is some commentary about good albums that didn’t quite make it, and bands I’m going to be looking at closely in 2012!
As always, remember that this list is about complete albums and not individual songs. Yes, there may be songs out there from 2011 that I liked better than anything on this list… but, as a whole, the following ten albums are my favorite of the year!
#10: M83 – Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming.
M83 is a band I always wanted to like. Why not? They’re all French and sophisticated, doing their own special brand of electronic shoegaze. But I’ve never met an album of theirs I liked all the way through… until now. Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming. is a delight from start to finish. And I’m happy for them! The music of M83 (named after spiral galaxy Messier 83) has been featured in dozens of films, TV shows and video games; I’m glad to see them put out an excellent product.
#9: Julianna Barwick – The Magic Place
Julianna Barwick is an American musician who was born in Louisiana and grew up singing in church choirs before moving to (where else?) Brooklyn. It’s kind of hard to pin down her exact sound. To me, she certainly sounds a bit like Elizabeth Frazer of the Cocteau Twins singing over the late 70s\early 80s ambient work of Brian Eno or Harold Budd. But it’s not that simple. There’s certainly some Björk, Enya and maybe even some Danielle Dax thrown in for good measure. In spite of all the comparisons, I think she has a totally unique sound that’s both ethereal and otherwordly. It sounds like something 4AD would have put out in 1984… and I mean that as the highest possible compliment! On the negative side, Elizabeth Frazer\Enya singing over very mellow Eno\Budd isn’t something you can throw on at a party or on a whim. But that’s cool. Different is good sometimes.
#8: Lykke Li – Wounded Rhymes
Swedish musician Lykke Li (real name: Li Lykke Timotej Zachrisson) has been an indie favorite ever since her tune “Little Bit” hit the scene in 2007. But her second album, Wounded Rhymes, just hit it out of the damn park. Like Björk, Li has a tendency to kind of go all over the place with her music, a trait that was held in check better by this disc. And I don’t know why, but I just love this woman’s lyrics: cold, dark, and sometimes just plain clever. “Like a shotgun needs an outcome” is my favorite line for all of 2011.
