My Favorite Albums (Right Now)
These are the albums that I've been enjoying the most lately.
- Beautiful Death by Bella Morte
- Years of Refusal by Morrissey
- Walking with Strangers by The Birthday Massacre
- My Winter Storm by Tarja
- Oceanborn by Nightwish
- Banned in D.C. by Bad Brains
ID3 Tag Parsing
I've been working on a project to read and update ID3 tags on my music collection. An ID3 tag is the meta data embedded in mp3 files that contains artist and other information. My initial goal is to batch update the "genre" field in my mp3 files. I've written a simple .Net forms application to do this. I found a really good library created by Novell called TagLib Sharp. The library makes it super easy to read and write ID3 tags.
TagLib.File tagFile = TagLib.File.Create(filePath);
Tag tagId3v2 = tagFile.GetTag(TagTypes.Id3v2);
if (tagId3v2 != null) tagId3v2.Genres = genreArray;
Tag tagId3v1 = tagFile.GetTag(TagTypes.Id3v1);
if (tagId3v1 != null) tagId3v1.Genres = genreArray;
tagFile.Save();
The UI is pretty lame, but it works...
More Love for Last.fm
It's been a while since I've written about music, so here I go. My latest purchase is the new Morrissey album, Years of Refusal. I really like it. I would even say it's one of his best solo albums to date. Sure, his voice has flattened out with age, but he makes up for it with his usual clever lyrics and well composed music from his band. This album is very rock n' roll and has some catchy tunes. On a related note, I was browsing through a Portland Monthly magazine yesterday and they had a column with local alternatives to national bands. Their suggestion for Morrissey fans was M. Ward. I'm familiar with the name, but I've never given him a listen. I think I will.
Multitasking Television
Now that I've had enough of the Perfect Day (sun is bad), I've migrated to the great indoors. There are at least 4 things I'd like to be doing while indoors: listening to music, looking at photos, browsing the web, and watching baseball. As it turns out, I'm doing all 4 at once! Check it out.
More Praise for Last.fm
I'm generally disappointed with the state of the World Wide Web these days. The WWW used to be a simple communications tool to share information on a globally connected network. I'm not saying that it should have stayed that way, but I wish we had taken a more structured approach to innovation. I've written about this before, so I won't go into it again. My point for today is that Last.fm has done things right. It's the only modern web service that I use regularly, and it does exactly what it needs to do - nothing more and nothing less. I am sitting at work right now listening to "recommended" music, a lot of which I've never heard before. I have to say, there is a lot of good music out there, from the 50s to modern day. I have been "bookmarking" things that I like so I can look into purchasing them after a little more listening (Last.fm is not a free music download service).
So, if you're interested in music and have the time to listen to it, I'd suggest looking into Last.fm. It's free. I'm listening to the Dixie Chicks right now. I never even thought to give them the time of day, but I like what I hear.
I Dig Vagalume
I've been using Vagalume, a last.fm player, on my internet tablet. This might be one of the best and most useful pieces of software that I've ever used. I particularly like the neighborhood radio feature, which plays songs from last.fm users that have similar tastes to mine. It's like having a portable radio that only plays stuff that I like.
Morrissey for Obama
It seems that one of my favorite people in the world, Morrissey, is promoting Barack Obama (and himself). Go Moz!
Minor Threat Sauce
I've just discovered a hot sauce named after one of my favorite 80s straight edge punk bands, Minor Threat. Pitchfork says it's so. It sounds delicious!
Made from a rare, mild breed of habaneros grown specifically for us, Minor Threat draws its inspiration from the legendary West Indies' mustard- and mango-based habanero sauces, only it mysteriously priviledges the pepper's fruitiness over its notoriously overwhelming heat.
Morrissey – Irish Blood, English Heart
This is one of my favorite new Morrissey songs. It is fitting that part of my dad's family are Irish immigrants living in England.
Morrissey vs. NME
In the newest issue of NME (a British magazine about new music), there is a cover story on Morrissey. Morrissey and NME have always been at odds, but it has generally been tame. This time, however, rather than just publishing the Morrissey interview as it was done, NME decided to add commentary that totally trashes the man. I've not read the article, titled "Has the World Changed, or Has He Changed?", as it's not readily available to me.
Here is the response from Morrissey's manager.
Here is the NME web site.
