Sunday, October 10, 2004

The Perils of MP3 Player Ownership


Mississippi

Today, I spent a couple of hours sorting through my MP3 collection on my early adopter's model (twice the size, 120% of the cost and none of the design flair of an iPod) Archos player today. This greatest problem with these MP3 players is how to organise the 6,000 or so tracks that they can hold. The first thing you do when you get one is to load it up with every track you can get hold of, then you spend the next six months jabbing at tiny buttons and wading through copious subdirectories trying to find something you feel like listening to. After a while you just give up and listen to any ready-made compilation albums that you had the forethought to install. Anyway, the contents of my Archos have got more than a little confused over the last year or so and I resolved to have a good clean-out.
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I couldn't help noticing just how much Bluegrass and Country and Western music had crept onto it since its last spring clean. I originally loaded all those tracks on as a joke, then I developed a strange unwholesome attraction to listening to them, the same kind of pleasure you get from sniffing your own farts, then I actually found myself liking them. And I'm not just talking about the occasional Shania Twain crossover ditty or Paris Texas-style Ry Cooder slide guitar riff. I'm talking the real Folger's gourmet stuff; the kind of wailing dirges that they play in Southern redneck dives after 11.00pm; whilst the tatooed locals stare into the necks of their Budweiser bottles and contemplate the fact that they are a) unemployed, and b) probably going to develop asbestosis from the job they've just been made unemployed from. I'm warning you this kind of listening material is addictive; ask any Leonard Cohen fan.
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Aside from the C&W, which I don't mind, a whole load of trance, rap and other junk had infested my machine. Weeding these defective tracks out of the 6,000 on my player was looking to be a monumental task, until I hit upon the following simple formula which I recommend to anybody with a large, unsorted MP3 collection. I can guarantee that, at a stroke, the quality and credibility of your music collection will be improved by anything between 100 and 6,000%. Here's the secret ...
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Delete all tracks with any of the following words in the artist name or title: 'MC', 'DJ', 'Dido', 'Simply' or 'Red'.
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Don't hesitate. Don't falter. Do it now. Once finished with your own collection, apply the same formula to any other collection you can get your hands on. Innocently ask friends or family to lend your their MP3 players then do them a favour. Once you've finished with the MP3 players move onto CD, tape and vinyl collections. If at all possible make it your life's work
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PS Stef's Most Recent Deep South Gallery here ...
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PPS What's wrong with Dido?
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1. She's boring, insipid, vacuous and completely lacking in any genuine emotion, spirit or soul whatsoever (listen to Nina Simone instead)
2. She's posh
3. She was nominated as 'Best Newcomer' in the Brit Awards in two separate years - which proves that a) she was shagging or related to someone, and b) you fell for it you Muppet
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PPPS What's wrong with Simply Red?
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1. If you have to ask, ignore me, you deserve everything you get and listen to

2 comments:

Number Mouth said...

Plz say "poop" more in your blogs...thnx

Stef said...

... anyhthing for you Patience