Greatly insane
Last week was so exhausting - for pleasant reasons, mostly - that I'm now forced to do one of those catchall, week-in-review LJ posts. But I'll spare the disinterested from my spew with the magic of lj-cut tags.
New iPod! While bradamant and I were roadtripping with the stalker_guapos two weekends ago, I was in charge of car music, and my iPod kept crashing. I hadn't jostled it, wasn't doing anything unusual - but we were playing a lot of different songs, and occasionally, when I'd select one from a new menu, the Pod would freeze up. I thought little of it back then - I'd just reset, find the song again and rock on - but little did I know this was the beginning of the end for my 60GB fourth-generation ("4G") iPod Photo.
The sporadic crashes recurred throughout the week. Friday afternoon, I'm at my desk at work, playing music to stay awake (again, long week), and the Pod wouldn't stop crashing. And this time, I wasn't even doing a lot of menu-selecting; I was just playing the new Justin Timberlake album. Okay, I was skipping back to play "My Love" over and over (I...um, really love that song); so maybe the Pod was just rebelling against my cheesy taste. But halfway through the album - after I'd had enough of "My Love," honest - the Pod reset itself, and this time I got the sad-iPod logo familiar to old Mac users. Nothing would revive it.
I bought this iPod in February 2005, and it will go down in history as the first iPod I've ever purchased that I couldn't successfully sell to a friend before upgrading; two of my friends have benefited from my Pod hunger since 2001. It was my third iPod, and my favorite by far, both in terms of capacity and form factor; I thought Apple really got the aesthetics perfect on the 4G iPods - they added the clickwheel, made it the right size and got rid of those four ugly buttons from the 3Gs. The new 5G iPods with video look almost as good, but the big screen is so much larger, and the click wheel is a little smaller, that the size ratio looks a little "off" to me.
Hey, not that I'd turn up my nose at a new iPod. And I didn't: I visited the 5th Avenue Apple Store on Sunday, got ironclad confirmation from a Genius Bar tech that the 4G iPod was toast, and was informed that if I turned in my old Pod for "recycling," I'd get 10% off a new one. That settled it. The best part about Apple's big announcement of new stuff a couple of weeks ago was that they cut the price of everything. Check it: 20 months ago, I paid $530 - on sale - for the 60GB iPod Photo; yesterday, my new black 80GB iPod video retailed for $350, and that was before the recycling discount.
In keeping with my Spinal Tap theme, the new Pod's name is Artie Fufkin. The old one was named Derek Smalls. I've already filled it with all my old songs, and half of the Yacht Rock videos.
Mad concerts! As I posted last week, the reason for the roadtrip with the stalker_guapos was the VirginFest concert in Baltimore. We hadn't been back from our Eastern Seaboard roadtrip one full day before bradamants_mom came into town, partially to visit us (we shamefully hadn't had her over since last Christmas) and mostly to see the Raconteurs with me at Roseland. That was last Tuesday night.
The show was a continuation of the awesomeness I saw at VirginFest, only this time with Jack White shamelessly leading the band and not even trying to melt into the background. Covers included a searing "Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)." Jack played like a man on fire and - sorry, Meg - really seemed to enjoy performing with a badass drummer. My mother-in-law was very pleased and - every time I turned to check on her - had a small, permanent smile on her face for the entirety of the show.
So that was show #2; Wednesday morning, I escorted our guest back to Penn Station. I slogged through a day of work, expecting to go home and veg out for the first time in nearly a week. But then my buddy Brian from Billboard called at 5:15, saying a pair of very expensive Rolling Stones tickets had just fallen into his lap for that night at Giants Stadium. You don't turn that down.
Here's a Rolling Stone Online review of the show we saw. The worst part: getting back from the stadium on those crappy New Jersey Transit shuttlebueses (hey, obifu, thanks again for taking those Green Day tix off my hands last year, and I'm sorry). The best part: we were in the 13th row on the floor - when the pyro went up during "Sympathy for the Devil," the flames literally toasted my face.
I find that everyone who's seen the Stones live since around Steel Wheels or so - when their shows became elaborate and obscenely priced - comes out effusing about the experience. I think there's two reasons: (1) they need to justify the dough they just dropped, so come hell or high water they're going to enjoy it; and (2) Mick Jagger is a born showman. Reason #1 wasn't a factor for me - thank god (quoted face value on the tix: $450...each). So I was left with Mick, and now, I have to say, I get it. He really doesn't look 63, more like a spry 48, and I still don't know where he gets the energy. As for Keith Richards, he looked terrible, but when has Keef ever looked less than terrible? Still, he all but phoned it in, and I now think Ron Wood has the most unsung job in rock: playing good, solid guitar while standing out of the way so everyone can yell "Keef!!" Poor sod.
Chart catchup! I was so swamped on Thursday that I failed to do my usual "Charting the Charts" post - apologies, for those who care - but frankly, the charts were mostly static last week. However, there was a frisson of excitement at the top of the album chart, where the mighty Trousersnake slid so far off his #1 debut the week before that he almost got evicted from the top slot by Clay Aiken. Details, from my new favorite music blog Idolator, are here and here (the guy commenting named "dennisobell" is me).
Amazingly, despite how shitty it reportedly is, Janet Jackson's new album is gonna top the charts this week, thanks almost entirely to a well-timed Oprah appearance. Next week, we'll see how tomorrow's stellar crop of new releases fares, but my early prediction: the Killers are gonna get thumped by Evanescence.
New iPod! While bradamant and I were roadtripping with the stalker_guapos two weekends ago, I was in charge of car music, and my iPod kept crashing. I hadn't jostled it, wasn't doing anything unusual - but we were playing a lot of different songs, and occasionally, when I'd select one from a new menu, the Pod would freeze up. I thought little of it back then - I'd just reset, find the song again and rock on - but little did I know this was the beginning of the end for my 60GB fourth-generation ("4G") iPod Photo.
The sporadic crashes recurred throughout the week. Friday afternoon, I'm at my desk at work, playing music to stay awake (again, long week), and the Pod wouldn't stop crashing. And this time, I wasn't even doing a lot of menu-selecting; I was just playing the new Justin Timberlake album. Okay, I was skipping back to play "My Love" over and over (I...um, really love that song); so maybe the Pod was just rebelling against my cheesy taste. But halfway through the album - after I'd had enough of "My Love," honest - the Pod reset itself, and this time I got the sad-iPod logo familiar to old Mac users. Nothing would revive it.
I bought this iPod in February 2005, and it will go down in history as the first iPod I've ever purchased that I couldn't successfully sell to a friend before upgrading; two of my friends have benefited from my Pod hunger since 2001. It was my third iPod, and my favorite by far, both in terms of capacity and form factor; I thought Apple really got the aesthetics perfect on the 4G iPods - they added the clickwheel, made it the right size and got rid of those four ugly buttons from the 3Gs. The new 5G iPods with video look almost as good, but the big screen is so much larger, and the click wheel is a little smaller, that the size ratio looks a little "off" to me.
Hey, not that I'd turn up my nose at a new iPod. And I didn't: I visited the 5th Avenue Apple Store on Sunday, got ironclad confirmation from a Genius Bar tech that the 4G iPod was toast, and was informed that if I turned in my old Pod for "recycling," I'd get 10% off a new one. That settled it. The best part about Apple's big announcement of new stuff a couple of weeks ago was that they cut the price of everything. Check it: 20 months ago, I paid $530 - on sale - for the 60GB iPod Photo; yesterday, my new black 80GB iPod video retailed for $350, and that was before the recycling discount.
In keeping with my Spinal Tap theme, the new Pod's name is Artie Fufkin. The old one was named Derek Smalls. I've already filled it with all my old songs, and half of the Yacht Rock videos.
Mad concerts! As I posted last week, the reason for the roadtrip with the stalker_guapos was the VirginFest concert in Baltimore. We hadn't been back from our Eastern Seaboard roadtrip one full day before bradamants_mom came into town, partially to visit us (we shamefully hadn't had her over since last Christmas) and mostly to see the Raconteurs with me at Roseland. That was last Tuesday night.
The show was a continuation of the awesomeness I saw at VirginFest, only this time with Jack White shamelessly leading the band and not even trying to melt into the background. Covers included a searing "Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)." Jack played like a man on fire and - sorry, Meg - really seemed to enjoy performing with a badass drummer. My mother-in-law was very pleased and - every time I turned to check on her - had a small, permanent smile on her face for the entirety of the show.
So that was show #2; Wednesday morning, I escorted our guest back to Penn Station. I slogged through a day of work, expecting to go home and veg out for the first time in nearly a week. But then my buddy Brian from Billboard called at 5:15, saying a pair of very expensive Rolling Stones tickets had just fallen into his lap for that night at Giants Stadium. You don't turn that down.
Here's a Rolling Stone Online review of the show we saw. The worst part: getting back from the stadium on those crappy New Jersey Transit shuttlebueses (hey, obifu, thanks again for taking those Green Day tix off my hands last year, and I'm sorry). The best part: we were in the 13th row on the floor - when the pyro went up during "Sympathy for the Devil," the flames literally toasted my face.
I find that everyone who's seen the Stones live since around Steel Wheels or so - when their shows became elaborate and obscenely priced - comes out effusing about the experience. I think there's two reasons: (1) they need to justify the dough they just dropped, so come hell or high water they're going to enjoy it; and (2) Mick Jagger is a born showman. Reason #1 wasn't a factor for me - thank god (quoted face value on the tix: $450...each). So I was left with Mick, and now, I have to say, I get it. He really doesn't look 63, more like a spry 48, and I still don't know where he gets the energy. As for Keith Richards, he looked terrible, but when has Keef ever looked less than terrible? Still, he all but phoned it in, and I now think Ron Wood has the most unsung job in rock: playing good, solid guitar while standing out of the way so everyone can yell "Keef!!" Poor sod.
Chart catchup! I was so swamped on Thursday that I failed to do my usual "Charting the Charts" post - apologies, for those who care - but frankly, the charts were mostly static last week. However, there was a frisson of excitement at the top of the album chart, where the mighty Trousersnake slid so far off his #1 debut the week before that he almost got evicted from the top slot by Clay Aiken. Details, from my new favorite music blog Idolator, are here and here (the guy commenting named "dennisobell" is me).
Amazingly, despite how shitty it reportedly is, Janet Jackson's new album is gonna top the charts this week, thanks almost entirely to a well-timed Oprah appearance. Next week, we'll see how tomorrow's stellar crop of new releases fares, but my early prediction: the Killers are gonna get thumped by Evanescence.