The proliferation of music

I have recently been discovering a lot of new music. Of course, much of this may be new to me and old hat to everyone else, because, although I've always loved all kinds of music, when one is living with an elderly mother, one does not have much chance to indulge one's own tastes. Especially when said elderly mother tended to have either CBC radio one or the television on most of the day, and it's a small house. And I don't have any really comfortable earphones.

However, now, through the magic of iTunes and Last.fm, I have been exploring and discovering things. I find, though, that the _disadvantage_ of iTunes is that you download something and then forget that you have it! I keep looking back at my library and seeing albums that I don't remember ever listening to, and then playing them and liking them, but not being able to remember them again when I want to play them again... This is compounded by the fact that there seem to be SO MANY bands or artists out there! You can't keep track of them all.

I think I may start buying cds of my favourites so that I can see them on the shelf and remind myself to play them. Yesterday I bought the Joshua Radin cd for that reason, and anyway, he's someone I've been listening to a lot. I also bought Feist, which I listened to in my car and enjoyed thoroughly.

Other new discoveries that I'm liking a lot:
The Weepies, Say I am You
Kate Walsh, Clocktower Park
Tristan Prettyman, Hello
Kate Rusby, Awkward Annie (asakiyume - you would like this)

More Music

I've spent a pleasant time today sorting my iTunes playlists and tidying up the music library. I found a nifty little utility that allows me to package and move a number of spoken word things I had copied from cds, which got put in the music library. This had meant that if I ever put my iPod on "shuffle" my music would be interspersed with Ian McKellen reading The Odyssey, or bits of the BBC version of The Lord of the Rings. These have now been removed nicely into "Audiobooks" where they belong.

I also had fun creating a playlist I've called "my soundtrack" - my life in music. Everything from the love theme to Zefferelli's Romeo and Juliet (which still brings tears to my eyes), to "To Sir With Love," from "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" to "The River," from "In Your Eyes" to "Northwest Passage" and "City of New Orleans" (oh, and I've just remembered "Sitting on the Dock of the Bay"... maybe in the morning.) It might be really weird listening to my past coming back to me, or it might be lovely. We'll see.

And I've just remembered a few more...