<b>VNV Nation - Empires</b> - specifically, "Kingdom". Man, I dig this song. They're pretty good live though - that is, they perform well, even though their stuff is mostly prerecorded. But they seemed to work the crowd pretty well. Definitely good stuff.

Wesley Willis--Feel the Power: Chicago schizophrenic street artist. Puts out 3 or 4 records a year. Usually, each of his CDs has 24 songs or so, each song about 3 minutes each, and all the songs are damn near the same (beats, tempo, etc.). He usually "sings" about his bus rides on CTA and Pace, friends of his, and concerts he attends. He was actually signed to American Recordings, and put out 2 records through them in 1996--Feel the Power and Fabian Road Warrior. Also has a band called the Fiasco that does indie-punk rock. Generally hangs out in Chicago's Wicker Park area--my ex-fiance actually saw him on the street one day...and didn't ask for his autograph...damn her! ;) Listen to one of his CDs, if only for some simple humor.

"Rock over London! Rock on Chicago!"

Radiohead--The Bends

Alice in Chains--Facelift

The Crow--soundtrack: Arguably one of the best soundtracks ever put together.

McDonald's is the place to rock.

Dave and I are very familiar with Wesley Willis, syc. Heh.

I whupped batman's ass.

i also agree with you on the comment about The Crow soundtrack.

i especially love Nine Inch Nails - Dead Souls...yay. that's actually one of my favorite songs. it just has a slew of great artists though.

Who else is anal about (re)naming their MP3s?

*raises hand*

While I don't care much for ID3 tags, I absolutely have to have every file named correctly and in the same order (track number - artist - song title.mp3). All 1700+ MP3s currently on my hard drive are named that way, as are most of the ones I have backed up on a giant stack of CD-Rs.

What kind of system do you guys use?

Ehhh, Joy Division does it much better. Reznor's version is much too ..., I guess "produced" is the world I'm looking for.

Anyone else here like JD?

i'm anal about it. very. and i got this from dave. my playlist has to be absolutely perfect in its presentation - that is, the mp3s have to be listed as so:

Artist - Song Title

and the mp3s have to be named like so:

Artist-Song_Title.mp3

Currently, I have two different systems - one that I used to use, and the one that I'm migrating to.

I used to have a system where every mp3 was named like so:

Artist_With_Underscores_If_More_Than_One_word-Song_Title.mp3

That worked pretty well. I didn't care about ID3, so long as my mp3s were named like that.

Now, I'm migrating to

/dave/mp3/Artist/Album Name/Song Name.mp3

Mainly because that's the way iTunes rips mp3s, and iTunes is the best mp3 player -ever-. Eventually, I want to make iTunes rip mp3s like this

/dave/mp3/Artist/Album Name/Artist - Song Name.mpg

'cause honestly, that's how I'd prefer it. I'm also being super anal about how they're cataloged, both in iTunes' internal DB, as well as the ID3 tags. Luckily, iTunes makes this awfully easy, and then I can play them from all of my computers via a nice SMB share. Once I get the file server built, they'll all be on there, and all the computers in the house will automount their various shares. House-wide, we probably have about 6,000 unique MP3's. Mine have always been the most impeccable. Unfortunately, I need to go through them all and re-work them. Oh well.

Anyway. That's how I do it now.

Mother Love Bone--Mother Love Bone: Such a waste for Andrew Wood to die. Although, without his passing, Pearl Jam may not have come into existance.

Have to agree (as long as you meant anything *after* Wish). Certainly haven't been motivated enough to buy anything. Which, admittedly, may be as much a reflection on me as on the band.

I tend to not listen to my more meloncholy albums much any more. For the first time in more than a year I was able to pluck up the courage to play some Nick Drake. I had to think about it.

More or less goes without saying :) Plus I thought that it would be good to mention some groups that maybe others hadn't heard of before.

Well, the masses (bless 'em) are welcome to whatever they choose instead.

Yes, I rather like "Wish", minus "Friday I'm In Love". I think I could never hear that song for the rest of my life and it wouldn't bother me a bit. "High" was a great single, and "From The Edge Of The Deep Green Sea" is fucking EPIC.

Sadly, I've bought everything The Cure has done after "Wish", (except for the new "Greatest Hits" compilation) and the only thing I listen to somewhat regularly is the "Paris" live record. There's some great versions of some old "Pornography"-era tracks on there ("Figurehead", "One Hundred Years", etc).

As for New Order, sure they disappeared after "Republic", but isn't that better than putting out two or three crap albums like The Cure did? And at least we got some decent stuff from Electronic (specifically "Twisted Tenderness") and the first Monaco album isn't that bad.

Speaking of Electronic, this is just a shot in the dark, but does anyone know what happened to the Johnny Marr & The Healers album that was supposed to come out last year or something? I heard the opened for Oasis a long time ago and there was an album in the works, but then nothing.

Hertz, my apologies for both misreading your post and posting my reply. It didn't quite come out like I intended. Not sure what I was thinking there. :)

mm: Point taken. :)

sycamore, I can't accept your apology, because there was no need to offer it in the first place ;)

Now, on a related note, I was going to apologise to the masses. I was going to say I'm sorry I was so elitist back there, because really, it's about what you like. My music isn't better than yours. It's just different.

But then I got subjected to Wheatus for the four billionth time by some nimrod at the lights, so they can just forget it.

Mr. Bungle--Mr. Bungle

Nine Inch Nails--The Fragile: Both discs

Blur--13: Wonderful CD. Probably their best.