MP3 Heist, part II

I've been listening to Brian Eno and John Cale's collaboration Wrong Way Up for days now. It's nosing out Garbage's Version 2.0 for top-of-the-CD-stack right now. This has been a busy position; British Sea Power became my new favorite band a month or two ago, and for a while I was wearing out Arcade Fire, but Eno and Cale would hold that honor if only they were a band. Somebody needs to banish them to Kerguelen Island for a couple of years with only a recording studio and a little French restaurant. This is the most incredible thing I've heard in ages.

I've always thought the recording industry was being shortsighted to attack MP3 swapping, but now I realize how thoroughly mad they are. One high-quality MP3 stash and I'm all set to buy up the Eno and Cale back catalogs and start hunting down interesting jazz and quasi-jazz in the wake of St. Germain. Rick named all our old servers at Iridio after bands: blondie, lush, culture, ella, byrd, dandy, cocteau, breeder, marley, pixies, gusgus, and miles off the top of my head. I contributed radiohead, kraftwerk, and catherine. And now I'm inclined to go through the rest of them. (Score two so far for cocteau and pixies, and half points for gusgus.) Blondie I've already been listening to (from a roommate's MP3 collection, naturally) and they're pretty good.

The Great MP3 Heist

Rick has left our poor little team at work, in order to go back to doing cool stuff, having natural light, and that kind of thing. We are very sad about this. (We're really excited for him, though, and looking forward to the Big Party next Friday.)

On the other hand, he left his Powerbook behind; being a man of impeccable musical taste and generous spirit, he left his impressive MP3 collection intact. I tried slurping the whole thing up but iTunes told me I didn't have enough disk space. So I had to be choosy, but so far the highlights include Garbage's 2.0, St. Germain's Tourist, and the Gotan Project (which I already had, somewhere, but haven't seen lately). And I've hardly even gotten started. I think my next trip to Easy Street Records is going to be expensive.

Thanks Rick!