September '07

When I got my very own laptop, nigh on 15 months ago now, I was overjoyed. Here at last was a computer I could organise the way I wanted to. No more folders scattered all over various hard drive partitions, no more desktops filled almost completely with icons and shortcuts (YUCK!), and no unwanted programs whatsoever.

(You should see our desktop at home. Sheesh. I guess it can't be helped, when more than one person uses a computer regularly, without making use of different Windows logins.)

Then the question arose -- how to organise my music? Some people, especially those with many gigs of mp3s, have a different folder for each artiste, and subfolders within those for each album. It's a reasonable system if your music consists mostly of entire albums, or if you're the type who knows exactly what he wants to listen to at any given time.

But it made far more sense to me to organise my music by genre, and only broadly. And it also made sense to use Windows' pre-set folders such as My Music, My Documents, My Pictures, and My Videos. Why go to the trouble of having another folder somewhere else entitled 'Music'? That just leads to complications when ripping, downloading, and so on.

And my 'system' works well for me. This is what my My Documents folder looks like:

I've tried often to remove Azureus Downloads, My eBooks, and My Sharing Folders, but they keep coming back. And this is My Music:

Tee hee. You may notice I had to look up how to take screenshots. And to think I used to want PrintScreen (SysRq), Scroll Lock, and Pause (Break) to be removed from standard keyboards.

Anyhow, so my Rock, Pop, & Hip-Hop folder is by far the biggest. Duh. It has three genres in it. Starting from January of this year, however, (i.e. when I got internet access in Delhi-- prior to that this laptop had never been connected to the 'net), I began to keep my new music in separate bunches for easy access, rather than have it lost within Rock, Pop, & Hip-Hop, where apart from a few folders all the songs are merely listed alphabetically:



For example, January had a lot of Keane downloading (I love them!), and this is reflected in its icon.

Finally arriving at the point of this post (!), here are some recommendations from my September 07 folder:


(1) Don Henly - Boys of Summer

This Eagle apparently had quite a successful solo recording career when his band split up prior to Hell Freezes Over, and if all his songs are like this one, I don't doubt that. After timestamp 2:30 it sounds like something off Pulse, only slightly faster than Floyd's usual stuff.


(2) The Eagles - One Day at a Time

Alright, I confess, I got both of these songs after happening to catch an Eagles concert on Zee Cafe's Sunday evening show, 'The Gig.' (Ten out of ten for imagination.) I like Boys of Summer better, but this is pretty good too, IMHO. Oo-la-lala! :)

By the by, I didn't know that so many of the Eagles sung. It was a different lead singer on almost every song I saw.


(3) Hard-Fi - Suburban Knights

If you don't already have this song, you must get it. The chorus is rather eighties English adult poppy, and, like Rihanna's Umbrella, the song was born to be played on the radio. Eminently listenable-to.


(4) Newton Faulkner - Dream Catch Me

Could be criticised as being a bit monotonous, especially the rythm section, but I like it. I'm trying to think whom his voice reminds me of: a younger hybrid of Gordon Lightfoot, Rod Stewart, and John Mayer?!

NB Please do comment if you listen to Gordon Lightfoot. I've never met anyone else who does, although I'm sure many people do. It's a parent thing, if you know what I mean. Only those whose folks listened to him are likely to have even heard of him.

(5) The Go-Go's - Head Over Heels

This one is pure eighties, and is in fact flicked from the soundtrack of a movie set partly in the eighties. (13 Going on 30, with Jennifer Garner. Forgive me.)


(6) P Diddy feat. Keyshia Cole - Last Night

I never thought I'd ever download a Puff Daddy song (apart from that cover of Every Breath You Take that he arranged.) I lost what little respect I had for the man who called himself Sean "Puffy" Combs when he changed his name to P Diddy after he split up with Jennifer Lopez. I mean, dude, she's blazing hot, but duuuuuuuudeee.. you can't change your NAME every time you lose a girlfriend! And from Puff Daddy to P Diddy!!! Did he? Didn't he? Diddy?!!?
Jeez.

But you know what... he does make some pretty darn good hip-hop songs. I stumbled across this while downloading the other one - Come to Me, featuring Nicole "PCD" Scherzingerburger. While Come to Me has been ingrained in my head as a "club" song (bound to come up while on the dance floor), Last Night isn't that common yet (in my circles, anyway), and I like, I like.


EDIT: Sorry, the screenshots came out far smaller than I expected. Bad Blogger!