The Desert Island: An Intro

Long story short: Anyone know of a media player that will play Apple Lossless files without hogging my system resources like iTunes?

I keep my files in Apple Lossless to preserve them at at least CD quality, since iTunes doesn’t read FLAC (and having an iPod is sometimes like being in an arranged marriage to iTunes). Last night, I tried to get Songbird to play my audio files, but I’m guessing it (like www.lala.com before it*) couldn’t read my Apple Lossless audio files. Once the experiment failed, I quit Songbird and went back to iTunes and found that it had no clue where all my music was. Somehow, every file was pointing to my windows/system32 directory. I’ve gotten all the songs back, so I just have to remove the dead links.

Anyway, that means that my playlists were deleted. I keep one called The Desert Island that is really a running list of my all-time favorite I'd-sooner-die-than-be-without-this! albums. On this site, I'm going to probably write about these albums whenever I feel it is appropriate. Or when I have nothing else to write about. There are 280 albums on the list (and it's a running tally), so theoretically I'm set over over half a year.

Anyway, as a preview of a couple of albums on that list, here are the Amazon preview pages for the album containing the song after which this blog was named:
Notorious BIG - Life After Death

and my post-election "This just feels so right for so many reasons" album-of-the-moment:
Sam Cooke - One Night Stand! Sam Cooke Live at the Harlem Square Club 1963

Maybe later I'll try to get some involvement with my last.fm page.

*Y’all should seriously try www.lala.com out. I’m rooting for their business model right now, though my rap songs appear to be the edited versions.

Hank Williams - The Unreleased Recordings

I was getting through a rainy day last week listening to the new Hank Williams Unreleased Recordings boxed set. It’s all so excellent, excellent country music (as should be expected from Hank Williams) culled from radio shows in 1951 brimming with energy and in high fidelity. I haven’t had time to double-check what unreleased songs popped up on this set, and I haven’t honestly delved obsessively-deeply through the 10-CD The Complete Hank Williams to know off the top of my head. (I’ve listened to each CD in that set a few times, but it’s 10 CDs from the era where 4 minutes might be considered a long song). The original versions on here are spirited, at least (and maybe occasionally feel a little better than the single versions).

I'm also happy to report that it doesn't focus on the doom-and-gloom of some of his recordings, which is an angle that had grown somewhat fashionable since alt-country boom and Johnny Cash's American Recordings (I see Hank's The Ultimate Collection as an example of that). Sure, there's plenty of sad songs ("I Can't Tell My Heart That"), but this is also a treasure trove of some joyous country-gospel songs. I wouldn't say I'm an expert on the matter, but I have to say that this might be one of the best examples of that side of his work. His voice comes in clearly and the recordings mostly seem to have held up well, aside from some expected (but less-harsh-than-expected) tape his on a couple tracks. The music itself, though, is top-notch in showing Hank Williams as a vocalist and interpreter.

Plus, there are takes on standards such as "On Top of Old Smokey" and "When the Saints Go Marching In." How can you go wrong?

Listen to samples from Hank Williams' The Unreleased Recordings (Warning: Not for the country un-friendly!)