I’m in the process of digitizing my whole CD collection, before I finally dispose of my physical CD library.

The question is, how do I properly tag tracks where the album title, artist name or song title are solely in lower case? Do I regard the sole usage of lower case as merely a stylistic decision? Do I then capitalize the first letter in the first word of the track title/album title/artist name? Or does every single word have their first letters capitalized?

The obvious answer would be to go with whatever iTunes says it should be. Which I do, but how about when album information is not available?

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I will probably sell off all my CDs, and destroy the ahem…others. It is shaping up to be a biggish stack. Some very decent albums in there too, if I may say so.

As for the Asian albums – I’ll never be able to offload them. They’ll go to my local library.

After all the culling I have done, I will soon be able to eliminate my overspill of possessions outside my room.

So Ray and I happened to watch the theatrical trailer for Daybreakers. It looks like a cross between The Matrix and Blade. I was particularly taken by the song that was played in the trailer.

E: Argh! That voice! The band starts with ‘P’, from the UK. The singer has black hair and he has a weird laugh.
R: ‘Placebo’?
E: I am so impressed.
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This is my new favourite song of the year. Gotye’s “Hearts a Mess” (argh!) is a lush, emotionally-charged piece (with lyrics that, coincidentally, follow a common plot element in romance novels, but I digress). I’ve always rather enjoyed Gotye’s music but this is so above and beyond WIN that I’m sad because it will be like a one hit wonder (except, he has other rather good songs, but they all pale in comparison so it is like a one hit wonder…) and he won’t make another piece with this level of awsumness. Am I pessimistic or what?
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I’m really starting to get into the last Dave Matthews Band album, Stand Up. Initially I thought they were some hippy grassy band. I think it was because I kept getting them mixed up with the John Butler Trio.

Then Ray forced me to listen to the album by playing it in the car. Talk about captive audience.
American Baby really caught my ear. I love the plucked violin, and the bass line in the pre-chorus. I was surfing around for the lyric meanings and apparently it’s not a very typical DMB sound and disappointing in that respect. Bah, what do they know. It is a great song.

The song was written the day after the “election” (which I’m guessing is the 2004 American Presidential Elections) and references 9/11, terrorism and war. From what I can tell, it’s about patriotism and sticking together nevertheless. I know this but perversely, the only images in my head are Abercrombie & Fitch blonde blue-eyed cheerleader sorority types lolling around. Terrible eh.

The other songs I’m currently digging are Dreamgirl and Old Dirt Hill (Bring That Beat Back), for similarly flippant reasons. While all three songs are great musically, the part I like best about them are the lyrics. I found Dreamgirl and Old Dirt Hill sweetly romantic. Having Dave Matthews’ husky masculine voice crooning out those lyrics is pure WIN.

After our late Big 2 and rootbeer guzzling night, Alice stayed overnight in the second room while Dan fell asleep on the sofa bed in the living room. I have to say again, those Staybridge suites at Woodland Hills were pretty awesome. I think I paid 60USD per night for that apartment.

We dragged ourselves out of bed the next day but making the checkout time deadline was hard. Dan drove off back home for a shower and Alice and I headed off to Fry’s Electronics so I could experience the American big box electronics retail shebang. It turns out Fry’s stores are often themed. The one Woodlands Hills one had an Alice in Wonderland theme. You can see giant flying cards suspended from the ceiling here, and the black and white chessboard floor. Apparently there was a mountain, or something, somewhere in another corner, but the store was huge and I didn’t get to see everything. I barely had time to grab a pair of headphones. They are bright green JVC in-ear ones – funky! Read the rest of this entry »