Anthurian

My $3000 Jukebox

Posted on 13 January 2011

Delving deeper into the archives for this “Historical Perspectives” post, this is from July 19, 2002 and appears to be the second post I’d ever made to Anthurian. Originally, Anthurian was a plain static Web site but, as technology (and my needs) evolved, it went through mulitple incarnations. Unfortunately, some of my original posts seem to have gotten lost but this one is pulled from the ones I could save.

Well, I’ve ripped almost my entire CD collection to MP3s and have them on my Mac. I did it so that I could vary my listening and shuffle through my own music without having to bring CDs back and forth between work and home. Right now I have 15 gigabytes of music, which equates to over 8 days of music if I let it run continuously. I own the CDs and I’m not sharing them, so I don’t think that I am doing anything illegal. Actually, I’m glad that I did rip all of the CDs to MP3s because it turns out that some of the CDs were very difficult for iTunes to rip whereas others that I was ready to toss out I could salvage a few songs from.

Of course, putting all these songs on shuffle makes for an interesting play list. I’m not as varied in my music as some, but I’d like to think that I do have a wide range in musical tastes. For example, today’s playlist (thus far) runs as follows: “Blackeyed Blond” (Red Hot Chili Peppers), “Get Up (Sex Machine)” (James Brown), “Revival” (Allman Brothers), “Folsom Prison Blues” (Johnny Cash), “Cancion” (Alirio Diaz), “Irresponsible Hate Anthem” (Marilyn Manson), “Terminal Frost” (Pink Floyd), “Exit” (U2), “Blue Skies Bring Tears” (Smashing Pumpkins), “Corazon Espinado” (Santana). Of course, I have some “Various Artist” tracks in there from CDs like the Natural Born Killers or Friday soundtracks. I didn’t rip my classical CDs ’cause I just don’t think it would be right to take apart something like Mozart’s Requiem. Personally, I don’t think it’s right to use such a beautiful piece of music in a car ad, but that’s just me.

I read somewhere that men can be moved to tears (or an emotional response) more easily by music than women, whereas women react more to visual cues. I don’t know where I read this so if anyone knows what I’m talking about, please inform me. Anyway, I’m sitting here listening to “Franklin’s Tower” (Grateful Dead) and it just makes me feel so good. It reminds me of the concert in Highgate, Vermont that Chris and Bill and I went to. It also reminds me of driving my old VW Beetle out to Allen’s Falls and Dan sitting in the back seat giving (a drunk) Brandon Kleenex so that he could toss them out the window — all the while I’m trying to drive and control these two freaks and then they got ahold of the plastic trout that I had (and still have) in my back window. He and the plastic octopus kept them amused for the rest of the car ride home.