I've removed my Top 10 songs from my Top 10 section. Choosing 10 'best' songs just wasn't going to happen, ever. The Top 10 albums saga will continue though. I listened back to Pantera's 'Cowboy's From Hell' again the other day and it didn't blow me away like it did a few months ago but I still love it. I'm interested to hear to the 'Scenes From a memory' album by Dream Theatre again to see if it still has the power I loved last year.

Listened to the 1995 remastered double CD set of 'War of the Worlds' this week and it's fantastic. I found the second CD to be of far less interest than the second CD, and most of the new 'mixes' to be ultimately pretty bad, but the first CD is pretty damn close to perfect. That 'ohhhhh loooororrr' noice the Maritians make is damn chilling.

And last by not least, the live version of Tori Amos' "Precious Things" gave me those fantastic 'good song' shivers on the way home today. Lasted the whole way through the track. The 'good song' high is one of my favs and shall not be beaten...

I'm 50% on the way to finishing off a song today. This is a pretty big deal because I've not written anything of note for months. With Walken's bass player off overseas of many months Heath and I are having a day in on Sunday to jam, finish off songs ('Free Ride', 'I Like It', 'Get On' and more) and hopefully write some more.

More than likely it will be one huge mess of bad covers and crazy drum+bass vs. keyboard jams. Excellent!

Approximate received a 'fan' email again today. Most emails through my page on MP3.com are little more than advertisments for the band sending the mail, but at least this guy genuinely seemed to like my music, wanting to add 'The 60kph Ton' to his MP3.com radio stations and suggesting he may like to remix the track later. Sonar has attempted to remix Approximate before and had a nice start going but gave up. I'd love to hear one of my tracks remixed. I'd love to hear one of my tracks covered in any form.

Subject URL: Napster Shut Down Set For March 2nd
The date for the next Napster hearing has been set for the 2nd March, during which time it is very likely Napster will be shut down. Personally I want Napster shut down for a while, preferably up to a couple of weeks. It will give time for all the alternatives to come out of the woodwork (via Null Device)

Subject URL: Rio Volt

The Rio Volt MP3 CD player is the best I've seen, with CDr, CD-RW, CD support. 10 OR (yes or) 40 second antishock for normal CDs and 120 second antishock for MP3 or WMA. Firmware updatable. ID3 display. But will it display filenames as default or option? Lets hope so.

Subject URL: Pencils Taste Like Lead

It's a news item. Ain't it pretty? Or is it shitty? We shall see...

hmmm. I'll work on it. Where'd my posts for today go? Try here. What about my old posts? Use the calendar on the left.

Heart
Dave responds to my usual complaints. As way of an update, I've had to pick up a half finished project and finish it off. It's the most challenging work I've done for months and I'm enjoying it. I often wonder if my problem is laziness, an unfortunate ability to easily bore or something else altogether.

I sometimes wonder why I do this weblog but I know one reason is to keep my brain going. To have something interesting to do.

I always wonder how much of my life has been luck and how much is a result of my own actions and abilities.

Nearly everything I do these days feels like time wasted. Time I could be spending writing music, spending time with friends or spending with my love.

RIAA Mislead the World in desperation
This overly sensationalist (but extreamly enlightening) article at Slashdot explains how the RIAA is trying to mislead the world into believing Napster is hurting their industry.

RIAA recently posted quotes such as "CD sales plummeted last year in the U.S. and record industry officials say the figures prove that Napster, the Internet music-sharing service, has harmed their business....Sales of music compact discs fell by 39% last year according to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA)...."Napster hurt record sales," said RIAA president Hilary Rosen."

What they fail to say until much further on in the article is that "CDs" is infact "CD Singles". Album sales have gone up significantly.

I would happily blame Napster for lost sales in singles because CD Singles are a stupidly expensive format no good to anyone but extreme collectors. People now download the songs to try them out, not buy the single.

They also lost money on vinyl and cassettes, products not effected by Napster.

I think some serious analysis should be made of CD sales, and the amount of money artists make each year compared through the years. These are numbers no-one seems to be able to provide. Indie sales vs. Major sales. New vs. Back catalog sales. CD Singles vs Full Album sales. Compilations vs. Original artist albums.

These are numbers I'm going to start looking for.

it magazine
I just found out (although I should have guessed by now) that 'it magazine', and Australia record collectors magazine folded in 2000. I wrote an article for them last year on Faith No More collectables that got published. I think I'll post the article here later this week. They stiffed me $50 from my fee anyway because I 'thanked' fnm.com and so I MUST have just stolen the whole article. I was pretty pissed given the effort I'd put into it.

Anyway, there really should be a webpage for Australian Record Collectors with articles on specific band collectables etc. It's a pretty big market.