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If you use amarok2/ubuntu via the neon nightly build service, you may have noticed that your collection shows up, but there are no tracks displayed.  A quick googling turned up this helpful post:

http://amarok.kde.org/forum/index.php?topic=15678.msg23480

Deleting ~.amarok-nightly and then re-scanning your collection should get you back up and running!

I'll be the first to admit that my music taste is somewhat "eclectic".  While being dominated by lots of strange European trip-hoppy stuff, I can easily bounce back and forth between something like Cypress Hill to classic jazz with Ella and Louis.  This morning, in an odd mood, I queued up the The Monkees' 1967 album More of the Monkees.  Yeah, it's campy and downright quaint, but one thing that I do appreciate about it, is the interesting mono mix.  Sure it has no depth to the sound, but there's something to be said of the effect--especially for some of the tracks with a driving, distorted guitar.  For some of the more minimalist bands out there like the Black Keys and White Stripes, I'm somewhat surprised that they haven't explored this avenue.  I really think it'd add some great pop to their stuff.

I should put together a list of my favorite mono mixes...

Here's a start, look for the Beatles mono mix of Paperback Writer.  Now that's awesome.

When I got home tonight, I had two packages from my parents sitting on my doorstep.  One was a box filled with Easter candy and a rope for the booger.  The other was the type of box I love to see--a flat, square box with an Acoustic Sounds label on it!  I popped it open, and was greeted with the latest Black Keys album, Attack & Release, in glorious vinyl.  My good old Dad knows exactly what I like.

While I already listened to the album once, I'm not here to really write a review yet.  I wanted to send along some heartfelt "thanks for knowing your customers" to the Black Keys and Nonesuch Records.  As I was breaking the plastic seal on the LP, I was thinking to myself, "I wish bands would make a digital lossless copy of the album available to you when you buy their LPs".  I mean seriously, when you've just forked out $30+ for the vinyl copy of the album, it seems a little off to then have to turn around and spend another $15 if you want to chuck it into your iTunes collection, or throw it onto your digital music player.  To my pleasant surprise, having put the needle to the vinyl and settling into the couch to read the liner notes, I noticed a CD stuck in the sleeve.  They actually had one-upped me, and included a copy of the album on CD!  That's what I'm talking about!

So, to you Dan and Pat, thanks!

One of my Christmas gifts this year was a vinyl copy of Hendrix's Axis: Bold as Love.  I'm not the first to state this, but I really appreciate vinyl, and how when you put the needle on the record, you're making a decision to listen to the music.  These days, people have a tendancy to "hear" music, that is, it is on in the background, but they are not focused on it.  It is there to act as a noise blocker at work, or to provide a distraction while they workout.  The act of listening to music means that you are actively focused on the music, to take it in, and appreciate it.

Below are the lyrics to "Bold as Love".  Before getting a vinyl copy, I had already picked out the song as one of my favorites from the album, mostly due to the great guitar work on it.  In sitting down to listen to the song, the vinyl gave me the added bonus of having the large gatefold packing, with the lyrics printed on the inside.  That let me listen to the music, and actually hear the lyrics and see the picture being painted.  This song is art--the music and the lyrics combining together to form a complete piece.

Here are the lyrics:

Anger he smiles, towering in shiny metallic purple armour
Queen jealousy, envy waits behind him
Her fiery green gown sneers at the grassy ground

My red is so confident that he flashes trophies of war and
Ribbons of euphoria
Orange is young, full of daring,
But very unsteady for the first go round
My yellow in this case is not so mellow
In fact Im trying to say its frigthened like me
And all these emotions of mine keep holding me from, eh,
Giving my life to a rainbow like you
But, Im eh , yeah, Im bold as love
Yeah, yeah
Well Im bold, bold as love (hear me talking, girl)
Im bold as love
Just ask the axis (he knows everything)
Yeah, yeah, yeah

Over the past year, my dad has done a great job of treating me well when it comes to listening to music at work.  Early last year, he bought me a pair of Grado SR60s headphones, and this Christmas he got me a HeadRoom Total BitHead headphone amp.  The BitHead not only serves as an amp, but it also serves as a USB audio device, meaning that you can bypass that crappy on-board chipset and run it through a decent sounding sound processing chip.  It runs a Burr-Brown PCM2902E DAC, and seems to be really well supported across a variety of OS platforms, seeing that it was picked right up by linux distro when I plugged it in.

So far, the combination of headphone and amp has been killer.  Last year I started the arduous process of replacing all the mp3 files that I have with lossless FLAC copies.  While it may not have been friendly to my available disk space, it has made music listening at work a much more pleasant experience.  Without any equalizer tweaking I've gotten great results.   All of the FLAC files have a superb, rich sound.  The sound stage is really wide and airy.  All the instruments are really distinct sounding and are not lost in some muddy musical haze.  But, what really impresses me most about this setup is bass presence.  Typical big box headphones have no low frequency presence, and sound completely washed out and tinny.  When you hook this up and start playing songs, you'll swear somewhere replaced all of your music.  The bass is ridiculously melodic, silky and omnipresent, but not overpowering.  You can feel it in your head, but in a very satisfying "this is what music is supposed to sound like" way.

There are a few recordings that really stand out too.  Kylie Minogue's Give it to Me from her Fever album sounds so completely different on this setup than on normal headphones.  The song has a kicking, driving bass, and the tinny sound that lesser headphones produce is totally missing, replaced by real sounding music. Willie Nelson's voice on Crazy from his Milk Cow Blues album is front and center, oh so clear, and he sounds like he's sitting in the cube across from you singing.  The Flaming Lips It Overtakes Me... from their At War with the Mystics is superb sounding too.  The bass pumps but is entirely distinctive, not intruding on any other instrument, the vocals are smooth, the acoustic guitar towards the end of the song is crystal clear and sweet sounding.

The pair also does a decent job on 128+ bit mp3 files, although if you listen, you can hear the difference between the mp3 and FLAC files.  The mp3 files don't have the same breadth to the sound stage--they seem a little more confined.  They also lack the whole feeling sound of the FLAC files.  The music seems a little more muted and not as rich feeling.

If you listen to tons of music at work, and are not one of the millions of mindless "I just use music as background noise iPod clones" (sorry Larry), then I'd definitely recommend looking into spending ~$200 and adding a whole new pleasent taste to your work life.

Last week I got Classic Record's 200g pressing of Jethro Tull's classic Aqualung. I have a version of CD FLACed, and I was able to switch between the vinyl and the lossless digital version, and let me just say that the vinyl version is awesome! It is much cleaner and more crisp than CD version. Where the CD has muddy sounding vocals and guitar, the vinyl stands out as crisp and clear, making it a real pleasure to listen to. It gives the album a more much intimate, "in the studio" feeling. I'm going to see what I can do towards ripping the vinyl version to replace the (now) lousy CD copy.

All in all, if you're a fan of the album and want an awesome sounding version, I'd highly recommend the latest release. I picked mine up from Acoustic Sounds.

As I was sitting around listening to Morcheeba's Charango, and it occurred to me that I really loved the first four opening tracks on that album, and that when I played one, I just had to follow it up with the next track. That got me thinking about the assorted other albums that I had in my collection that (in my mind) had that unique distinction--the album opened and had a set of songs that seemed to naturally flow from one track into the next.

So, I think I'm going to do--as NPR and the NewsHour likes to call them--an "occasional piece" on great album openings. And to avoid the risk of being cliched, I'm going to try to ignore the obvious ones.

I'm 5 minutes into this album and my ears hurt already. Why did they have to do such a lousy job with the mix on this album? There's something to be said for adding depth to a CD and not having a flat wall of noise. Now I remember why I haven't listened to this disc in years...

DirecTV shows a generic splash page and plays rock music on their Sunday Ticket channels before and after games.  While waiting for the HD broadcast of the Chiefs/Raiders to start on Sat night they were playing Zeppelin's Heartbreaker.  And here's where the props go out--they actually played Living Loving Maid after Heartbreaker.  Someone at Direct is a Zeppelin fan!  I was hoping for a follow-up of Ramble On, but no such luck.  That would've gotten them serious street cred...

How's this for a weird playlist today? Starts off with some Dandy Warhols, the first two tracks from Morrison Hotel, then Lucinda Williams, then a smattering of Gillian Welch, then some Killer and Carl Perkins. The Perkins sent me completely over the edge, now I'm full force into rockabilly with Nicky Kay and His Fabulous Kay-Tones - Go Crazy.