The Dynamic Duo

I don’t care much for most of the memes that float around the blogosphere—Boy, I’m full of buzzwords this morning, I need to burp more or something—but I really liked the musical baton thing that has been going around. I had pretty much despaired of it ever reaching me, when Mayu sent it on to me. Thanks a lot Mayu (Doing it in Japanese here would require me to change the encoding of the blog, which I want to do, bu tnot now. Maybe I’ll do it on Akatombo’s Japanese pages, it needs some content)! So be it on the dying end of this meme or not, I’m doing it! Away we go:

Total volume of music files on my computer:
iTunes is burning up 24.85 Gb of space (6,642 songs) on this Powerbook. If you add in a few things that we’ve been working on in Garageband, and a few miscellaneous downloads from indy artists it probably approaches 26 or 27 Gb. I need to get an external hard drive enclosure soon, or I won’t have room for any more work stuff

Song playing right now:
eight and black by a Japanese indy band called purr (I wonder if they are still together) from their yellow sunshine album. I think it was on the Lee V. Cleef label, but I don’t see it on the page I link to here. I discovered purr when I was doing an article on Japanese Indy artists for the ‘zine I had at the time. I haven’t heard of them since, but I bought two mini albums pressed on CD-R, and I listen to them fairly frequently.

The last CD I bought:
Does this mean the last CD I bought, or the last one I bought for me. I think I bought UltraGirl Eminem’s Encore album most recently. I think the last thing I bought for myself was The Empire Strikes First by Bad Religion. That CD makes me want to be in a band again. Anybody in Japan interested in starting a punk band?

Unlike Mayu, I can’t remember my first CD purchase, but I really wish I could. Maybe it was that Richard Marx album that I cannot for the life of me ever remember attaining. That is one album that I could understand if I was repressing the memory of buying.

Five songs(tunes) I listen to a lot, or that mean a lot to me:

Well, let’s see, songs I listen to a lot is fairly easy in iTunes although this isn’t very accurate since I haven’t had the Powerbook very long, and have been on shuffle play a lot since I’ve got so much to do:

1. Hello by Oasis from the (What’s The Story) Morning Glory? album.


2. Disappearing Boy by Green Day from the 1039/Smoothed Out Slappy Hour album.


3. Drain You by Nirvana from the From The Muddy Banks of the Wishkah album.


4. Another Bag of Bricks by Flogging Molly from the Drunken Lullabies album.


5. Ataeru Otoko by UNICORN from the THE VERY BEST OF UNICORN album.

As for song that mean a lot to me, recently I’m very troubled by the way America is going, so a lot of Anti-Bush stuff belongs in the mix. Let’s see what I can come up with off the top of my head:

1. Drain You by Nirvana from the From The Muddy Banks of the Wishkah album. – Anything from Nirvana really though Drain You has long been my favorite. If Nirvana hadn’t been around when I was in high-school (well at least until pretty close to the end of it) I may not be here today. After UltraMom banned them, they were known as ‘Surprise!!’ in my collection. I was such a clever little dickens.
2. Let Them Eat War by Bad Religion from the The Empire Strikes First album. – This whole album is fantastic. This is the first song that really grabbed me. It isn’t my favorite on the album anymore, but still very good after a ton of listens
3. Die For The Government by Anti-Flag from the At War With Society album. – this is the song from Anti-Flag that I keep coming back to. The tangible sadness and rage in Justin’s voice just grabs me. This is an old one, but their latest album is extremely good. I went to see them live recently in a club in Harajuku that I didn’t much care for, but it turned out to be on of the best shows I’ve ever seen in Japan because they attract the right audience.
4. American Idiot by Green Day from the American Idiot album. – The first decent album Green Day has made in a long time. They did a really nice job on this one, and American Idiot struck a nerve with me … and with a lot of other people too it seems.
5. My Immigrant Mom Talks Funny! by David Cross from the It’s Not Funny album. – It’s not music, but I want to wrap it up with some laughter. David Cross has made recent world events a bit more tolerable. Don’t worry, the titles have nothing to do with the content of the track. An honorable mention for this slot is Mitch Hedberg who died unexpectedly earlier this year at the way too young age of 37. I put David Cross in here, because he directly takes on Bush related stuff and gets right to the heart of the stuff that’s been bothering me.

Five people to whom I’m passing the baton:
Woohoo, another list!

1. The Cook at Cerebral Soup


2. Kuri at MediaTinker


3. Jim at Wirefarm


4. UltraMom right here, right now!


5. Johnny at John’s Japan, Dynamic Duo alumnus, because I hope to see at least one more post on that blog I set up for him before it rots away.

Godspeed musical baton!