100TWC - Day 99: Friendship

This post has a lot of tags. It started off with more but I blew Blogger's limit. I didn't even know there was a limit! See, friendship touches so many areas of my life that Blogger can't cope. I'm half expecting it to seize up in the middle of this post. Let's see how we get on...

With the last post of my 100-day (aka 100-theme) writing challenge in sight, friendship has been much on my mind. I've had some really nice comments and feedback on here, but what's been even better, and more surprising, is the feedback I've had in real life. Whenever I've met up with friends at least one of them has commented on each occasion how much they've been enjoying the writing. I've been enjoying it too, of course, in fact that's one of the things I'll be including in the "lessons learned" follow-up post I'll be writing over the weekend. But it's one thing to gain enjoyment from something yourself, and totally another thing to find out that you've been giving enjoyment to others. Writing can be a solitary experience (all writers say this, at least those who speak/write/email to me) with -- often -- not much in the way of validation or appreciation, so it's really cool to hear the opinions of readers, which posts they liked best and why, etc.

I'd also be really interested to hear which ones folk thought didn't work out so well. To see how this matches my own feelings, for one thing, but also because it's all part of the learning experience. Just doing this stuff has helped me improve enormously, but really good feedback that mentions the bad as well as the good, is also a huge help.

I appear to have drifted off topic somewhat, so to drag it back to friendship: I've been lucky. When I talk about the times we have with mates -- the trips to the Lakes, weekends away, meals out (and in) -- the single most common response is how unusual it is for a bunch of guys to have kept a communal friendship going for so long. I'm not sure how rare it is in the great scheme of things, but those who comment on it seem to think it's pretty rare. Much more common for women to have a "girly group of friends"; less so for guys to have a "blokey group", apparently.

I've known for many years that social groups depend on key individuals to hold them together. I had an old colleagues network at one time -- around two dozen people who all used to work together in the same part of the organisation until one dark day a reorganisation came along and scattered us all across the company. Some left for other jobs, some took the opportunity for early retirement, most split up into three or four units, separated by geography, department and skill set. For several years after the split, we would get together two or three times a year (Christmas, obviously, and then one or two other meals or social events like bowling, walking, pub crawls). These were all marvellous events, well attended and very popular, but they all had a single individual -- the same guy in every case -- as the instigator. And then one day he stopped doing it. And none of us have ever met up again since that day.

The small group of friends I always refer to as my "Nottingham" mates (even though only two of them live there now) have strength in depth when it comes to organising get-togethers. It's not driven by just one of us. Once a few weeks, or a months, have gone by since our last meet, one or other of us will get in touch to set something else up. Often we don't need to do this, as we arrange it in advance at the previous one. It's a source of infinite variety, pleasure, amusement and fun to Nikki and I to be able to be part of this, as I'm sure anyone who is lucky enough to have their own strong ties of friendship will understand. Friends, they say, are the family you choose, and I would tag that with "lines I wish I'd written" if there was any space left in the tag list :0)

As I've discovered (and blogged about before), friends come at you from all parts of life, and another group that I've been blessed to reconnect with -- a few years back now -- has been the curry crew. We may only meet once a month, but I find myself looking forward to those evenings immensely. The conversation always flows, it's always stimulating and amusing, and the food is only the icing on the cake (if curry can be said to be any kind of icing).

I have a small number of friends that fall into another different category. All of the aforementioned might be classed as "regular" friends, and if such a term fits then this small number I'm talking about now might correspondingly be referred to as "irregular" friends. People who, over the years, have meandered in and out of my life seemingly at random, but who whenever we meet will pick up the threads of friendship (and even conversation!) and knit them back into something recognisable within a few hours. I met one such person outside a hotel once, a few years back. Having not seen him for more than five years, suddenly there he was, leaving a hotel at which I had arrived to meet someone else. We only had chance for twenty minutes frantic catching up and exchanging of current contact details, but it rekindled some long-buried memories and the spark of yet another friendship stretching back to the mid 1970s. We originally met at university and the names of other uni friends crop up regularly in the strangest places. Naturally the Internet is the perfect medium for this and over the years I've had the occasional email from old friends who've read this blog, or seen my profile on LinkedIn, or Friends Reunited, or found my website through Google.

There is a downside to this though. The reality of how easy it is to lose touch with people was brought home to me when I attended a school reunion about 15 years ago. It was such a strange experience I vowed never to attend one again (although I was tempted a couple of years back when they held a 25th -- or was it 30th? -- reunion). Not only the experience -- spending 3 or 4 hours in a function room with 50 people who at one time I saw on a daily basis but who, with one exception, I hadn't seen for 15 years -- but the aftermath. The impact of the realisation that I had completely lost touch with all of them, even those I'd thought of as close friends, really hit me surprisingly hard. I guess it just shows that friends are more than simply people you spend time with. Just as it's easy to be lonely in a crowded room, rubbing shoulders with a bunch of people every day for six years doesn't necessarily make them your friends. It knocked me for six a bit, did that.

Bargains and hot new music

Had one of those marketing emails from Amazon, or Play, or HMV (frankly, they arrive so frequently that they all blend into one) this morning entitled, rather breathlessly, "bargains and hot new music."

The first linked entry in the body of the email? Simon & Garfunkel's Greatest Hits.

Well at that price it wasn't a bargain, and I hardly think it qualifies as "hot new music" either, with a release date of 1972 :-\

Stunning Lines

I've written almost two dozen original songs, so I know from personal experience that some lines stand out as being especially memorable, poignant, apposite, meaningful, moving, or beautifully crafted. And unless you're a particularly gifted songwriter, those really good, stand-out lines are few. I reckon probably three in my case, so far, and I'm probably being generous to myself. I bet everyone can think of at least a couple from their favourite songs that really grab their heart and give it a squeeze.

Never mind, I'll find someone like you.

Adele has been all over the UK and world media for the last four years or so, but nothing quite prepares you for the quality of the songs - all the songs - on her second album: 21. For me though (and apparently, since 21 has only been out a little over a month and sales are already in the hundreds of thousands, for many others too), even among the many gems on this album that single line from the chorus of Someone Like You is one of the most breathtakingly, heart-achingly powerful I've ever heard.

So few words to crystallise the loss of hope, the final realisation that love has gone, but even while it's leaving you don't wish any hurt for the other even though you're hurting. You loved them that much. Never mind. Don't worry about me. All I need to do is find another you. Simple.

The power of the words is, of course, multiplied by Adele's amazing performance. If you haven't seen it I suggest you get yourself over to YouTube sharpish. You'll be glad you did. But it is the words that do it for me every time. The album insert credits Adele Adkins and Dan Wilson as co-writers. Top job guys. It really is a line I wish I'd written.

The Z Factor

I haven't written much about this year's X Factor. In fact, on checking, I haven't written anything at all about X Factor on this blog, ever. Which is strange for someone who used to write between 1 and 5 "TV critic" posts a day on TV Scoop. Why is that, I wonder? Well the title of this post might give you a clue. I honestly don't think I've seen such an array of total bollocks claiming to be singers in my life, and last night reached the absolute nadir of the dregs of the pit of Hades.

"Rock Night" it claimed to be, so you'll pardon me for expressing some surprise at the collection of bland ballads we were subjected to, all (naturally) greeted with effervescent enthusiasm by the four judges who are, apparently, increasingly losing the plot when it comes to having any discernable clue what they're listening to. Take, for example, Rebecca. One of the best of the bad bunch, I'd have to agree, but what's with Dannii's comments? The acts performed two songs last night, as we're getting down to smaller numbers now and they need to pad the show out a bit to maximise the ad revenues. So for her first song, Rebecca, as is her wont, stood rigidly behind the microphone and sang sweetly. "That was nice," Dannii enthused, "but I'd like to see a little more performance. You know, move about a bit." (I'm paraphrasing). So here's Rebecca's second number, where she stood rigidly behind the microphone and sang sweetly. And a couple of times, still standing on the spot, swayed her hips a bit. "Now THAT's the kind of performance I was looking for!" gushed Dannii. HUH?

But it would be wrong to single out Dannii in the stupid comments stakes. They're all just as bad as each other, trotting out the same old (and I mean... OLD) clichés time after time, making it their own, believable, relevant, true recording artist, with a liberal smattering of the usual "do you know what"s and "let me tell you"s added in to make absolutely sure that we all fall asleep.

If I didn't believe this show had jumped the shark before, I certainly reached that conclusion very early on in this series. The "vote for the worst" campaign has literally its worst contestant this year in Wagner, and while the thought of "sticking it to the man" is mildly amusing and diverting it doesn't make up for the pain of having to sit - sorry "fast forward" - through his performances week after week. The predictable stories of judges' in-fighting, vote rigging, and production hoopla to keep the most controversial contestants in the show as long as possible have verged on the disgusting this year, but above all the media hype towers the dark truth of an almost incredible lack of serious talent in the line-up.

Of all last night's dross only Matt Cardle's Nights in White Satin (or "Knights..." as the ITV X Factor home page has it this morning. LOL) came anywhere close to being what I would call a half-decent performance by a new artist and even that started off weak and ended up edging towards a shout. And yet after every screeching, out of tune, boring repetition of songs we've heard a million times before, we're treated to the spectacle of four "experts" telling us we're listening to pure gold, when it's clear to anyone who can be bothered to open up their eyes and ears that they're watching, at best, glorified karaoke without a shred of originality and only the merest hint of musicality every so often.

Come on, Cowell. Haven't you made enough money yet? Piss off to America with this worn out formulaic crap, and give us our Saturday nights and our traditional Christmas No. 1s back again.

The Excellent Eight

In response to several (well OK, two) comments wanting me to come clean about which tracks in the Storm the Charts top 40 I'd rated "excellent" I thought I'd make them the subject of a post in their own right, rather than hiding them away in the comments. They are, after all, excellent. According to me at least. And according to several thousand other people too, if their current positions in the Amazon chart are any indication.

I've called this the "excellent eight" but as it happens the top 40 has been subjected to some last minute adjustments on account of a couple of acts not managing to make their work available through the required outlets in time. As a result of this, one of the tracks I didn't consider excellent was replaced by one that I did, so it's actually an "excellent nine" now. Oh well. I'm lucky enough to be able to afford the extra 49p.

49p you say? Don't you mean 79p? Well, maybe. But there's a good chance (I haven't checked) that this extra track is one of the 32 whose price Amazon has dropped this week. Are they supporting the Storm? Who knows, but as they say in retail "every little helps."

Anyway enough of this waffle, here are the tracks I'll be downloading later today, with their artists:

Emily Barker and the Red Clay Halo - Nostalgia.  [listen here] [buy here]

The Lovedays - House of Cards. [listen here] [buy here]

Woodpigeon - ...and as the ship went down, you'd never looked finer. [listen here] [buy here]

Pocket Satellite - Toy Train. [listen here] [buy here]

Olivia Broadfield - Don't Cry. [listen here] [buy here]

Rubika - Robots. [listen here] [buy here]

The Portland Authority - A New Year. [listen here] [buy here]

Penny Black - Green. [listen here] [buy here]

My Luminaries - Parasol. [listen here] [buy here]

Another American Idol disappears without trace

Exactly as I predicted, last week, Lee Dewyze was crowned American Idol 2010, beating Crystal Bowersox into second place.

For me, this year's AI "season" was notable for two things: the paucity of talent in the "top 12" (despite the judges repeating over and over how this was one of their "strongest years ever" it so clearly wasn't true), and how obvious it was from a long way out that the final would be - not quite a repeat exactly; more an echo - of last year's, with a mediocre but popular guy (last year it was Kris... er... what was his name again?) with a so-so voice winning out over a true, unique artist (Adam Lambert).

I don't think the similarities will end with the final. In the same way that Lambert has gone on to have a multi-platinum first album and a sell-out world tour, I predict Crystal's career will go from strength to strength on the back of "losing" one of the biggest talent shows in the world, whereas Dewyze will soon become as forgotten outside the US as whatsisname.

Why is that? Well anyone who watched the final show shouldn't need telling. Lee failed to really deliver on any one of his three songs - even the one that will become his first single now that he's won - appearing nervous and confused for most of his performances which ended up being as dull as ditchwater. Crystal on the other hand nailed every single one of her songs, received raved reviews from the judges (including a standing ovation from Ellen), and lit up the auditorium with some great performances. Still true to herself after all these months, she was an artist when she entered the competition and an artist she will remain.

So why didn't she win? Because the final is not a singing contest, it's a popularity contest. And most of the votes come from tweenie girls. They didn't get behind Adam Lambert last year (even though, even more than Crystal, he was so far ahead of his rival he may as well have been on a different planet) because he's gay, and they didn't get behind Crystal because she's a woman. Listen back to the opening of the Finale show when Ryan Seacrest asks the audience "who's here for Crystal, and who's here for Lee?" The cheers after each question make it sound like Lee fans outnumbered Crystal fans at least 2 to 1. Crazy, but there you go.

There is another, more Machiavellian, explanation that I've been known to proffer on occasion. It depends whether or not you believe the voting is rigged (or ignored). And that is that the producers long ago worked out that having a strong artist come second, and a weaker one winning, means they make more money. The stronger artist will have a career whether they win or not. The weaker NEEDS to be the winner to have a career at all. Simple, albeit cynical, mathematics. And cynicism or not this is now such a well-established pattern as to be as credible as any other explanation.

I should perhaps add one more thing that this year's Idol is notable for. The last appearance by Simon Cowell. I totally agree with the prediction by another blogger I read this week: that his leaving is certain death for American Idol. It will limp on for one more season, shedding its audience throughout the series as they realise the show has lost its edge without Cowell, and the tenth Idol will be the last.

More Than's ALIVE!

(Just in case you were wondering, the title is intended to be a - rather weak, admittedly - pun on the famous line from Flash Gordon uttered by the inimitable Brian Blessed: Gordon's alive!)

Things are shaping up for our live set at this year's Chorlton Players "hotpot" show. This year it's been badged "Pimp My Hotpot" on account of one of the sketches - a hilarious adult take on The Cat in the Hat written by one of the Players, entitled The Pimp in the Hat. We're rehearsing every Monday and Wednesday, and yesterday our rehearsal was graced by a young lady who has volunteered to play a live flute accompaniment to one of my numbers - More Than Just Your Face. Annie has transcribed the piano intro and the oboe sections for flute and the result, which we heard for the first time last night, sounds totally fab.

Can't wait to sing live with that haunting flute as a backdrop!

Storm warning

Recently we found out about the opportunity of a lifetime... which, ironically, we may be JUST too late for.

Storm the Charts is a campaign designed to repeat the success of last Christmas's campaign to get Rage in the Machine to the number 1 chart spot in preference to Simon Cowell's "traditional" X Factor winner, who in recent years has been a shoo-in for the Christmas #1 on account of the cynical and exploitative timing of the show.

Only this time, instead of just the number one, the campaign is trying to take over the entire top 40.

And this time, instead of the profits STILL making their way to Sony BMG (who ironically own the rights to the Rage in the Machine single and therefore still made money on the back of the Christmas campaign), they're choosing unsigned indie bands who have never charted.

Bands, in fact, like Beresford & Wallace.

How cool would that have been? Mere weeks after releasing the album, to have Spin Doctor charting, and downloaded by thousands of people who only a short time ago had never heard of us?

Unfortunately, there is an application deadline for bands wishing to take part of March 23. And in order to apply, our music would have to be already available from iTunes. Even though iTunes is the quickest online retailer at processing new music, they still quote 1-3 weeks as the lead time to load up new stuff, so even if we could get it to them today we'd still only have a slim chance of meeting the deadline, and that's without taking account of the delays introduced by our chosen digital distribution partner.

No, sadly, we're gonna have to take a back seat this time round and miss out on the fun. BUT - if the campaign is successful and captures the UK music-buying public's imagination in the way the organisers hope it will, then there'll almost certainly be another go later. You can bet we'll *definitely* be there next time round.

Surprise early release

Annie was at the peak of production prowess and took no time at all to master her last vocal, recorded on Thursday night, and complete the tweaks to those other couple of tracks we had glitches on. So having allowed ourselves an entire weekend to prepare for release, we were ready by lunchtime.

I pointed out that many people would be working Monday anyway and might not be able to listen right away, so in the end we agreed to steal a march on your expectations and release Weird & Wonderful early. At the moment you can only stream it from one of the websites, but we're busy signing up for iTunes and Amazon distribution, so it'll be available for iPods etc as soon as we can make it happen.

Meanwhile, to listen to all 12 tracks on the new album, you can use the Music Player on the Beresford & Wallace website or if you're on Facebook you can try the music player on our Facebook page.

Weird & Wonderful artwork

As the excitement mounts in the run-up to the release of our second album, one of the MOST exciting parts is the arrival of the cover art, which Natalie volunteered to do. My only involvement was to add the lettering to the final version - and in the very early stages to help develop the idea - and then to (try and) sit back and not nag too much, what with this being her finals year an' all, to get it finished.

And here it is. I love it. It's exactly what I wanted. No, it's *better* than I wanted, because Nat has added her own artistic flair, invention and imagination to the remit and come up with something that exactly captures the essence of "Weird and Wonderful".

Our first album was produced in something like a cottage industry, with me burning CDs and printing off the covers and the infill. It had a definite homespun feel to it, and we posted off physical copies to all our family and mates. Now, only a handful of the original copies remain, and being burnt onto CD-R has meant that some of those copies no longer play. We decided we needed a better, more professional approach this time round.

One big difference that's occurred over the last five years is that iTunes, the iTunes Store, and digital music in general has entered the public consciousness in a way that had really only just got started back in 2005. So for Weird and Wonderful we're going for a digital release, with streaming media on our websites for a casual listen, and paid downloads for those who want a personal copy. Anyone needing to get their hands on a physical disk will still be able to order one, through a collaboration with a site called CDBaby - more details on that once the album is released. At the moment, we still have two songs to record and one or two other small tasks before we can put the album to bed. Little things like deciding on the order of tracks.

Tenth song in the can

Tonight's song - the penultimate one on Annie's sing list - is a pleasant little ditty about the girlfriend of an axe murderer whose head is so messed up she doesn't really know whether he's killed her, or she's killed him.

You begin to see why I picked "Weird & Wonderful" as the title of our second album.

Anyway the interesting thing about this number, for us, is that it's one of the ones that highlighted a slight problem with the way we write songs. Annie gets an idea - it might be a bass line, or a beat, or a melody - and she builds on it until she has a complete tune, which will probably have many of the elements of the final version in terms of the instruments used, etc, and it has a definite melody line, but often will still need some work to polish it into the final version.

At this point she hands it over to me and I give it a listen. Many listens actually - over and over again - which is why I need to be alone for this part, or at least wearing headphones! Eventually the song begins to speak to me, telling me the story it wants the waiting world to hear. All I do is write the words down. Simple really.

But at that stage, we haven't decided who's going to sing it. And there's the rub. Because not only has the tune not been written with one of us in mind, up to now it's not actually been written with either of us in mind. And just occasionally, this has meant that neither of us can sing it. I mean, I'm an OK singer, and Annie has some professional training from her years at drama school, but there's only so far up or down you can make your voice go.

For our first album... well, we were *so excited* to be recording music we just knuckled down and got on with it. And struggled in places. Listening back to that album now, one or two of my tracks are at the limit of my range and sound a bit painful. Definitely wanted to avoid that this time round, and there have been a few tracks in danger of the same problem. This one being the case in point.

Usually, she can solve the problem with a bit of clever transposition. This time round, after half an hour of trying to hit the high notes in the middle eight it became obvious that wasn't going to be enough. But hey, when you're an accomplished musician, that's no problem. After five or ten minutes at the keyboard Annie had rewritten the offending four lines and we were off and recording again.

We're hoping this kind of emergency measure won't be required in the future. With neat biro marks on her keyboard denoting our upper and lower ranges from now on she'll be writing nothing but notes we can reach. The songs might be about murder, but at least they won't sound like they've been murdered.

Progress

iTunes have an offer running from today. "The 12 Days of Christmas" offers a free download every day for... well... you get the idea. So I thought yeah, why not? It's free - what's to complain about? Even if the first track on offer IS by Snow Patrol.

Having subscribed to the email reminders, I get a handy-dandy link to click on. That takes me to a page saying "hang on, we're just loading up iTunes so you can access the iStore."

Now I don't know about you, but whenever there's mention of iTunes I get that watery feeling in my bowels. Earlier versions of this pile of steaming doos used to hang my machine on a regular basis. It's *always* slow, always cumbersome, and the other thing it does nearly every time I use it is tell me there's a new version available, would I like to download it? And then proceeds to fail to download it.

So anyway I ran it. And it told me there's a new version available (9.0.2 or something). With its track record of total fail I replied Nah I'll Leave It Thanks and proceeded to attempt to download my free track.

Network timeout.

I tried again. "This item requires iTunes 9 to download."

You've got to laugh. Even though, every SINGLE time I use iTunes, I'd much rather cry. But, you know, faced with the inevitable, the Zen thing to do is bend with the wind, like the bamboo. Or something. I bent. I downloaded it. HOW big? Ninety-something MEG? Good grief. But hey, the download time was nothing like the install time, and here (finally, I hear you say) we get to the point of this post.

Status: Computing space requirements (a progress bar)
Status: Validating install (another progress bar)

It's a progress bar Jim, but not as we know it. What progress is it measuring? Who knows. How many more stages will there be? Who knows. How long 'til the entire task will be finished? Who, the f***, knows? That progress bar certainly doesn't tell me anything useful, except how far it is away from the next progress bar starting.

Call me old fashioned, but I remember a time when progress bars gave you an indication of... you know... progress. I know! Mad, wasn't it?! If it was half-way across, the job was halfway done. In some rare and wonderful cases, it was even true - ALMOST true - that if it had taken ten minutes to get half way, then there were ten minutes left. No. Hang on. That's false memory talking. Things were never THAT good. Were they? But they were better than this. How many of these damned things am I going to have to sit through?

Can there be anything more satisfying...

...than sitting in one's study while working, and hearing the strains of one of your favourite albums of all time coming up from downstairs, because it's being listened to by your daughters?

Well, I'm sure you have your own list of "most satisfying moments," but this *definitely* qualifies as one of mine.

It's like... passing on the baton of prog rock enjoyment to the next generation. What a pity there are so few contemporary bands with the musical prowess of those great 70s icons to create new stuff that's equally as good.

*waits patiently for the denizens of bothbarson to hotly contest that last point*

That syncing feeling

Woke up to a little message from iTunes to say 8 tunes had not been copied because they couldn't be found.

Which, out of 1930 tunes, isn't a bad hit rate, but it still surprised me. I thought I'd sorted everything out. Turned out to be songs from my old "Caraoke" folders (yes, I know it's spelled karaoke. These songs were for listening to in the car. Geddit?) some of which I'd already spotted had been *moved* into the folders from their original locations, rather than copied. Don't ask me why; I must have been having an off day.

Anyway since the magic of playlists means I no longer need duplicates for the purposes of practising my karaoke warblings while on long drives, I'd decided I could delete the Caraoke folders. All three of them. Which explains the missing eight tunes. Damn.

Luckily they're all songs from compilation albums currently gathering dust in the top room. At some stage I'll need to dig them out and re-rip the missing tracks. For now, the other 1922 will just have to keep me going.

I'm starting to sync

Almost three weeks after I started on this tagging/album art business, I think I'm finally ready to go. To... you know... plug the damned thing in and let it rip.

The last item on the list, and easily the most tedious, was finding art for every single one of the tracks that I'd called "Singles" and Paul had lumped together as "Tunes." Removing the duplicates, listening again to the Tunes I didn't recognise, airbrushing some out of the picture, and deciding whether to go with a grainy scan of the original single's cover, or the album sleeve the track is from, or just some random picture associated with the artist.

But now, it's all done. And I'm syncing fast. Well, as fast as iTunes can manage, which looks like it'll be done sometime in the early hours of tomorrow.

More iTunes madness

When Paul came to stay last year, I took the opportunity to dump his iPod onto my PC. That was 16 MONTHS ago and as yet none of that music has found its way onto mine. Not that I've been doing nothing. It takes a while to listen to 80GB of music and decide whether it's something you'll want to listen to again and, Paul would be the first to admit, he does listen to some weird shit.

Having jettisoned the weirdest of the weird, there's considerably less than 80GB of the original stuff left, but even so what I added to the pile virtually doubled my music collection, and along with the fact that I've bought quite a few new albums recently, I was coming in for some serious nagging (well, exasperated sighs anyway) from some quarters at the fact that *another* car journey was taking place and there was *still* nothing new on the iPod. I'd already ticked the WMA to MP3 conversion box, so I was running out of excuses.

It's been a while since I used iTunes and I soon remembered why. Sure, I'd had some pretty bad experiences with it when I first loaded up the iPod, and since then I've avoided it as much as possible. It didn't help that every time I opened it up it would tell me a newer version was available, and then pretend to download that newer version but never get anywhere.

I decided that upgrade had to be first on the agenda. A newer version *might* be more stable, and if the auto-upgrade wasn't working for some reason, I'd just have to go over there and drag it off the Apple site myself. Installation complete, I set version 8.2.1.6 off on its crawl through my hard drive again, to find all that lovely new stuff from Paul, and those purchases from the last sixteen months.

One of the things I really, really wanted to sort out was the lack of Album Art. I've always had a thing for album covers (I even bought Roger Dean's book ferchrissake), so it was a source of some irritation that almost none of the music I copied over that first time had any art associated with it. I'd done some research and discovered the iTunes Library album art fetching thingy, which looked like an obvious first step since it involved no effort on my part beyond a click or two.

Sadly - a common experience by all accounts - iTunes managed to find less than half the album art I needed. For one thing it's extremely sensitive to naming inconsistencies, and beyond that it simply doesn't have a very extensive collection. So here's where I trip over the first of today's stupid iTunes annoyances. See, being an Apple product, iTunes has to pretend it understands nothing about Windows, or how the Microsoft Media Player rips CDs to your PC. Most CDs come with their album art stored on the disk as JPEG files, and Media Player conveniently copies these to the same folder as the music, and calls the files "album art." That's too subtle for iTunes. It pretends it can't find them. OK, so they're hidden files. Don't get technical on me. If I can see them, so can iTunes.

I reverted to the manual method - dragging the (hidden) Album Art files into iTunes. But what about all those albums from Paul, that I didn't have files for, hidden or otherwise? Two words: Google Images. Just typing the artist and album name into Google Images, in most cases, resulted in several thousand copies of the right picture file being presented for my selection. Brilliant. Brilliant and tedious, but brilliant even so.

Did I say "the first" of the iTunes annoyances? Yes. There's at least one more. Track numbering. iTunes will interpret ID3 tags correctly, and list the tracks in the right order if they're there. If not, tracks are listed alphabetically. But once again iTunes deliberately ignores, or pretends to have no knowledge of, the standard Media Player method of naming the music files it has ripped. "01 First Track Name" "02 Second Track Name" and so on. So even in the absence of correct ID3 tags, there is the smallest CLUE there as to the correct order, and I REALLY didn't want to have to trawl through the majority of my music collection telling iTunes what it should already have been able to work out.

Still, you know, it's not like I've got anything else to do.

Clumps of conversion

Returning to my PC last night after taking Blythe home I was surprised to find the WMA->MP3 conversion process had finished. Well, when I say finished, I mean stopped. The program thought it had reached the end of the list, but it was clear that quite a few files had been skipped.

I sorted the list by file type and removed the successfully-converted MP3 files, which reduced the list size from 2670 to 899. It sounded about right. At the estimated rate of progress I'd expected completion around 8am this morning; that number of files should have taken around 15 hours; and the program had clearly terminated while I'd been out.

I set it running again last night on those 899 files and this morning the conversion had stopped again. This time 199 files had been skipped. I repeated the process and left it running while I took Nikki to work, only to find 49 files still doggedly unconverted on my return. What is this? Some kind of binary chop? No, it seems clear that the freeware conversion tool I'd found has a bug in its list processing code. No matter, I started it off again on the 49, which first reduced to 17 and then to 6 at the fifth attempt. I ran it manually against those, one at a time and finally, shortly after 9am, the whole job was done.

Remember I said WMAs were more space hungry than MP3s? Completing this conversion has freed up 16.4GB space on my hard drive.

I've been converted

Or perhaps, I should say, I'm being converted.

Several years ago when my PC was young, I decided to rip my music collection to it. After all, I reasoned, I spent many of my waking hours in front of the PC, we have no means of playing music in the living room, and the "media centre" idea was beginning to be established as the way to go. Intoxicated by the vastness of the space available to me (I had an almost-empty 250GB disk - luxury!) I chose to rip my collection to the superior, but slightly more space hungry, Windows Media Audio (wma) format, rather than the, perhaps more traditional, MP3.

The more tech-savvy of you will have predicted what comes next, and long-standing readers of this blog will already know.

I bought an iPod.

iPods don't play WMA format music files.

The frustrations of grappling with iTunes, expressed in that blog post linked above, have stayed with me for so long that I've only ever synced it once. That first time. You might even say I'd been traumatised. It did change my behaviour though. As soon as I discovered the WMA restriction I changed my rip options, and have been ripping in MP3 ever since. But still, more than half of my original music collection remained inaccessible, and none of my newer albums, despite having been ripped in the right format, have been synced.

This has long been a source of disappointment to regular travellers, as they discover nothing new on the iPod, but recently came to a head with my purchase of the Best of Nightwish, which both Natalie and Blythe wanted to listen to almost continuously. We even had to resort to the CD player!

Finally reaching the end of Procrastination Road, I sought out a file converter and pointed it at my music collection early this morning. It initially found almost 6,000 files, but after running it for an hour or so I realised it was wasting time analysing the MP3 files to detect that they didn't need converting, so I stopped it and removed everything from the list except WMAs, thereby reducing the number to 2,670 files. A few minutes progress monitoring suggested the conversion process would take almost 48 hours to complete, and when I checked a few minutes ago, this was still true.

You'd have thought with all my experience I'd know better than to use proprietary formats for *anything*. Maybe this will be the final lesson on that subject.

I'd forgotten how good this is

I mentioned that we bought some DVDs and music CDs yesterday. Two CDs to be precise, both by King Crimson. I'm still slowly and almost half-heartedly rebuilding my vinyl collection from the 70s and 80s and I was very pleased to discover both their debut album, the famous In The Court of the Crimson King, and Lizard, in HMV.

I couldn't tell you the last time I listened to ITCOTCK all the way through, but regular readers won't be surprised to read that it was probably "over thirty years" ago. No, seriously, that's just irony talking. I certainly played it at one time while living in Alsager, a period which ended 20 years ago this year, and I may even have played it at some stage while living in the village, but it's probably at least ten years since my turntable was connected up and playable.

And as it says at the top there, I'd forgotten how good the album is. And that is "awesomely good." Both musically and from a personal memory standpoint, this is one of my favourite albums - and favourite bands - of all time. Now if I can only find a copy of Starless and Bible Black...

The Musical Box 2008 - the Trick of the Tail tour - Manchester

The tickets for last night's gig at the Manchester Apollo have been sitting here on my desk under the monitor since early March, heightening the anticipation of the evening. Phil & Vicky came over from Chesterfield, and we'd secured tickets for my daughters too, so we were an excited party of seven in total as we took our seats on row J at around 7.30pm.

I'd been disappointed initially, when I saw the set list, that the band were not playing the whole album, but then I remembered Musical Box's trademark adherence to the absolute letter of the original tour experience, from staging, through slides and effects, music, instruments and, of course, content. This being Genesis' first album of the post-Gabriel era, the tour necessarily relied on a lot of their Gabriel back-catalogue, and so only five of the tracks from Trick of the Tail made an appearance.

The set was cleverly bracketed with the opening and closing tracks from the album - Dance on a Volcano for starters and Los Endos (which was to become Genesis' traditional closing number) to finish, and in between we were treated to a selection of the most mouth-watering goodies from the early 70s.

Following Dance on a Volcano, the band performed a medley from Lamb comprising the title track, Fly on a Windshield and (my personal favourite) Carpet Crawlers. And then, with Denis Gagne doing a passable impersonation of Phil Collins' stage antics, it was time for the Cinema Show.

I'm not sure if it was a problem with where we were sitting, or the staging, or the mix, but this time round (the third time we've seen Musical Box) I found the sound very thin, and many of the vocals overtaken by the instruments. Maybe thirty years of listening to the studio versions has coloured my judgement, but I don't remember this being an issue with earlier gigs.

Wasn't a problem for the next number though - back to Trick for Robbery, Assault and Battery, accompanied by the original film footage on the backdrop, and Denis dressed in the traditional flat cap and overcoat. I switched off after that while they did White Mountain from Trespass. Of all the Gabriel-era albums, Trespass is my least favourite and the least-played by a very long way (I've probably only listened to it 2 or 3 times in total), but it wasn't long before we were treated to a note-perfect rendition of Firth of Fifth, followed in quick succession by two more Trick of the Tail gems: Entangled, and Squonk.

By now we were all well warmed up and ready for the highlight of the evening: the whole of Supper's Ready. Before we came out tonight, I'd passed comment that this would probably be the last time we'd fork out to see Musical Box. We were about six bars into Supper's Ready when I decided that no, if and when they come to Manchester again, we'll be here again. It's such a rare treat to hear Supper's Ready live from beginning to end that I don't want to pass up any chance.

There was just time for the "first ever Genesis single" (as it is often badged in the press) I Know What I Like (in Your Wardrobe) before they hit the roof with the closing number: the aforementioned Los Endos.

We had been expecting both It and Watcher of the Skies as an encore, but they must have been running late, or made a late change to the running order, because Watcher was dropped.

I had been extremely impressed with Denis's drumming during the evening, until Annie revealed that the forum-chatter had given the game away. It's only Phil Collins who can sing and drum, and when Denis walked around the flats in the direction of the drum kit, he never reappeared. A "real" drummer came back on, dressed in identical clothing and with an identical wig and beard a la Collins, and changed back into Denis on the return journey. It was very cleverly done and I didn't have a clue!

All in all a great gig, hugely enjoyed by us all. The chances of a full Genesis line-up touring again any time may be fading into the distance, but while we have Musical Box it (almost) doesn't matter.