Mixed Bizness
Hello little fella. You've changed my life.
For my 30th birthday this past January, M gave me one of the best (and coolest) presents I've ever received: that nifty little device you see above called Squeezebox.
Basically, this shiny little thing connects to our computer over our wireless network and allows us to access and play ALL the music on our hard drives (all 100 gigs of it...no...I am not kidding...) regardless of file type, location, etc. through our stereo.
I cannot overstate how amazing this is. 100 gigs is a LOT of music, yo, and it's very hard to manage it all. It takes time to burn, label, and archive all the live stuff we have onto CDs (we're both really anal about how this is done, as I'm sure you can imagine, so we're really slow at doing it...I have hundreds of CDs that I haven't labeled yet and there's just so much music we haven't even attempted to burn). There are shows that I've wanted to listen to for years that I can't because they're not on a CD or in MP3 format for my (also overflowing) iPod. Now we can (and do!) listen to whatever the heck we want. And since I've already ripped a lot of our CDs onto the computer for my iPod, it's totally cut back on the time we have to spend searching through the massive binders of CDs we brought with us. (Yes, we brought ALL our CDs with us...they took me 4 days to pack. I kid you not.)
It also plays podcasts and internet radio, which has been super-cool (I highly recommend the awesome mix of funk, rap, and old-school hip hop on WeFunk radio from Montreal) and we've actually mixed up our standard Sunday morning newspaper music (the Dead) to include some great stuff from nugs.net.
So today I was working from home and we turned the Squeezebox on "random" to see what it would spit out. First song...Stevie Wonder...ass-shakingly fantastic. And then, out of 100 gigs of music, the next song the thing picks is...more Stevie. Heh. It got a lot more random (and fun) from there on out though. I especially liked the old school/new school Space > Triple Wide and the 36 minute LMLYP from Ween, which pretty much encapsulates everything I love about that band in one dirty, dirty song.
Ultimately, the Random feature made for a pretty cool setlist. (And it was MUCH better than the shitty dance music that's been blasting through Marketing in the office these days.)
...read on to see what we listened to today...
Stevie Wonder: Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I'm Yours from Signed, Sealed And Delivered
Stevie Wonder: Living For The City from Innervisions
Grateful Dead: Dark Star from Winterland Arena 2-24-74
Phish: Llama from Drum Logos, Fukuoaka Japan 6-14-00
Stereolab: Three-Dee Melodie from Mars Audiac Quartet
Les Claypool: Highball with the Devil from Tipitina's 5-4-04
Phish: The Lizards from Deer Creek 8-13-96
moe.: Spine Of A Dog from L
Phish: Down With Disease from Worcester 11-28-98
Phish: Birds Of A Feather from Portland 7-15-98
moe.: Sweet Emotion from Stubbs 11-10-00
Jurassic 5: Break from Power In Numbers
Phil and Friends with Trey and Page: Alabama Getaway from The Warfield, 4-15-99
Grateful Dead: Loser from Cornell 5-8-77
The Slip: Soft Machine from Main Hall, Montreal, QC 3-2-06
Project Logic featuring DJ Logic: Ron's House from Great American Music Hall 11-09-00
Tea Leaf Green: Harvest Time from Moe's Alley 12-15-05
Grateful Dead: Space from Oakland Coliseum 12-28-88
Umphrey's McGee: The Triple Wide from Murat Egyptian Room 2-26-05
Ween: LMLYP from Live At Stubb's
Grateful Dead: Here Comes Sunshine from Boston Music Hall 11-30-73
The Jayhawks: A Break In The Clouds from Smile
Phish: Foam from The Keswick 11-25-92
Brain Damaged Eggmen: I Am the Walrus from Jam Cruise 2006
Widespread Panic: Rock from Backyard, Bee Cave, TX 7-20-02
Tea Leaf Green: Planet Of Green Love from Moe's Alley 12-15-05
Galactic: Tippi Toes from Jam Cruise 2005
Rufus Wainwright: 11:11 from Want One
Tea Leaf Green: Panspermic De-evolution from Cafe-Club Fais Do-Do 10-21-05
Talking Heads: What A Day That Was from Stop Making Sense
Grateful Dead: Let it Grow from Winterland Arena 2-24-74
Phish: My Old Home Place from Deer Creek 7-21-03
Medeski, Martin, and Wood: Sasa from End Of The World Party (Just In Case)
Funkadelic: Let's Make It Last from Cosmic Slop
Beck: Tropicalia from Mutations
Trey and friends: Speech from the 2002 Jammys
...and then I had to jump on a call. Which was fitting, as the last words from Trey's speech are "Stop. This. Shit. and give us back our Phish!" Indeed.