Horrible Sinus Infection

What a horrible week it has been.  It just started out with some headaches and general stuffiness and by the end of the week, I couldn’t eat for 3 days due to the intense pain in my teeth and upper jaw.

Today was the first that I’ve been able to eat in the past 4 days… I’ve been sure not to push it, but it seems as though the anti-biotic is finally working.  I never knew a sinus infection could be so debilitating.

Additional Music Library Details

Now that I’m switching over to MediaMonkey as my media manager, I have some cool new reporting tools.  I’ve decided to post a track listing spreadsheet.  This lists all of the tracks that I have (all 37,000+ of them), it will help me in determining some duplicates that I have as well as some holes in the collection.  I’m sure that I’ve missed a few CDs when ripping to the library, so this will help point this out.

Music Library Spreadsheet

Music Library Finally Complete

After much work, I’ve finally completed the digitizing of my music library.  I had much more of this completed in the past; however, a bad external hard drive ruined quite a bit of my collection.  So I’ve spent considerable time making sure my complete collection was digitized and available.  Here are the basic stats:

Totals
Type Library Played
Artists 2362 6
Albums 3381 3
Genres 74 1
Years 55 1
Playlists 0 0
Tracks 38135 3
Length (h:mm:ss) 2901:04:03 0:09:16
File size 229.27 GB 12.74 MB

Averages
Type Library Played
Tracks per Artist 16.2 83.7
Tracks per Album 11.3 11.3
Tracks per Genre 511.1 17620
Tracks per Year 314.3 2
Bitrate (kbps) 193 192
Year 1982 1977
Tracks played per day 3
Rating *** **"
Length (h:mm:ss) 0:05:34 0:03:05
File size 6.16 MB 4.25 MB

Top 10 Artists
Tracks Artist Length File size
372 Joe Satriani 31:18:57 2.73 GB
342 Rush 31:22:20 2.55 GB
296 Cheap Trick 20:13:40 1.63 GB
291 Steve Vai 19:01:35 1.53 GB
248 Gary Moore 21:58:53 1.74 GB
243 Styx 18:02:16 1.45 GB
227 AC/DC 17:26:05 1.39 GB
209 Judas Priest 16:13:46 1.26 GB
207 Paul McCartney 11:38:35 963.56 MB
203 Sting 15:12:33 1.22 GB

You can ignore the played statistics.  This report was generated through Media Monkey and it doesn’t include my statistics from playing on my iPod.  There is probably a way to do this; however, I don’t have the time or desire to try to figure this out right now.

Candlebox – Into the Sun

After having listened to this CD nearly 100 times in the past two months, I figured it was time to give it an official review.  I’ve always been a bit of a Candlebox fan, not exceedingly so, but I like their music.  I must say that this CD has been in solid rotation for over two months now with no signs of slowing.  I’ve even gone as far as saying that it may be the best thing put out in 2008.

It is by far my favorite Candlebox CD.  Kevin Martin’s voice has never been better, at times slipping into Perry-esque tones (“Lover Come Back to Me”) while still being able to shout as in the first track “Stand”.  I don’t understand why Candlebox are lumped in with the “grunge” genre – other than the era in which they came onto the scene.  They are a decent, if maybe a little dark, rock band.

There are numerous highlights on this CD, the song I play the most is “Consider Us” – so much so that my daughter and son know all of the lyrics to the song.  Maybe a little dark, but hauntingly good.  It’s interesting to hear your kids sing:  “What do we see before we die, is it beautiful? …” ending with “How would you feel if we were lying?”.  Very well sung, produced and performed.

The first track “Stand” is the rocker on the CD.  I love it and I think Martin shows his voice off quite a bit on this one.  The song is even a bit Zepplin-esque at spots, not an unusual comparison considering the strength of his voice.  They get back into Zepplin mode by the fifth track with “Underneath It All”.

The only track that I don’t get is the second track “Bitches Brewin’”.  Just seems out of place on this CD.  Everything else is 4 to 5 stars.

Everywhere I look online, they give this CD horrible reviews… I most definitely disagree and think that Candelbox – Into The Sun is a must-have for any rock music lover.  If not the best of 2008, definitely in the top 5 releases of the year.