January 2005
What Do I Have on My Rio Karma?
As many of you already know, my wife Bigfoot gave me a Rio Karma
for my birthday. It's a 20G digital music player. While it is not
as thin and trendy as the iPod, it does all the same things, and
has a couple tricks of its own. I'm totally happy with this bad
boy, and I've already loaded 3,400 songs on it. Depending on file
sizes, I should have room for forty-eight to forty-nine hundred
songs. I will not be there any time soon.
The Rio's Music Manager software allows me to look at my collection
in whole new way - by the numbers. Most of the statistics come as
no surprise to me, it's just that I've always been too lazy to index
all those CD's. Now, I know what kind of a music owner I am.
Top Representation:
Steely Dan. With a whopping 127 songs, the Dan leads the pack. Their
last two albums are not in the collection because they are terrible.
All I have is their recordings (proper albums and studio tracks)
from the 70's, and a live CD from the 1993 reunion tour.
Trailing close behind is Stereolab at 106. There is a very good
chance that their total may surpass the Dan in the next year because
I have a couple more albums to buy.
Longest Song:
"A Long Day" by the Polyphonic Spree. However, it's 36
minutes and 30 seconds of mostly nothing.
Longest Proper Song:
"My Favorite Things" by John Coltrane from the album "Afro
Blue Impressions". It is 21 minutes and 11 seconds long.
Shortest Song:
This is dumb because half of my CD's have dumb intro-'songs' coming
from all over the place.
Shortest Non-Intro Song:
"Her Majesty" by the Beatles and "Avalanche Rock"
by the Avalaches. Both songs come in at a miniscule 23 seconds,
and neither are intros.
Most Records from One Artist/Band:
Again, this is a close race between Steely Dan and Stereolab, and
it's basically a tie. I have eight unique CD's from each band, but
three more from Steely Dan's demo reel. These should not count because
no one other than me wants to hear them. The extra album I have
from Stereolab is their BBC Sessions, which is totally cool. That
makes them the winner.
Missing Bands:
The Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd.
- PF - In high school, I managed to buy every Pink Floyd LP from
"Piper at the Gates of Dawn" to "The Final Cut".
They are all in West Virginia being listened to by a good friend
who has a decent record player. I'm a jerk because other than
Ummagumma and Wish You Were Here, I have NO PF on CD. God only
knows how that happened.
- The Stones - Back in the day, I owned twelve or so Stones records
- real LP's. They are currently at my friend's place in West Virginia.
I'm as Stones CD deficient as I am with the Pink Floyd. There
are plenty of reasons for this LP-CD gap, but it pretty much comes
down to me being lazy, cheap, and easily distracted.
In the end, I'm very thankful that my beautiful wife gave me the
Rio Karma. She's the super best wife ever.
NOTE: Godzilla would now like to get married or acquire
a serious long-term girlfriend because he wants an iPod.
