No gods, no kings, no billionaires
The new iPods go up to 60GB, have better battery life (up to 15 hours), and have a colour screen for showing off your photo collection. They plug into TVs, too, which is highly nifty, and possibly more of a killer feature than it sounds at first.
Still no radio, though.
Sarah McLachlan is amazing live. Her voice is steady, strong, and full of emotion. She sent shivers up my spine with damn near every song.
The show was tight and well-rehearsed. On the one hand, this left little room for spontaneity, on the other hand it was polished to perfection, and made a beautiful showcase for Sarah’s songs. Where we were sitting (middle of the front row of the second balcony–great view), the sound was a little hollow, and the drums were very prominent in the mix, but that hardly distracted from a wonderful gig.
Set list:
(Encore:)
iPod, iPod, iPod, yada yada. They’re shiny and all, but until they come with an FM radio, experience shows that if I had one, it would just end up gathering dust in its cradle.
The new iRiver H340, now… that’s a different question. 40GB of hard disk joy. FM radio, and the ability to record radio broadcasts. Built-in MP3 encoder, so you can record from other line-in sources, too. 16 Hours of battery life. 2″ Colour screen, and it also acts as a picture viewer. Nifty.
Okay, so it doesn’t integrate with iTunes, and it doesn’t support AAC, but my music collection is MP3 all the way, baby. And seeing as it plugs into my PC as an external hard drive, how hard can it be to knock together a little app to rip through my iTunes config files and recreate my playlists in Winamp playlist format?
Have I mentioned recently that my birthday and Christmas are just round the corner?
(It would have been fun to have been the first to come up with the “I me a River” title, but Ed Hawco beat me to it by a good year and a half.)
The Barenaked Ladies are going to be back in the UK at the end of November to play a few gigs. They’re even playing the Carling Academy in Glasgow on November 30th–my birthday. Yay!
The only problem is that we’ll be in California that week.
Speaking as someone who missed their UK tour earlier this year, I can only say: COCK.
Aw, man. I bought Steve Winwood’s latest album About Time earlier this evening. Laid back funkiness with a generous helping of mellow Latin rhythms. This is one to enjoy late in the evening, with the lights turned low, and a glass of your favourite special reserve to hand (mine’s a single malt, thanks).
The last track, “Silvia (Who is she?)”, kicks all kinds of chilled out ass. Close your eyes, and crank it up loud, or get the cans out to spare the neighbours. Mighty. Simply mighty.
Out of the five last CDs I’ve bought or wanted to buy, how many could I get at the iTunes Music Store (UK)? Nil.
I guess I’m not mainstream enough.