Category: #Music

My Top 14 Albums!

IMG_4453This little Top album meme is shamelessly nicked from other sources, such as Facebook posts, still – I enjoyed making up the list and listening to a lot of music to make up my mind 🙂

  • Alannah Myles – Alannah Myles – The very first CD I bought back in the day when they were still new.
  • Albert King with Stevie Ray Vaughan – in Session – Blues, say no more.
  • Amy Winehouse – Paradiso – Always good for a drinking session (sic).
  • Clanad – The ultimate collection – This one got me through some very hard times back in the early 90s.
  • Dinah Washington Finest Hour – Classic.
  • Earth and Fire – The Singles – These guys are the alternate Abba – a little more raw.
  • Huey Lewis and the News – Sports – The very first tape album I bought, and not regretted a single minute of listening to 🙂
  • Imelda May – Love Tattoo – I got engaged and married with “Falling In Love” playing on a loop in my head!
  • Jeff Wayne – War Of The Worlds (1985) – Say no more.
  • Mike Oldfield – Amarok – Love this – few words, but sets your imagination going.
  • Postmodern Jukebox – Squad Goals – PMJ take a normal song a fuck with it to transform it into a masterpiece – this is their most recent album, and one of their best!
  • Robert Schumann – The classical selection – Yes, it’s not Mozart – think I’ve grown out of my Mozart days!
  • Sky – Five Live – Sky – those drugged up hippies armed with the most amazing pieces of music I’ve ever heard – Live is always better.
  • The Very Best of Nina Simone – Always good drinking music 🙂

… And that’s my 14 – spread over 30 years of collecting music… There are so many more artists in the collection, this is a small slice of my personal history!

Some more Post Modern Jukebox…

I’ve posted a few odd songs from PMJ in the past, so here is a pick of the recent best of PMJ – Enjoy 🙂

You Give Love A Bad Name – Vintage Blues – Style Bon Jovi Cover ft. Jennie Lena

Black Hole Sun – Postmodern Jukebox Vintage Cover ft. Haley Reinhart

Stressed Out – Postmodern Jukebox Twenty One Pilots Cover ft. Puddles Pity Party (Sad Clown)

Ex’s and Oh’s – Vintage ’30s Jazz Elle King Cover ft. Lisa Gary

Mad World – Vintage Vaudeville – Style Cover ft. Puddles Pity Party & Haley Reinhart

.m3u playlists and Winamp…

winampRemember WinAmp?

Do you still use WinAmp?

Do you have a load of favoured, lovingly built .m3u playlists?

Would you like the files copied to another folder, without having do them manually one by one, to play on another device?

If the answer to all of the above is yes (This means you’re old!), look no further. Below is some batch file code in Windows which will allow you to do exactly that. Run it from the command line with the single parameter of the playlist.mu3 filename (Filename cannot contain spaces).

When run the batch file will create a folder in the current location named after the .m3u file, go through the .m3u file, then copy all of the tracks to the destination folder for you – from there all you need to do is reorganise them to your own preferences – you could use DBPowerAmp to convert the formats, and Mp3Tag to do the filenames / ID3 tags 🙂

I’ve recently used this to extract my playlists from my PC, copying the files, then setting the ID3 tags with Mp3Tag as a compilation, then shoving over to my iPad with CopyTrans Manager.

Have fun with the code, feel free to use and modify, however you are forbidden in using it in any form of commercial project without significant modification. If you do find the code handy, please comment, and link back here!


@echo off

if "%1"=="" goto NoFilename

if exist "%1" (goto continue) else (goto FileDoesntExist)

:continue

echo Extracting filenames from %1

find /V "#" %1 > tempfileextract.txt

set DestTemp=%1
set Dest=%DestTemp:~0,-4%

mkdir %dest%

for /f "delims=" %%a in (tempfileextract.txt) do (

echo Processing %cd%\%%a
copy "%cd%\%%a" %dest% >nul

)

goto end

:NoFilename
echo No Filenname specified
goto end

:FileDoesntExist
echo Cannot open %1
goto end

:end
echo.
echo Cleaning up.
if exist tempfileextract.txt del tempfileextract.txt
echo.
echo Done.

Wintergatan – Marble Machine

I was sucked into the YouTube Vortex the other day, and stumbled upon this gem from Wintergatan… This is simply amazing, and in this day and age where the fine level craftsman is something of a myth, even more amazing. Apparently this machine uses somewhere in the region of 2000 marbles (Although they look like steel ball-bearings to me), and is entirely hand cranked… What kind of madmen made this – Wintergatan madmen!

Enjoy 🙂

After watching this, I went further and watched some more Wintergatan… Whilst they looks like hippies given the IKEA make-over, they make some shit hot instrumental music – highly recommended 🙂

Another amazing performance from Postmodern Jukebox!

Their most recent video upload – Same Old Love – Vintage New Orleans Selena Gomez Cover featuring Brielle Von Hugel. I love this style of music, and PMJ have performed this piece flawlessly – awesome stuff 🙂 Again, I can’t wait to go see them in England in just under a week from now!

Talking of PMJ, there have been some recent posts from Robyn Adele Anderson, during some filming with the group. Robyn is one of the most versatile, quick and fun singers I’ve ever had the pleasure of listening to – can’t wait for those to be released!

Amazing Music from Postmodern Jukebox.

As Postmodern Jukebox would say “Just PMJ and Chill”.

Postmodern Jukebox is an amazing collection of artists which vary seemingly daily, lead by the amazing Scott Bradlee who invented the concept. Scott and the artists who make up PMJ take existing music to places it was never designed to go.

I’m going to be fortunate enough to go see them live in the UK, around two weeks from now, and can hardly wait! Rather than waffle on about PMJ, I’ll embed a few of my very favourite PMJ tracks below:

Featuring the peerless talent of Morgan James, “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World” – I was in a branch of Curys (UK Electronic Retailer) in 2015, and accidentally hooked up to the in-store stereo system, and broadcast this… lol 🙂

Next up, featuring the amazing versatile Robyn Adele Anderson is “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun”, but nothing like you’ve ever heard it before.

Next here is Haley Reinhart with “Opps!… I did it again!”, in the style of Marilyn Monroe!

Finall, an instrumental of the Game Of Thrones theme, featuring the man with infinite sax skills – Dave Koz!

If you’re still here after watching the vids, here are a couple of PMJ links:

Their main site, http://www.postmodernjukebox.com

And the PMJ YouTube channel

Enjoy! 🙂