The band in Heaven, They play my favorite song

I'm starting to feel a little overwhelmed at the prospect of trying to make a top whatever list for 2004. There has been a ton of great music released this year, and I just don't have enough listening hours to do it all justice. I've probably acquired 40 2004 releases so far, including the new Nick Cave double album (available on Emusic, check it out). I've also got 4 more on my list to download from Musicnet, including Dogs Die in Hot Cars, The Fiery Furnaces, Rilo Kiley, and Doug Gillard. I'm off all next week, so hopefully I can get caught up.

I'm really starting to appreciate the Musicnet subscription. For an extra $8.95 a month on top of an AOL account, you can download from a catalog nearly as extensive as iTunes, and listen to them on the same computer as much as you want. There are some downsides, inexplicably, sometimes one or more songs from a CD won't be available, and I hate the fact that it doesn't include a track number, or list them in the library in track number order, which makes making the proper album playlist tedious. Still, I get to hear a lot of stuff I wouldn't have taken a chance on if I was buying discs semi-blind, and it's handy when I get the hankering to hear something I don't want or can't afford in my permanent collection.

I'm starting to seriously hanker after an iPod, especially since my big multi-disc player at work is going wacko. It apparently overheats and starts jumping all over the disc, used to be after 3 CDs, then one, and this morning after being off all night it did it midway the first CD. I'll have to see about getting it fixed, fortunately I can ship stuff easily from the office. If I have to listen to CDs one at a time, or rip them to the hard drive while it's being repaired, wouldn't it make more sense to 'pod them in the first place? If I'd been smart, I would have just spent the extra money in the first place, and not bought the changer.

More later, including my feeble attempt to explain why Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is a wonderful book everyone should read.