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An occasional blog about populist politics and popular music, not necessarily at the same time. LinksLocal Links My Other Websites Music Politics Others Networking Music DatabaseArtist Search: Website SearchGoogle: Recent Reading
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Monday, August 13, 2018 Music Week
Music: current count 30119 [30076] rated (+43), 325 [337] unrated (-12). Server crashed Thursday and has been down since, so I don't have anywhere to post this. Latest message says: "We are trying to get your server online today. Thank you again for your patience." Evidently it was damaged by a power surge, and it took a couple days for them to get the undamaged servers up. Second message had something about disk drives, suggesting they have some slow and tedious salvage method. Presumably the worst-case scenario is starting again from scratch on a new server -- probably faster, maybe a bit cheaper. Most of the websites are cloned or backed up elsewhere, so I don't expect much permanent loss -- although a couple have been managed to someone else, and I don't know the state of his backups. Reconfiguring all of the domains and accounts (8-10) isn't something I remember how to do, so will be a bit of a slog. Of course, this situation is somewhat worse coming a couple months after my local server crashed, costing me a lot of data loss. I've been able to rebuild my local copies of websites from the server, but differences in software revisions have caused a lot of code to break. I haven't been doing full updates since then, so things have gotten a bit precarious. (Robert Christgau's website is on its own virtual server, so is still up. I updated about 95 files recently, but still have a bunch more to work on before I can do a complete resynch.) I've been taking it easy since the disruption, trying to avoid panic and depression. So far, so good, but I imagine the cumulative weight of all this stress will take a toll. I'm sure not as confident in my mastery of this technology as I thought I was. Meanwhile, been playing music. Continued my scan through my reggae list, especially seeking out albums I previously owned and marked as U in my database. Wound up with just two U records left (both by Big Youth). Decided to play some Jon Hassell after that, starting with two albums I used to own but never got registered in the database, then picked up a couple more that Christgau had liked. Finally, moved on to U-rated rap albums, having a bit less success at finding them (still unrated: M.O.P.'s Handle Ur Bizness [EP], Twice Thou's The Bank Attack, MTV: The First 1000 Years: Hip-Hop. Moving on to the rock lists next. Maybe at some point doing this I'll knock the unrated list down to something I can print out and physically search for. Meanwhile, actually made a dent in the new jazz queue. I haven't been getting much, and most of what's been in the mail recently has September (or later) release dates, so didn't seem like a rush. Also took a look at Dan Phillips, who had sent me a download link for his latest a few months back. I downloaded it, but wound up reviewing it from Napster. Also found it and more on Bandcamp. I didn't go all completist on him, but did find one from 2017 I liked even more than the new one. (His Decaying Orbit, credited to Chicago Edge Ensemble, was also on my 2017 Jazz List.) Other main thing I've been doing has been to collect the political bits from my notebook. I created one book file for 2001-2008 (766k words, 1590 pages), another for 2009-2012 (708k words, 1768 pages), and I've just filled out a third for 2013-2016 (675k words, 1666 pages). Most likely I'll do the same thing for post-2016. At the same time, I've collected various non-music, non-political notes into a sidecar file (currently 324k words, 780 pages): autobiographical bits, notes on friends and family (many deceased), work on the house, computers, cooking, movies and television I've watched, pets, various maladies. Should be useful for the long-procrastinated memoir, but mostly it's gotten me reviewing the late stages of my life. Not sure whether I should be proud of all the work I've put into writing since Laura told me she'd rather I do that than start that home automation business, or ashamed of all the time I've wasted while not making any sort of tangible living. Probably will depend on whether she (or anyone else) can carve all this writing up into several worthwhile books. At some point I'll share these files -- assuming that at some point I get a working server, or come up with some other suitable outlet. PS: Occurs to me that I should make one more pass through the notebook to pick out the music writings that I didn't already stick in to the jazz guide books. Some good material there, especially from the Expert Comments period. Unfortunately, also a lot of lists and statistical analysis that are likely to be of little if any general interest. I wish someone else would take a crack at that, not least because such a person would start with a different vantage point. Also, I already have way too much to work with already. New records rated this week:
Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries rated this week:
Old music rated this week:
Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:
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