Reading multiple stories about how AI demand has made hard drive, GPU and RAM prices all skyrocket, I decided to pull the trigger and upgrade my laptop to something that will handle video editing better than the one I’ve currently got. This is an M2 Macbook Air that I bought three years ago, and I made the mistake of only speccing 8GB of RAM. It’s been a solid machine, but it has a few quirks I dislike (mainly software-related) and it just chugs when I’m working with heavy video files. I specced out a new M5 Air with 16GB of RAM last week, and with a trade in on my current machine I should save about 1/3 of the total cost. However, the order is currently stuck in processing—what was supposed to be in stock locally is now estimated to be here between May 15-19.
Interestingly, when I look at the stats for IK here, my daily numbers have jumped up to about four times where they used to be a year ago, and when I compare that with the Scout journal, those numbers have dropped. My guess (and I need to do a lot more digging in my server logs) is that I’m getting hit by the AI bots, who are scraping the site for content. I would have expected that the Scout journal would be hit just as much, but apparently not.
I’ve had the drumbeat and bassline of Angel by Massive Attack stuck in my head for the last three days. I was fortunate enough to see them live in 2019 during the Mezzanine 30th Anniversary tour, and this was more powerful in person than the recorded version, if that’s possible. Being able to see Horace Andy and Liz Fraser sing their tracks live was incredible.
I’ve had a number of different songs buzzing around my skull over the last couple of weeks, but this one flew in and stuck itself directly into my cerebral cortex.
Back In The Day, one of the first of a handful of MP3s I yoinked from Napster was a copy of this song. It still rips.
Heavy Metal Suicide, by the humorously named Ringo Deathstarr. Their music spans several genres, from shoegaze to throwback alternative metal—this track being a good example of the latter. Their albums have been hit or miss for me, but each one has contained at least two or three good tracks, making for a good back catalog. See also: Guilt, Stare at the Sun, and Two Girls.
Apparently The Kids have found a couple of classic rock songs to replace the guitar freakout in Free Bird to accompany their Insta reels: I’ve heard Iris by the Goo Goo Dolls repeatedly to describe Gen-X related topics they have no firsthand experience with. Now it’s stuck in my head. I didn’t like this band when they were big, and I was sick of this song when it was popular. Goddamn it. [Cues up a Spotify playlist to wash the dirt out of my ears]
This week’s brainpan echo: Fu Manchu, Mongoose. I have a deep love for stoner rock: bluesy, distorted, repeating riffs with nonsense lyrics and a driving beat. Fu Manchu has been around for decades and brings the thunder on this track; their killer-to-filler ratio is much less than a QOTSA or Clutch, but when it works, it works.
She Drives Me Crazy, by the Fine Young Cannibals. This song has taken up residence in my brain after I listened to a podcast about the quick life and death of this band, who made two albums and split up in the late 80’s. I wasn’t a huge fan back in the day but now I have more respect for the production and craft, and it’s catchy as hell. Bonus trivia: the guitarist and bassist were both from The English Beat, another favorite band of mine from the early 80’s.
I’ve had Falling Hard by the Crystal Method going through my head for the past couple of days. This was released 17 years ago, in a time period where a lot of electronic acts were teaming up with vocalists. I just love the groove of this song. Apparently one half of TCM retired a number of years ago and it’s just one guy now. I haven’t really dug into their stuff lately, but what I have heard is OK, I guess. I miss the Big Beat artists of that time period, and the first two TCM albums are desert island discs for me.
This week’s earworm: another oldie, this time from an electroclash group called Ladytron, called Destroy Everything You Touch. I found this on an MP3blog back in the day and loved it; for some reason it snuck into my brain and has been on repeat ever since. I don’t know if Ladytron ever had another hit after this, but they’re still around.
I was a big RHCP fan back in the late 80’s, when they still had the original lineup, moving into their first album after the death of Hillel Slovak. At Lollapalooza in 1990, I bought an overpriced RHCP hat that never fit my head correctly, and which I later sold—an expensive lesson I took to heart. My taste for the band tailed off pretty quickly after that, to the point of indifference and outright distaste. They’ve had some highlights in the intervening years, however, and this song was one of my favorites when it was released almost a decade ago. It’s gotten stuck in my head this week, and it makes a good companion for gray fall days: it’s propulsive, but (to my ears) melancholy, almost sad, especially if you ignore the lyrics. When this band hits on all cylinders, they are still amazing.
Lights Out, by Royal Blood. It’s amazing how much great music two guys with a bass guitar and drums can make. When I first heard this track I thought there must’ve been at least three people in the band, but he’s using a combination of pedals to both mimic a guitar and bass and widen out the sound. And the drumming is really tasty. Their first two albums are killer, and then they changed their sound up a little bit, leaning into disco, which I didn’t enjoy as much.