Thursday, 16 November 2006

Stiltskin

I am an inveterate weeder, everyone knows this about me. It helped enormously when it came to moving across the Atlantic because I had to weed everything I own down to just a few boxes of books and a suitcase full of clothes. Whenever I have perpetrated a crime against clutter my friend Ree will say to me,
'Oh I wish you'd come and sort out my stuff,' but she wouldn't really, because I would do it, I'd go and sort anyone's clutter, but no-one really wants that to happen. It makes Kevin nervous and I can understand that even though I've never thrown out or recycled anything without showing it to him first.

Now this character flaw of mine should be compatible with the music system we have in this house. All of our music is on a central server and there is a kind of terminal in each room that we play it from. All I have to do is browse the database and find the artist or album or track that I want to hear. Very slick. The system is called Slim Server and the terminal is called Squeezebox and Kevin writes some of the code for it.

In the morning, we are awoken by Squeezebox which selects random tracks and turns on at the time set. I think I'm correct in saying that Kevin wrote the alarm function. I am always already awake when the alarm goes off, I preempt it, if the alarm goes off at 7.30 I will be awake by 7.28, I don't know how that works, but it works.

So what's the problem? Well, Kevin and I have creative differences, different approaches to the music system database. I don't know if I mentioned this, but I like to weed. I would just have music on there that we like, and by we I mean me really.
Now in the first place, Kevin has far wider tastes in music than I and I mean far wider. But as well as that, he has a sort of music library thing going on. He likes, within reason, the idea of anyone being able to browse our music collection and I can certainly respect that ideal. Obviously there are limits to his tolerance. No-one wants BS on their music database.

Somehow, Stiltskin has escaped our system. Yes, Stiltskin. And so I know for sure that I wasn't woken by them this morning and yet inexplicably, as I lay in bed, one of the tracks from their album 'Inside' was running through my head. It has haunted me all morning, it won't bloody well go away.

Stiltskin were an Edinburgh band who had a number one single at some point in the 90's with a track that was the background to a Levis (I think, memory faltering, so please correct me) ad. It was an amazing track and an amazing album. And that was that - until now. They are either about to release or have just released a new single. But I had to Google them to find that out, so that doesn't explain why 'Illusion' is in my head suddenly. And where is my Stiltskin album? What happened to it, it would have escaped even my weeding, although maybe not the outside weeding, where one of my kids comes along and says,
'Oh, can I borrow this?' where 'borrow' = half inch.

Oh well. The answer will come to me no doubt, unlike the album.
And the pic, well I just 'borrowed' it from some bloke's Flickr site.

5 comments:

Sleepy said...

You are doing that freaky shit again...
Inside by Stiltskin was one of the CD singles I ripped onto the Mac and is now on my ipod, only 2 weeks ago.
I was convinced I had the album but it too, has gone walkabout.

Have to say that I'm with Kev on having ALL your music on the system. I'm now up to 4000 and something on the ipod.
Including the classical stuff, folk stuff and all my world music.
If someone says,'Oh, I've never heard Russian folk tunes or Christy Moore', I love to be able to say, 'Got it on my ipod, you got a lead for your stereo?'.
Not a black cat-er thing, just to be able to share.

Schneewittchen said...

That is freaky, hmmm....

I think that's Kev's scenario too, tho we don't have any Ashlee Simpson or Britney or that kind of shite.

Sleepy said...

Don't know who Ashlee Simpson is!!
(Is that bad?)

Only have the one Britney, 'One More Time' tune... The video sold it I'm afraid!

Anonymous said...

I wonder how many songs I'm up to on my iPod. My other vice is burning mp3 files onto a cd that I can play in my car. I've not yet made the perfect cd though. I always find myself skipping songs, they just aren't good driving songs. And NEVER do Enya in the car, it would be too easy to fall asleep after a late night of work and an early day of class.

I think by now, I've got way too much stuff and you'd take a gas can and a match to my "stuff" before you'd start weeding out.

Sleepy said...

ree.. I know what you mean! I am on a quest for the perfect 'mix' CD, as well as the ultimate 'on the go' list for the ipod.
While I'm sat in front of the computer I think Ooooh, that's a good tune. Only when I'm stood at a bus stop in the pissing rain do I think "Feeling Hot Hot Hot" may not have been an ideal choice.