Erik Novales

On Sirius, why is Lithium (the ’90s rock channel) so terrible in comparison to the excellent First Wave channel? I listen to both regularly, and I’m still hearing unusual or rarely-heard tracks on First Wave. It’s great. On the other hand, on Lithium, I’m guaranteed to hear a steady diet of the same Soundgarden, Alice [...]

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I’ve made a few posts in the past about the ongoing death of CDs, and, after some haphazard Googling following a bout of watching ‘90s music videos, dug up some news that hits close to home. A music store where I spent a lot of time in college, CD World, recently closed both of its [...]

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I happened to be browsing through Amazon and eBay the other day, and got to thinking about the CD single format. I used to be quite the avid collector of these back in the late 90′s and earlier this decade — you could often find hidden gems among the b-sides, and I just liked the [...]

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Last night I saw Matthew Sweet play at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano. He’s on a mini-tour to promote his new album (out since a few days ago), which I picked up but haven’t listened to yet. The show was OK — heavily weighted towards the new album, which I am cautiously optimistic [...]

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After finishing my CD ripping project, one of the first things I considered was, "How should I back this stuff up?" The last thing I want to have happen is for my hard drive to fail, necessitating a repeat of this epic project. My brother had suggested just using another hard drive or some sort [...]

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I’m pretty much done with ripping my audio CD collection to my computer — I just have a couple of stragglers (lost, then later found in long-disused CD carrying cases) left to deal with. The final count wound up being approximately 900 CDs, with 16 cases where I couldn’t get a clean read of an [...]

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I mentioned earlier that I was ripping my entire audio CD collection to my computer for ease of use. Initially, I was getting the back covers out by sticking my fingertips underneath the edge of the “tray area” (the part with the eponymous jewel), and then wiggling the tray to the side to dislodge one [...]

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Last night we went to see Supergrass in concert, which was a decent show. Standing near us was a guy wearing a promo T-shirt for a game — I had the same shirt, from an E3 several years ago. The game was "Seed," and was apparently shut down a few months after its release. As [...]

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Oasis frontman links videogames to knife violence: "If kids are sitting up all night smoking super skunk [cannabis] and they come so desensitised to crime because they’re playing these videogames, it’s really, really scary." * "sudden expertism" being a bit of Ticket lingo describing people who insist that they are an authority on any subject [...]

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My brother recently got me a free subscription to Paste Magazine, a “music, film, and culture” magazine, with the “damning with faint praise” comment of, “Well, I like the music sampler CD that comes with each issue.” I have now received two issues of this magazine, and am prepared to pass judgment. The content of [...]

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