the internet is full of music

so today was the day that i really got hooked on rhapsody. i spent four hours with his enormous spreadsheet full of new wave, post punk, early hip hop, AOR, and assorted early '80s genres (tu-tone, rockabilly revival, industrial, early goth, baggy?), which I was trying to create a timeline from, and just kept running into roadblocks. what DOES style council sound like? why does everyone love paul weller, he's such a Who ass kissing louse it seems (and hey, I like the Jam and the mod revival in general) and well, why didn't Daniel Miller do more with the Normal? Not everything was answered, but my spiffy and great subscription to Rhapsody kept the tunes flowing all day ...

(early Simple Minds, not that interesting; Thin Lizzy, god i love them; Killing Joke, why didn't i hear this before?; the Undertones, still can't dig their last record; Nick Lowe, weirdly before his time and overshadowed by Costello who dammit, I just can't dig wholly)

...and you know what? ya, you know this, but it is easy and painless to toss out the album format altogether. the whole concept of association and networking information is vastly different (and yes, partially controlled by jackass administrative/marketing/evil barons) and less constraining than the horrific record shop experience (I wonder what the gender breakdown is of who prefers shopping online/listening online to buying in stores...anyone know?)...

then there's AMG, who ya, dude, FUCKED UP with their redesign, but not just for the heavy interface - who searches under such ideas as 'mood' there are moods like 'at work' which isn't a mood at all, and 'driving at night' which probably doesn't mean that you're using AMG . not only is it presumptious, but it's wrong-headed in its entire anticipation of why people use the site. the network paths are unsystematic and it seems that the back end of it is a mystery (and i write for them no less), making the wise and wonderful dozen or so full-timers strange overlords not only of reference information but emotional flow of music, which seems like a lofty and absurd thing to take upon yrself (or rather, have some dumb marketing execs tell you is 'the way of the future' to quote My Life With the Thrill Kill...). apparently there are endless blog entries about their misstep so i'll stop.