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Day Two Hundred Sixty Nine (Year Two)

My plan for tonight's post is to clear up a few of the loose ends that have been hanging out there for the last couple of days, and to address one issue in particular that has sprung from one of those things.  I'll start with the fun stuff first.

There were 24 CDs in the box I was left in charge of from SL's brother.  I have now sorted them into two distinct piles: one that I'm planning on adding to the ever-expanding collection of music in my house, and one that may end up making a home at Half Price Books.  First, the list of stuff I'm planning to keep:

Strange & Beautiful - Aqualung
The Best Of Joe Cocker - Joe Cocker
Duran Duran - Duran Duran
Smell The Color 9 - Chris Rice
The Future Embrace - Billy Corgan
Final Straw - Snow Patrol
Welcome To Winners - Lowgold
The Best Of: - Blur
Diamonds On The Inside - Ben Harper
Fair Warning - Van Halen
Early Days, Volume One - Led Zeppelin

All solid choices, I think... and now for the second list

Now 3
Now 5
Now 29
Confessions Of A Teenage Drama Queen (soundtrack)
A Little More Personal (Raw) - Lindsay Lohan
Flap Your Wings - The Choir
Noel - Josh Groban
Bleed Like Me* - Garbage
Black & Blue/Millennium/Selftitled - Backstreet Boys
No Strings Attached/Selftitled - NSYNC

So, yeah, the second list seems a lot more questionable... don't you think?  And just for the record, the only reason the Garbage record made the second list as opposed to the first is because I own it already, and don't see a reason why I ought to hang onto two copies.  The Now stuff might be interesting to cherry-pick for select songs, and somehow I can see myself at least giving the LiLo disc a cursory listen out of nothing more than sheer morbid curiosity.

The other thing I did tonight was check out the Alexi Liaho DVDs.  They're intriguing.  There's a LOT of information on them, and a lot of technical examples and explanations for things.  That's the part of it that I really liked. 

Here's the part that bugged me.  As someone who is picking things up again, and someone who is wanting to get back into teaching at some point, it puzzles me that all of the musical examples were in tunings that were not standard tuning.  Why does it bug me?  Because I really feel like new players ought to know where things sit in everyday, standard tuning before venturing out into tougher areas.  I can understand if someone likes Children of Bodom, and wants to learn their music, but I feel like the way to fully understand the sonic changes that Alexi makes, I feel like they need to get at least a few of the basics down just like the rest of us have.

That's all for tonight.  Tomorrow and Thursday will have a full "Red House" update, and get me back to where I was heading earlier in the week. 

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