Steak of the Onion Address
I haven't been writing much of late because I've been working on my iPod, going through everything to make sure that there are no more missing tracks (or, harder to distinguish, replacement tracks with reversed right and left stereo channels that came about because somebody - I'm not going to mention who, but he's usually a bit of a stickler for these things - forgot to reset CDex after correcting some of the issues with Pino Donaggio's Carrie), and also using the "sort album" tags to re-order stuff to better conform to how I'd look for them (i.e. Jurassic Park, The Lost World and Jurassic Park III, or First Blood, Rambo: First Blood Part II and Rambo III, or Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade now appear in sequence together on the album list, the 'Score (007)' genre lists the films now in chronological order instead of alphabetically, that sort of thing).
Eventually, when I'm satisfied that just about everything is in good order, I'm going to attack the "sort artist," "sort album artist" and "sort composer" fields so that the artist can display first name then last while still being properly listed by last name (i.e. "Michael Small" will show up on the screen, but come up under "S," not "M"). While sorting fields existed in previous versions of iTunes, only the previous to current version actually allowed one to edit them in batch. I've also added a few genres, which are my primary means of album navigation; one of these was 'Score (Shakespeare),' which actually ended up being a nifty category; William Walton, Miklós Rózsa, Patrick Doyle, John Scott, Michael Nyman, Dimitri Shostakovich, Ennio Morricone are among the composers represented.
While this task may sound rather tedious, I have to admit that I've been rather enjoying it because it does mean immersing myself in my music collection yet again with a greater diversity than normal since I'm moving from title to title owing as to the next task, not what it enters my head to listen to. That said, iTunes for Windows still handles like a stoned, dyslexic, three-legged mule.I am taking a break from fixing my iPod up tonight, however, because I have to prepare the storyboards for Friday's shoot. This shouldn't take too long as there are only five set-ups, but it has to get done and I don't want to start up working on the iPod because I won't stop for hours (I did rip my two new Intrada discs, Charles Fox's 9 To 5 and David Newman's Little Monsters to it, but that's all for tonight). I just hope that, as four of them are exteriors, the A.M. showers predicted for that day are over by the P.M... although I wouldn't mind having the street all wet for the shots themselves.I was wondering why I hadn't received a new bill for my car insurance. Wonder turned quickly to worry as none materialized in my mailbox, so I checked online. I had, apparently, accidentally enrolled in a monthly recurring payment plan, and I had therefore paid my bill at the end of November. I had in the past avoided paying in this manner because my insurance rate was a large enough figure that I wanted to have control over when I sent the payment. The amount of my bill is so reduced now that it isn't worth bothering to not let the bill recharge automatically at this point. So it all worked out in the end, but it was a rare lapse in attention on my part that allowed it to occur in the first place.
The 9 To 5 album is great fun; I love the "Violet Steals the Body" cue! I wonder if I shouldn't make a sort of 'zany animation' CD that would allow me to throw on some Carl Stalling, Milt Franklyn, William Lava, Bruce Broughton and possibly throw on some Guy Gross cues from the "Revenging Angel" episode of Farscape... and, of course, the grotesque perversion of that Disney sound heard in "Violet's Fantasy" from this score.
Okay... maybe not.
During the organization of my collection, I realized that even though I received Sudden Impact not long after its release, I had never actually listened to it all the way through (the Dirty Harry movies are also now much more conveniently grouped together). I took it for a spin last night... this Dirty Harry mix I have planned after the January release of The Dead Pool is going to be fracking awesome.