Last year the SXSW people put mp3s up of some of the bands that were performing. (Whoever submitted on I guess). So I went through the list and picked ones that were from Seattle or from bands whose name sounded familiar for some reason. I don't know, 15 or so songs.

They did it again this year so I decided I would go through them, listen to a little bit of each one, and download the ones that grabbed me. Five days and 156 downloads later I finally finished. I even skipped some of the genres like "experimental", and "hip hop" though all the ones I skipped were just a fraction of the songs. Maybe 75-80% of the bands had an mp3 you could download.

Apparently now "folk" can be combined with any genre with (folk-punk) or without (folkadelica) a hyphen. There are lots of other cool, new genres including "death country" and, my favorite, neo-krautrock minimalism.

So I'm waiting at the bus stop this morning. At first I'm the only one, but then some smoking guy shows up. Anyway, we're waiting and the bus is a little late (a real shocker, I know), but it shows up. The traffic is bad so the bus has to stop a little ways up the street from the actual stop. (It's the 46th and Aurora stop.) The smoking guy and I look at the bus, then we look at the stoplight, then the bus. The bus is at that magical point where you really can't decide if you should walk up and get on or wait for it to come to you. Sort of a Metro Lagrange point.

We waited.

So my backpack (actully more than one of them) is still giving my left ar and hand fits. I wear it for a couple hours or so and my left shoulder and elbow really start to hurt and my left hand gets numb. I'm thinking about getting a waist pack and see how that works. The main problem is they're about half the size (or less) of my backpack. That may be a good thing since I probably carry too much crap anyway.

I decided to make a user account on the forum for these webcomics I read. One of them (Scary Go Round) is, I think, the best one I read. Maybe it's the best one altogether. Anyway, one of the character's phone's ringtone was the first few words to a Sisters of Mercy song's chorus, and for some reason I felt compelled to comment about it. I bought the record it was on way back when when it came out (I don't know, '88 maybe? Wait Amazon says '90.) Of course somebody beat me too it. Oh well.

I bought, I think, 4 records total back then (instead of cassettes). Floodland by the Sisters of Mercy, Green Thoughts by the Smithereens, and two soundtracks. One was "Salvation" which I got for some New Order songs--mostly Skullcrusher. The other I think was "Modern Girls" for the Depeche Mode and Jesus and Mary Chain tracks. I never saw either of the movies. I had a thing for getting soundtracks to movies that I never saw because I thought the songs would be good. Often the movies were terrible, and my friends thought I was nuts. Some of them were really good though: Married to the Mob, for example. Terrible movie but great soundtrack.

I suppose I should have put something here earlier. Oh well. I found out today that there was a Hum reunion concert last year--not that I was really going to go to Chicago to see it in any case. I missed seeing them twice in Seattle.

I wonder if the lead singer has gone back to teaching history?