My stats are going to be weird this week, I have more than 300 new tracks. I guess the seeds for this new music week were sown about a month ago, when I bought a set of CDs with the best 100 works of Johann Sebastian Bach. I read Gödel, Escher, Bach (by Douglas R. Hofstadter) a couple of years ago, but it's not until now, as I'm three-quarters of the way through Le Ton beau de Marot, that I finally decide to listen to some Bach. But alas, my DVD drive went on the blink, and I was only able to rip three of the 6 CDs, and that with some audible errors in the resulting music files.

A couple of weeks ago, my Mac wouldn't wake up one morning, so I took it in to be fixed, and an excruciating week later I had it back with a new DVD drive and a new hard drive. So I could at last rip the other few disks, though I haven't done them all yet.

Then last Saturday I was in neighbouring France so I went into a shopping centre in search of Sarah Bettens' new album, Shine, knowing that it had already been released in France but I'd have to wait until October 19 to get it in Switzerland. As luck would have it, this supermarket had no music stores, I couldn't only look for it in the music section of Migros (yeah, they're taking over France as well!) They didn't have it, but they did have a cheap CD of Comprend Qui Peut, so I bought that, knowing that Boby Lapointe sings very silly songs.

A few days later, the iTunes Music Store added some K's Choice albums, including their live album which I didn't have. Perhaps this was in preparation for releasing Shine. Anyway, I bough the live album, this will prepare me for seeing Sarah Bettens in concert.

Then I discovered that there were several Jonathan Coulton tracks which had somehow escaped my attention, including, but not limited to, his Ze Frank songs. I bought them all, and while browsing JoCo's website I found a link to Brad Sucks and downloaded all his music. Also, somewhere along the line I finally got around to converting the Zunior FLAC sampler to Apple Lossless.

On Thursday night (late-night shopping), I went to fnac in the hope that somehow they'd have Shine a day early. I ended up buying a set of the best 100 songs by Serge Gainsbourg. It was going to have to happen eventually... I have the impression that every francophone is familiar with his songs, so I should be too. Anyway I liked the cover of La Javanaise that the guy who I mention in way too many journal entries whom I'm not going to link here did at his concert.

When I got home I decided that if I was going to familiarise myself with Gainsbourg, I should also listen to Alain Souchon. He is, after all, one of the inspirations for the guy I'm not going to mention, according to an interview I read. So I bought an album of his on iTunes.

Later that same night, I noticed, thanks to Lastfm, that Tom Smith has a whole lot more songs than just PC99, which I had on the Technobabble album. Indeed, he has a lot of tracks for free download. So I downloaded them. This also lead me to discover FuMP, where many other silly songs can be downloaded for free. So I got some of those.

The release date of Shine came and even nine whole hours after midnight (yeah, I'm impatient) there was still nothing on iTunes. So I had a look at the forums on Sarah's website and somebody mentioned that her brother Woodface had a new album out. Woohoo! So I bought that.

I decided to go to another concert of the guy I'm not going to mention, and while looking at other concerts at the same venue, I found Chanson Plus Bifluorée. Silly songs galore! And what's more, their 47-track album De concert et d'imprévu was only 30 francs on iTunes. I listened to the preview of Grammaire song and I was sold.

Yesterday I didn't have time to look for Shine because I was at a festival in Morges all day, but I did notice that there's a CD shop at the train station whihc is open on Sunday (open on Sunday, in Geneva! Can you believe it?) so I'm about to go there. I'm not too hopeful though... their website says Shine won't be out until November 2. As if this were Belgium. It looks like this week will be the substitute-for-Shine week, and maybe next week will be the Shine week.

Edit 24/10: The mythical open-on-Sundays CD shop had disappeared when I went to look for it. I'm not sure exactly where it is any more. But according to the Scream Team mailing:

In Switzerland, Shine might already be in the shops as no official release date was announced and the CDs have been shipped to Switzerland early this week.

Take your top 20 artists. For each of these artists, collect the top 5 similar artists. The resulting number of unique artists is your eclectic score. If the score is small (extreme = 5) your musical preferences are very limited, and if it is large (larger than 80, extreme = 100), then you have an eclectic musical preference. You can compute your own score at http://anthony.liekens.net/pub/scripts/last.fm/eclectic.php

My eclectic score is currently



The 72 related artists for my profile are 3 Doors Down, Acceptance, Anberlin (3), Armor for Sleep (2), Audio Adrenaline (5), Beatbox Giant Productions, LLC, Boston, Building 429, Caedmon's Call, Catch 22, Chip Davis, Chris Tomlin (2), Copeland (2), Cute Is What We Aim For, David Arkenstone, David Crowder Band, David Lanz, Delirious?, Eagles, Fall Out Boy (2), Five Iron Frenzy, Foreigner, George W. Bush, George Winston, Goo Goo Dolls (2), Hillsong, Hoobastank, Jars of Clay, Jeremy Camp (2), Jonezetta, Kids in the Way, Kutless (2), Lifehouse, Lovedrug, Mae (3), Matchbox Twenty, Matt Redman (2), Motion City Soundtrack (3), Mustard Plug, Newsboys (3), Nobody Likes Onions, PAX217, Panic! At the Disco, Plain White T's, REO Speedwagon, Reel Big Fish, Relient K, Sanctus Real (2), Saturday Night Live, Seventh Day Slumber, Shane & Shane, Something Corporate, Straylight Run, Styx, Sugarcult, Switchfoot, Tait, Taking Back Sunday (2), The Academy Is... (2), The All-American Rejects (3), The Ataris, The Early November, The Insyderz (2), The O.C. Supertones, The Starting Line (2), The W's, Third Day (2), Vertical Horizon, Yanni, Yellowcard, Ze Frank, dc Talk

Interesting that Audio Adrenaline came up 5 times in my similar artists. And where did Yanni come from? LOL!