Over the past six months, I had been checking out songs from Mnemic. At first, I just liked the one song. Then another. Eventually, I was digging pretty much every song they had. Mnemic, like Meshuggah, needs to be referred to as an "acquired taste", since their sound is quite unusual, even for a metal band. I went ahead and bought both Mechanical Spin Phenomena and The Audio Injected Soul, which are now listed in the Music section of my website. Looking forward to their next release, but it seems they split with their lead singer (just today, as a matter of fact). Currently, I am working on getting into Meshuggah, but that band has quite a few more albums out there. It'll take a while, but I like their songs so far.

In the past, I used Soulseek for music downloads, but today I switched to LimeWire (www.limewire.org). That was a very easy decision to make. LimeWire is so much better than Soulseek, seriously. I had used LimeWire before and this new version (4.10.9) is simply fantastic. It's shareware so it's free, but has a Pro version that you can buy if you want support and other features. The user interface is sweet, downloads are very fast, and I can find songs so much easier than I could on Soulseek. Of course, I still go to Napster to buy any song I plan on keeping long term.

One new one from A-ha, Analogue, and one old "Best Of" collection, Van Halen's The Best Of Both Worlds. I was never a big Van Halen fan when I was younger, but I used to own 5150 and enjoyed it alot. I kept hearing all these good old VH songs on the radio and realized I needed to get this CD. Haven't even heard a single song from the new A-ha disc, but since they are one of my favorite bands, I'll always buy their new stuff.

Once again, my split personality got in a fight and I ended up buying some new metal and some old 80’s music. This time its Raunchy’s two CDs, Velvet Noise and Confusion Bay, along with Duran Duran’s Greatest Hits; one band from Scandinavia that few people probably have heard about and one popular band that everyone has heard about. I’ve already listed these in the Music section of my site, along with quite a few MP3 sample uploads. I’ve also just begun to finally add my own notes to each CD, but that will take awhile to finish.

I’ve tried several places for buying individual songs online, but I’m actually going to go with an old name, Napster (www.napster.com). I like their interface and the additional information provided about the artists. For finding certain songs which aren’t too popular, I still use Soulseek (www.slsknet.org), but when it comes time to buy them outright, I use Napster. Paying $.99 for a song that I’m going to play over and over again in my Jeep, on my computer, and on my MP3 player sounds fair to me.

Just finished listing all my CDs in the Music section of my website. I’m also trying to make short MP3 samples from some of my Favorites Songs. That’ll take a while. I’ve got a lot of songs which I don’t have the CD for anymore (usually because the rest of the CD was terrible). You pay around $15 thinking you were going to get a disc full of good songs . . . but you only got one! When it comes to those types of individual songs, I’m just going to buy them online for $.99 each. The oddest song that I haven’t been able to find yet (either to download for free or to buy) is one from House Of Lords (yeah, late 80’s hair metal band). I might just have to buy the whole CD for that one song.

Anyone who’s looking for a good music database program should check out OrangeCD (www.firetongue.com). It runs on your home PC, but it also allows you to publish your CD collection to the Web. I’m using it to flesh out the “Music” section of my site.