John's Blog

For the longest time I had been keeping my iPod "pure" and only putting "legit" songs that I bought from the iTunes store, or ones that I had transferred over from CD's that I had bought. But my idealism melted away as I kept walking by the shelves of stuff I had grabbed from the original Napster, back in it's heyday before they shut it down. I had always shared a lot of files, and got plenty in return, but when the "end was near" I did go on a feeding frenzy and download a boatload of songs, sorta like a fat man at an "all you can eat" buffet. Thinking about the cost of "re-buying" them (since I did buy many on vinyl) got me over my idealism.

For a brief period of time, I also used the other file sharing services, before they started to degenerate into suckyness thanks to people (RIAA special agents?) who would sabotage downloading efforts by putting mislabeled files into the pool. Although I had thought I had purged most of them, I was shocked to hear a song I love on the radio that for years I had thought was by Butthole Surfers. I now see that Detatchable Penis is actually by the group King Missile. After changing my ID tag on the iPod, I sampled the iTunes offerings for this group. What a disappointment; "Detachable Penis" may be their best work, although "Pain Series (1) Hot Coffee" brought a smile to my face, but isn't hardly worth the $0.99 that it would cost. Finally, a group that is even too weird for me!