Musings in Search of a Muse

Last night I purchased a couple new songs from iTunes and noticed something unexpected when I synched the iPod ... some songs that were already on the iPod updated themselves and the available free space decreased with each update. My first thought was Hey! I added artwork to those tunes! Well, I just finished taking off all the user-added album art and will synch again before I go to bed. Hopefully I'll see that it increases the free space on the iPod.


New Music from iTunes

I bought The Undisputed Truth's "Smiling Faces Sometimes" (The Best of Undisputed Truth - Smiling Faces) after thinking about it for a month or so because I was in the mood for some new music and it makes a nice compliment to the tunes I have from Traffic and the other '60s/'70s stuff I have. Parts of it are as good as I remember them to be from when I last heard it in my youth. It will fit well into my R&B playlist.

Purchase of Charlie Byrd's rendition of "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)" from Byrd by the Sea was something of a whim. It's not nearly as good as the 30-second sample makes it out to be, but it's still nice as a light Jazz piece. Not something I'd intentionally sit and listen to, but as a filler in the Jazz playlist or in a dinner music compilation it's a fine fit. Really the only bad thing about it is that there are times you can't tell that it's a cover of the Beatles original. The melody just disappears when the various instruments all take solos at the same time.

With all this in mind, which one is the Song of the Day? "Dear Mr. Fantasy (Stereo Version)" by Traffic from the album Feelin' Alright: The Very Best of Traffic. Okay, that's a switcheroo, but it was one of the best songs that I listened to today and hadn't already been the SOD. I wanted to bring up "Blue Collar" by B.T.O. again, but that really wouldn't be fair.

But since I bought two tracks, let's have a second SOD: "Stealin'" by Uriah Heep (from 20th Century Masters - The Millennium Collection: The Best of Uriah Heep). Like "Mr. Fantasy" and "Smiling Faces" this one fits nicely into the collection of music I have from that era but is still gutsy enough to compete with more modern tunes for space on the iPod and in my regular listening rotation.