Every year I make an effort to wade through the 1,000 or so songs that comprise the SXSW MP3 showcase that is offered up before the festivities in Austin begin. It’s a worthwhile, if sometimes tedious, task that has introduced me to bands that I wouldn’t have discovered otherwise.
I go at the process in fits and spurts, aided immensely by iTunes and the following AppleScript (launched by FastScripts), which allows me to quickly can songs (usually by speed/death metal bands with names like “Hammerstrike” and “Ogg the Slayer,” as well as overly earnest solo males) whose first 10 seconds convince me that my time would be better spent elsewhere:
tell application "iTunes"
set curr_rating to the rating of the current track as text
set curr_track to the name of the current track
set curr_artist to the artist of the current track
set curr_dur to the duration of the current track
set curr_dbid to the database ID of the current track
end tell
set keep_song to display dialog "Keep \"" & curr_track & "\" by " & curr_artist & "?" buttons {"Yes", "Yes, and skip to end", "No"} default button 3
if button returned of keep_song is "No" then
tell application "iTunes"
set rating of every track of playlist 1 whose database ID is curr_dbid to 20 as number
set played date of every track of playlist 1 whose database ID is curr_dbid to current date
set enabled of every track of playlist 1 whose database ID is curr_dbid to false
if the database ID of the current track is curr_dbid then
set player position to (curr_dur - 1)
end if
end tell
end if
if button returned of keep_song is "Yes, and skip to end" then
tell application "iTunes"
set played date of every track of playlist 1 whose database ID is curr_dbid to current date
if the database ID of the current track is curr_dbid then
set player position to (curr_dur - 1)
end if
end tell
end if
Songs that are worth visiting again get 2-4 stars, while the rest slowly get culled or rated as they come up in future playings. Of the 1,000 songs, perhaps 10-15% really stick.
In the five years that I’ve been doing this experiment, I’ve been reluctant to hand out the coveted five star rating. “Unless” by Outrageous Cherry got it back in 2005, but it’s an honor only to be bestowed on the most perfect of songs.
I’m a bit behind on the process — I just finished 2009’s batch — but I am happy to announce that another five-star song has been found. It’s called “Punch and Judy” (video) and is by the British Band Little Thief. Like so many of these bands that I find, their website and MySpace page is woefully sparse and out-of-date. Perhaps it was just their fate to get together long enough to put out some truly wonderful songs before disappearing back into the flow of daily life, unsigned and largely undiscovered.
This impromptu performance on the London Tube is worth three minutes of your time and is a beautiful moment by a band whose joy in making music is quite apparent.
