The Sandlot

We the people fight for our existence
We don't claim to be perfect but we're free
We dream our dreams alone with no resistance
Fadin' like the stars we wish to be- Noel Gallagher


I love music and I love going to concerts. I own over 30GB of music (nearly 9000 songs by more than 150 artists/bands) and have been to more concerts than I can count. Great music, like all great art evokes thought, discussion and emotion on part of the beholder. Like all art though, what is perceived to be "great" is subjective and a matter of opinion, though few bands and songs are universally agreed upon as being great.

To me, one of the truly great bands of this or any generation is Oasis. I was fortunate enough to see them in concert once, at the Air Canada Center in Toronto a couple years ago. They are without a doubt one of the best bands I've ever seen live and their classic songs like Champagne Supernova some how are more awesome live than on CD. You may not remember but I once named Champagne Supernova as the best song of all time and after reviewing that top 50 list it strikes me that 2 years ago I was sort of a moron but I digress...

I have a method for determining a bands greatness. Its relatively simple and genius. Just figure out the percentage of their songs that are good. For example, Oasis has released 7 studio albums to date and several b-sides and other songs, totalling 86 songs (we won't include covers, best of compilations or live/unofficially released songs). Out of those 86 songs, a whopping 73 I consider good. Simple math tells us that 84.8% of their catalogue is comprised of good songs. I would say that any band that tops the 75% barrier qualifies as a great band (60-74% = good etc.) Also a band needs a minimum of 3 albums to qualify for a discussion on greatness.

I make this post because I've been listening to Oasis a lot lately and finally was able to rip the live performance DVD from their latest documentary onto my computer which took place in Manchester in 2005. I have posted my favorite clip below from said performance, the song 'Little by Little', which I also quoted at the top of this post. While I didn't get to see them play this song when I saw them in Toronto it has always been one of my favorites because I love Noel and he's amazing live. Also the crowd reaction to the song is absolutely spine tingling in places. Enjoy.

And we're back. I was without my personal computer for a week because the primary hard drive decided it wanted to crash. Can't really complain though since I've had this beast since mid 2002.

I took it up to J&B computers on Davidson Rd. They're the best. Had them re-install windows on the 80GB hard drive I already had in here which was just used to store my media files, then put in a 160GB hard drive, and while I was at it had them put 1GB of RAM in. They also managed to save a lot of data off the broken 40GB drive. Why not just buy a new computer you might ask? Cause everything I outlined above only cost me $260. I more than doubled my hard drive space and doubled my RAM without having to spend upwards of $800 for a whole new system.

The downside was I did lose a lot of data, like the video I was editing of BF's birthday from 2 years ago. Suffice to say that dream died with my hard drive. Other than that, I nearly have everything set up to how it was pre-crash. Can't get the volume controls on my keyboard to work though.

While I was re-downloading programs I discovered a nice little site. www.oldapps.com. That's how I managed to get the now defunct Musicmatch. It also has every single version of AIM ever. So once I find out from BF which version was the good one that had the best file sharing setup I will download that and let everyone else know which version it is.

So in closing, make sure you back up your files kids. I lucked out given that my music was backed up in 3 separate locations and that J&B was able to save all my photos. Shit can break at any time, so be prepared.