50 quid bloke

Homeward Bound, Simon and Garfunkel (Sitting in a railway station etc etc)
Early Morning Rain, Gordon Lightfoot. (I’m a long way from home, miss my loved ones so..but got drunk and missed the plane)
Leaving on a jet plane, John Denver
There must be millions out there. Well at least another one.
[random thought while trying to learn ‘Early Morning Rain’ on guitar, and realising the lyrics are actually quite rubbish]

I have generally been trying to get everyone to read James Surowiecki’s The Wisdom of Crowds. In particular, I have been suggesting people buy it on iTMS and download it onto their iPods.
I mentioned this to one colleague at work who I knew received a 40Gb iPod for Xmas.
She said almost with a hint of mourning in her voice: ‘Oh, my iPod…’
A tale of woe follows about the fact that her glorious shiny eight month old iPod only had eight albums on it: and she’d sort of got fed up of listening to them over and over again. Too difficult. Too busy with the kids. Too little time.
Now, I had already given her my iPod starter pack: 20 CD Roms with MP3s burnt onto them. And, I know I should have walked away. However, I found myself for a second time last night, plugging someone else’s iPod into my PC and handing over all my musical worldly goods. I like to think she will be wowed by my amazing ‘eclectic’ taste, but I suggest she’ll just be slightly miffed that I’ve only got three Oasis tracks on there.
By co-incidence, stumbled across this thread on I Love Music, from someone who has done something similar, but had a slightly more violent reaction than myself

- So I had 100 gbs of (fairly hard to find) music that I’ve slowly collected over the past four years at college. The other day a friend of mine asked to copy it to an external drive and I agreed. Now I feel sick to my stomach and I can’t seem to stop hating my friend. Is this simple greed?

- This is why socialism will never work.

- Next time you see them, I bet they tell you that they think you’ve got shit taste. In fact, now they probably hate you.

- since i transfered everything to a external hd, i’ve had several people copy all 200 gigs to their own drives. i never felt the slightest twinge of guilt — these people are friends, and we’ve always shared music. guy’s just a wee bit selfish, methinks.

Something old: Have finally taken delivery of Wilco’s A Ghost Is Born, about a decade after everyone else. Will squelch it onto the iPod over the weekend.
Something new: Interpol’s Antics has arrived. This had better be good.
Something borrowed: Reminds me that I’ve forgotten to go and grab a load of CDs off our arts editor.
Something blue: Having rekindled my flame for Elvis Costello, I feel the need to buy the remastered and expanded version of Almost Blue, which I always loved.

The Scotsman has discovered blogging, and for some peculiar reason makes me their sample music blog. Here’s the entry: which immediately makes me seem like a very sad old bloke.

Name: The Fifty Quid Bloke (www.50quid.org)
What is it? Calls himself the saviour of the music industry, based on newspaper stories claiming fortysomethings now buy more albums than teens.
Sample: “If you’re going to set up a band, make sure it’s got a name no-one will forget. This is clearly something you don’t need to tell Lesbians on Ecstasy. Their first album is out at the end of October, I’m sure a concerted effort by a few thousand people could get them to the top of the download chart.”

See - write in haste, repent at leisure. Meanwhile, for anyone who’s turned up looking for more LoE coverage. Sorry. Not that sort of site.