Cougar Microbes

A few months ago we ran a competition giving Cougar Microbes readers a free copy of TuneUp to fix their music collection.

We asked the question: If you could rearrange/fix/change any musical moment that has happened in history what would it be?

This was the outstanding in our books by a guy called Blue:

1. Light Aircrafts
Ban them. They took Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, country star Patsy Cline, John Denver, Otis Redding, Big Bopper, half of Lynrd Skynryd, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Ozzy guitarist Randy Rhoads, and Aaliyah to name but a handful. No wonder the tour bus is such a popular transportation option.

2. Finding God
Once the Big Guy gets under an artist’s skin the work tends to suffer. Al Green went from making the sexiest music known to man to making gospel albums known to nobody. P.Diddy protege Mase quit hip-hop for the ministry, and when he came back his skills didn’t. The less said about Bob Dylan‘s born-again albums the better, and just picture Jehovah’s Witness Prince proselytizing door-to-door in purple pumps. Esther (née Madonna) caused quite the mishegas by hopping onto Kabbalah’s New-Age-Judaism bandwagon. And Cat Stevens loved Islam so much he named himself after it when he converted, then quit the music business in 1979. Silly rock stars — you’re supposed to be the ones being worshipped!

3. “Colonel” Tom Parker
Before Suge Knight, Lou Pearlman or even Allen Klein came the “Colonel” – inventor of ruinously exploitative rock management. Getting his hooks into Elvis in 1955, the Dutch con man artfully steered the King away from making music and towards the likes of Clambake, Kissin’ Cousins, Kid Galahad, and about 30 other Hollywood forgettables he made instead of recording or touring for most of the next decade.

4. Electric Violins
Say no more

5. Nearly Every Hip-Hop Video
We get it. Your ride is pimped, your crib is a castle, you sip “Cristal” and have a queue of semi-naked hoes lining up to get into your jacuzzi. Congratulations to a generation of hip-hop video directors for making decadence seem so boring.

6. Braided Goatees
Just grow those chin whiskers out a foot, part in the middle, and weave pube-like braids. Tragically, the resulting blood loss to the head severely lowers IQ levels, resulting in guttural vocals and misspelled band names.

TuneUp are currently hosting a holiday sale so click here to get a 20% discount on “the perfect holiday gift for music lovers”

TRACKS:

Following on from my product test-drive for TuneUp a few weeks ago the San Francisco developers have announced a major development to their magical little tool.

Not only is TuneUp now available for Windows Media Players for anyone who is hostile /allergic/oblvious to Apple‘s attempt at domination of the music software and personal player market. I know a few people who would do anything to avoid Itunes and this solution is perfect for them.

Furthermore the company has also developed on the premise of Tuniverse , to which I alluded to in my review, into Tuniver.se: a one stop location for all your music and social media interactions. So now Itunes and WMP users, on both mac and pc, can enjoy the benefits of a shiny and up to date music library.

TuneUp are giving three Cougar Microbes reader a free copy to the software. All you have to do is answer this question:

If you could rearrange/fix/change any musical moment that has happened in history what would it be?

Answer’s in the comments section, winners will be announced on the May 8th

Here is another “rearranged” track for you:

TRACK:

Florence and The Machine – Dog Days Are Over (Breakage Remix)

Having resisted the temptation to digitalize my collection for a long time (largely due to my investment in thousands of Cd’s, Tapes, Minidisks and vinyl over several years) I was finally thrust into the 21st century when I bought my first old generation ipod.

At the time Itunes did not do fancy things like finding track names or filling in missing album covers. Still I became obsessed with transferring my entire collection on to the magical device whilst spending hours (if not days) filling in missing information. I could honestly write a thesis on iTunes now.

Over the years my collection has grown rapidly and despite a valliant effort the tidiness regime recently began to unravel. Simply put I now had too many songs to have an accurate overview of the missing information and frankly one of the last things I wanted to do after a long day at work is to dissect my entire collection.

I realised I had turned the block when a friend was looking through my collection and commented “I though you were the kind to keep your iTunes in order“. Fortunately I was asked to test drive a piece of software that appealed to my obsession with keeping Itunes in order and could also, potentially, improve my music listening habits helping me rediscover my collection. Having already read about TuneUp I was eager to give it a spin.

After a pretty quick and painless installation the application launches itself side by side with iTunes acting like an added dashboard. After an initial scan of my library I was given the option to drag individual or groups of tracks for TuneUp to process.

Since the application gave me the option to add a ‘cleaned by tune up‘ note to the track’s metadata I decided to set a smart playlist to look for tracks that didn’t mention this phrase. This way I was able to distinguish between tracks I already actioned and those I still needed to run through the application.

Although the manufacturers recommend running 500 songs at a time I often surpassed that processing thousands of tracks in one sessions and though this was sometimes slightly sluggish I suspect this has more to do with ITunes inner workings.

There are also few omissions and tiny mistakes in the catalogue on offer but overall it has to be said I was impressed with the accuracy of results. Not only did the application spot and fix many of my foreign tracks (Italy,Israel, Brazil, Spain etc.) but it also had information for many smaller acts, obscure remixes and albums yet to be released.

The application is bundled with the extra eye-candy they call Tuniverse, a comprehensive resource for the artist I was playing including recent news, biographies and video content. Much like Last.fm there is also a display for upcoming concerts for artists in you like in your area.

In the future I would like to be given the option to select which album a track belongs to (such as in the case of a Greatest Hits Collection where a track may appear on additional releases) but overall TuneUp does an amazing job in fixing your iTunes metadata and guaranteeing it is accurate and up to date.

As my collection continues to grow I’m not sure what I would do without it now.

TRACKS:

Bob Marley – Iron Lion Zion [5 Alive Fugitive Edit]