Before leaving work yesterday, I turned on iTunes on my computer with the foolish expectation that when I got home it would be ready to play music right away, without me having to start it up (yes, I am that much of an anal retentive). The problem seems to have been that all my music was on my external hard drive, so the computer went back to the default folder. When I got home and plugged it in to the mac, iTunes started loading the library from the external HD again, but when it had finished, the main library was littered with those little exclamation marks that mean that it can't find where the songs are located. I flicked through and worked out about half were lost.
I wondered what to do and after a bit of searching on the web, saved my library file, deleted all the songs and then reloaded the library file. This time, it said something along the lines of "import successful, but some files could not be found". I looked down and the library had been reduced to about 11,000 tracks, about a third of what there should be. I searched the external HD in a panic, but there were about the right number of files there, so, for some reason, iTunes just can't find them...which is bloody annoying.
The only solution I have found, has meant deleting all my songs from iTunes, and then just dragging and dropping the iTunes library folder in iTunes again. It's worked and the library is back to an (unnecessary) 30,000 odd songs, but it has also deleted all my playlists and all the info about playtimes etc. Really, really annoying. I now have to go through and re-list about 200 odd album playlists. I could of course just not do it, but I wouldn't be able to look at the iTunes window without sweating or something else OCD.
I still have no idea why it may have happened in the first place, so I have no idea what to do to prevent it happening in the future? Anyone experienced anything similar? Probably...
Last night we went to see Gilles Peterson at the Liquid Room. It was the third anniversary and they had a sick lineup including Jazztronik, Soil Pimp Sessions, José James, some of the cats from Kyoto Jazz Massive and Raphael Sebbag from U.F.O. It started with a DJ throwdown with Jazztronik, Kyoto Jazz Massive, the Soil Pimp Sesssions MC and then Raphael Sebbag. They all played some sick Jazz and house tunes, but for some (inexplicable) reason, the crowd weren't too into it, or at least weren't dancing much until Raphael Sebbag started to play some salsa. Then J.A.M. did a special live set with José James singing and scatting about with them. They made a really great, tight group - I really enjoyed it and the crowd seemed to get more into it. Next Gilles Peterson did a DJ set - a really sick set technically apart from anything else - I must find out what his first tune was...sounded a little like Bernard Herrmann, but I don't think it was. Then this new group called Kingdom Afrocks did a live set. I really enjoyed their set too, again a really tight band, with a sick keyboard player and brass section. Great stuff. The only problem for me was that the batteries in my flash died before I could use it and the Liquid Room staff wouldn't let me go upstairs and get my other one. Still took some photos, but not sure how well they are going to turn out. Hopefully the event will be broadcast tonight 4am-6am on J-Wave in Tokyo and then (I hope) on his Worldwide show in the UK next week. Click the flyer above to see some of the better photos I took.
After visiting the vaguely disturbing Yasukuni Shrine last week, my Dad and I wandered over the road to the Nippon Budokan to have a look at the cherry blossoms that were in tarty bloom. We decided to go inside to take a look at the venue (one of Japan's most prestigious, where the Beatles - amongst many others - played), where I had never been before. Just inside the massive stone walls, there were thousands of people, mainly mid 20s/30s men, queueing up. Figuring it might be some kind of heavy metal concert (there was a lot of black clothing on display), we had a wander to try to work out what was going on. It turns out that it was a concert by Yukari Tamura, a (possibly) famous anime & video game voice actress and Akiba-kei pop-star. The queue was not to meet her, nor to get into her concert, nor even to buy concert tickets, but just to buy the official concert merchandise, including cuddly rabbits, doilies and photos. Not having a video camera, I put my camera on rapid photo mode, and made this little animation of the (really a little scarily long) queue. The music you can hear is from her album. When you're listening, bear in mind that she is 32 years old. Any geeks / Members of her Mellow Pretty Fanclub /Rabid Otaku people who may want to just download it can do so here, otherwise, click the picture below.
I took a lot of photos with my Holga at my friend Pete's band's gigs. "The Grimace" were one of the most promising up-and-coming bands in Tokyo until the the malevolent influence of the Japanese wife of the band's artistic powerhouse and the banging-pots-and-pans-together musical influence of another member's vegetarian photographer wife put an end to their dreams. They have now parted ways. These shots are not especially clear, nor especially good, but I quite like the gritty atmosphere that the slightly distorted Holga plastic lens lends the shots. I think they work relatively well as shots from a (really) small venue. As ever, click the photo to see the whole gallery.
