One of my peeves that you don't care about, is how Spotify 'helpfully' changes the track title on songs.

In my old age there's apparently no limit to my OCD when it comes to my music library. When I did "files in iTunes" like an animal, I carefully curated all the metadata and it was a music library of fucking amazement. My last.fm listening history stats bore that out.

Then I started streaming music like all the kids and it's been mostly fantastic. Trying to explain to Kevin Spencer aged 18 that this little black piece of glass in my hand has access to the entire world's music collection would result in utter disbelief.

But I digress.

So yeah, Spotify like to mostly add things like "Remastered 2014 Version" to song titles. Which I detest. Or as is the case with Tears For Fears' The Hurting album, rename Pale Shelter to "Pale Shelter – 2nd Single Version". Because reasons.

Good lord man, why do you even care?

Any last.fm'er will tell you that because the song title is different, it will be counted as a completely different song. And lo over the course of my streaming life, no end of tracks have been miscounted. And I has a sad. And other last.fm'ers on the forums also have sads about this. We've been teased about "fixes" forthcoming and when I asked again about that plan, got an answer I liked.

last.fm will implement a fix

This will be best fixed with adding new track-level scrobble corrections, once that's implemented later in the year. It looks bad now because we can't make changes the corrections dataset until the new scrobble db is deployed, but once we're able to add new track corrections / redirections to the site, this problem should be greatly reduced.

And I has a happy. I like happy.

No, you shouldn't be wearing flip flops.

Do Dr Martens make any, you didn't ask. No they don't and sandals aren't a thing going anywhere near my feet.

Springtime in Arizona. The Palo Verde tree in my front garden is blossoming nicely.

Now, I can't say what it is, but something that grows here my body doesn't like. I managed to avoid allergies growing up (or hay fever as it was known in England). But my eyes and nose run like mad in the spring here. And as I get older it seems to get slightly worse. Thankfully there are pills for all this that work like magic.

They say don't ever meet your heros and while Morrissey was far from that, his words and his voice featured heavily on the soundtrack of my youth. I had posters and t-shirts of The Smiths and their albums were always on constant rotation.

So it's all a bit disappointing isn't it when you find out that those you once held in high regard have, quite frankly, disappeared up their own asshole.

From Stereogum.

And as far as racism goes, the modern Loony Left seem to forget that Hitler was Left wing! But of course, we are all called racist now, and the word is actually meaningless. It’s just a way of changing the subject. When someone calls you racist, what they are saying is “Hmm, you actually have a point, and I don’t know how to answer it, so perhaps if I distract you by calling you a bigot we’ll both forget how enlightened your comment was.”

(tip of the hat to my old mucker @jaseyhall for the racist uncle reference)

I'm a bit partial to abstract vanishing points. I like to sip my coffee in the morning and browse the Flickr pool of the same name.

By now you've probably seen the new Solo trailer. The internet sums it up best as this movie is probably going to be terrible but DONALD GLOVER AMAZEBALLS. To which I'll have to take their word on it as I don't know who Donald Glover is.

I like the fact there are going to be non-Skywalker movies set in the Star Wars universe. Rogue One was very very good indeed and proved you could tell a good story with new characters. So I'm hopeful this Han Solo origins movie will follow suit. Alden Ehrenreich has some big shoes to fill mind.

Let's talk about concerts in Arizona. Or lack thereof. As the fifth largest city in America, Phoenix does get visited very often by bands. But usually they're the super popular ones, with lots of resources and backing. So what seems to happen more often than not is a band I love announce "a US tour" when really it's nothing of the sort. They'll play in New York, Boston, and then in LA and San Fransisco.

The rest of us get to watch as they flyover on their way to California.

Waves to the plane carrying the band I love.

In the last few weeks two bands from my youth that I never had the chance to see live announced US "tours". And have a guess what States are being visited? There's no way you'll guess New York and California..

Killing Joke are playing their 40th anniversary gigs. And for the first time in *mumble* years The The are playing live. But they're not visiting any of the flyover states. Which is a real bummer as I would love to see both of them.

Prescott, 2018.

At the really rather wonderful Superstition Meadery. I wouldn't have said I was a Mead fan, but these guys do some amazing things. If you ever find yourself in Prescott, you should stop by.

I'm going to start writing a bit more here. The problem, I think, lies perhaps in age. And time. And commitment. I know for a fact there won't be any epic tomes so will make no promises there. So these will be little post-ettes I think. Things that would fit nicely on Twitter. Except here instead.

Yesterday marked the first day we've needed to have the AC on in 2018. 90° days are upon us in the desert and it all seems too soon. I swear every year I find myself going "did we have the AC on by this point last year?". We probably did. Similarly in August I'll go "was it really this hot last year?". It probably was.

It only took a little over 12 years, and almost slipped by me. But a couple weeks back I crossed the 400,000 scrobble count over at last.fm. There aren't many of the old guard still scrobbling every day and I must admit I don't spend anywhere near as much time there as I used to. But I do still love me some music listening stats. And I'm glad Spotify still has last.fm support baked in now that I'm fully immersed in streaming.