THE WHO RELEASE GREATEST HITS LIVE

The Who just released Greatest Hits Live exclusively on iTunes. Kind of a weird collection, spanning thier entire career, pretty much. The oldest track is "My Generation" recorded for the BBC in 1965, and the most recent is a live version of "Eminence Front," was recorded last year. Some of the stuff was previously released, like the BBC session, some stuff from their 1989 tour and one track is from Live At Leeds, but the rest seems previously unavailable.  Still, save for one long medley track ("Naked Eye/Let's See Action/My Generation" live from 1974 that lasts about 15 minutes) they're all available a la carte.  Some of it seems pretty great, but if you are new to The Who, or don't have any live stuff, start with Live At Leeds or Live At The Isle Of Wight. There's also a cool live concert inculded in the deluxe reissue of Who's Next. The Who should have fewer greatest hits collections (I can think of five) and more live recordings from different periods in their career.

ITUNES AND LIVE NATION TEAM UP

According to Reuters, iTunes and concert promoter Live Nation will be teaming up to offer downloads of concert recordings for $7.99 starting Tuesday. Pretty cool, if they get good artists.

MY iPOD ADDICTION PART 2

I think that vinyl is the best way to listen to recorded music. With that sentence out of the way, I can also say that I am a huge fan of the iPod. I am an iPod addict, actually, and I've been dealing with it.

My computer recently came close to having a meltdown, my harddrive was rapidly running out of space, and my iTunes library of over 36,000 items (mostly songs, also a bunch of episodes of my appearances on the SIRIUSXM channels OutQ, The Catholic Channel, Liquid Metal and E Street Radio) wasn't helping. Also not helping was my wife's huge collection of her photos (which are incredible).

But it was looking like things were about to melt down and even with my stuff backed up to an external hard drive, I was worried. I actually didn't have to stop using my iPod. It's just that I couldn't load any more new music onto my computer, and I definitely was worried about synching my iPod to the computer, the last time I tried it, it took hours and my computer crashed. Luckily, the iPod was OK. But I couldn't update my iPod with new music by Living Colour, Alice In Chains, The Reverend Horton Heat, KRS-One, Arctic Monkeys, reissues by The Beatles and The Beastie Boys, and I couldn't check out newer artists like Florence & The Machine and The Noisettes. I mean, I had the CDs, but I'm just not in my car that much.

At the same time, I had a minor but painful back injury that prevented me from working out (I can be a nut about that too). So for a few weeks there, I felt like I was wearing the wrong clothes, or I was in the mirror universe or something. I'm starting to feel my equilibrium returning!

MY iTUNES ADDICTION

My (blog's) name is No Expiration, and I'm an addict.

To iTunes.

All right, that admission won't get me a reality show, no health insurance company is going to pay my rehab bills and no one will feel sorry for me. But, damn, it's hard for me to go without it!

The details aren't interesting - and OF COURSE I backed up my 140 GB (and counting) music collection (it contains over 36,000 items, and would take 104 days to listen to it start to finish) on an external hard drive, and worse comes to worse, it's all on my iPod.

But still. I haven't been able to buy stuff in the iTunes store and I haven't been able to load new music to my iPod. It has called to my attention how much of the music I listen to is on my iPod. So, I haven't been able to really give time to new albums by Noisettes, Miranda Lambert, David Gray, Living Colour, Alice In Chains, KRS-One & Buckshot, Arctic Monkeys, The Black Crowes and Porcupine Tree, or archival releases from George Jones, The Jackson 5, Smokey Robinson & The Miracles, The Beastie Boys, The Supersuckers, The Drive-By Truckers, Big Pun and The Stone Roses.

With the help of an expert, I have been able to reinstall iTunes, but I still can't access about half of my collection - some of it was on my C drive, and some on my D drive and the rest isn't interesting, and I'm assured this isn't really a big problem. But damn, I can't wait to update my iPod. I'm getting anxiety worring about how to prepare my "Best of 2009" and my "Best of the '00s" lists! Not that anyone is asking me for them.

I am definitely still a believer in vinyl being the best format for music (other than, arguably, seeing an artist live), but I am also a huge fan of digital music and the iPod. I wouldn't want to live without it, and I hope not to anymore.