Joe Strummer 1952 - 2002

Today marks the 10th anniversary of the death of Joe Strummer. A previously unknown heart defect took Joe from us on 22nd December 2002. He was an inspiration to many and his legacy lives on.
Rest easy Woody.

Strummerville.

Free music player & tools

Ok, so you've downloaded a few free albums from the links in previous posts and probably have a decent collection of stuff from iTunes and your own CD's ripped to your hard drive. This week I will point you in the direction of a superb alternative to Windows Media Player for your music along with a couple of handy tools to optimise and organise your mp3's and some other audio formats - all for free.

WINAMP

Winamp has been around for a long time and is still my player of choice. Easy and intuitive to use, Winamp can handle all popular music formats and many video types as well. Import music into the library, create and save playlists, edit tags, listen to online radio and download podcasts.

There are thousands of skins, plug-ins and visualisations available to let you get the most from Winamp and modify it to your needs. I find the cross-fade and normalise plug-ins really handy when DJ'ing parties, often using a visualisation for some eye candy. Other plug-ins include lyrics, karaoke, alarms, equalisers, enhancers and more.

All this is in the free version, if you need more you can always upgrade to pro but I have never needed to. Get either version here Winamp

  Mp3Tag

Correct tagging of your Mp3's is probably the best form of housekeeping you can do with regard to your music files. Properly tagged files are a great help when it comes to searching for tracks and organising libraries and playlists. 
A tag will give information such as artist, title, album, year, genre along with embedding a cover or artists image. Mp3Tag will do all this and is the ideal tool for the job. Customisable features include  filename to tag or vice versa, auto numbering, case conversion and batch conversion with which you can tag an entire album in seconds. 
Supports many other audio formats. Download from Mp3Tag

BonkEnc

BonkEnc is a simple yet versatile ripper and converter with a basic interface. There are options to rip to MP3, AAC, MP4, FLAC, AIF, VOC, OggVorbis, AU, WAV and convert between formats with various bitrate/quality options and CDDB support. Download here BonkEnc
A newer version, now renamed fre:ac free audio converter is avalable from here  fre:ac

Dan Baird and Homemade Sin @ O2 Academy, Sheffield

Having been a big fan of the Georgia Satellites in years past this gig was gonna be unmissable as far as I was concerned. Dan Baird's current band Homemade Sin comprises of Dan (of course) on guitar and lead vocals with former Satellites Mauro Magellan on drums and Keith Christopher on bass along with legendary Warner E. Hodges (Jason & the Scorchers) on lead guitar.

Dan's style is predominantly highly fuelled country/blues, in parts even what some would describe as cowpunk or alternate country. No matter what you wanna call it, this bands performance really hits the spot. 

It was a great experience to see a band of this pedigree so up close in a small local venue and it was obvious that the band enjoyed playing just as much as we enjoyed listening.

More info, CD, DVD, tour dates at Dan Baird and Homemade Sin.

I couldn't blog about this gig without mentioning the two excellent support bands that helped make this a particularly good night.

I got to the show early as a really wanted to see local band Roaming Son. These guys had been recommended to me a few weeks ago so I was pretty chuffed to find they were playing support. 

Roaming Son are very rockabilly influenced but with more accent on the rock rather than the billy, if you get my drift. I very much enjoyed what I heard and hope to see them play a full set of their own sometime soon. Watch this space.

Although they seemed a little low key for some of the rock audience I really took to main support Charlie Lankester and The Mojo Killers. Charlie has a history of working with many well known and influential musicians and this comes across very well with the guys he's now playing with. 

This fine blues band provided an excellent counterpoint to the more upbeat bands before and after and had me rooted to the spot for their entire set. Their first album "Song in a Minor Key" was released in September and it's on my Xmas list.