It seems the web standards world is taking time out from the usual witty banter to partake of a musical meme. Andrew Krespanis passed the baton to me earlier today. So, although it's not web related I am going to indulge :)

Total volume of music on my computer

We don't have fair use legislation in Australia just yet, so none. Yes, that does mean iPods have few legal uses in Australia...

Actually now that I think about it, there's quite a few megs worth of songs by local band Tycho Brahe on my hard drive. All entirely legal since I run their website and the website has them up for free download :)

Last CD I purchased

VNV Nation's new album Matter+Form.

Playing right now

Nothing at this precise moment, so I'll have to backtrack to the last thing I played at home (where I am now): Man With No Name's Earth Moving the Sun.

Five songs that mean a lot to me

Only five? :)

  • We Stand Alone by Covenant (the industrial band, not the metal band). We Stand Alone is the song that I remember most from our interstate trip to see Covenant play in Sydney last year. I pushed forward through the crowd in anticipation and was only a few rows back from the stage when that awesome lead-in started.
  • Honour (Juno version) by VNV Nation. I had to choose from a stack of dancefloor anthems and what the hell, this song kicked off the DJ set I played once that kept the dancefloor packed for the entire timeslot. Now that is a rush.
  • Peter Gunn off The Blues Brothers soundtrack (edging out several others). You can't deny it's a great piece of music; with that driving bass line and fat horn section. The Blues Brothers is my enduring favourite movie and the music was a major influence in my choice to learn saxophone at high school.
  • London Calling, Rock the Casbah and White Riot by The Clash. I refuse to choose ;)
  • Homesick by The Cure was my favourite song through high school (oh the angst, hand-forehead-nail!). It's a beautiful, wistful track which is musically very rich.

Five people to whom I am (not) passing the musical baton

To be honest I'm not going to pass the baton at this stage, since so many people have already answered the quiz. Instead, I'm going to link to five responses I found interesting. Memes evolve and mutate, after all.

  • Random Banter: A Musical Baton. Jason Klein apparently had the same immediate thought as me - did the record companies start this meme?
  • Jeffrey Veen gets a link because I'd only heard of one of the artists he listed.
  • Selfgratification: Meme me up, Scotty! For fooling with the meme and liking Cat Empire. Oh, and for passing the baton to me as well :) [BTW Cam... my first CD purchase - I think - was Songs of Faith and Devotion by Depeche Mode. Next purchase is undecided, I actually keep an entire list of planned purchases.]
  • The Man in Blue - Musical baton, purely for thinking of Dave Brubeck when I didn't.
  • You know it's driving me nuts, there was a particular response I liked when I read it earlier today but now I can't find it amongst all the webdev sites I've visited. I'd like to observe that half the people who have answered the meme are also planning to be at WE05. Maybe we should all get t-shirts made with our responses on the back.

I'm also wondering if Nick and I are the only web developers who like industrial? :)