'Aural' is right with the world

Cut me some slack. You try coming up with a clever, punny headline at 2:15 a.m.

I wrote a bunch of stuff here about why I like the musicians that I like. Then I erased it. My taste in music is as eclectic as the people who brought that music into my life. You'll meet them some other time.

The reason I'm posting: Until tonight, Tori Amos reigned over the music on my iPod — not the music I listen to most, but the music that takes up the most real estate. And that was 483 songs — 34 hours, 49 minutes and 33 seconds, or 2.38GB. And that does not include her latest studio album (not the Christmas album; the one before that), which I did not buy because, frankly, she's started to scare me a bit with her multiple personalities and strangely wax-like plastic surgery. ::shudders:: Still, a sizable collection.

Then, tonight, I downloaded a bunch of Ben Folds/BFF bootlegs, chose only the best ones (none of that "I taped it from the 44th row while screaming!" stuff) and added them to my iPod. And that did the trick. Ben Folds/BFF have moved into the top spot by a large margin: 1,090 songs — 71 hours, 36 minutes and 3 seconds, or 5.86GB. Only about half the boots I downloaded made the first cut, and I'm going to give it another listen tomorrow and cut out any other boots that I don't totally love.

(I should also add here that I have bought every Ben Folds and BFF release. Every one. I believe in supporting artists. I also believe in bootlegs released into the wild. Some of the greatest music can't and won't be made in a studio. It happens on the fly in a crowd of people. And Ben Folds gets bonus points for his liberal use of audience participation — something else you won't find on a studio album.)

I've used 126.8GB on my iPod. I have 19.06GB free. If I really need to free up space, I can cut out some Tom Waits (2.27GB), Dave Matthews (4.8GB), The Who (1.94GB), Ween (1.27GB), Dead Milkmen (1.07GB), Flaming Lips (1.25GB), Queen (1.8GB), Billy Joel (1.28GB) or The Beatles (1.71GB). [Edit: And Ani DiFranco (1.27GB).] I'm sure there are other bands with well over a GB dedicated to them, but those are the first ones that come to mind.

Like I said before, I have my friends to thank for my taste in music. I feel like deleting some of these albums they cherish is akin to deleting the part of them that shared that music with me.

I will reassess when I wake up.

[Edit: I'm usually pretty good with math, so I'm going to chalk this up to being tired. My original post was completely wrong -- I said Tori had the most real estate, then, a couple of grafs later, listed Dave Matthews with more. A lot more. NIN and Metallica have more too. I'm not rebuilding the original post. But I felt it important to point out I do know 4 is more than 2.]