Proportion Distortion

One of my New Year's Resolutions was to reduce my intake of physical CDs to one disc per month. I've already purchased my one CD for January, so I would've either had to wait until February to pick up the new Magnetic Fields or blow my resolution midway through January. The album Distortion is on major label subsidiary Nonesuch (like their last one i), so it probably won't make it to emusic.

I got one track ("The Nun's Litany") from doug's 2007 end-of-year mix and another one ("Mr. Mistletoe") from a Christmas blog, so I already had mp3s of two of the 13 songs, so I headed over to The Hype Machine yesterday to see what else I could grab from Distortion. Between yesterday and today, I've been able to find the remaining 11 tracks posted to various music blogs, so now I've acquired the entire album without paying one cent. The songs I've heard are really good, so I'll probably buy the CD at some point (whenever a used copy turns up), but I have all the songs on mp3 until then.

The Magnetic Fields are playing a couple of nights at the Herbst Theater next month for the Noise Pop Fest. I tried to buy a ticket to one of the shows when they went on sale, and somehow ended up with a ticket to another Noise Pop show (The Mountain Goats at The Bottom of the Hill). The two band names (Magnetic Fields and Mountain Goats) scan alike when you're looking at them, so I just ended up buying a ticket for the wrong band. At least it's an afternoon matinee show! That's my one Noise Pop show for 2008 and my quota might go down to zero next year, so it might be my last NP show ever, unless there's a Game Theory reunion or something.

I'm trying to prune my SF concert attendance down to a manageable number, which is about one show per month. This is my show for March, because I already have shows for January and February. I might need to expand that to two shows a month if there's something I really want to see.