"Nothing is forever, and our efforts can go to waste." - Embrace.

Rain falls on Cambridge.

A discussion of the method: As we've alluded to here often, an ongoing project we are working on is obtaining CD or digital versions of "important" songs or records that we currently only have on cassette. The definition of important, of course, is subjective. But one good barometer of importance is garnering a coveted spot on a mixtape. We've got scores of old mixes sitting around in boxes, and their track listings are fertile ground for ideas of things we'd like to rescue from obscurity. Now that we live in such a glorious digital age, acquiring some of the material is fairly easy, as we noted previously in our post about how EMusic now has some seven-inches available for digital download now. So Hurl's My Pal God singles: easy. Embrace's "Last Song," which appeared on quite a few mixes: easy, now that ITunes has it. We downloaded it this morning and are rocking out to it now.

But poring over mixtapes has presented us with some formidable challenges, too. Where to get a copy of Bethlehem, PA's The Original Sins' "Rise," let along the entire Self Destruct record it came from? And what of material we hardly knew anything about in the first place, more than a decade ago? Of course, Google has proved invaluable in this effort. Case in point: Who the hell were the Primitive Painters? What was the name of the record that servicable, if not a little wimpy, songs like "Okay," "Something Snaps" and "Different" came from? Where did the band come from? Where did they go? Well, here are all the answers. Thanks, Internets!

The band, apparently one of the 129 greatest O.C. bands ever [this list at first glance does not include Uniform Choice, who should appear at #1, and therefore this list blows], was from Orange County, California. They released their debut full-length "Dirtclods" in 1992 on an English indie, tooled around for a couple more years, and then broke up. The band has recently reformed and written and released a new EP. I think AllMusic's non-interest in the band probably is a reasonable estimation of the band's overall place in the world of music. But still, in the supposed digital age, the excuses for material being unavailable for weirdos like us to track down and purchase are getting fewer and fewer.

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The WFMU blog points us to this amazing animated cartoon at the Hitachi web site that re-interprets an old School House Rock! episode to explain a 10-fold increase in memory capacity it has developed for its hard drives. Unexpectedly wildly amusing.

We can't wait until this technology is available to consumers.

That is all.