iTunes Decoded: Track 16

Alright. So a while back, we'll say 2009-ish, my desktop crashed. I ended up getting a new laptop, but at the time, I was not technical disaster ready, so I never backed up my hard drive. That's right, all my pictures, documents, and music were just lost. Through a YouTube tutorial, I discovered that I did have back up for my music in the form of my iPod.

I followed the step-by-step directions, and voila! I was able to recover all 10,000 plus of my songs and put them on my laptop. One hiccup, 25% of the tracks lost all their descriptive info (title, artist, album, etc.). They were either re-named a track number (ex: track 12) or a non-descriptive 4 letter code (ex: BVTH). Nonetheless, I was happy to have my music back, so I dealt with the missing info. In other words, I was too lazy to manually enter in all the info myself. 25% of 10,000 is a lot of damn songs.

So here I am 5 years later and I have finally grown tired of playing the guessing game. I haven't been able to find Erykah Badu's I Want You in forever, and that's one of my all-time jams. I will now update all of my unknown track info, one track at a time and document it for your reading pleasure. This is the first installment.

New Year...New Name...New Game

Happy New Year everybody! Many of you may already know that I am not one for making New Year's resolutions, so please believe that what has taken place is in no way some fake ass promise to you or myself to be better. I mean let's face it, I'm as good as it gets, so the only promise I can make is to give you more. I've had this plan in motion for while, it's just a coincidence the name change happened on January 1st, so suck it

When I started Conscious Residue, it was mainly just release therapy for myself, but the more I wrote, the more curious I grew as to what this could evolve to. I was able to provide a space for other creative and like-minded individuals to express their thoughts on various subjects and contribute great content (Dustine, Tim, and Jeff), and two others who claim they will eventually write something for the blog (I'm not going to name any names, but for argument's sake, let's just call them Allycia and DeMario). With these new partnerships, CR was able to get over 12,000 unique views in 2013.


I know what you're thinking, "12,000!?!?! That ain't shit! I seen a kitten wearing a bow-tie and tube socks on YouTube get 12 million views in 2 days." To that I say blow me. I think 12,000 views is not bad for a medium (the Internet) that is geared towards a partially illiterate audience and having a strict marketing budget of posting on Facebook. My goal is to at least double that in 2014.

Which brings me to the name change, #Culture. Even though I love the name Conscious Residue, it just didn't have that ring to it like major online media brands Buzzfeed, Huffington Post, or Grantland do. Let's face it, Conscious Residue sounds like an album title from a pretentious jazz artist or a new strand of marijuana some hippy in Montana cultivated.

Yes, technically the name #Culture dumbs it down, but it still gets our point across. In Twitter terms, the hashtag (#) means trending or the current hot topic. Not only will we showcase trending topics, but I hope to have #Culture itself trending in 2014.

We will still rant about dumb pop-culture nonsense, hit you with the standards (Week Sauce, The A.D.D. Report, Daily Throwbacks, etc...), and give you a few new things (WacGyver Podcast and live event reviews). Who knows, we might be able to get Jeff Donovan to complete his 31 Horror Movies in 31 Days reviews list...wishful thinking.

I'm excited about the work I plan to put into this blog this year, and hopefully one or two of you will enjoy the outcome. For the first time this year...you're welcome.

By The Way...F*ck You Facebook & YouTube

You can include George Lucas and Shanice on that list too. Happy birthday, Olivia.

Follower Critique: LoveRaychelMusic - Right On Time

Since I opened a Twitter page for this blog, I've gotten a lot of follows from aspiring musicians.  Why, you ask.  I'm guessing they want me to feature their music on my blog.  Not a problem, but it comes with a price...I must give it an honest critique (unless you send a check, then I'll say its the greatest thing since Thriller, or whatever else you want me to write...every man has a price...no Ted DiBiase).

Two things I hope to accomplish with this: 1) I can help get quality, unheard artists a little bit of exposure (not much because let's face it, this blog is going nowhere fast), and 2) Brutal reviews will get shitty artists to shy away and leave me alone.

Where Are They Now?: YouTube Sensation Edition

I can't count the number of times I thought to myself "whatever happened to the Chocolate Rain guy?" Well instead of waiting for Tosh.0 to do a web redemption for you favorite Internet has-been, check out this flow chart that lets us catch up with 20 YouTube sensations from the past.

Lollapalooza 2013 Line-Up

Pretty lackluster if you ask me.  A bunch of musicians who got huge from YouTube...yawn.  From what I'm seeing, I would probably only care about seeing Kendrick Lamar.  Check out the line-up to see if one of your favorites is coming to the over-commercialized, over-priced, and over-populated Chicago-based music festival.  You're welcome.