In the mind of the Drygerskunk

So Fossil points me to some decent music... and I go over and find the source.

All 2800 tracks of mash-ups. 

If you believe in Surgeons' Law, 90% of them are crap.  And that is what I'm finding them out to be.

But, of course, I have a method to my madness of finding the goodies from the crap.  I'm using iTunes rating system, where you can give a 1-5 star rating.  I leave it blank for "needs to be rated," 2+ for keepers and 4+ goes on my iPhone (with some exceptions, of course).  1 star rated songs have only one purpose in (their short) life:  to be thrown into the trash can.

All songs start out at 1.  To get to 2 or above, they have to follow some minimal rules.  For instance...

• If the song starts out too slow, taking more than thirty seconds to get going, you're staying at 1 and I'm skipping you. There are a few exceptions to this, though... but 60% of the music I was going through was being trapped by this.  (I call this the "GET GOIN'! MOVE THAT GEAR UP!" rule; instrumentals that say they are get a pass)
  
  Likewise, songs with an "intro" before starting out to begin with only penalize themselves.  Learn how to edit your tunes, man! ("Standing around like a bloody idiot...")
  

• Conversely, if it starts right up into the first verse without laying down the underlying beats, it also sticks at 1.  What are you, Dragonball Z opera?
• If the music doesn't flow smoothly, constantly starts and stutters, is high-end clipped (popping the speakers), it sticks at 1. ("BONK!")
  
• If the singing is best done at a poetry recital in a smoky bar on stage, it sticks at 1.  Most rap and hip-hop gets trapped by this.
• If the music and vocals are badly mixed, it also sticks at 1.  ("SPEAK UP, SONNY! I CAN BARELY HEAR YOU!")
• If the vocals are in a foreign language, it sticks at 1 unless there's a good reason. ("DO THEY SPEAK ENGLISH IN WHAT?")

I'm tempted to add a "You have a history of making crap" rule, catching: Eminem, Gwen Stefani, Kelis, Kayane West, Beastie Boys, Destiny's Child, etc. Alot of rappers and hip-hop artists showing a pattern.  I took an initial swipe at the crap that was surfacing at the top, and cut the list down to 1467 unrated out of 1980, with another 380 on the chopping block.

For now, I'm keeping the 1's that don't show a pattern until I'm done the whole list.  I'll probably do another purge like this after another five days of ratings.