Best Song You'll Hear Today

dropping the needle on some fat album track

Hey, music lover. Listen, (heh) I heard this song (today) and wanted to share because it's the best thing ever according to me. Maybe you will love it, too. My criteri(a/um) are/is (WTF) simple: it's gotta have that thing. That thing could be anything, especially, at the moment. It's cool, though, because this song is awesome. Also, this page is chock full of grooves. So much groove. We've got grooves sliding all over the place around here.

Like this right here, hot DAMN!!

And now...

~ The best song you'll hear today ~

Sam Cooke
A Change is gonna come

As a yoot, it was all P'twaang
And this and this

Past Best Songs
check 'em out

Most of these are from Youtube which is only usable with the SponsorBlock and Ublock Origin browser extensions

Louder

Also, just stop thinking and groove with Joe Jackson one time

"...I read the news, I can't believe my eyes"

Speaking of grooving, some music players for Linux include

I employ 3 easy ways to listen to music on my desktop: mpv, audacious, mpg123, and pianobar. mpv finds the least work because it will pop-up album covers, which, while pretty, are distracting and will not stay on the virtual desktop I move mpv over to as they pop up in my face 2 desktops over all of the time. Still, it's a handy alias:
alias tunes='mpv --shuffle --playlist=tunage20jan25.m3u &'

Audacious is map'd to a keybind in rc.xml, of course, see below. So handy and it gets a lot of use - I hit w-a and it's playing. Awesome. I have a URL playlist already loaded and audacious is set to resume playing at start. Or, you can open a playlist: right-click on the interface and add a URL: https://wicn-ice.streamguys1.com/live-mp3. In the settings you can click to auto play playlist when you open, see an image below, after you groove with the Tedeschi Trucks Band one time. Awesome.

Tedeschi Trucks Band Live

Phew! That was awesome. Now, continuing...

in ~/.config/openbox/rc.xml

<keyboard>
...
<keybind key="W-a">
<action name="Execute">
<startupnotify>
<enabled>true</enabled>
<name>wicn</name>
</startupnotify>
<command>audacious</command>
</action>
</keybind>
...
</keyboard>

mpg123 used to do all the heavy lifting around here when I used it to play that same URL playlist that audacious plays now. 6 in one, half-dozen in the other. I coulda map'd mpg123 to the same keybind, but, I never did and only kept using it in an alias from the terminal: alias wicn='mpg123 https://wicn-ice.streamguys1.com/live-mp3'
It worked great and I might dump audacious again and map it.

Handy Pianobar

So I ran with pithos for years. Loved it, worked great, nice to look at, got out of the way. Once I started messing with my setup last year ('24) I started to have problems with pithos and gnome-keyring; specificaly with gnome-keyring. Pfft. I found Pianobar and it's a finer soultion for me, handily map'd to w-p and using a gpg key to keep my account password safe because who wants plain text files with passwords right there staring you in the face?

Pianobar can get your account password from an encrypted file instead which is very cool. Make a text file, put your pandora account password in it, save the file and then encrypt the file. In the pianobar config file add the path to the file: password_command = gpg --decrypt ~/password.gpg.

Bonus: Supertramp Crime of the Century

There is a handy script for controling Pianobar that may interest you. Using Pianobar this way negates leaving a terminal open. It's pretty terrific, actually, because there is nothing in front of me and the keybinds allow me to do my thing, in fact, have a look at a few keybinds that I am using in ~/.config/openbox/rc.xml. And, you know, I put it in the menu, too. I mean....If you copy the menu items, run a c'tarl+h to change $USER to you, and maybe the icons, but, kora is pretty sweet.

for rc.xml

 <keybind key="W-a-Home">
      <action name="Execute">
        <command>~/.config/pianobar/control-pianobar.sh love</command>
      </action>
    </keybind>
    <keybind key="W-a-Left">
      <action name="Execute">
        <command>~/.config/pianobar/control-pianobar.sh history</command>
      </action>
    </keybind>
    <keybind key="W-a-Right">
      <action name="Execute">
        <command>~/.config/pianobar/control-pianobar.sh next</command>
      </action>
    </keybind>
      <keybind key="W-a-Up">
      <action name="Execute">
        <command>~/.config/pianobar/control-pianobar.sh switchstation</command>
      </action>
    </keybind>
      <keybind key="W-a-Down">
      <action name="Execute">
        <command>~/.config/pianobar/control-pianobar.sh p</command>
      </action>
    </keybind>
    <keybind key="W-a-Delete">
      <action name="Execute">
        <command>~/.config/pianobar/control-pianobar.sh quit</command>
      </action>
    </keybind>

for menu.xml

    <menu id="pianobar" label="Pianobar" icon="/usr/share/icons/Dracula/apps/scalable/screenie.svg">
  <item label="Play" icon="/home/$USER/.local/share/icons/kora/actions/16/media-play.svg">
      <action name="Execute">
<command>~/.config/pianobar/control-pianobar.sh p</command>
      </action>
   </item>
     <item label="Pause" icon="/home/$USER/.local/share/icons/kora/actions/16/media-playback-pause.svg">
      <action name="Execute">
<command>~/.config/pianobar/control-pianobar.sh p</command>
      </action>
   </item>
    <item label="Next" icon="/home/$USER/.local/share/icons/kora/actions/16/media-seek-forward.svg">
      <action name="Execute">
<command>~/.config/pianobar/control-pianobar.sh next</command>
      </action>
   </item>
    <item label="Previous" icon="/home/$USER/.local/share/icons/kora/actions/16/media-seek-backward.svg">
      <action name="Execute">
<command>~/.config/pianobar/control-pianobar.sh history</command>
      </action>
   </item>
    <item label="Like" icon="/home/$USER/.local/share/icons/kora/emblems/symbolic/xsi-emblem-favorite-symbolic.svg">
      <action name="Execute">
<command>~/.config/pianobar/control-pianobar.sh love</command>
      </action>
   </item>
    <item label="Ban" icon="/home/$USER/.local/share/icons/kora/actions/symbolic/action-unavailable-symbolic.svg">
      <action name="Execute">
<command>~/.config/pianobar/control-pianobar.sh ban</command>
      </action>
   </item>
    <item label="Change Station" icon="/home/$USER/.local/share/icons/kora/emblems/symbolic/emblem-music-symbolic.svg">
      <action name="Execute">
<command>~/.config/pianobar/control-pianobar.sh switchstation</command>
      </action>
   </item>
    <item label="Quit" icon="/home/$USER/.local/share/icons/kora/actions/16/quickopen.svg">
      <action name="Execute">
<command>~/.config/pianobar/control-pianobar.sh quit</command>
      </action>
   </item>
   </menu>

what, me worry?

🤮 your mom 🌮