  urlLink musicmobs is a great website to go to check musical trends, and people who use itunes are fairly cool, except those windows itunes users who only listen to linkin park all day.
anyway, i did want to add my mac's library list to musicmobs, but it's not really necessary, and it'd be boasting. it'd make me the greatest music geek on the website, with 45000 plays and counting. but see my collection on my mother's computer only. the one on my mac laptop is more extensive at about 8000 tracks -- all ripped, since those damned filesharing programmes don't work-- which would probably bring most of my favourite artists into the top 10 easily. but here i only have a cd's full, since i can't do anything else while ripping my cd on this computer, i have to do so *very* selectively.
but the statistics are pretty cool indeed, and with definite evidence of some proper music fans with their own catalogue rollin', instead of someone who keeps listening to something that makes our local airwaves. lemmings, all of them. anyway, yes, i did break down one day and decide to listen to one of alice's covers. although you may immediately ask if alice is not entitled to sell her versions of songs or to quickly emblazon her own "copyright" over them, she has the right to do so under US law, but she has to send mail to the artist in charge with 30 days' notice to invoke a license (which i believe is automatically and unconditionally given to her, unless she cribs the whole recording) to cover the song under US fair use terms. these may be mirrored in singapore law when the FTA takes place in just a few days' time. we assume that alice is so smart from her english acing activities that she has already sent these artists their fair use letters already, so she is probably legally bound to do so. although people may sue her for deploying guitar, it's so 1966. no cool person ever plays guitar any more.
(in case alice does indeed play all the guitar, it's the best strumming since sonic youth! errr heh. maybe not. ) but alice does have a sweet singing voice. really sweet like sugar. even though she sings the one they play EVERY TIME YOU SCORE A GOAL IN THAT WINNING ELEVEN GAME, IT'S NOT FUNNY ANY MORE. honest. i scored so many goals i turned delirious. never mind a more american voice singing it (words pronounced by americans like "hot", "fot", "bot" and "han solo" are now pronounced "hart", "fart", "bart" and "banjo" respectively). or that she does, admittedly, just slightly trips over the very very high chords, but every good woman has a bit of manliness in her.
hence the tendency to spoil for a fight now and then. alice, seriously, well, keep it up. it's good enough. cy did sing a stereolab song (she MEMORISED the whole of "lo boob oscillator" just to tramp on into "plastic sun" by sonic's kim gordon)... once. it's almost the most charming song ever, except that they try to spoof sonic youth at the three minute mark. 
