Many thanks to Lisa and Kevin for yesterday's excellent suggestion about flat files. It worked great! I just exported the db as a monstrous huge html table. Two actually, one sorted by song title and one by artist. Uploaded them both to my web server and loaded them up on the computer in the MCR at the beginning of the show. Once the pages were loaded, searching them was easy. The results weren't grouped as nicely as they would have been with a web app, but the search was fast enough that it didn't matter.
And thank goodness the suggestion came in time for yesterday's show. Searching the flat files let me fill a couple of requests that I wouldn't have been able to otherwise. (Who knew I have two songs by Eddie Fisher?) The show went really well, if I do say so. Lots of requests, which keeps it fun. And I even got a nice email after the show from a listener, wow! I'm starting to feel more comfortable with the show & better able to handle the pace. I find Divaville Lounge more hectic than a regular playlist show because the songs are all so short. In a normal show, if you get behind you can always put on an eight minute song and get caught up. But in this format, almost all the songs are 2 1/2 minutes, and there are no really long songs. So you're always in a hurry to get the next song cued up. Still, I'm feeling much less harried as I get used to the pace.
Next week is a show I'm really looking forward to: Latin a la Lounge, a special theme show of Latin music. Over the weekend I made a list of potential music for the show. I have enough for about 5 shows, not even counting whatever cohost Santa Salsera will bring. Why not, it's good to have options!
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