i ran fsck and it didn't report any errors, so i rebooted and started the 1/1 song play again. if it works for the remaining hour of my work day, that should be a good start.
by the way, thanks a lot for the help!

fsck output:

empeg:/empeg/bin# fsck -fay /dev/hda4
Parallelizing fsck version 1.19 (13-Jul-2000)
e2fsck 1.19, 13-Jul-2000 for EXT2 FS 0.5b, 95/08/09
ext2fs_check_if_mount: No such file or directory while determining whether /dev/
hda4 is mounted.
Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes
Pass 2: Checking directory structure
Pass 3: Checking directory connectivity
Pass 4: Checking reference counts
Pass 5: Checking group summary information
/dev/hda4: 10054/152576 files (5.2% non-contiguous), 4508808/4862970 blocks