more progress today:
its nearly complete, now. it is still polling based (every 3 or 4 secs it web-connects and gets data then parses it and displays only what changed to the lcd).
eventually I'll lay out the code better so that its mostly or even entirely interrupt based. so until then, the IR commands from the user sometimes seem sluggish to be recognized.
I have my bargraph code ported over from my VoluMaster code base and now I can see song progress (lol) on the display.