Help with MySQL SELECT loop

The code below is my first attempt at a multiple SELECT. Is there a better way? Thanks Ken Brill kbrill@multi.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- function TotalCountSongs($channel) { // create a temp table to fill a.. $sql = "CREATE TABLE templistcount {TABLE STUFF DELETED}; b.. $result = mysql_query($sql) or die ("\n\nCannot read from database\n" . mysql_errno(). "\n" . mysql_error()); // get the allable genres from the channels database, these are MP3 ID3v2 genres tags a.. $sql = "SELECT * FROM channels WHERE channel=\"$channel\""; b.. $result = mysql_query($sql) or die ("</select>\n\nCannot read from database\n" . mysql_errno(). "\n" . mysql_error()); c.. $row = mysql_fetch_object ($result); // At this point $t="Rock, Country, Jazz" a.. $t=$row->types; b.. $a=explode(", ", $t); // Now that I have a list of genres (MP3 ID3 genre tags) in $a, I want to pull all the // songs that match those 3 genres out of the table 'list' and count them // and to do this I move them one genre at a time to a temp database and // then select them all and count that. The table 'list' has several thousand song titles // from hundreds of genres a.. foreach ($a as $Genres) { a.. $Genres=trim($Genres); b.. $sql = "INSERT INTO templistcount (number, filename, filesize, seconds, bitrate, sample, copyright, ID3songtitle, ID3artist, ID3album, year, comment , genre) SELECT number, filename, filesize, seconds, bitrate, sample, copyright, ID3songtitle, ID3artist, ID3album, year, comment, genre FROM list WHERE genre=\"$Genres\""; c.. $result = mysql_query($sql) or die ("</select>\n\nCannot copy from database\n" . mysql_errno(). "\n" . mysql_error()); b.. } c.. $sql = "SELECT * FROM templistcount"; d.. $result = mysql_query($sql) or die ("</select>\n\nCannot count items in database\n" . mysql_errno(). "\n" . mysql_error()); e.. $num_rows = mysql_num_rows($result); f.. $sql = "DROP TABLE templistcount"; g.. $result = mysql_query($sql) or die ("</select>\n\nCannot count items in database\n" . mysql_errno(). "\n" . mysql_error()); h.. return $num_rows; }