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Up-to-date: Album-a-day
(22 Mar 2008 at 12:33) |
Wowza, I knew I was behind on album-a-day updates, but when I finally got around to posting the backlog (and I was doing this thing where I don't pee or eat until I'm done even thought I definitely need to eat and pee because of all of the coffee) I realized that it was over a year overdue! Now the album-a-day page is up to date. We can have a little party because this last batch of updates (53) put the total count (388) past 365, which if you think about it, means that this project has wasted/enriched a whole person-year of music making. (OK, not really, since most people do not spend the whole 24 hours making music. But it is symbolic, dude.) I apologize to all the AAD faithfuls for taking so long with their albums. The main reason for this is that I have a half-written automated version of the AAD submission process, so the idea of doing this manual cut'n'paste business is extra off-putting.
Another thing is, someone mentioned in the submit comments that he had heard about AAD in an NPR segment about National Novel Writing month, which also mentioned AAD. Did anyone else hear this or know where I could find it?
By the way, since it's been about 10 years since last time, I have begun ListenQuest Maximus 2008. This is where I listen to all of my CDs in their entirety (I have like a thousand??). You can tell that I'm doing this because it is the only occasion in which I listen to the Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers soundtrack that I ill-advisedly bought when I was a They Might Be Giants completist because it had one unreleased song on it. So, like, do not take my recently listened box as any kind of recommendation for the next several months. |  |
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Oh shit. I recorded several new ones which I didn't submit because I thought you would never update the website again.
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| I will update forever. Please enqueue them, if you like. |
Yay! I was wondering what was going on when you didn't even update the AAD page when you completed your last AAD... um...a buot a year ago. Looks like I have some work ahead of me.
I understand the 'listen through' thing. Currently, I'm in the process of listening to all my MP3 CDs. I had a spindle of about 100 CDs that I started with. That took me approximately a year to get through, listening to anywhere between 4 to 8 hours a day at work. My current count stands at: Songs: 12511 Time : 801h 05m 07s
I've done the same thing with my CDs (~1000) and cassettes (~700). Both took me about a year. At one point I had listened to all of my LPs (~500 - 600) and 45s (I have no idea... probably in the ear of ~700) but not 78s. I don't know how long that took other than 'years'.
P.S. Congrats on finishing up your paper. Well done laddy! |
Damn, I have like a year's worth of AADs I have to submit now. Needless to say, you should fear for your record.
Also, I commend you for attempting ListenQuest again. I've been basically trying to listen to all the music on my hard drive for like a year and a half and I've barely made a dent in it. It is some brutal work, my friend. |
I think Adhesion means that I, Scrap Heap, should fear for my record. Right?
And heh, I don't try to listen to all my music. I just enjoy the fact that I can shuffle and hear something totally different and new.
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| i'm quite surprised you didn't 'heart' 'good bike heaven' on 'exile on atari street'! it's such an excellent song! |
Well, my methodology for heart-ing songs is not very careful. I do like that one (and am happy to hear that you do, too!), but I don't feel like it particularly stands out on that album. I guess each listener can attach his/her own hearts and skulls.
Also, you must spell it as "Atari ST" or else the joke is lost! =) |
| haha, yes, apologies on muffing the album title. that surprises me it doesn't stand out to you--the opening riff seems strong and different for you. there's an epic-ness to the song that makes it stand out to me, and its placement is perfect at the beginning of the album, IMO. i like a song like 'official rules of baseball' but it seems like a standard good tom 7 song :) , not something that leaps out at me. but i accept our different appraisals! i would put a starman next to good bike heaven i think ;) |
I agree: It is definitely an album-opener, much more so than official rules of baseball. I think the latter is just cleverer in a way that satisfies me. I dunno. Sometimes one of my songs that I think is fine/okay is inexplicably (to me) popular; the best example probably being the T7ES "Theme from reb2", which a number of people have independently pointed out as a favorite but I don't really get it. This is of some concern to me, because I feel like I ought to understand why my own songs are appealing if they are appealing, but at the same time it is not that surprising since to me making music feels more like discovery than invention.
I have many times thought that AAD futuresite should have the ability for people to rate songs and stuff like that, but I know better than to suggest that it's really coming, given my track record recently. =) |
yes, that's a neat idea having people rate songs on a future aad site. i like to make youtube videos and i've found that the ones that are popular tend to be ones i'm not so crazy about, and the ones i love don't always get a lot of views.
there's of course a tension--there's what you want to be appreciated for and what you are actually appreciated for by other people. i think the more auteur-ish artists will not be crazy about being popular or following what the fans like, because they're trying to stay true to an inner vision, whereas the 'soulless sell outs' will make artistic decisions the way an entrepreneur might.
those are extremes really though, and don't emphasize the discovery element i suppose (usually i think of auteurs as visionaries rather than discoverers, but i suppose discoverers could have a similar indifference to popular opinion). |
| not just an indifference, but a lack of control over what is discovered, regardless... |
| Yeah "Theme from reb2" is definitely one of my top 3 T7ES songs. |
i've heard of a study that suggested that what is popular is somewhat unpredictable. a song that is popular in one group would not end up being popular in another group. iirc, there was some kind of social element to why music got popular--like if your friend liked a song, you'd be more likely to like it too. there was then, i think, a sort of network effect--the more people liked a song, the more there's an incentive to you to like the song, so you can connect with lots of others who have similar tastes. it's no fun being the only guy into polka...or, uh, so i'm told.
could be getting the facts wrong on the study, but that's what i recall. it sort of makes sense to me, because i look around and see no shortage of talent, but only a few artists become popular.
one thing i've contemplated is maybe people can only be into so many songs or bands at a time. i found i didn't really get into guided by voices until i had pretty much listened to as much pixies or pavement as i could handle (not because i didn't like the bands, but because i had pretty much heard all of it over and over). i could imagine getting into gbv rather than pavement in early college, if gbv had 'gotten there first', and then perhaps now i would be getting into pavement as gbv lost its luster.
is it possible 'theme from reb2' is likely one of the first songs someone might listen to if they were checking out the t7es collection, i wonder? |
| Personally speaking, "Theme from reb2" was probably more like the 30th T7ES song I heard. |
mike: Sure, that definitely sounds plausible! But, in your case you didn't get to like Good Bike Heaven because all your friends liked it, right? =)
I stick reb2 in there when I'm forced to pick a few samples (like on last.fm), so that might contribute. Certainly there's a selection effect too, where I'm more likely to notice if someone mentions liking that song. But mostly it's just that I can't predict what others will like. |
| true, i came across the album a day project via a web search, liked the idea, and listened to your music to see how the idea applied, and admired the results. interesting thought though--the music isn't typically what i would think i would like--i suspect i like it in part because i liked the idea of the album-a-day project, and the crap art ethic, and your music stands for those things. i've often thought a lot of times punks like the idea of punk and any punk band will do, or bob marley because he represents a certain attitude or sub-culture, and these points support the social-ness of music, i think. but it's obvious from my last.fm playlist that i've quite genuinely enjoyed your work all the same. |
sorry, the second-to-last sentence should read '*some people like* bob marley...'. i've never noticed a big punk following of bob marley!
:-)
i guess the clash had a reggae influence!
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"and these points support the social-ness of music."
sorry, my above statement from the first post is a bit of a non-sequitur. what i think i meant was: i think people often like punk or like bob marley because the music or musician stand for certain ideas or attitudes or tastes, and people are often attracted first to the idea of the music, and then find some music to be into ("i liked the idea of anarchy--and i found the sex pistols").
people show they like a particular band by wearing a shirt say, and this expresses also (perhaps most importantly?) that they like idea of the music ("i like the politics of the clash, bob marley, whoever. it's not important that you know i like punk, reggae, whatever, music--it's important that you know i like the message of the music").
so people like an idea, find a band that expresses it, wear the shirt, and advertise to others that they are into a certain idea represented by the band, to meet like-minded people.
dunno, just a theory, certainly not one that explains all taste in music. sorry for all the words, didn't mean to write that much, but saw i was being a bit confusing. |
| Yeah, I agree. There are loads of factors that lead to someone liking something, because in general most music could be liked by most people. There is definite value in associating one's tastes narrowly, and value for musicians to work in styles that align (perhaps for no preordained reason) with some philosophy, or demographic, or clothing style. I'm sure I do it, if not by design then by defense mechanism... |
| Hm, what do you mean by defense mechanism? :) |
| Any hope yet for the digitization of Then Come The Chunks? |
| never give up hope!! |
| That sounds like I'll need it! :) |
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