I heart BOAT
The best news I’ve heard all week
Ok, not really, but maybe the best news I’ve heard in a few hours:
A.C. Newman – one of the lead talents in the New Pornographers – has a new album coming out on January 20th. That gives me two reasons to look forward to that day!
This music you’re listening to really sounds like that band you don’t like
I know I should get over it, but it really gets me when I’m listening to music and someone walks in and says “oh, this sounds like
It should be less annoying when they don’t know you hate the supposedly similar band, but it never seems to be, and it’s worse when they do know.
I guess it’s because I totally disagree. If I really hate the sound of one band and like the sound of another, then they can’t really have the same sound, can they? Can you hate the taste of broccoli and like a meal that tastes like broccoli?
An oddity about my taste in music
I have discovered that the albums that I grow to love – the ones I listen to the most, the longest, and come back to over and over again – are the ones I initially didn’t like. Over and over again, I have noticed that my favorite albums are the ones I first listened to and thought “ugh, that’s disappointing.”
I think it must be a complexity thing. I downloaded this album (album cover NSFW) a month or so ago. For the first week, I could barely get into it. Now, though, I think it’s one of the best albums I’ve discovered in years. This album, on the other hand, I discovered last year and loved it immediately. Now I can hardly stand it. One major difference in the two albums is that the first one is far more complex. I guess it has more to offer over time, which means it takes longer to comprehend while having more staying power.
The trouble is that it’s hard to find new music that you’ll really love when you know you might not like it until you can really get into it. Sometimes I download an album and just can’t ever get into it, and sometimes I have more luck.
It’s also extra hard to introduce good bands to friends, because I know they won’t get it on the first try. And I bet that’s starting to drive Katie insane!
I heart skreemr
I’m forever amazed by all the cool little tricks the interweb can do. Take skreemr, for instance. Skreemr is a full-fledged mp3 search engine.
All’s I have to do is open up songbird (songbird and skreemr go together like an mp3 in an mp3 player), search for a band, and click play. Skreemr finds all the mp3′s out there for, say, Field Music. Then songbird finds all of the mp3′s embedded in the page and automagically queues them for me and plays them on demand.
Pretty nifty. It’s like a built-in myspace page for whatever band I’m interested in.
Popular music? What’s that?
Last night Katie asked me if I knew that song “I kissed a girl.”
“Of course I know it,” I said. “Well,” she responded, “you don’t exactly listen to ‘popular’ radio.”
“But that song has been around forever …” I retorted.
Apparently I was wrong. That was another song about kissing a girl. And I have never heard this particular (apparently bad) song. I hope I can keep my streak.
It’s true that I never listen to so-called “popular” music unless I have to. To me, popularity doesn’t have anything to do with good. Take the Macarena, for instance. I was on vacation when that song came out in 1997. When I first heard it, it was already popular. I thought it was a joke. I really did.
Give me emusic, pandora, and last.fm any day of the week over top 40, or whatever it’s called these days. I will pass.
Currently listening to
Of course a lot of the time it’s easiest to look at the last.fm widget in the right column, but anyway.
Thank goodness for audacity
Thank goodness for audacity.
I downloaded a really cool moonbabies (dumb name, cool sound) album over the weekend, and almost every track on it has 20-30 seconds of dead air at the end of it. Very annoying. I find I can’t listen to the album unless I have a finger on the fast forward button.
Enter audacity (and about 15 minutes of my time), and the album plays like it should … or at least like I think it should.
And what counts is what I think, right?
Not exactly a travel album
I’m really enjoying this album right now, even though it’s not going on my “in the car” mix.
Sometimes I’m glad I’m not in a band
‘Cause I’d have to be in a photo like one of these. One of my hobbies is finding new bands and new music. I see *lots* of similarly bad bands photos.
I think the third one is my favorite.
You can’t beat free
Currently listening to the new John Baker album, available for free here.
