Music
Listening to Bare Naked Ladies, “Live in Red Rock”. Hadn’t ever really listened to them before. Just heard a song or two of theirs on the radio and it never really clicked as to who they were or what songs were theirs. I really suck at remembering band or album or song names.
Anyways, fun to listen to new music around the house. Been so long since I really got new music that the only really new music I ever heard was occasionally MP3s snagged from friends or VH1 on those days I am up early enough they are playing music or listening lately to the Cape Radio.
Find music tends to organize my thoughts while listening to it. I know from past projects that it tends to affect my coding and writing style. Both in tempo and I suppose in the pacing or arrangement of whatever the ’stuff’ I am working on is.
Not as much the idea of some music being more appropriate for the ‘mood’ of what I am working on, but more of how I’ll write code differently while listening to Wagner then I would whlie listening to Razed in Black’s re-mix album that was done at a freakishly high BPM for what was essentially a very dark / gothic album.
Okay, a little sleepy so that came out weirdly but I think the point got across.
Still unpacking my music collection. Lived here for, uh, three years now and not unpacked yet. Will need to repack soon since my landlord is making sounds about selling the place.
My music collection reminds me of ‘High Fidelity’. I can very much track my music collection by date or who I was in a relationship with.
The last couple years I haven’t gotten any new music, or been dating.
My stuff from my time in hell, er NC, was really random and was me trying to fit in and listen to music people I hung out with had. It is stuff like AddNtoX.
Before that was a very eclectic period with Loreena McKennit alongside strange bands like Snog, the one from the teacher I dated one summer she was in town on a seminar. and the others from strange friends I had who went out of the way to find weird stuff.
I have a couple pop cds like Bush, Eve 6 and Stabbing Westword from when I dated a girl who was doing research on cultural movements at the time.
Lots of instrumental and orchestral from when I dated a cellist.
NIN and KMFDM from a girl who pretty thoroughly shattered my heart, but who I went to a lot of very noisy very dark concerts with while dating.
Don’t really own any music from before that, if I did it would be on cassette tape and I think all of those got used for weird 3d art projects ages ago.
I need to catalog all my cds again. I have everything from before I moved to NC as MP3s so I can at least find out how many cds the ex-gf nicked from me that I owned before that.
(Originally posted at A Home Away from Hythia)
January 20th, 2006 at 10:52 pm
If you like them you would LOVE The Dave Matthews Band.
January 20th, 2006 at 10:53 pm
Actually I’ve heard the Dave Matthews Band play in Portland at waterfront music festivals. For some reason their behavior on stage just really turned me off of them.
I do like Dave Matthews solo stuff though.
January 21st, 2006 at 9:55 am
Here’s a case where we differ. My musical tastes certainly don’t change based on whether or not there’s a woman in my life. I listen to the same stuff now that I listened to twenty-five years ago. Of course, newer soundtracks are periodically added to my collection, though not for some time.
I tried listening to that Cape radio after somebody else blogged about it, but it doesn’t play anything I like (bear in mind that I detest rock, even the so-called “soft rock”).
But I got my CD player hooked up yesterday, so I can set it on random and let it pick tracks from the 100 CDs it holds. Ahhhh…
January 21st, 2006 at 2:37 pm
I think that’s one of the best things about meeting new people — learning about their musical tastes, finding new bands that you like that you’d never have found on your own. And the proliferation of MP3 trading has really just helped in that.
January 21st, 2006 at 2:59 pm
So am I the only one for whom it doesn’t work that way?
January 21st, 2006 at 6:37 pm
Yep.
January 21st, 2006 at 7:09 pm
My musical tastes didn’t change based on who I was dating, I still have some things I like that I’ve never dated anyone who also liked it ( New Wave: Talking Heads, Information Society, New Order, etc. ), but I’d end up buying music based on the recommendations or nagging of the person I was with at the time.
In some cases that meant being introduced to new things that I’d like ( Loreena McKennit ) and at other times it resulted in cds I haven’t listened to since breaking up ( Eve 6 ).
What I actually tend to like the most these days is something with a fast enough beat to keep me awake and interested, and not have so much squaking and grinding that it gives me a headache.
I have some electronica that I like that I just won’t listen to right now as I tend to put one album on and just have it repeat all evening and I know I’ll get annoyed at it mid-way through the second time through.
But yeah, always looking for suggestions of new bands to look up or listen too. Maybe I like them, maybe not, but it is at least a few minutes of new noise to broaden my musical surroundings.
January 21st, 2006 at 10:12 pm
You can’t go wrong with my boys from Big Bad Voodoo Daddy. If you like swing, that is. And I do!
January 21st, 2006 at 11:53 pm
Big Bad Voodoo Daddy…
I am going to have to find some mp3s of them just for the name because that is craaaa-zy sounding.
January 22nd, 2006 at 11:41 am
I don’t like modern Swing. The drums ruin it for me. They tend to hammer you with the beat.
I had a friend who suggested that the apparent difference in that respect between classic Big Bands and modern swing bands was just more modern recording techniques. I maintain that it’s because Big Bands had 20-40 musicians, and typically only one drummer. Thus, the drums were no more 5% of the instruments. These days, they account for closer to 20%, I’d say.
No, give me Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman (although Gene Krupa’s drum solo in “Sing Sing Sing” does give me a headache), the Andrews Sisters… Nothing today can even come close to them, as far as I’m concerned.
January 22nd, 2006 at 6:45 pm
Thats an interesting theory about the difference between ‘Big Band’ and ‘Swing’ music. Might have to research that a little. Kind of a funny little idea in the whole ‘old is new again’ vein of things.
My closest theory to that is that most ‘country’ music is bad 80s pop ballads re-done with a nasal twang. ( By ‘country’ I mean pop-country and not the traditional ‘folk’ or ‘bluegrass’ country. )
January 22nd, 2006 at 11:47 pm
Big Bad Voodoo Daddy is much fun and cool music from the little bit I’ve heard now.
Also it helps answer that question I had of what exactly ’swing’ music was.
Puts me in mind of a Bogart mobster club scene. The lady on stage singing with the band behind her and the black band leader on a trumpet who’d play some triumphant riff on the horn during the climactic scene.
January 23rd, 2006 at 10:28 am
Don’t forget that Big Band music was grouped into two different styles, “swing” and “sweet.” The former was happy, rollicking, foot-stomping music, like “In the Mood” and “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy.” The latter was largely romantic ballads, suitable for slow-dancing, such as “Sentimental Journey” and “On a Slow Boat to China.”
I like both styles, though younger folks seem to have no patience for anything that has a slow tempo. I really don’t understand why. Of course, I don’t understand why the crucial element seems to be the beat rather than the melody these days, much less why anyone would crank the bass all the way up and the treble all the way down, so all that remains is the bone-rattling “boom boom boom,” rendering all popular “songs” virtually identical.
/sigh
I’m old…