New Day Rising

September 4th, 2009 Hello. This entry has nothing at all to do with Hüsker Dü's New Day Rising, although I do love that album. Rather, this entry is about being at the cusp of a shifting marketplace in terms of buying music, and I'm a little conflicted about it. I was recently thinking about how I feel like I haven't gotten much new music this year as opposed to other years. However, in reality I believe I have purchased about the same amount of music as I have in years past. The main difference in 2009 is that the number of albums I've downloaded from iTunes, Lala, and Amazon has far outpaced the number of CD's I've bought from traditional record stores such as B-Side or Strictly Discs. Here's a sample of some recently purchased downloads versus recent CD purchases (neither list is complete):

Downloads:
St. Vincent - Actor
Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest
Dirty Projectors - Bitte Orca
Metric - Fantasies
Mr. Scruff - Ninja Tuna With Bonus Bait
Various Artists - Dark Was The Night (Red Hot Compilation)

CD's:
Sonic Youth - The Eternal
Dinosaur Jr - Farm
R.E.M. - Reckoning (Deluxe Edition)
Pavement - Brighten The Corners (Nicene Creedence Ed.)
M. Ward - Hold Time
Jose Gonzalez - Live at Park Ave - 01 March 2008

You can definitely see the division of how I've discerned whether to download an album or actually made the decision to head down to the record store to pick up a copy. Two of the six CD's are reissues. Four of the six CD's are by "classic" bands.

In my mind, I've come to the conclusion that the only real reason for me to buy a CD is that its A. a limited/deluxe/special edition of a classic album with some sort of bonus material, B. an album from a classic/favorite artist, or C. a CD that I've stumbled upon at an incredibly low bargain price, usually at a used CD store. M. Ward may not qualify as a classic just yet but he's definitely a favorite, and I feel like I've invested quite a bit in his back catalog that it makes sense to keep the set complete at this point so he kind of swings into that category. The Jose Gonzalez disc was that rare instance of a new disc at a nice price.

And its not to say that I don't value any of these newer bands like Grizzly Bear or Dirty Projectors as much as veteran bands such as Sonic Youth or Dinosaur Jr. Maybe in 15-20 years I'll be buying the Veckatimest deluxe reissue complete with a bonus disc (if CD's still exist 15-20 years from now, of course). I just think that today the importance of having the genuine article has diminished. In a way, its a good thing because the focus is on the actual music as opposed to the packaging that most people could care less about anyway. Also, as a consumer the online marketplace has given people the opportunity to be more savvy when making music purchases as you now have the ability to sample the music before you actually buy it - that is, if you're still actually buying music as opposed to stealing music, but that's a discussion for another time.

This is why it's hard for me, personally, to let the CD go: I like the ritual of traditionally finding and buying music. I genuinely like going to the record store and sifting through racks of CD's. I also like that feeling of "doing your homework" about a band or an album: hearing about a band by word-of-mouth, reading multiple reviews, absorbing interviews with the artist, and buying a piece of music without having heard a note because everything that came beforehand made you at least 85% confident that you were going to be into it, regardless. The element of surprise is almost completely gone because everything is so easily accessible now.

So I am at the crossroads. I'm definitely heading towards the future, but I'm not completely willing to relinquish the past just yet. I like the CD. I like vinyl. Cassettes were pretty cool, too, especially the mix tape. 8-tracks were strange. Mini-discs (MD's) were the 8-tracks of the 90's. But the mp3 is a completely different animal altogether. You can't touch it, read it, or accidentally scratch it, and you don't have to worry about it warping in the back seat of your car on a hot summer day. The mp3 makes sense - its just music, without the pretense. The focus has now shifted to how you listen to your mp3's, especially now that you can carry your entire music collection in your pocket. This, however, is another discussion for another time.

Songs I've been into lately:

Here To Fall - Yo La Tengo
Heartbeats - The Knife
Psychic City (Voodoo City) - YACHT
Stillness Is The Move - Dirty Projectors
Ex Factor - Lauryn Hill
I'll Believe In Anything - Wolf Parade
Lover's Spit (ft. Feist) - Broken Social Scene
Two Weeks - Grizzly Bear
Island On The Coast - Band of Horses
All My Friends - LCD Soundsystem
Fearless - Pink Floyd
Bounce That - Girl Talk
China Girl (Diplo Mix) - M.I.A.
Check The Rhime - A Tribe Called Quest
The Kids Don't Stand A Chance - Vampire Weekend
Brackett, WI - Bon Iver

That's it for now. More to come later. Maybe. Have a good evening.

Classic Rock

May 8th, 2009 Hello. So recently there was an email chain getting passed around amongst friends regarding the worst/overplayed/annoying songs. The songs initially mentioned were:

Freebird - Lynyrd Skynyrd
Stairway to Heaven - Led Zeppelin
Hotel California - The Eagles
Layla - Derek & The Dominoes

I think I could easily add a song from The Who, Jethro Tull or Deep Purple ("Baba O'Riley," "Aqualung," or "Smoke On the Water," anyone?) and it certainly wouldn't degrade the essence of the list. These classic rock staples have become so cliché that essentially it has become cliché to even hate them. It's hard to even consider that there was a time when these songs were regarded as fresh and exciting because they have been basically force-fed into our consciousness over the past four decades by radio programmers who don't seem to understand that too much of a good thing can be very bad.

But here's the thing - I really don't mind hearing "Freebird," "Stairway," or "Layla," despite having heard these songs literally thousands upon thousands of times during my lifetime. Sounds crazy, doesn't it? And I think it has something to do with movies. When I hear "Freebird" now, I don't think about these crazy rednecks playing southern fried rock. Ultimately, I think about this great scene in a not-so-great movie from Cameron Crowe called Elizabethtown, in which the the "black sheep" character of the family plays Skynyrd's signature song with his band at his uncle's wake which hilariously ends up in flames. When I hear "Stairway," I don't think of the bloated rock epic that it's become, I think about another Cameron Crowe movie called Almost Famous. In the bonus material from the DVD version of the movie, there is an outtake where the main character plays "Stairway" for his mom, and he's trying to get her to understand why that song is so powerful to him, which is pretty amusing. And with "Layla" - a song which I completely despised while I was growing up - I now think about the end of the Martin Scorcese film, Goodfellas, in which the piano coda of the song is played over a montage of corpses that turn up around town after DeNiro's character systematically eliminates almost everyone connected to him in the mob. Brutal, to say the least, but that coda to "Layla" provides the perfect eulogy.

In effect, these movies have really helped to re-contextualize these pieces of music, and I can hear them now for what they are - powerful and epic rock songs. It also helps (a lot) that I rarely listen to the radio these days - I don't think I've faithfully listened to the radio since I realized that there was incredible music that wasn't being played on the radio - so it's not like I run the risk of hearing these songs more than once or twice a year. So on those rare occasions I do hear these songs, I don't immediately turn them off - I actually listen.

So, if you feel like you've heard "Baba O'Riley" maybe one time too many, I suggest you watch Adrien Brody's character rock out in Spike Lee's Summer of Sam, and it might get you back to thinking why that song is truly... classic.

On a completely unrelated note, here's a short list of songs I've been listening to lately:

God + Suicide - Blitzen Trapper
Heartbeats - Jose Gonzalez
Tightrope - Yeasayer
All The Wine - The National
Either Way - Wilco
The Strangers - St. Vincent
Trouble - Ray LaMontagne
Hard Feelings - The Constantines
Bankrobber - The Clash
No Omega - Eric B. & Rakim
Someone Great - LCD Soundsystem

I'll try to add some links later. Have a good evening.

PINK MOON 2009 Over the hill, part II

SNOW MOON 2009 Over the hill

WOLF MOON 2009 Music in 2008

BEAVER MOON 2008 FUNKY 4+1

HUNTER MOON 2008 Salami

HARVEST MOON 2008 Stuffed Up

STURGEON MOON 2008 Eraser

STRAWBERRY MOON 2008 PB & J

FLOWER MOON 2008 The Helicopter

PINK MOON 2008 Hooks

WORM MOON 2008 iPod and I

SNOW MOON 2008 All Around Al's World of Sound 101

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