A week of music listening

I had a different post nearly ready, but I think it is still wandering too much, so I will see if I can whittle it down into something concise.

Music is important to me, and writing about it is important to me, and there is a lot that has happened with it, especially since starting the music reviews, and then it goes beyond music. So there is this jumble, where I probably have four posts that are all related.

Right now the simplest thing to do is go over my listening habits. I tracked my time spent listening last week. I was kind of curious, and it is a look into processes, which I dig.

Usually I work Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday, with Saturday, Sunday, and Wednesday off. Work days are 7:30 to 5:45, but usually for the first couple of hours I keep things quiet. There are people getting up and ready, maybe sleeping in, and I am not a morning person.

I usually start listening to music somewhere between 10 and 11 AM, and the first thing I will do is pick the song of the day. That usually just takes a few minutes. I had been working through existing play lists. Currently I am going through bands I have reviewed, and I have a list of bands that have not had a song of the day yet, but whom I intend to use. If I don't already know what song I am going to pick, I will check the review for ideas, and I will listen, maybe to a few different songs, but I generally don't agonize over it.

The next priority is listening to the bands that will be reviewed for that week. Ideally I will listen to all of the songs three times through, though with a group with a lot of songs it may not be possible. Thursday morning I will listen to the Thursday band one more time before I post the review, then the Friday band and will start Friday with them. I want to know that I have really given the music a shot, and that I am not missing anything about it.

I started off with For the Broken and Closer to Closure, but they sounded similar enough that I thought I better change it up, so I brought in The Delinquents. Normally that would just bump Closer to Closure to this week, but they have a longer discography available, and this week in addition to the regular reviews I am getting ready for a concert with three bands, only one of which I am familiar with. So this week I am listening to Sunshine Collective and Clones of Clones for review this week, and Dads, Pentimento, and Reggie and the Full Effect for concert preparation. (I did throw in some Esoteric, and I may add some Coalesce and Get Up Kids too, just to be thorough.)

The Reggie review should be next Friday, but I won't know if I will review the openers together or separately until after I have heard them. I could possibly decide that I have written enough about Reggie already, based on the one general review plus an album review. This is the first time I will see a band live after doing a review, so it's a new thing. (Though, if I can make it to see Dave Hause February 26th, that will be a second time and in the same month.)

Then is music that I listen to for different projects. One is that I have been trying to understand "Emo", but it was not really sinking in. I read Nothing Feels Good, and I listened to some of it, but what I am doing now is going through slowly and listening to all the bands. Even with that, it wasn't working, and so I have been needing to expand.

Everyone agrees that it starts with Rites of Spring, and listening to some Fugazi and Minor Threat in connection with that makes sense, but it was reading more on Spotify (most biographies come from Rovi) and Wikipedia that started giving associated bands from that time that really started to help. Some of it was understanding punk's move to hardcore, and the rise of indie bands, with the growing emphasis on DIY, and it all seems to contribute to the environment where emotional hardcore happens.

This basically means that I have also listened to REM, Black Flag, the Meat Puppets, Minutemen, the Replacements, and Hüsker Dü, but I finally feel like I am on solid ground. The Buzzcocks were part of that, and I have actually started moving forward, having listened to Embrace and Gray Matter this week. After Beef Eater and Fire Party, I will be ready for Chapter 2.

This also led to some other things. For example, "Lipstick" by the Buzzcocks reminded me of "Shot By Both Sides" by Magazine. This totally makes sense, as Howard Devoto was a co-writer on both. I also heard a little bit of similarity between Gray Matter and Billy Idol's "White Wedding", so I needed to check that out, but it seemed less obvious, and  I can't point to any part of a Gray Matter song and say "Here!" Sunshine Collective may remind me of Jill Sobule, so I want to listen to her a bit this week as well.

Hearing one thing often leads to other things. For example, someone posted a clip of "Bell Song" from the opera Lakmé, which was fine, except that I was disappointed that it wasn't "Flower Duet", so then I needed to listen to that, and to the barcarolle from Tales of Hoffman.

There is also music that I use for writing. The big one was deciding to try and create a set list for a Gin Blossoms concert, because I wanted to listen to everything for that. When I put in the All American Rejects, that was while I was going over the screenplay for Hungry before loading it to Amazon. I guess after working on Family Blood, the Rejects are my vampire band. I can see where it could have gone in other directions.

When I pulled up "Barely Breathing" and "Kiss Me", that's because I was getting ready to work on Out of Step, which I have not loaded to Amazon yet. Conventional Weapons and Danger Days are for a different project, that I will probably not work on any more until next week, because there are too many other things.

"More Than This" is for a comic that I think I will also put off a month, but because that is on one of my play lists (Non-annoying love songs), I just let the other music go. I have started to rely on play lists a lot as my go-to listening, because I know I like them. However, I have also been making more of a point to pull up bands I like. So because I was hearing "Goodbye Copenhagen" in my mind, it was good to listen to New Politics, and "My Perfect Thing" led to listening to Farewell My Love.

I have mostly listed where I was listening. I use Spotify as much as I can, even when I own the music, because it pays a little, and more than the other paying sources. And, I can find a lot. For Gin Blossoms I needed to pull out my CDs for Dusted and Major Lodge Victory, and I have Pencey Prep on my desk right now, but they do pretty well. I will go through Youtube at least once for any band review though, if they have videos.

It may also be worth pointing out how closely this ends up being associated with work. On my off days, I try not to be chained to the computer, and that is where I do most of my listening. It does make my work hours more interesting, and if I must have a day job, having one where I can listen to music is an awesome perk. There are a lot of jobs where either the environment or the type of work would make it impossible.

The one thing that did not come up for the week in question is that some times I will pull up songs to sing. If I have karaoke coming up, or I just get in the mood, it will happen, and it tends to involve Fall Out Boy, Misfits, and Alkaline Trio, very likely with some Gin Blossoms and maybe Kaoma.

There are some important points to make there regarding how the current setup for music distribution limits what newer songs end up being available for karaoke, but I think I will save that for later. I will always come back to writing about music, because the music is always there. I am always hearing it and thinking about it, and eventually the words have to break through.

January 20th - 26th, 2014

Monday (late start due to a doctor appointment)

1:30 - 2:15 music videos for blog ("Love Like Winter", "Sing", "Don't Cry" and "Go")

2:30 - 3:02 For the Broken (Spotify)

3:03 - 3:14 Closer to Closure (Spotify)

3:15 - 4:11 The Delinquents (Soundcloud)

4:25 - 5:20 Buzzcocks Singles Going Steady (Spotify)

5:40 - 7:41 MCR Conventional Weapons and Danger Days (Spotify)

7:42 -8:30 "More Than This", rest of Non-annoying love songs play list, "Lipstick" and "Shot By Both Sides". (Spotify)

Tuesday

10:15 - 10:30 song of the day stuff

10:33 - 11:04 Delinquents, Soundcloud and Youtube

11:45 - 1:05 For the Broken, Spotify, Youtube

2:00 - 4:00 R.E.M, Murmur and Reckoning on Spotify

4:16 - 5:11 Farewell My Love, Gold Tattoos (Spotify)

5:12 - 5:47  Alkaline Trio tracks off of Crimson (Spotify)

Wednesday

10:15 "Stars of God" by Crow Black Sky for the song of the day.

1:40 - 3:20 AAR, When the World Comes Down and into Move Along, Spotify

5:13 - 5:30, 6:35-6:45 For the Broken, Spotify

Thursday

9:10 - 9:25 "Bell Song" and "Flower Duet", then barcarolle from Hoffman (Youtube)

9:30 - 10:05 New Politics, A Bad Girl in Harlem, Spotify

10:15 - 10:20 Song of day stuff, Fever Cadence

11:00 - 12:08  For the Broken, Spotify (with Youtube break for Chantal and Jimmy and Helena)

1:30 - 2:24 Fugazi, Repeater, Spotify

3:35 - 4:02 Delinquents on Soundcloud

Little break for Barely Breathing, Kiss Me, More than This, and some Reggie.

4:52 - 5:45 Rites of Spring, starting with 6 song demo but then going into Rites of Spring. Like the intro to Drink Deep.

Friday

10:45 - 11:00 Looking for song of day, Rattlesnake Gunfight and Kris Orlowski

11:45 - 12:50 Delinquents

2:16 - 2:40 Finishing Rites of Spring

2:42 - 3:24 Embrace

3:26 - 4:30 Gray Matter, Food for Thought/Take It Back, plus "White Wedding"

4:47 - 6:45 + 30 minutes later, Gin Blossoms

Saturday

11:15-11:30 Puppet Rebellion for Song of the Day

11:30 - 12:20, 2:30 - 8:30 on and off Gin Blossoms

Sunday

10:10 - 10:13 All the Apparatus for song of the day

3:00 4:30 - Gin Blossoms