Society’s consumption and listening of music has changed a lot in the past eight years – the same eight years that I have been into music. In high school I bought CDs and listened to them in my car or Walkman. During this time Apple released its now-dominant iTunes and iPod. iTunes was the first well-designed and very usable digital content managing program for many of us. Forget iPods for a second – iTunes let the masses easily burn all their CDs and store a massive library of music in practically no space at all.

When I went to college I burned all my CDs to my laptop. Because of its easy to useness and legitimateness, iTunes was partially responsible for me letting go of the need to physically buy and maintain a music library. I’d still rather buy DVDs and books, but I have not bought a CD in two years and that is a big deal for someone who had as many albums as I did in high school. I have since sold most of those CDs because I just don’t need them anymore.

Everything fit on my hard-drive in the fall of 2005. But thanks to dorm file-sharing applications and my position at the college radio station, I had more access to free music than ever before. I kept getting so much new music that a year later I had to buy an external hard-drive to house all of that music. Later, after buying a new laptop with more internal space, I was able to move it back to my internal hard-drive to make listening to music more fun. But I still had to cull back my collection, pruning 10 or so gigs of forgettable crap.

Over the course of a few years, I’ve been slowly deleting records to make space for new ones or just to satisfy my desire to get rid of records I did not like. Or, more importantly, to eliminate the problem that years of liking post-rock and drone/ambient/experimental instrumental electronic music effectively ruins any fun in letting music shuffle or play from the master collection.

Before starting this, I had 35 and 1/2 days, or almost 57 gigabytes of music. That’s almost 13,000 songs. I know people who have more, for sure, but I think I need to do a serious purging of my iTunes. Weed the bad albums and bands that I never listen to. I’m writing about it because I think it will be a fun way to look back on the evolution of my musical tastes as well as figure out why I like what I like and why I don’t like what I like.

There will be several Rounds of elimination, starting with albums I’ve never listened to, then going to artists and albums where I really like one song but never listen to the rest, and so on and so on… And here we go!

Round 1: Eliminating Outliers

Here are some of the albums on iTunes that I have never, ever listened to. I would have a long time ago, but there is a peril to eliminating records I have never listened to in that one day I might listen to them and discover at least one good song. So I’ve listened to all (or most) of these records to give them at least a fair shot toward being a KEEPAH or getting the AX.

Apples in Stereo Discovery of a World Inside the Moon AX
Opener “Go” is catchy stuff, a band I’ve known about a long time, but overall their albums are forgettable. This album starts off strong but I just get bored. That whole Elephant 6 sound got tiresome fast, I even admit to have sold my copy of Neutral Milk Hotel ages ago. Oh well. I still love the band Beulah though, they manage to keep up momentum throughout their albums. I think this also makes me appreciate The Shins for some reason.

The Bastard Wing Crystal Thicket AX
For a while I was really into this ‘dread folk’ music. This band features Christina Carter of Charalambides, which really is fantastic and Joy Shapes is life changing. But this is just too dready. I would like a little more swirling or action, the stand-out Tom Carter guitar work from Charalambides. A band like Espers can make dready folk that is lyrical and harmonic. This Bastard Wing record, however, is the kind of thing I got while at the radio station. Obscure doesn’t mean good. Boring, but I would have liked in high school I guess.

Clebanof Strings Exciting Sounds KEEPAH
My hidden passion is for exotica and lounge music, and I went through a phase of getting a lot of vinyl-ripped albums off of Exotica blogs. This is no exception, and is not any landmark album. A lot of exotica and 50s/60s instrumentals are all just different arrangements and covers of like, the same songs. One of the most known (and most cool) exotica songs is “Quiet Village”, and the recording here is one of the more epic ones I have heard. I am way into the “1000 string” echo sound, probably from the 60s movies and Christmas music I was raised on. This record is pretty rad. I still don’t know if its just the irony in me that likes it. Also very boring and melodramatic in parts, but I’m used to this easy kind of boring.

Colleen The Golden Morning Breaks AX
This is so hard for me to judge because this is pretty good soundtrack music, ambient stuff. But being on burnout from too much of this stuff, I can’t help but not be moved. It also fits into the sort of, disturbed childhood moment music category… which one of my favorite bands, Pram, does with much more aplomb. And because if I’m ever in the mood to listen to something like this, I always go to my favorite examples, of which this is not. Will I miss the gamelan and bell chimes with string samples? Maybe its time will come, so I’ll leave that decision for another day. No, I must be strong. Be gone Colleen (what a terrible name)

Current 93 Judas as Black Moth AX
This is a “Best of” Current 93, a prolific doom chamber folk dude who is actually pretty well known. And in many ways I should like this, but, ugh its just too much. And the question I must ask myself is, Will I ever be in the mood for this? There are no dynamics in the songs. Just sort of swells and lyrics with “haunting imagery”. I think a big problem is that I am not a lyric-based man, and that I can’t even pay attention or absorb the imagery that David Tibet sings about here.

Fugazi The Argument KEEPAH
This is a big band that I never really got into. I mean they’re THE post-hardcore band. I was going to listen to their debut, Repeater, and judge that, but it was far too lo-fi for me to deal with. So I went with The Argument, their last studio album. I was skeptical, but the third track was very exciting and it was easy coasting after that. Def all that is dynamic and interesting about post-hardcore all with a good chorus.

Guided By Voices Bee Thousand KEEPAH
Another popular indie band who’s most popular album I’ve had for like, ever, but never listened too. I’m really not into lo-fi indie rock (I don’t even like Pavement’s Slanted and Enchanted), and I was skeptical that I’d be bored here, but by “Tractor Rape Chain” I’m really digging it. Great weird lyrics, which I like, regardless of if they’re meaningful or not (like “Hardcore UFOs”). Very surprised.

Hammock Raising Your Voice Trying to Stop a Whisper AX
I’ve got all these Hammock CDs and I know they’re droney, shoegazey, post-rocky. Every song sounds the same and has a ridiculous title, like “When the sky pours down like a fountain” or “Floating away in every direction”. Pretty but zzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Herbie Hancock Headhunters KEEPAH
I think I downloaded some Herbie Hancock albums because I was going through a jazz fusion phase. Also we played “Chameleon”, this record’s opener, in my high school jazz band. Mm solid. I think I only like jazz fusion because it reminds me of 70s PBS, maybe also because its groovy. Great music to have on in the background.

Maximo Park A Certain Trigger KEEPAH
I like the Futureheads and I never listened to this band because they seemed to be a carbon copy. But listening to this, it’s pretty excellent. Sounds almost exactly like Futureheads, but that’s a good thing. It’s a great dancy punk listen. Good for doing homework WHICH I DON’T HAVE ANYMORE EH.

MF Doom Mm…Food AX
My freshman year of college MF Doom was THE indie rapper every dorm kid liked. His King Ghidorah album, using Gozilla movie samples, is the only actual rap CD I’ve ever bought. I like popular rap, and I love sick beats, but never cared enough to be a rap aficionado (i.e. into non-radio rap, like Wu-Tang). I think freshman year, MF Doom felt like an easy in to underground rap, but I ripped this CD and never listened to it because I lost interest in trying to be hip hop cool. Overall, his stuttered beats and his raspy voice grate on my nerves, even though he has cool samples and geek culture references.

Led Zeppelin Houses of the Holy KEEPAH
Led Zeppelin is probably the biggest band I never got into. Ok, maybe the Rolling Stones. But I’ve TRIED to get into the Stones, they just don’t do it for me. I liked some of the songs on Zeppelin IV back in the day. I don’t remember when I got this but I never listened to it – I know its the most “Fantastical” of the group’s albums, with Tolkien references or some jazz. But the first three songs really grabbed me, “The Rain Song” in particular sounds great. Really cool, though I still don’t know if I’m into Robert Plant’s voice that much.

Margo Guryan Take a Picture AX
I used to see this record featured at Kim’s Music on St. Marks and I came THIS close to buying it like half a dozen times. The cover features the titular singer, a cute brunette, smiling out a window on a rainy day. It’s too cute – that exact kind of 60s/70s French inspired rock/pop with a cute singer that gets the guys every time. Anyways, that’s what I remember when I pass this while scrolling down my iTunes library, but I never listened to it when I got it on some blog. Listening to it, I think that its a “forgotten gem” for a reason – its certainly poppy and catchy, but just not enough to leave much of an impression amongst all the other catchy hushed-girl pop/rock from the period. WHATS A GUY LIKE ME DOING WITH CATCHY HUSHED GIRL POP/ROCK ANYWAYS?

New Pornographers Twin Cinema AX
The only New Pornographers album in my iTunes. Umm I know a lot of people used to like this band. Do people still? Ugh I just think its too late for me – it’s nothing I haven’t heard else where. And I don’t know what irks me about this music – it’s like its catchy but is incompatible with my catch receptors. Like, imagine a sine wave on a plane, that’s my catchy reception. Well the New Pornographers are another wave that is just an inch to the right of my wave – they don’t line up.

Pink Floyd The Piper At the Gates of Dawn AX
Background: While I never got into the “popular” Pink Floyd albums out of pure snobbery, a fellow DJ at the radio station told me that if I liked post-rock and space rock and shiz then I had to check out their first album, the last one with that guy who died… Anyways, so I got it, never listened to it. I’ve never liked The Doors, and I hear a lot of similarities here. This is the kind of 60’s psychadelic that I don’t like. Moody Blues? Great. The United States of America? Stellar. Pink Floyd? Beh.

Velvet Underground The Velvet Underground & Nico KEEPAH
Yeah I even forgot that I hadn’t listened to this. It’s such a big deal of a record. It like INVENTED punk or something. Right? I forget – I noticed it mentioned everywhere when I was getting into music so I avoided it. And, I think, I like the Nico songs but don’t like the Lou Reed songs. So that means I like the mellower tracks, but the more up-tempo ones sound generically gritty. Maybe because they INVENTED that kind of generic grittiness.

The White Birch Come Up For Air KEEPAH
I first heard about the Rune Grammofon label when I was getting more into post-rock and experimental music. It’s a super stylish Norwegian label for mostly Norwegian artists – and I mean real artists – which made it all the more awesome (I’m Norwegian). I could never find any of their records at stores I went to in high school – but at my college radio station we got alllll their stuff, so I was swimming in well-packaged experimental Norwegian electronica. This White Birch band is probably the most traditional band on the label, with guitars and drums and a singer, but I think I got it just before music fatigue set in. Well, I was expecting to be bored, but the first track is really quite somber and beautiful. The same can be said for the rest of the album, which is dripping in Nordic melancholy.

The Wrens Meadowlands KEEPAH
Here’s the last one for today – a relic from the days that held music review site Pitchfork’s opinion above all others. This album got a great review, I never bought the CD, though I downloaded it a few years later when it was too late to care enough to actually listen to it. I was under the impression that it would be a more poppy, jangly affair, but am surprised to find it quite somber (though jangly somber). Quite good – perfect for driving alone through your hometown at night.

WOW A tie between keepers and losers. I was not expecting to enjoy as many of these albums as I did.

Be on the lookout for Phase 2: Deleting those albums that have only one good track!

Tags: bad music, classic rock, cool music, exotica, indie, itunes, lame music, lounge, pop, post-rock

This entry was posted on Friday, July 31st, 2009 at 11:45 am and is filed under Media Chips + Dip. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.