tunequest

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March 20 – 41 songs played. 8 removed.

contrary to what one may think, given conventional wisdom, weekends are not the boom time of music listening that one would expect them to be. lots of free time should equal lots of play time. but of course there are commitments and chores and errands and all kinds of other activities that get in the way. i’m certain it would not be good for my marriage if i spent all our time together wearing ipod ear buds. it turns out so, this past weekend, i didn’t listen to a single song. but i did get re-acquainted with an old friend called deep space nine, and that counts for something i guess.

onward to today. well, unlike friday, today’s tunequest felt like a chore. i’ve got nothing against any of the music here; i just wasn’t in the mood for most of it. looking over the list though, i must say such feelings were mostly unwarranted.

  • guns n roses [appetite for destruction]
  • geinoh yamashirogumi [akira symphonic suite]
  • 10cents [buggin’ out]
  • christopher franke [babylon 5: whatever happened to mr. garabaldi]
  • berlin philharmonic performing r. strauss’ ‘also sprach zarathustra’
  • smashing pumpkins [bullet with butterfly wings]
  • mouse on mars [bib]single

ah appetite for destruction. a classic. and to this day, i have no idea why my parents let me listen to it. i was only ten years old or so when it came out. my only conclusion is that they must have thought i was too young to really understand what the songs meant. and it’s true. it wasn’t until i rediscovered the album in college that i gave the lyrics some serious consideration and there is some seriously mature themes. i guess ignorance was bliss in this case. but thinking back, i can’t help remember the times i listened to it in the van with my mom, just be-boppin along and she didn’t say a thing.

also in today’s play count, i must put in a good word about the smashing pumpkins. while the band were pretty decent musicians in their own right, they were also particularly good at covering other peoples songs. pisces iscariot has a cover of the animals ‘girl named sandoz’ and fleetwood mac‘s ‘landslide’ both of which i think sound better on that record than they do on the originals. similar story with the bullet with butterfly wings single (expanded version from the aeroplane flies high box set) which is a collection of five cover tracks by the cars, alice cooper, blondie, missing persons, and the cure. once again, i think the pumpkins exceed the cars on ‘you’re all i’ve got tonight’ and rock the house with alice cooper’s ‘clones (we’re all).’

also sprach zarathustra, better known as the theme from 2001: a space odyssey. there’s actually a lot more music after that first movement and the berlin philharmonic put out a great performance of it all.

March 16 – 50 songs played. 10 added.

a solid 3 hours and 40 minutes in today, which doesn’t seem long enough to have covered all the items below. but a lot of them are singles, just 2-4 songs each, plus i don’t actually list an album here until i’ve played all its songs. i had 6 songs left in the soul coughing show and only the last 2 of sigur ros’ (). so those didn’t make the list until today, despite the fact that most of the songs had been played earlier.

also, i know adding more music to my library doesn’t make this task any easier. but i’m always running into new stuff and i don’t want to become musically stagnant. thus, more music. today it was a tortoise show in san francisco 2005.

  • aarhus symphony performing vagn holmboe’s no.8
  • weezer [buddy holly]single
  • soul couging live in boston 1996
  • london symphony performing stravinsky’s "card game"
  • the breeders [cannonball] single
  • foo fighters [big me] single
  • helmut [biscuits for smut] single
  • lithops [blasmusik / intendo 7"]
  • hooverphonic [blue wonder power milk]
  • sigur ros [()]
  • lalo schifrin [bullit]

there are a few albums in a persons life that are emotive of a particular time or place, albums that, when heard, take you back to the feelings you felt when the music was fresh and new. smashing pumpkins’ mellon collie is one such album, taking me back to the winter and spring of my 11th grade year, when nearly-daily bomb threats meant being sent to hang out at the football stadium or skipping school altogether. those were fun times for over-achievers.

likewise for hooverphonic’s blue wonder power milk, and particularly the song "renaissance affair." every time i hear that song, i travel back in time to the summer after i graduated college, when i was high on my academic achievements in ad school with big dreams of landing a job a hot agency. that summer was amazing; i had few obligations, plenty of friends (old and new) and plenty of fun. i spent a good deal of time learning capoeira and exercising my creativity. it felt like a non-stop party.

while things haven’t turned out as expected (i never did get that ad job) and life has been generally good to me, when i hear that album, i can’t help but think what might have been.

March 10 – 57 songs played.

this morning i increased the number songs on the tunequest playlist from 300 to 1000 songs. that translates to about 110 albums or so, alphabetically ranging from ‘0’ to ‘Bo.’ even though alpha-by-album method pretty much ensures a random assortment of musical styles, i decided i wanted an even larger variety to choose from. so without further ado, here are today’s entries.

  • thomas newman [american beauty]
  • christopher franke [babylon 5: the face of the enemy]
  • christopher franke [babylon 5: river of souls]
  • christopher franke [babylon 5: messages from earth]
  • chris isaak [baja sessions]
  • mercury rev [all is dream]

today was the first of what i’m sure will be several babylon 5 days in the coming weeks. tangerine dream member christopher franke wrote the music for every episode of the epic sci-fi series and has released the score from about 30 of the 110 episodes for a total of about 17 hours to my taste, the music is very laid back and mellow; appropriately spacey with a handful of memorable themes and catchy action cues. thelogbook has just about everything you’d want to know and more. •

i don’t know much about thomas newman or his composing style, but his unorthodox score for the 1999’s american beauty is unique and compelling. i haven’t seen the film, so i don’t know what effect the score generated on screen, but the music, based primarily on percussion, is simple, subtle and itself beautiful. •

lastly, i’ve never paid much attention to Chris Isaak, but a bunch of his albums came with my marriage, and i’ve found that i do enjoy his laid-back style. today, he took me to a little bit of mexico while channeling elvis and roy orbison with his baja sessions. Though he was trying to hard on Only the Lonely.

Years later, System 7 confirms my love of Can

Today’s roundup:

  • system 7 [777]
  • tortoise [digest compendium of the tortoise’s world]
  • oasis [what’s the story morning glory]
  • styrofoam [a heart without a mind] single

A little story about System 7: back in summer of 1997, when only a handful of people knew what "mp3" meant, I ran across a song file called system 7-dizzy spoon on an old-school Hotline server. Being a Mac guy, I was intrigued by a band named after a defunct operating system. And being in the first year of college, I was susceptible to doing the typical college-age experimentation, so download it I did. I remember enjoying the song almost immediately, but because my musical world revolved mostly around rock at the time, I didn’t seek out any other material by the group and left it as a one-off in mt collection.

Then a funny thing happened three years later in summer of 2000. I discovered the most excellent german band of the 70s: Can. The last song on their 1972 album Ege Bamyasi is entitled Spoon and I think I nearly had an aneurysm of excitement the first time I heard heard it. I immediately recognized it as the same song as the Dizzy Spoon file. Rather, it was almost the same song. Dizzy Spoon turned out to be System 7’s contribution to the 1997 Can remix/tribute album Sacrilege.

Since then, Can has become one of my most respected and admired groups for its innovations and influence and I like to think that I was pre-destined to enjoy their music from the moment I downloaded that mislabeled mp3.

As for System 7, the group’s engaging ambient techno continues to entertain me, though 777 is one of their earlier efforts and is a little disappointing. "faydeaudeau" is the standout track and overall the album is decently mellow space out music, even if the composition is overly simple.

Speaking of early works, that Tortoise album is a bit difficult to handle, which is probably why I hadn’t listened to it for nearly 4 years. Digest Compendium is a collection of early singles and remixes, where the group seems more experimental, having not yet found their sound. As such, it’s uneven, and at times dull. Event though Tortoise is one of my favorite bands, I ended up removing a handful of songs from my library because I couldn’t see myself listening to them again. however, it did serve to remind me that I’ve been neglectful of the band lately. I had better rectify that soon.

March 8 – 40 songs played. 24 removed.

today included:

  • bavarian radio orchestra performing beethoven's no.5
  • badly drawn boy [about a boy]
  • english symphony performing delius' florida suite
  • disney's magic skyway music from the 1964 new york world's fair
  • all tomorrow's parties 1.0

you know, the back-to-back playing of delius' florida suite (which is magnificent, btw) with dvorak's no.9 has given me the idea to put together some kind of "impressions of america" compilation. dvorak's 9th was written during the time the czech composer spent in states (it even premiered in new york) and delius was inspired to write his florida suite by his experiences while he live in jacksonville. both composers wrote their works near the end of the 19th century and i guess i'm just intrigued by late-romantic music influenced by the american landscape and psyche of the time. i'd be tempted to only put foreign composers on that compilation (delius was british), but then i wouldn't be able to include copland's appalachian spring.

also, i must call out the disney music. richard and robert sherman's compositions for the magic skyway exhibit at the new york world's fair is simply a modern-era musical gem. the futurism is thick and the music just exudes the scientific and industrial "up-and-go-get-em!" ethos of the era.

Soundtrack for yardwork and car mechanicry

Ah, sweet weekend, the first without rain in about 2 months. Naturally it’s time for yardwork. I can finally finish my fall raking, just in time for spring. Even though I actually loathe doing yardwork, it does present much opportunity for music listening. Too bad I didn’t get to take advantage of it; I was too busy fighting an alternator.

Curse those who designed the 1997 pontiac sunfire–my hand got stuck in the freakin’ engine!

Still, I did manage to get in some Add N to (X) [add insult to injury] and mad season. no, not the drivel from Rob Thomas’ band–my library may not always reflect it, but I do have a modicum of taste. I refer, instead, to the worthwhile 1995 grunge side project of Pearl Jam‘s Mike Mcready and Alice in Chains‘ Layne Staley. I literally hadn’t heard the album in years and for the most part, it has held up since i bought it in high school. It’s an order of magnitude better than the much more publicized Temple of the Dog side project.

progress-wise, it seems that recent slacking is taking its toll. I now have to listen to 45 songs per day (up from 44). with an average song length of 4:05 minutes, by my calculations, I should finish with three days to spare. then I can gear up for tunequest 2007!

March 3 – 30 songs played. 2 removed.

I had a short day at the office, so i only managed to work in about 2 hours of music. no albums today, just handful of singles. highlights include stayin’ alive [bee gees], a couple tracks from velocity girl’s¡simpatico! and the hand that feed [nine inch nails] (i’m kinda bummed that i won’t get to hear it again for the rest of the year.

oh well, on with the mission.

i also dumped 2 boards of canada tracks from a few old tunes, vol 2.