Post by Adam on Jan 19, 2007 1:26:51 GMT -5
So what does it for you? What do you hear in these sounds? If music could talk, what does it say to you?
I can't really say that its my mood that dictates what I listen to (or want to). Sometimes I have to try different genres or artists and I'll end up feeling different or finding exactly what I was needing in the least possible place. My dilemma with my cd collection is the same as everyone else's: there's just too much damn music to listen to. Also equally infuriating is what I don't already own, which I constantly think about.
I listen to music on my way to work and during work (while operating a floor scrubber, for example) and I usually pack in my 78-sleeve cd jacket: the dependables, the stuff I haven't listened to and the discs I can't quit playing. Otherwise I work in the ambience of the workplace (both noisy and quiet, the latter at night) and my brain will operate like a radio dial, finding songs I wish I could hear but can't while struggling to finish work. And sometimes there's a desperation to play that song when I get home or in the vehicle for as long as I can hold the song in memory. Or maybe I'll lose interest before then and find something else.
The point is that its a random thing. Sometimes its easy to pinpoint. Sometimes not.
Chuck Klosterman once wrote (along the lines; I'm paraphrasing here) that people love parts of songs rather than entire songs. There are the money shots, to be considered, but the whole is important.
I still haven't purchased an MP3 player of any kind so I'm left with my trusty Discman and the cds to get me through a day. That means dealing with cds, warts and all, when I really feel that I need mix tapes or plays. But I listen anyway in the hopes that I pick up a song I didn't feel was great before or if an album plays better.
I'd rather have rock or metal playing during the day and soul, rap and electroncia during the night. One keeps me active and the other relaxes. Sometimes I'll change it up because as Banky said, "variety is a spice of life."
I love metal, though, and I'm way behind in that genre although I try and try. Its been unfarily shoehorned as a limited, incomphrensible genre (it seems) but the potential is so damn great.
My favorite metal scribe, Martin Popoff, put it best some years back:
"It's the only music from my youth I'm not embarrassed about any more, except, that is, for classic rock, mainly prog. R.E.M, The Cure, even fIREHOSE, Joe Ely, Kate Bush and The Replacements, for me it's all inextricably linked to university (you folks call it college), weepy, vulnerable, girl problem stuff. Metal just is. It rarely contains irony, and when it does, we all get it and laugh at the joke bouncing around, with, and at us. It's never changed, or, at least the general power chord, power personality aspect of it still courses, plows, blunders, chops away. It keeps you young, it makes you get up in the morning and methodically vanquish your action points, it staves off the dozy mid-afternoon, gotta-take-a-breaks. It can occasionally brainwash you into jogging. It basically jars you out of a number of potential funks, losing situations, surrenders."
He's right. Metal has that theraputic quality to it. There's no telling how much the likes of Slayer, Sepultura, Pantera or Metallica (among others) kept me from taking my anger out on someone or something after a long, hard day at work during college or since.
And metal isn't the only genre that can get you up-and-running. All kinds of music has enabled me flesh out my thoughts and feelings. It reminds me of things to do or things I've forgot. I've worked faster and efficient with it playing. I've made it such an integral part of my life that its unthinkable that I could start or finish a day without it.
I can't really say that its my mood that dictates what I listen to (or want to). Sometimes I have to try different genres or artists and I'll end up feeling different or finding exactly what I was needing in the least possible place. My dilemma with my cd collection is the same as everyone else's: there's just too much damn music to listen to. Also equally infuriating is what I don't already own, which I constantly think about.
I listen to music on my way to work and during work (while operating a floor scrubber, for example) and I usually pack in my 78-sleeve cd jacket: the dependables, the stuff I haven't listened to and the discs I can't quit playing. Otherwise I work in the ambience of the workplace (both noisy and quiet, the latter at night) and my brain will operate like a radio dial, finding songs I wish I could hear but can't while struggling to finish work. And sometimes there's a desperation to play that song when I get home or in the vehicle for as long as I can hold the song in memory. Or maybe I'll lose interest before then and find something else.
The point is that its a random thing. Sometimes its easy to pinpoint. Sometimes not.
Chuck Klosterman once wrote (along the lines; I'm paraphrasing here) that people love parts of songs rather than entire songs. There are the money shots, to be considered, but the whole is important.
I still haven't purchased an MP3 player of any kind so I'm left with my trusty Discman and the cds to get me through a day. That means dealing with cds, warts and all, when I really feel that I need mix tapes or plays. But I listen anyway in the hopes that I pick up a song I didn't feel was great before or if an album plays better.
I'd rather have rock or metal playing during the day and soul, rap and electroncia during the night. One keeps me active and the other relaxes. Sometimes I'll change it up because as Banky said, "variety is a spice of life."
I love metal, though, and I'm way behind in that genre although I try and try. Its been unfarily shoehorned as a limited, incomphrensible genre (it seems) but the potential is so damn great.
My favorite metal scribe, Martin Popoff, put it best some years back:
"It's the only music from my youth I'm not embarrassed about any more, except, that is, for classic rock, mainly prog. R.E.M, The Cure, even fIREHOSE, Joe Ely, Kate Bush and The Replacements, for me it's all inextricably linked to university (you folks call it college), weepy, vulnerable, girl problem stuff. Metal just is. It rarely contains irony, and when it does, we all get it and laugh at the joke bouncing around, with, and at us. It's never changed, or, at least the general power chord, power personality aspect of it still courses, plows, blunders, chops away. It keeps you young, it makes you get up in the morning and methodically vanquish your action points, it staves off the dozy mid-afternoon, gotta-take-a-breaks. It can occasionally brainwash you into jogging. It basically jars you out of a number of potential funks, losing situations, surrenders."
He's right. Metal has that theraputic quality to it. There's no telling how much the likes of Slayer, Sepultura, Pantera or Metallica (among others) kept me from taking my anger out on someone or something after a long, hard day at work during college or since.
And metal isn't the only genre that can get you up-and-running. All kinds of music has enabled me flesh out my thoughts and feelings. It reminds me of things to do or things I've forgot. I've worked faster and efficient with it playing. I've made it such an integral part of my life that its unthinkable that I could start or finish a day without it.