Less stockpiling, more listening? Sure. Let's try that.
January 18, 2018 2:28 PM   Subscribe

James Jackson Toth (of Wooden Wand) has a confession: he's a music addict, and he realized he had gone too far when he figured out that he couldn't listen to all his music in 40 years. But he had a plan - listen to one album only per week, starting on the first week of 2017. Only 52 albums for an entire year, to get back to really listening to and appreciating music, instead of amassing more and more. Album #1: Autechre's Oversteps from 2010. Things began to fall apart almost immediately.
posted by filthy light thief (86 comments total) 31 users marked this as a favorite
 
yeah well, no surprise. there is a difference between a stockpile and a library. the mistake he made in the first place was to stockpile, instead of build. the tip-off is right there in the early part of the article, when he refers to his "rabid consumption". he's got it right about streaming - it is a transitory experience. but he's also suffering from the elitism and weariness of the privilieged. he's only just started to realize it.
posted by lapolla at 2:51 PM on January 18, 2018 [5 favorites]


Why does it have to be so starkly formal so as to attempt to not listen to any other music each week other than the selected album? What's wrong with focusing on one album a week, while still allowing for the serendipitious new stuff to break in? Choose an album as the "default" listen. Heck, choose one album a week to listen through at least once, with your complete attention and attendant review of liner notes? Most people can find even 1 hour to do that.

Because it makes for a much less interesting article, I guess.
posted by tclark at 2:52 PM on January 18, 2018 [4 favorites]


I think there is a certain kind of personality that is more drawn to the acquisition of things or experiences (could be music, could be birdwatching, could be high scores in retro 80s games, I don't know) than the things or experiences themselves. Most people have a certain amount of that, but this guy has it like, dialled up to 11. Or possibly 111. The answer to appreciating music more is not to limit yourself arbitrarily, but to stay more present with your experiences - stop yearning after the focused music-listening habits of your youth (news flash: you are no longer young) or chasing the next thing that could be EVEN BETTER than what you are doing now. This is not as easy as it sounds, but gets easier with practice.
posted by Athanassiel at 3:00 PM on January 18, 2018 [8 favorites]


when he refers to his "rabid consumption". he's got it right about streaming - it is a transitory experience

I wish streaming was a transitory experience and serendipitous stuff could slip in. That is not my experience. Currently on pandora I get a Tom Petty song about every 5 to 10 songs. Mumford and Sons at about the same rate. I've thumbed down on Red Hot Chili Peppers every chance I get and still they keep coming at me. I'm starting to hate music that I liked in the past because the algorithms just won't ever let them go unplayed for a moment.

I feel like the supposed experience of unlimited music via streaming is worse than when my older brother went through his Olivia Newton John Xanadu on endless repeat phase. Is it some sort of algorithm payola driven thing?

I'm glad I've still got my old pre-wars Napster stockpile because I am going back to it and loading up my phone's memory card just so I can get some variety and randomness.
posted by srboisvert at 3:10 PM on January 18, 2018 [11 favorites]


It's bizarre that he seems to feel that, by being a middle aged person who no longer fixates on the minutiae of who played bass on Ribald and the Stoats' second flexi disc, he's evidence of some personal or (even more risibly) cultural degradation.

It doesn't seem to occur to him that the reason he's not obsessing over details any more is probably that he's grown up a bit and has more interesting and/or important things to worry about most of the time.
posted by howfar at 3:13 PM on January 18, 2018 [13 favorites]


I get freaked out by the streaming experience. I never liked singles, mix-tapes, or listening to the radio either. I want to pick albums and listen to them from beginning to end (or even a side at a time) with a natural pause after the last track.

I'm terrified of the possibility that I'll listen to a track, hear it enough to attach some significance, then never be able to find it again because it was just streaming and I don't know the name of the artist or album. Or even worse, know the artist and track but never be able to find it again.

To me, the music I choose to listen to is an important part of who I am, and I am not interested in leaving that to the whims of streaming service algorithms. The fact that artists get a negligible share of streaming revenue (as opposed to the fact that I can buy from bandcamp and know most of the money goes to the person running the bandcamp page) is just icing on the cake.
posted by idiopath at 3:15 PM on January 18, 2018 [4 favorites]


I wish streaming was a transitory experience and serendipitous stuff could slip in. That is not my experience.

Not particularly wanting to buzz market, but the Spotify automatic playlist generation is pretty fantastic these days.
posted by howfar at 3:15 PM on January 18, 2018 [5 favorites]


This failed because the typical album is between 30 minutes and an hour long, while the number of waking hours in a week is 112 hours.

If we take 45 minutes as the average, and only attempt to fill half the week's waking hours with music, you'd need to listen to a single album around 75 times. Even one album per day is hard. Try listening to just one album 8-10 times in a row and see how far you get. I mostly listen to music during my commute and my time at the gym, which over the week would be, again, around 10 listens to the same album in a row.

It's impossible.
posted by krisjohn at 3:18 PM on January 18, 2018 [1 favorite]


This is wonderful, and now I want Screamers, Bangers & Cosmic Synths—thanks for the post!

Man, I wish it weren't so inevitable that the thread would be full of people smugly announcing that the author is Doing It Wrong, but you go to the internet with the MeFi you have, not the MeFi you want.
posted by languagehat at 3:19 PM on January 18, 2018 [29 favorites]


Why did the experiment fail? For one thing, it failed because it was unpleasant, and I didn't want to do it anymore.

Pretty good reason.

More importantly, I couldn't help feeling almost immediately that I had already reached a conclusion: Modern life, with all of its informational density, has rendered filtering out the noise virtually impossible.

Err.... no?
posted by Artw at 3:19 PM on January 18, 2018 [7 favorites]


Am I a "deep listener" or merely another trophy-hunting collector?

I think the answer is clear.
posted by Greg_Ace at 3:20 PM on January 18, 2018 [2 favorites]


A small, suspicious part of me wonders if this isn't editorial advertising for Screamers, Bangers and Cosmic Synths.

which I now want, anyway
posted by sandettie light vessel automatic at 3:46 PM on January 18, 2018 [2 favorites]


Not particularly wanting to buzz market, but the Spotify automatic playlist generation is pretty fantastic these days.

It really is. the best part is that it knows that I might like all sorts of different stuff from all sorts of different artists, and that despite Kristen Bell being my most-listened-to artist last year (the curse of a 6 year old daughter) that Orange 9mm inspired playlist still appears.
posted by Dr. Twist at 3:48 PM on January 18, 2018 [2 favorites]


Like many people about my age — I'm 39 — I used to study and pore over the records and cassettes in my collection. I read lyric sheets and thank-you lists. I knew every song title on every album, even the ones relegated to the deep recesses, like side 2, track 4.
I don't want to alarm anyone, but I think we may have just reached Peak NPR. Everybody just stay calm, sidle slowly toward the exit, and keep your head down, and we'll all make it out of this alive.
posted by Mayor West at 3:51 PM on January 18, 2018 [13 favorites]


Peak NPR

Funny you should say that, I said exactly the same to Spouse last night upon hearing a string-section cover of Needle In The Hay last night, on some public radio program or other.
posted by sandettie light vessel automatic at 3:53 PM on January 18, 2018 [2 favorites]


I'm new to Spotify and impressed by it too. The basic "artist radio" thing does a great job of, say, "play music by Autechre and artists like Autechre". But they do so much more. We listen to a pretty diverse collection of stuff; noodly electronica like Autechre, classic American jazz, chanteuse-style world music like Cesaria Evora. I was pretty impressed with these recommended daily mixes today. Not only are they music relevant to those genres, but they are appropriately separated. Fuck Buttons in one bin, Orchestra Baobab in an other. Nicely done.
posted by Nelson at 3:57 PM on January 18, 2018 [2 favorites]


I don't see anything wrong, in terms of musical edification, with a kind of T-shaped approach to engaging with it: you have a (comparatively) narrow swath of artists or recordings or what have you that you've listened to deeply and are extremely familiar with, and then you have a more explorative and maybe more varied array of things whose every nook and cranny you don't spend as much time absorbing, but that you still enjoy and want to have around. Even stockpiling doesn't have to be pathological, sometimes you get driven to follow a certain vein and then move onto something else in the meantime, but the record of that exploration is still there and you can come back and listen to the parts that you didn't get to the first time.

Still, I lol at the people (almost always the type of self-styled critic or curator that retweets their own Year End Top Tracks playlist well into April) who have a 300GB music collection (and not because it's FLAC) and would never admit to there being a single item in there that they couldn't expound on the cultural relevance of.
posted by invitapriore at 4:02 PM on January 18, 2018 [2 favorites]


The author's frequent comparison of his compulsion to less reputable addictions is probably not far off.

A friend of ours, sober for over 10 years, gets VERY OBSESSIVELY INTO any new hobby he takes up, buying ALL THE THINGS THAT GO WITH THE HOBBY. I found this out when I helped him move houses, and helped pack and unpack so many untouched items still in box. Now he's into cigars, so at least those are more lightweight, unless he's serious about the walk-in humidor.
posted by ivan ivanych samovar at 4:14 PM on January 18, 2018 [5 favorites]


That means there are records I own today that I will definitely never hear again. It was a sobering thought. Toward the end of David Foster Wallace's 2001 short story "Good Old Neon," the narrator recognizes the "state in which a man realizes that everything he sees will outlast him." With one single calculation, made on a whim, I had placed myself in this very state.

This ties in nicely with the recent FPP on death, facscism, and technophilia.

There is something in the mindset of over-privileged dudes that sends them into panic attacks when they face their own mortality - once they realize that something will outlast them, they have to acknowledge that they are not, in fact, the center of the universe.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 4:18 PM on January 18, 2018 [6 favorites]


Yeah this (the experiment) is no way to live. I just checked out one of the Wooden Wand tracks, budgeting 4:18 of my remaining, fleeting, precious time on Earth to it. Was that the best use of my scarce, vanishing listening time? I haven't even heard all of Eric Dolphy yet! Now I have to catch up! Rational maximizing, taken to an extreme, leaves you empty and unable to appreciate any experience or moment.
posted by thelonius at 4:21 PM on January 18, 2018 [3 favorites]


Hey, I used to do this, all the time! I did it by saving up my paper round money, and getting the bus into town, to the local version of Rough Trade, where indie singles were 70p and albums about three quid. It was the 1970s though. And, (it's all coming back ...) I used to stream stuff as well! But it was over something called an 'AM Radio.' So I couldn't customize the stream (!) but it was still hella fun.
posted by carter at 4:22 PM on January 18, 2018 [3 favorites]


I've gotta say this article really hit home for me. Like the author I spent a great deal of my late teens and early 20s trawling through every insanely extensive psych/folk/ambient/drone/experimental user library on Soulseek (including many of the myriad releases the author himself was involved with!). There was certainly an unhealthy aspect of rabid collecting, but the most satisfying rush was sharing strange and alluring finds with like-minded friends both online and offline.

Strange as it might sound to a non-obsessive, downloading, freaking out to, and enthusiastically sharing weird Wooden Wand tour-only live CDRs or criminally unknown Lol Coxhill LPs provided some of the fondest memories of that time period for me.

I'll always miss those days especially with the knowledge that they can probably never come back (at least in the same wild-eyed way).
posted by dreamlanding at 4:26 PM on January 18, 2018 [3 favorites]


I’m the same age and I think the compulsion is easily explained by that mp3 explosion in the early 2000. It went from «I will have to eat ramen for the rest of the month to afford the last Boredoms record from Japan» to « here’s the entire Boredoms discography including b-sides and unreleased tracks for free » in basically a month. That shift made a lot of music lovers into compulsive maniacs.
posted by SageLeVoid at 4:33 PM on January 18, 2018 [18 favorites]


The experiment was dumb, but I did think he had some interesting things to say about music and how your relationship with it changes as you grow older. One of the reasons I like having a record collection is because it forces me to focus more on not only the music as I listen to it, but the acts of deciding to add albums to my collection, choosing to listen to them and picking them off the shelf, deciding what I want to keep and what I can weed, etc..

I have a Spotify premium account, and for me it's great for previewing albums I might want to buy and listening to music on the go (the weekly Discover playlist has also been pretty good at bringing new stuff to my attention), but I almost never use it to listen to music at home, in part because if I do then I have to worry about the connection cutting out and other technological hassles but mainly because music just doesn't register with me in the same way when I stream or listen to MP3s, of which there are (*checks*) approximately ten zillion burned to my laptop.
posted by The Card Cheat at 4:38 PM on January 18, 2018


This reminds me of the guy on reddit who listened to music chronologically, beginning in the 2nd millennium B.C. and following Wikipedia's Music by Year page. Allotting 1 decade of music per week of life, it would take about 4 years to deep listen to all of the music.
posted by wjfitzy at 4:53 PM on January 18, 2018 [7 favorites]


When someone told me they "don't really pay attention to lyrics," I would stare at them as if they'd just dipped a Snickers bar into a jar of mustard.

I get this from so many people. It's like they don't really even like music. I listen to music, the words are incidental. No one pays attention to what the drums are *saying*, what information's encoded in the guitar riffs.

It only matters if it sounds good, and that's why we care about whether someone's voice is beautiful or interesting. Because if we're being honest with ourselves? Most lyrics are shit.
posted by explosion at 5:00 PM on January 18, 2018 [5 favorites]


Most lyrics are shit.

But the most awful doggerel often works very well with music. And efforts to write lyrics that hold up as poetry are very often execrable. I think it's kind of an awesome mystery.
posted by thelonius at 5:08 PM on January 18, 2018 [15 favorites]


It only matters if it sounds good, [...] Most lyrics are shit.

Does it have to be one or the other extreme?

I think lyrics matter. They're not all that matters. There are some artists whose lyrics I think are beautiful and compelling - but I just can't get into their music. There are some artists with beautiful and compelling music - but I think their lyrics are insipid. In either case, both the music and the lyrics are important parts of the work, but what you find necessary (or sufficient) to enjoy it will be pretty individual...

I do agree with you that most lyrics are shit, though. Also, as a person with no romantic/sexual drive, I just don't connect to the majority of lyrics out there because oh my god are people obsessed with love and sex. I listen to a lot of music in languages I don't understand...
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 5:11 PM on January 18, 2018


Does it have to be one or the other extreme?

Oh no, people can like what they want. I'm just all about the sound and the lyrics are a low, low priority.

I'm the guy whose favorite Metallica track is Orion. I was a big Tori Amos fan, and someone was like, "god, how can you like her? Have you listened to those lyrics?" and I was like, "Honestly? Not really? I like the sound of her voice."

So it's just weird to me when people obsess over lyrics at the expense of the rest of the music.
posted by explosion at 5:21 PM on January 18, 2018 [8 favorites]


There was a much more reasonable fallback for the author, where he dedicates an hour a day to listen to an album directly: phone's off, laptop is closed, no interruptions, just him playing the album and looking at the liner notes.

Like him, I'm terrible with arbitrary, self-imposed limits. But approaching this as a set-aside activity for the purpose of reconnecting with depth in listening and disconnecting from the connected world, seems like it would sidestep most of the abrasive characteristics of his experiment.
posted by fatbird at 5:55 PM on January 18, 2018 [2 favorites]


I was a big Tori Amos fan, and someone was like, "god, how can you like her? Have you listened to those lyrics?" and I was like, "Honestly? Not really? I like the sound of her voice."

That's funny, I got the opposite - people insisting that her lyrics were deep and wonderful despite her voice. I don't think her lyrics are terrible, actually - they're often bizarre and not always in a good way, but they're so much better than so much of the insipid pap out there. I wouldn't want to listen to her on open mic poetry night, but set to music they make more sense.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 6:08 PM on January 18, 2018 [2 favorites]


iTunes gets a lot of shit but it's smart playlists help a lot with this problem. I have a big bulk of mp3s I got off soulseek around the same time but I have a system for either listening to them regularly or getting them out of my ears forever. Like if a song is rated 2 stars I have to listen to it once a year or rate it 1 star to get it off my phone. If a song is rated above that I make sure to listen to it at least every 3 months. Or if I don't want to do that, I down rate it to 2 stars so I won't see it for a year. It's kind of like kon-Marie. It keeps my collection healthy and circulating.
posted by bleep at 6:27 PM on January 18, 2018 [2 favorites]


If we take 45 minutes as the average, and only attempt to fill half the week's waking hours with music, you'd need to listen to a single album around 75 times. Even one album per day is hard. Try listening to just one album 8-10 times in a row and see how far you get. I mostly listen to music during my commute and my time at the gym, which over the week would be, again, around 10 listens to the same album in a row.

It's impossible.


😳 This is how I do music these days. But usually that album is weeks on end. And I wonder why my current music collection is so small and why I only “discover” a handful of albums per year. Send help plz.
posted by [insert clever name here] at 6:32 PM on January 18, 2018 [2 favorites]


When I think about how many albums I will not here, or how many books I will not read, I become paralyzed in terror, in absolute fear at how little I can contain within myself and how little expertise and knowledge I can possess, as breadth of content consumed is revealed to be fetishization of novelty and endless FOMO.

This essay stressed me the heck out.
posted by Going To Maine at 7:00 PM on January 18, 2018 [3 favorites]


I still listen to one album at a time? For like a week on my CD player. I have no Spotify, but I have an fm radio. And a second CD player in the kitchen with a choice of 5 cds that we rotate every year or so...
posted by Valancy Rachel at 7:11 PM on January 18, 2018 [3 favorites]


I've heard that the difference between collecting and hoarding is curation. And I think that's mostly right, although when you're starting out in a new hobby you'll have a lot of enthusiasm but not a lot of developed taste, so the distinction is meaningless; You're going to be trying everything you can get your hands on, and ideally develop your curatorial instincts that way.

The thing about music and art, though, is it's possible to develop a sensibility of appreciation that transcends like and dislike, where it can be fun going to the art museum and spend time in front of the paintings that don't do anything for you, because there's a newfound pleasure in trying to work out what's going on and why it works for other people. And you're listening to all kinds of random music because you like filling the air with something going on even though it doesn't necessarily push any of your buttons but you're furthering the journey of learning about what pushes the buttons of total strangers. And hey presto, you have more albums and CDs and tapes than you have house to fit them in.

I get the urge he had to try to reconnect with what made him first fall in love with music, so I don't think he's wrongheaded even if he went about it the wrong way. I hope he finds a way to moderate his compulsions and find that connection again.
posted by ardgedee at 7:37 PM on January 18, 2018 [3 favorites]


This is a fairly trite corollary of the late-capitalist industrialized nations' malady where it's bourgeoisie define themselves by their consumption patterns. What brands they buy, what car they drive, what experiences they purchase on their vacations, what wine the can identify by jamming corks up their nostrils, what music they consume and how; it's a relentless hamster wheel race seeking to infuse their post-truth lives with something not entirely unlike meaning and it is, by design and careful management, destined to failure: buying shit doesn't add meaning to your life, it adds shit.
Failure is, in fact, the point of the exercise and it's actual meaning.
And making sure people keep buying shit.
It reminds me of a gringo I met years ago on a boat in Bolivia who tried to get me to appreciate the importance of the fact that his flip-flops where some actual brand, instead of my knockoffs, and had this thingie here, see? that makes a huge difference in how comfortable they where, and this was important somehow.
posted by signal at 7:40 PM on January 18, 2018 [5 favorites]


Man, I wish it weren't so inevitable that the thread would be full of people smugly announcing that the author is Doing It Wrong,

Normally I would agree with this, but he really was. I like some of the things he had to say about music and relationships to it, but wow, he really makes a lot of broad and misguided assumptions, has huge blind spots in his insights, and comes to some very odd conclusions from it all.
posted by bongo_x at 7:41 PM on January 18, 2018 [6 favorites]


Yeah, yeah, yeah, but down at the bottom of this NPR article is Jimmy Fallon, channelng James Taylor, crticising Trump. He does a great job. Obsession is amazing it takes some seriously dedicated, high voltage, neuro wiring. I sure don't run that way.
posted by Oyéah at 7:45 PM on January 18, 2018


This is a fairly trite corollary of the late-capitalist industrialized nations' malady where its bourgeoisie define themselves by their consumption patterns.

Presumably we are defining late capitalism as stretching back to whenever the first scholar moaned that there were too many books and not enough time.
posted by Going To Maine at 7:52 PM on January 18, 2018


I'm reminded of a handmade poster I saw on the wall of City LIghts bookstore in San Francisco:

"Buying more books than one can ever possibly read is the soul's way of trying to attain infinity."
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:57 PM on January 18, 2018 [21 favorites]


And I wonder why my current music collection is so small and why I only “discover” a handful of albums per year. Send help plz.

Like, I've been doing single album posts to the Blue on a perhaps too-frequent basis for at least a month or more. You're welcome.

posted by hippybear at 8:13 PM on January 18, 2018 [2 favorites]


Defining identity based on music is likely as old as human identity. It used to involve a lot more singing along and a lot more dancing, but it continues.
posted by idiopath at 8:36 PM on January 18, 2018 [1 favorite]


It used to involve a lot more singing along and a lot more dancing

This is why most of my entertainment dollar is spent on going to concerts or going to weekends with DJs I enjoy.

I'd like to get involved with maybe something like contra dancing locally, which is another interesting way to be involved with music.

As far as music habits go, I don't do wallpaper listening of music during my day. When I pick and choose, I've had a steady slow stream of new music into my life for a long time, usually from artists I follow and continue to follow for decades, although sometimes someone new comes into my life and they end up as a spring which contributes to the well from which I draw.

What I love is a thing which happens often enough, when one of these artists I follow puts out a new album and when I get it I listen to nothing else for several weeks. I've been getting vinyl lately, but I always get a physical copy because that's what I've always done. I'll always sit down with the packaging and do what I've done since I was 5 or 6 - pour over the packaging. Not every listen, but at least once in-depth, and maybe again in a week or two. The feeling always fades out after, probably maximum a month. But that initial deep dive love affair with new album from someone I follow... I just adore that.
posted by hippybear at 9:04 PM on January 18, 2018


This feels pretty true for me, except rather than continuing to amass a music collection, around 5 years ago (hey, the exact same time I got pregnant!) I just stopped accruing new music entirely*. Anyway, I solved this by asking on FB for music selections, and signing up for a vinylmeplease subscription--which is really nice! You get one album a month, and it's quirky but also curated. Sometimes you get Moby and sometimes you get Moses Sumney. I spend most of the month playing their selection, but also might buy 1-2 albums a month at a record store, mostly from the suggestions my friends made, and they're not perfect, but, like, destroyer is growing on me, I guess. We listen to albums at dinner (my kid picks the Moana soundtrack, without fail--my husband, a Duke Ellington record or else the protopunk band Death) which carves out some space for dedicated listening.

I rarely fall in love with something the way I did when I was 18, but I figure that was a byproduct of being 18 above all else.



*I did continue to accrue books over this time, but when you're in publishing, it's difficult to avoid. Plus, we have a wicked free book box at the local library.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 9:26 PM on January 18, 2018 [3 favorites]


Only in retrospect can I see that my obsession with music — once the proud badge of the misfit, the precocious autodidact — was beginning to resemble something prosaic and common, like an addiction to World of Warcraft or Internet porn.

(Psst. Your obsession with music was always prosaic and common.)
posted by straight at 9:51 PM on January 18, 2018 [5 favorites]


I don't want to alarm anyone, but I think we may have just reached Peak NPR

no that was this:
posted by wibari at 9:54 PM on January 18, 2018


This is why Morning Becomes Eclectic is so fucking great. Gems pop up constantly and I put them into favorites on Spotify. He basically does the heavy lifting. Listening to one album per week sound likes punishment.
posted by Brocktoon at 9:58 PM on January 18, 2018


I have to admit, I made this post in part because This Me. Well, not my mirror image or doppelganger, but perhaps a close relative.

Hi, I'm filthy light thief, and I collect music. I have a wall of CDs, and most of them are opened ... but not all of them. Yes, I still have some CDs in their original shrink wrap. I also have some LPs that haven't touched a needle yet. And some unopened cassettes (but there, it's because my one reliable cassette player, in my car, isn't great, and I don't want to chew up new cassettes). I also buy a bunch of digital music, some of which gets a few "spins" and then gets forgotten.

But I don't stream, because like some other folks in here, I don't trust the transitory nature of streaming media -- I like to own a tangible item, and failing that, have a digital version that I can burn or back up. And I don't obsess over members of bands, or lyrics --- but I do pay attention to labels, and artists or bands as broad "musical producing units."

Anyway, I've thought about giving my wall of sounds a proper listen-through, but I keep getting new music, which goes on the top of the pile of "to be heard." Some things get played and replayed, others I will come back to again after a year or two. But in general, I find some stupid comfort in just having access to all that music. And I get that same tingle that Toth does when passing a thrift store or record shop, because therein lies unknown treasures, gems I have not yet heard. Half of the fun of those places is the hunt -- having access to everything online means you can hit "next" forever, where physical record digging is a solid experience, and one with limited resources. Also, not everything is streaming -- there are decades of amazing music that still aren't digitized, particularly when it comes from non-Western countries. And then there are tour-only EPs, limited run records, etc. etc. etc.

(The second reason I posted this was because of all the tantalizing references to even more music to find, which I'll link up later, because that means I have more music to peruse and enjoy ;))

(Final late night thought -- how is it that people can be happy just listening to the radio play the same songs, over and over? There are SO MANY NEAT THINGS TO HEAR! I don't want to waste my time listening to the same Great Hits, especially when it's the Top 40 on shuffle?)
posted by filthy light thief at 10:03 PM on January 18, 2018 [6 favorites]


(Psst. Your obsession with music was always prosaic and common.)

What’s uncommon is an appreciation for the means of music beyond its function as a collection of signifiers. This is how you get turtlenecked fuckasses with bad jazz opinions proclaiming that a power pop band from 1989 that only released a 7” picture disc and played three shows in Eugene, OR before disbanding actually set the course for all of rock music in the 90s. My kingdom for someone with an ear to appraise music instead of the jaded English majors we get now...
posted by invitapriore at 10:13 PM on January 18, 2018 [1 favorite]


(Final late night thought -- how is it that people can be happy just listening to the radio play the same songs, over and over? There are SO MANY NEAT THINGS TO HEAR! I don't want to waste my time listening to the same Great Hits, especially when it's the Top 40 on shuffle?)

I have Strong Opinions About This because I work in a warehouse and I don't get to choose my own music (well about once every two months I'll plug in my iPod) but mostly it's a circulation of radio stations, many of which make me want to kill myself but I soldier on.

So, my thoughts: most of these stations aren't even Top 40. They're Top 5, and they're very repetitive, and yes everyone knows all those songs (and if they don't they soon will).

Someone needs to start radio stations that are based on songs that only ever got to top chart positions between 40-20. The selection would be broader and the selection would be more interesting.

We have a local radio station, Kool 107.1, which plays "the greatest hits of the first 40 years of rock and roll" or something, so they'll play Elvis next to Elvis Costello and they lean a bit too heavily into the disco but also they once played this song about putting beans in our ears and my brain sort of exploded. That radio station is a lot of fun, but is still too predictable. "Beatles every hour!" Oh, yay.

Anyway, more interesting music would be good. But I don't really get to choose. So, I develop Strong Opinions, which I haven't really let loose with here.
posted by hippybear at 10:24 PM on January 18, 2018 [2 favorites]


No comment on the compulsive collecting. Different strokes for different folks, yeah?

As to radio, in Canada the CBC radio 2 plays a very eclectic mix most nights between 8pm-12 (Afterdark) and a robot mix that's pretty good overnight.

And there's Radio Paradise. Perhaps a bit dull for some, but I usually hear something that makes my ears perk up.

I have to agree with hippybear about top 40 radio. The repetition kills me. My daughter is 13 and I'm doing my best to give her an eclectic appreciation for all music. She recently asked me to put together a playlist of 50's music and early bubblegum pop, so I think she'll be ok, but I still have to endure the same top 40 songs over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. At least I got to discover Jackpot. What a gem of a song.
posted by ashbury at 11:42 PM on January 18, 2018


When I think about how many albums I will not here, or how many books I will not read, I become paralyzed in terror, in absolute fear at how little I can contain within myself and how little expertise and knowledge I can possess, as breadth of content consumed is revealed to be fetishization of novelty and endless FOMO.

This essay stressed me the heck out.

posted by Going To Maine at 9:00 PM on January 18

It didn't stress me out at all. It's the same with books, with music, with friendships, with a type of food that I would flat-out love but I'm never going to even see it, or hear of it. Half Price Books used to sell t-shirts "So many books / So little time" and that shirt helped me learn to relax.

I am never, ever going to hear all of the music that would lift me, move me, move me either to tears or rage. There isn't enough time. There is not enough time.

I have Amazon Prime. They offered me their full-out streaming service, 90 day trial, then ten bucks a month. So I got to digging into some albums which I love, and I'll be goddamned if there weren't songs missing from the albums. Talk about skeezy, sleazy, low-rent rat-bastard sons-of-bitches. I cancelled out immediately.

A good disc jockey is my streaming service. Houston has a great radio station -- KPFT -- which streams live either on your computer or your phone, very cool. Saturday they have three great music shows. But what if I'm not up yet, or I'm doing something else, or what have you -- what then? Well, all three of those shows have the last three weeks able to be downloaded as .mp3 files. So just grab them, play them at my convenience.

There was a disc jockey here in Austin -- Larry Monroe -- he was the most knowledgeable person w/r/t music and musicians that I've ever come across. He introduced me to so. much. great. music. that I'd not have come across if not for him. Heart attack took him maybe 3 years ago, a huge blank spot in Austin radio. It's been years but there also was a really funky station in San Antone that was hard to pick up even if you were *in* San Antone but they streamed also, so I could catch it on my puter.

I had a huge, huge collection of books, I built shelving for them, covered an entire wall, really was attractive. But I thinned that down to just one small shelving unit, and now even less than that. Between Audible, and books mailed to my house for four bucks from Amazon, I just don't need a huge stockpile of books. So I don't have one....

Sum: I can't do it all. I'm going to miss out on things that would be great for me. On the other hand, through luck, chance, grace, etc, through whatever of those fits best I have found music that I love, and I play it when I want to. I am a person who re-reads books that are important to me, I'm much the same way with music. I've still got about seven hundred or eight maybe cd's here, probably 80% of them onto .mp3 files. I downloaded a huge pile of albums off napster and they're still around, a friend of mine gave me a 32 gig micro sd card loaded with music, I gave him the same of some of my music. I just *love* that I can fit so much music and books etc onto a card smaller than my smallest fingernail, makes me smile.

Just relax, for chrissakes. Ease. Up. You can't Do It All. Have some faith in life, know that a lot of what you need land in your hands.

Fin ~~ Even if you were able to grasp all that's in your hands now -- can't be done -- but even if it could be done there's always More. Art never stops, nor do we want it to. Just relax into what you've found in your hands, and what will fall into your hands that's just now being created.
posted by dancestoblue at 12:18 AM on January 19, 2018 [6 favorites]


Since TFA brought it up, I just want to say that watching all of The Dekalog is worth anyone's time. It's ten individual films. When it was made, it was considered to be one ten-hour film, which was daunting to many. Nowadays, though, a lot of us in the west watch serial drama, so this film series is really no task at all. Here is Roger Ebert's review of it. The themes are political and religious, but the films aren't dull or preachy at all, they're just very good drama that examines morality--just like several recent popular TV series that I could name.
posted by heatvision at 4:04 AM on January 19, 2018 [5 favorites]


My takeaway from this is that I now need that Screamers, Bangers and Cosmic Synths collection. I'm not super-excited about how expensive it is to ship from the UK, though.

That was the right takeaway, right? That I need to buy more records?

I have been trying to carve a better space in my life to actively listen to more music. I'm getting there.
posted by darksong at 4:58 AM on January 19, 2018 [2 favorites]


Exhausted just reading the article. Very glad not to live in his head.

ps now got beans in my ears
posted by lokta at 5:09 AM on January 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


> Normally I would agree with this, but he really was.

In other words, you don't Do It the way he Does It. Which is fine, and you're welcome to be meh about his article, but I trust you would disassociate yourself from shitty ad hominems like:

> (Psst. Your obsession with music was always prosaic and common.)

And it's that kind of triumphant "I rule, you suck, loser!" comment that makes me feel less and less identification with MeFi these days.

> I just want to say that watching all of The Dekalog is worth anyone's time.

Strongly seconded: it's a great movie/series of short films!
posted by languagehat at 5:54 AM on January 19, 2018 [2 favorites]


I still listen to albums, and I’ll often get stuck on one for a while, but I also actively seek out new music. I read reviews in various rock/jazz/electronic/hip hop publications and will sample whatever I read about. Back when music was still sold in stores I’d go in weekly and ask “what’s new?” and spend an hour or two sampling everything. I also follow rabbit trails- if musician A who I like mentions musician B they like I’ll go listen to some of musician B’s stuff. I buy about 50 albums/year but I listen to them all, and I rotate in music from the past- I accomplish that with various Smart Playlists - for example I have a group of SPs, one for each year since I was born, each playlist gathers all music I own released that year and I’ll frequently be like “I wanna listen to 1995” and put that year on shuffle by album.

For me the music/lyrics dichotomy is nonexistent. If lyrics are there I listen to them. If not, I don’t. Well-written lyrics with meh music have the same negative effect on me as amazing music with subpar or racist/mysoginist/poorly-written lyrics - it ruins the song for me, or worse, makes the song boring to me.
posted by eustacescrubb at 6:11 AM on January 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


This is how you get turtlenecked fuckasses with bad jazz opinions proclaiming that a power pop band from 1989 that only released a 7” picture disc and played three shows in Eugene, OR before disbanding actually set the course for all of rock music in the 90s.

Okay except Tullycraft really is the best band of all time.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 6:21 AM on January 19, 2018 [6 favorites]


I saw this on HN and replied there, but for those who don't read HN...

I fell into the same trap with guitars, and realized a year or more back that I'd turned into a guitar collector rather than a guitar player. I have a number of excellent instruments, most of which hang on the wall or live in cases, and don't get played.

So I'm reducing my collection to one of each kind... 6 and 12-string acoustics, possibly a nylon string, my National Duolian, Rick lap steel, and an acoustic bass. I can't be bothered with eBay, so most of the rest are off to the auction house for their stringed instrument auction in early April.

And strangely, I find myself playing a lot more, enjoying the music a lot more, and thinking about "stuff" a lot less.

Music, other than what I play myself, I have a troubled relationship with. Crap hearing and tinnitus means that most gigs aren't worth attending, and I find having music playing mostly annoying, mainly because of the dam' 24-hour Spotify clone playing in the background in my brain, that I can occasionally influence but never silence. Anyone else have that?
posted by 43rdAnd9th at 6:33 AM on January 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


The article resonated with me a bit, as I feel I am always struggling to both work toward a more minimalist lifestyle and also experience more and more media. I have partly found success utilizing my city's awesome library system to check out books and music, which then have to go back after awhile.

After Christmas, our family often goes through a purging process, because we have a smallish house, but two artists/makers and a child living in it. This year, we really pored over twenty-plus years of accumulated books and weeded them out. First we sold what we could to a local used book store that we love and then donated the rest to the local Habitat for Humanity thrift store. It was a huge chunk - hundreds of books. We both had accumulated a fair number of academic books related to our professions, but also lots of fiction books that one of us had read once, but was unlikely to read again. We found some common books to donate as well, that one will still likely be able to get from the library in the future.

As part of the process, I pored through our shared music collection. I don't like to buy only digital copies of music, preferring to buy used CDs from our various used bookstores. Sometimes, I buy a single digital track to "bookmark" an artist that I will hunt for later. I started my Joni Mitchell collection that way, for instance. We sold/donated a pile of CDs and kept 450 in our shared pile. CD cases take up less space than books, after all! There are some CDs that I don't think will be listened to again, but each of us feels that way about the media that is only liked by the other person, of course!

My worst collecting problem is comic books. I have been reading comics for over thirty years. While I have never had so much spare money that I could follow more than three or so titles a month, I still had accumulated five whole "long" boxes of comics over the years - about 180 linear inches total of floppy comics back-to-back. I took the unprecedented step last Fall of donating and selling parts of my comic collection and am now down to two long boxes. My graphic novel collection is equally big, with hundreds of items in that collection.

I definitely try to do a frequent check with my comics (and books and music) and ask "Am I going to enjoy or experience this again?" But still where I think I resonated with the article is that collecting media, maybe especially oddball and outsider stuff* like comic books, is that it forms part of your sense of self to have the materials. On the rare occasions that I meet someone with similar comic book tastes to mine (do you like ElfQuest? Fantastic Four? Jack Kirby? Sophie Campbell? Becky Cloonan?), it's a real treat. Like the author, I think I am always "presenting" my collection to some imaginary critic. I think many of us curate ourselves much more than we're willing to admit. We may not consistently or thoroughly curate ourselves, but we frequently do, if that makes sense.

The funny thing is, I have only once had a random other person drop in and inspect my comic book collection, as it were. The person is even arguably famous in design/comics circles and his appearance at my house was part of a very odd chain of events. He pored over my whole collection and did pronounce it interesting, so I guess there's that!

* - Yes, I am well aware that every movie is a superhero movie, but this was real dork/nerd stuff when I started.
posted by Slothrop at 6:33 AM on January 19, 2018 [3 favorites]


Okay except Tullycraft really is the best band of all time.

That is an odd way you have of spelling "Jellyfish"
posted by thelonius at 6:40 AM on January 19, 2018


Okay except Tullycraft really is the best band of all time.

That is an odd way you have of spelling "Jellyfish"


Tiger Trap or nothing, there are no good bands, we live alone in an uncaring universe.
posted by Going To Maine at 8:36 AM on January 19, 2018 [3 favorites]


I’m not much of a music guy but a while back, in my late 20s & early 30s, I suppose this was me in regards to books and movies. I always loved books so I’ve been an accumulator in that regard since I was a kid but I also work in the bowels of the movie business so I’ve tended to accumulate a lot of visual media as well. So for a long time I just ended up with a lot of stuff. But as I got older my relationship with this stuff began to change.

A friend of mine jokingly warned me that having a kid forces you to recognise that you are mortal. At the time I laughed it off but he wasn’t wrong. Kids don’t stop growing and changing – pants that were too big one week are an inch too short the next. Cognitive development happens overnight – things that were impossible to do a month before suddenly become second nature. That growing kid becomes a visual reminder of time passing and a constant reminder of your mortality and need to engage in a better way. A delightful reminder at times but still… Death is knocking.

So for me that was a wakeup call. I changed the way I approached my media consumption. Firstly, I focused on the time and quality spent on the media I was consuming and placed it into the context of my larger life. So time spent with loved ones always trumps time spent on media consumption. As I never had a fear of missing out but always craved something new I rarely rewatched or reread things and now I generally only do that if I’m watching / rereading with my kid.

Once upon time I’d watch anything but now not so much. I evaluate all casually consumed media (sometimes I need to watch things for work) with the thought “is this worth my ever diminishing time?” Quality over quantity... and I’m draconian about that and while I understand myself well enough to know if I can get something out of a specific book or movie I’ve also learned to trust other curators – whether it is friends or online voices (including Mefites). Because I try to be mindful of the time spent on a specific book, movie/TV show, or video game I try to balance it out with time spent on something else. As an example, I’ve spent a fair bit of time playing Zelda Breath of the Wild so I’ve balanced that out with time spent on a reading a couple books and renewing my interest in film photography. I’ve also found it helpful to guide my consumption based on lists or themes – movies by a specific director or period of time, books of a particular genre or author - carefully balancing the junkier stuff with the better stuff. I find this helps me get more out of that media if I can get a better understanding of the context. I’ve found this makes it less about a race to consume & way to identify with that consumption and more about enriching myself. Works for me but as always YMMV.
posted by Ashwagandha at 9:37 AM on January 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


> howfar:
Not particularly wanting to buzz market, but the Spotify automatic playlist generation is pretty fantastic these days."

TIL about Spotify's automatic playlist generation. So thank you. It has been following me around and has already created 4 albums of very different material. Color me impressed.

What I had noticed before is in the "discover" section, where there are suggestions based on one's listening that sound faintly punitive:

BECAUSE YOU LISTENED TO STEELY DAN
BECAUSE YOU LISTENED TO THE LEMON TWIGS

this wouldn't stand out except that most of their recommendation lines are much blander, the usual "Similar to Georgie Fame & The Blue Flames"

but BECAUSE!
posted by chavenet at 10:26 AM on January 19, 2018 [3 favorites]


And it's that kind of triumphant "I rule, you suck, loser!" comment that makes me feel less and less identification with MeFi these days.

I said or meant nothing like this. I really feel like you're taking this far more seriously than it deserves. This kind of overly sensitive lashing out is why I spend less time on MeFi these days.
posted by bongo_x at 11:27 AM on January 19, 2018 [3 favorites]


I once had a cassette stuck in my car stereo for over a year. It was Sonic Youth’s Sister on one side and the Meat Puppet’s Up on the Sun on the other. I was OK with that.

I’m in a similar situation now. Five CD changer in my car but I don’t really do CDs anymore so when the radio doesn’t do it for me it’s either Elliot Smith, Deerhoof, The Kinks, Belle and Sebastian or Bardo Pond. And I’m OK with that too.

My 20-something son, despite an extensive FKAC collection is into vinyl (like they do) and restored my old AR turntable. He has no illusions about the sound quality, though. I think it’s more about savoring the experience. Guess I raised him right.
posted by sjswitzer at 12:16 PM on January 19, 2018


> (Psst. Your obsession with music was always prosaic and common.)

And it's that kind of triumphant "I rule, you suck, loser!" comment that makes me feel less and less identification with MeFi these days.


Oh come on now. All I'm saying is that lots and lots of people collected music the same way the author does. It doesn't make him some weird, deep, inexplicable kind of person. It's neither the sign of Greatness nor of Being a Loser. And the sooner anyone realizes that, the sooner they can get on with just listening to and enjoying music without letting all this anxiety about What My Music Listening Habits Reveal About My True Identity get in the way.
posted by straight at 12:26 PM on January 19, 2018 [4 favorites]


Okay except Tullycraft really is the best band of all time.

That is an odd way you have of spelling "Jellyfish"

Tiger Trap or nothing, there are no good bands, we live alone in an uncaring universe.


You can spell THE FALL out of all these letters, so you are all indirectly correct(-ah).
posted by mykescipark at 12:34 PM on January 19, 2018 [3 favorites]


And the sooner anyone realizes that, the sooner they can get on with just listening to and enjoying music without letting all this anxiety about What My Music Listening Habits Reveal About My True Identity get in the way.

I think it is shameful that you are being compelled to read thinkpieces about other people's music consumption. Is there no justice in this world, &c.
posted by sandettie light vessel automatic at 12:49 PM on January 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


BECAUSE YOU LISTENED TO STEELY DAN
I LEARNED IT FROM YOU, DAD
I LEARNED IT BY WATCHING YOU
posted by thelonius at 12:53 PM on January 19, 2018 [12 favorites]


BECAUSE YOU LISTENED TO STEELY DAN
I LEARNED IT FROM YOU, DAD
I LEARNED IT BY WATCHING YOU


Yey, you guys? This guy thelonius?

I think everything that can be said in this thread has now been said.

I think... we're done. We can shut this thread down. We did it. Good job everybody.
posted by sjswitzer at 1:15 PM on January 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


Metafilter: is why I spend less time on MeFi these days.
posted by eustacescrubb at 2:42 PM on January 19, 2018 [8 favorites]


Try limiting yourself to just reading and re-reading one thread per week.
posted by Artw at 5:40 PM on January 19, 2018 [6 favorites]


Acquisitionally speaking, knitting peeps have a term for this: SABLE. It stands for Stash Acquisition Beyond Life Expectancy. Just FYI.
posted by knitcrazybooknut at 11:56 PM on January 19, 2018 [5 favorites]


In guitar player lingo, there's G.A.S.: gear acquisition syndrome. The tipping point is when you spend more time, energy and lifeforce buying guitars, pedals and amps then actually learning how to play them.
posted by signal at 7:51 AM on January 20, 2018 [2 favorites]


We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers... and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls.

Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get locked into a serious drug collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can.

posted by Artw at 8:34 AM on January 20, 2018 [2 favorites]


gear acquisition syndrome

I could spend $20k, today, on completely reasonable purchases that I totally deserve to have. Did you know that you can just order a Fodera bass on Sweetwater now? That's 25% of the way, right there. Gonna need some new cabinets for that, and may as well upgrade the Aguilar Tonehammer to the 500 watt one. Oh yeah one of those Carr amps that has a built-in attenuator. And that brings us to the guitars. I don't even have an acoustic guitar. For that matter, why not try an oud? Well over halfway now, and haven't even started buying pedals. Or digital pianos. Or electronic drum kits.
posted by thelonius at 9:18 AM on January 20, 2018 [1 favorite]


I was going to post this, but then got lazy. It’s funny to read some of the comments here by people who clearly don’t know who Toth is. It’s no big deal not to know, but some of the objections are funny if you don’t know who he is. He’s a widely respected avant- garde avant-folk musician who has released a ton of solo and collaborative music. Just music by him and associated acts takes up a solid couple of feet in my record collection. His musical friends and associates easily release 50 records a year. And, as with anyone who is really embedded in music like this, and who makes his own music across a range of genres, his collection isnt just every Joni Mitchell album, it’s also, I’m sure, filled with obscure shit that serves as inspiration and antagonism.

Incidentally, his record from last year, clipper ship, on Three Lobed, was one of the best records of the year, and made a bunch of well respected best of lists.

I’m glad he wrote this, and glad he got it onto NPR.
posted by OmieWise at 12:02 PM on January 20, 2018 [2 favorites]


Does he do anything avant?
posted by thelonius at 12:31 PM on January 20, 2018 [1 favorite]


Well, now that I know Wooden Wand has some good reviews (and Three Lobed!) I guess have to go listen to some more effin' music.
posted by Going To Maine at 1:10 PM on January 20, 2018


> I'm terrified of the possibility that I'll listen to a track, hear it enough to attach some significance, then never be able to find it again because it was just streaming and I don't know the name of the artist or album. Or even worse, know the artist and track but never be able to find it again.

Yep! How I handle that: This week, a friend in Austin tweeted that she'd gotten her SXSW wristband, and I thought, "time to go listen to their showcase artists!" With that, some music podcasts I follow, and smart playlists on my iPod, I have lots of music to choose from, and curate for later. If engaged rating and listening feels like work, I have already-curated music to listen to.
posted by Pronoiac at 1:32 PM on January 20, 2018


Well, now that I know Wooden Wand has some good reviews (and Three Lobed!) I guess have to go listen to some more effin' music.

Cory at Three Lobed has released several James Jackson Toth/Wooden Wand projects.
posted by OmieWise at 7:11 PM on January 20, 2018


If you really want to cut down on personal reading/viewing/listening time, go to grad school! That's one way to end up with a two-to-four-year backlog of stuff to slog through.
posted by gtrwolf at 10:35 PM on January 23, 2018


Too many items to respond to individually, but I too admit to worshiping at the alter of Physical Media (downloads of otherwise unavailable for less than $200 records aside). Since I'm allowed to listen to CDs at work (though headphones) and also moonlight as a college radio DJ, it's fairly easy to justify said habit (it helps to purge via eBay and now Discogs on a regular basis). I'm definitely aware of the "yes-you're-actually-going-to-die-someday" mortality thang and try to adjust my listening, etc. habits accordingly, but sometimes it's not that easy to break from the comfort-viewing/listening routine (e.g. that episode of L&O/SVU on DVR that you've seen at least a dozen times).
posted by gtrwolf at 10:52 PM on January 23, 2018


Hell, man, Clipper Ship is good. I’m surprised Pitchfork let it slip by. They’re weak on folk & blues, but Three Lobed and anything with a drone usually gets a token nod.
posted by Going To Maine at 7:46 PM on January 24, 2018


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