So!
The mandate for this was originally eleven months--not too bad, right? The mandate was also one-in-one-out, which got trashed after a few times. And of course, it coincided with the slowest-moving time in my professional life--me and just about all of my fellow music-writing freelancers. Couldn't be too hard, right? Especially once I stopped feeling beholden to "keep up" anymore than I absolutely had to.
I knew the decade was ending; I hoped to do some fairly extensive writing about it for one outlet in particular, and talked with the editor about it at some length. After nine months of jumping through paperwork-related hoops and not getting very encouraging feedback on what I did pitch (meaning that most of the responses were about technical details I knew nothing about and couldn't relate to), I gave up that idea, and figured I wasn't going to be doing any. Not quite. I've done '00s pieces for The A.V. Club, eMusic, NPR, and one more to come. I'm planning something longish and listy for my other blog, too. (Speaking of lists, this interview with Umberto Eco says a lot of what I've been felt about them for years now.) This is all very gratifying, though it's eaten into my time more than I'd anticipated--a big project I'm working on has been on the back burner as a result, though it's definitely a good sign that the big project is the thing I'm really itching to get back to.
It's also occupied a lot of listening time I'd hoped to devote to catching up with the Unheard playlist--which as I type stands at 16 hours. That's better than I'd thought, mostly because I've been more assiduous about it the last couple days, but with October also largely a wash due to settling in, it's made me wonder what the hell I've been thinking all this time. Especially since one of the tenets of this project is to allow for deeper focus on what I do hear, and I'm not sure that's actually happened.
Writing about 2002 for eMusic, it was hard not to compare that year and this one. That was the first (and so far, only) year I've lived in New York beginning to end, January 1 to December 31; I remember that New Year's Eve distinctly because I was so horribly broke after returning from Christmas in Minneapolis (took Amtrak both ways) that I didn't go out. Nevertheless, I still recall 2002 as my favorite musical year of the decade, and being in NYC was a big part of why: it made everything seem even more vital. There were records coming out all the time that fed the urge for discussion, that helped to redraw what the moment might mean, coming from multiple directions.
In 2009 that seems less so. Obviously, that's perspective talking: I'm 34, stay in more than go out, yadda yadda yadda. Oh yeah: I'm also spoiled for choice. "Keeping up" with as much as I could was a full-time job in 2002--a thrilling one--and in '09 just keeping track of a handful of things is exhausting. I had more energy then, yes. But I'm still an enthusiastic listener, maybe to a fault. Things grab me all the time; I've already drafted Top 100 Tracks and Top 20 Albums lists (still being tweaked and not going public till at least Christmas, sorry) that recording-for-recording are full of superb music. But apart from '07, most of the decade from '05 forward has felt sluggish and water-treading. That will change with time; I'm betting the FACT crew would laugh at my sad-old-man moping, and the electronic list Andy Battaglia and I made (linked above) has gotten several comments along those lines too. I have no trouble copping to it, because I'd rather be honest about where I'm coming from than not. If my ears are lying, so be it. But they're the only ears I've got, and I'm not interested in trading them in--they've given me too much pleasure over the years, including this one.
All of which makes me wonder whether Slow Listening is worth the bother. Ultimately I think it is, and not just because I'm really stubborn, though stubbornness certainly plays a big part. But any idea I might have had that curbing my intake would stanch my appetite deserves a condescending pat on the head. My eyes have always been bigger than my ears and always will be. I'm no monk. And I trust myself enough to figure that if there's lots of stuff that sounds good enough to hold onto but only a few things that draw me toward them irresistibly, that's down to the music and not my own flightiness. Not to mention the ageless saw that lots of good records don't necessarily add up to a satisfying epoch.
But now that I've put myself back on the Unheard-playlist treadmill again I realize how much I enjoy the hunt for its own sake. It keeps me alert; even if what I'm ultimately drawn toward is reminiscent of what I already know I like--and in many cases it is--that stuff still has to fight it out with lots of other things. The key, I remind myself over and over again, is that if I don't like it I can stop listening anytime. "Be diligent" and "know your limits": the peanut butter and chocolate of plowing through acres of new music.
20.11.09
12.10.09
Hello, Brooklyn.
I'm in Brooklyn now, have been since the first of the month, enjoying being back a lot more than I'd expected to--I forgot how much of an improvement being around Angela all the time is. Well, not all the time--she's in Soho and I'm in Kensington, and while the F trip is only a half-hour, weekend subway construction doubles the commute Fri-Sun, not to mention that she'll likely move nearer to Columbia around the end of the year. But the accessibility makes a big difference, and differently than two months' cohabitation at her folks' place. There's no ticking clock overhanging anything. I'm happier overall than I have been in a while.
I haven't been listening to much music of late--I'm dreadfully behind. Moving is a lot of it. The last few days in Seattle disallowed much new-stuff playing time, and when I got here I was too preoccupied and/or restless to sit still for long. Not to mention that it wasn't till two days ago that I got online full-time at my apartment--Jason, who owns the place (or close enough), had to put my laptop specs into the web system, and he's gone a lot. Now that I'm in I've been playing catchup. There's a ton of it to do. I'll spare you the full list, which is just more data, to concentrate on what's in the Unheard playlist right this second: six mixes totaling four hours by Cinnaman, Jay Scarlett, Joy Orbison, Trillbass, DJ I.D., and Annie Mac.
All of these are at least a month old. Until a few minutes ago, they were joined by Untold's XLR8R mix, which is fabulous. The Annie Mac sounds nice, too, so far--and is, as it turns out, from way back in March. I forget how I acquired it--probably not through Nuum, which I'm pretty sure is the source of everything else here; definitely not via that Fader link, which I'd never seen until now. Too late to write about it, then--sort of the goal of all this listening through acquisitions, in some way, especially now that I've fallen behind on any number of other things.
This bothers me even though I should know better than to let it. What's left of the pop press--by which I mean music sections of papers and mags and websites as well as dedicated music pubs/sites--clutches onto "timeliness" more tightly than ever now that everyone figures it has to thanks to the Web's instantaneous qualities. This has had an insidious effect on music writing, I think, in that it's made what gets covered even more conservative than it's always been. The idea that rock that's rooted in '60s Beatles or '70s punk is somehow "timeless" is ridiculous on its face; so is the idea that something that no one was making even three years ago is untested and therefore negligible. But that's the way these things shake out--don't I know it.
Right now there are 67 items in the Unheard folder (as opposed to the Unheard playlist in iTunes), as well as a number of CDs I need to investigate sitting somewhere in my room--moving has meant I have fewer things in my immediate possession (95 percent of my stuff is in my friend Jen's basement in Seattle), but what's here isn't particularly well organized yet. (I need to get some shelving.) In the last few days, friends have asked what I think of Total 10 and the new Built to Spill, given that I'm a fan of both Kompakt and BTS. I haven't acquired either yet, and I won't for a while, because there's all that other stuff I need to get through. I haven't made matters any easier by downloading a bunch of things today--FACT mixes, a couple of albums I need to review, a few others I might or might not. Moreover, there's no professional impetus to hear either BTS or Total 10, because it's too late to write about either. As well, there are fewer places to write about them--for money, anyway, which merciless as it may sound is how I have to prioritize things. The people who asked are big fans of both discs, and I probably will be too once I get to them. But there's too much else to barrel through first.
That sounds counterintuitive to me, too. But I don't know--principle means a lot to me. I don't like living beyond my means on any level. Yet that's what I've been doing for the last two weeks: I'm owed a giant amount of money by one of my primary outlets, and they have yet to pay up. The money goes into my account, and from there I can forward whatever mail is left in Seattle--meaning in order to get paid for my other writing (all via check), I have to get paid by these guys, because moving here cleaned me out. For the first time in my life, I've been living off a credit card, the first I've ever had. (It's not even mine: it's a subsidiary card my mom put under my name last year. I took it this summer, after she'd offered it again.) It's a nightmare: I've literally had to do everything with it, meaning that instead of taking out cash from my bank account and exploring any number of places in my new neighborhood, I've had to stick to buying and eating in places that take Visa--meaning nearly every time that I've had to pay a $10 minimum in order to buy or eat something. It's more difficult, and more expensive, in every way, especially when you're living paycheck to paycheck. And it makes playing through what I've already acquired before getting to something I haven't seem even saner than usual.
I haven't been listening to much music of late--I'm dreadfully behind. Moving is a lot of it. The last few days in Seattle disallowed much new-stuff playing time, and when I got here I was too preoccupied and/or restless to sit still for long. Not to mention that it wasn't till two days ago that I got online full-time at my apartment--Jason, who owns the place (or close enough), had to put my laptop specs into the web system, and he's gone a lot. Now that I'm in I've been playing catchup. There's a ton of it to do. I'll spare you the full list, which is just more data, to concentrate on what's in the Unheard playlist right this second: six mixes totaling four hours by Cinnaman, Jay Scarlett, Joy Orbison, Trillbass, DJ I.D., and Annie Mac.
All of these are at least a month old. Until a few minutes ago, they were joined by Untold's XLR8R mix, which is fabulous. The Annie Mac sounds nice, too, so far--and is, as it turns out, from way back in March. I forget how I acquired it--probably not through Nuum, which I'm pretty sure is the source of everything else here; definitely not via that Fader link, which I'd never seen until now. Too late to write about it, then--sort of the goal of all this listening through acquisitions, in some way, especially now that I've fallen behind on any number of other things.
This bothers me even though I should know better than to let it. What's left of the pop press--by which I mean music sections of papers and mags and websites as well as dedicated music pubs/sites--clutches onto "timeliness" more tightly than ever now that everyone figures it has to thanks to the Web's instantaneous qualities. This has had an insidious effect on music writing, I think, in that it's made what gets covered even more conservative than it's always been. The idea that rock that's rooted in '60s Beatles or '70s punk is somehow "timeless" is ridiculous on its face; so is the idea that something that no one was making even three years ago is untested and therefore negligible. But that's the way these things shake out--don't I know it.
Right now there are 67 items in the Unheard folder (as opposed to the Unheard playlist in iTunes), as well as a number of CDs I need to investigate sitting somewhere in my room--moving has meant I have fewer things in my immediate possession (95 percent of my stuff is in my friend Jen's basement in Seattle), but what's here isn't particularly well organized yet. (I need to get some shelving.) In the last few days, friends have asked what I think of Total 10 and the new Built to Spill, given that I'm a fan of both Kompakt and BTS. I haven't acquired either yet, and I won't for a while, because there's all that other stuff I need to get through. I haven't made matters any easier by downloading a bunch of things today--FACT mixes, a couple of albums I need to review, a few others I might or might not. Moreover, there's no professional impetus to hear either BTS or Total 10, because it's too late to write about either. As well, there are fewer places to write about them--for money, anyway, which merciless as it may sound is how I have to prioritize things. The people who asked are big fans of both discs, and I probably will be too once I get to them. But there's too much else to barrel through first.
That sounds counterintuitive to me, too. But I don't know--principle means a lot to me. I don't like living beyond my means on any level. Yet that's what I've been doing for the last two weeks: I'm owed a giant amount of money by one of my primary outlets, and they have yet to pay up. The money goes into my account, and from there I can forward whatever mail is left in Seattle--meaning in order to get paid for my other writing (all via check), I have to get paid by these guys, because moving here cleaned me out. For the first time in my life, I've been living off a credit card, the first I've ever had. (It's not even mine: it's a subsidiary card my mom put under my name last year. I took it this summer, after she'd offered it again.) It's a nightmare: I've literally had to do everything with it, meaning that instead of taking out cash from my bank account and exploring any number of places in my new neighborhood, I've had to stick to buying and eating in places that take Visa--meaning nearly every time that I've had to pay a $10 minimum in order to buy or eat something. It's more difficult, and more expensive, in every way, especially when you're living paycheck to paycheck. And it makes playing through what I've already acquired before getting to something I haven't seem even saner than usual.
24.9.09
Thanks, iTunes 9.
I just noticed something on iTunes' new upgrade. The podcast feature performs one function for me: I only subscribe to Resident Advisor's podcast. (The FACT Mixes I just get as I get them.) I'd always figured I'd kept up with them, though I knew in some sneaking way that I wasn't hearing them all, would start and then forget about them sometimes, occasionally not finishing them on purpose. Nevertheless, there's a visual function for podcasts now: a full circle if you haven't listened yet, which was always there, and a half-circle for the ones you started but didn't finish, which is new. Here's what I'm behind on:
Louderbach, RA.155: 11:46 played, 44:45 left
Seth Troxler, RA.156: 49:41 played, 23:44 left
Lawrence, RA.161: 15:55 played, 59:24 left
Drums of Death, RA.165: 51:27 played, 8:36 left
Peter Van Hoesen, RA.168: 1:09:01 played, 17:54 left
And the entire last two, by Still Going and now Modeselektor. Sigh.
Louderbach, RA.155: 11:46 played, 44:45 left
Seth Troxler, RA.156: 49:41 played, 23:44 left
Lawrence, RA.161: 15:55 played, 59:24 left
Drums of Death, RA.165: 51:27 played, 8:36 left
Peter Van Hoesen, RA.168: 1:09:01 played, 17:54 left
And the entire last two, by Still Going and now Modeselektor. Sigh.
15.9.09
Hearing now.
Just now I noticed something in my iTunes folders. There are two separate playlists for old songs--one for songs I discovered on blogs and online, one for songs off reissues. Together they barely exist. Part of it is that reissues aren't an easy sell for a reviewer at this point. There's a degree to which keeping up with reissues is as important as new releases, because the past is always getting rediscovered in interesting ways in pop music, and reissues are a big part of that. That's true this year, and yes, some of what I got in return for the many books and CDs I've been getting rid of (two weeks till I go to NYC) have been reissues: Feelies, Beatles. (Of course I succumbed to the Beatles reissues. They're completely my foundation. Everything stems from them for me. I still buy most of the key myths. It's never going to change, however much I make fun of Rolling Stone for the exact same thing. Who do you think instilled it? I may go nuts about it on the main blog one night. Beware.)
Nevertheless, SLM has made it more mandatory for me to hear new music instead of old. My habit is to look for new stuff online, which is where the bulk of my listening now comes from. There are fewer likely-looking/seeming reissues coming to my attention. Even the new stuff consisting of old stuff--the FACT Mixes by the Emperor Machine and Woebot spring to mind--seems more new than old, because in those cases it's DJs shaping the story rather than the artists themselves. That might be arbitrary, but I think it's key to how we perceive the works. Records sound differently when they're used differently--sometimes ordinary, sometimes better than you could hope to have imagined. However it works, this year I've paid almost no attention to that which came before--not in anywhere near systematically, and systematically is how I listen.
I hope it's clear by now that this is still an experiment. I do think, as I'd hoped, that it will be my modus operandi going out--it's not an eleven-month plan anymore, it's more or less permanent. It's like becoming a jogger or something; perhaps something more tangible and tactile will be the next area where I decisively cut down. (Well, I eat less than I used to as well, but that's been a gradual slowdown rather than a set of instructions.) But to get back to systems for a second, I think, in my arbitrary way, that '09 has been one of the worst pop years I've lived through, possibly the worst. I hear a lot of crap, we all do, but this year's feels like a nadir. Nevertheless, the past few months have shown me some things I wasn't expecting and am excited about: the dubstep-not-dubstep I've talked about before, and now jerkin' rap from L.A.
Between them, they've scattered crumbs all over the place, largely in the form of mixes in post-dubstep's case and with jerk, a windfall via Matthew Africa (and Rodney Greene): Digital Dripped. Read it and weep. I didn't need to get any further behind in my listening, but now I am.
D.D. is shamelessly a leak blog. Nothing but lists of new songs available for grabbing followed, often, by "(hot)" or "(very hot)" or "(jerkin song)" or "(hot jerkin song)" or "(very hot jerkin song)." That's all the editorial you get. And the effect it has is to make you want to hear everything. What the hell makes this a hot or very hot song? In my case, of course, the more Pavlovian effect is, "Oooh--another jerkin' song!" (Thanks again, Rodney.) Between it and FACT I'm kind of psyched to be living in the now.
Or maybe not. I'm working on a bunch of reviews for eMusic, mostly of Sony catalog, and it's been refreshing to dig into albums I like but didn't spend as much time with as I'd like to until I got the assignments. Aerosmith's Rocks and Lene Lovich's Stateless are the latest I've been puzzling over way past deadline. (Others done, more to come.) It's challenging to write about older stuff you don't know in your bones already, especially when they're not being presented in a new context.
Nevertheless, SLM has made it more mandatory for me to hear new music instead of old. My habit is to look for new stuff online, which is where the bulk of my listening now comes from. There are fewer likely-looking/seeming reissues coming to my attention. Even the new stuff consisting of old stuff--the FACT Mixes by the Emperor Machine and Woebot spring to mind--seems more new than old, because in those cases it's DJs shaping the story rather than the artists themselves. That might be arbitrary, but I think it's key to how we perceive the works. Records sound differently when they're used differently--sometimes ordinary, sometimes better than you could hope to have imagined. However it works, this year I've paid almost no attention to that which came before--not in anywhere near systematically, and systematically is how I listen.
I hope it's clear by now that this is still an experiment. I do think, as I'd hoped, that it will be my modus operandi going out--it's not an eleven-month plan anymore, it's more or less permanent. It's like becoming a jogger or something; perhaps something more tangible and tactile will be the next area where I decisively cut down. (Well, I eat less than I used to as well, but that's been a gradual slowdown rather than a set of instructions.) But to get back to systems for a second, I think, in my arbitrary way, that '09 has been one of the worst pop years I've lived through, possibly the worst. I hear a lot of crap, we all do, but this year's feels like a nadir. Nevertheless, the past few months have shown me some things I wasn't expecting and am excited about: the dubstep-not-dubstep I've talked about before, and now jerkin' rap from L.A.
Between them, they've scattered crumbs all over the place, largely in the form of mixes in post-dubstep's case and with jerk, a windfall via Matthew Africa (and Rodney Greene): Digital Dripped. Read it and weep. I didn't need to get any further behind in my listening, but now I am.
D.D. is shamelessly a leak blog. Nothing but lists of new songs available for grabbing followed, often, by "(hot)" or "(very hot)" or "(jerkin song)" or "(hot jerkin song)" or "(very hot jerkin song)." That's all the editorial you get. And the effect it has is to make you want to hear everything. What the hell makes this a hot or very hot song? In my case, of course, the more Pavlovian effect is, "Oooh--another jerkin' song!" (Thanks again, Rodney.) Between it and FACT I'm kind of psyched to be living in the now.
Or maybe not. I'm working on a bunch of reviews for eMusic, mostly of Sony catalog, and it's been refreshing to dig into albums I like but didn't spend as much time with as I'd like to until I got the assignments. Aerosmith's Rocks and Lene Lovich's Stateless are the latest I've been puzzling over way past deadline. (Others done, more to come.) It's challenging to write about older stuff you don't know in your bones already, especially when they're not being presented in a new context.
1.9.09
The end of "Citizen Kane."
I've been back in Seattle for a little under a week now; I leave on Thursday for a weekend in Minneapolis for a friend's wedding. I just happened to turn on Citizen Kane, the last half-hour or so, and watched the ending again. There they are, the newspaper reporters in perpetual shadow, walking through the warehouse where all the thousands of artworks, many in crates, lay. Kane wanted them, had the money, had fallen victim to his own monomania. Then he died, and there it was, laying there, statue upon statue, the unfinishable life's work of an enthusiast who'd lost all sense of proportion.
Coming back has been frustrating. I won't be in contact with my girlfriend for a week, which is fairly depressing. I'd forgotten just how much stuff I need to go through and either sell, give away, or pack: a good friend has volunteered her basement to help me store things--a very good friend, like so many I have. I have an apartment waiting for me in Brooklyn, with another very good friend. I'm making some progress on a big project, though I should be making more; I've got steady work, which is more than I could have hoped for even a few months ago; I'm going to be OK. This is something I've worried about a lot this year, and it's a relief. I even have been thinking about what I might do beyond writing: nothing glamorous, nothing horrifying. Just a mountain of stuff to do, in a place that makes me want to do nothing at all, which I'll do anyway. It's a good way to end things here--it's long overdue.
Watching Kane, watching all that glittering crap in the warehouse, I obviously thought about SLM. The way that things accumulate and never get touched; the way the long-ago sense that you might want to explore everything curdles into acquiring everything and exploring nothing. I worry a lot that I've lost my inquisitiveness. I don't really think I have; two pieces I did for The Onion A.V. Club's New York edition were both enjoyable and encouraging--I'd allowed myself to forget I know how to write features, and not write them about music. But I worry. I didn't go out much in New York, and I don't go out much in Seattle, partly because I put myself in a work bubble years ago thinking it would strengthen my writing itself. It has. It hasn't done much for me socially, though, and as I get older the habits become more rigid. I use the excuse that I'm broke in order not to do things, but it's not good to stay in all the time. I grow paranoid; the weed I'm often smoking doesn't help. But having rid myself of a lot of CDs before leaving in July helps a great deal; it tells me I can do it. So, in a way, does SLM.
Part of me is really annoyed I'm doing anything at all. I love Seattle; I want to settle here. I had such a bad experience in New York three years ago that I never wanted to go there again. July and August were fraught in some ways; I don't have much money. But I really do belong there, albeit temporarily. The big project is one reason; Angela is another. But I've become inert here, dysfunctional. It's my fault insofar as I've succumbed to my own worries; having the person you love tell you it's going to be OK really does help a lot, even when you don't believe it at the time. I know that's not a chimera now. And the pace of New York is a draw too, even when it's aggravating. This time, though, I don't think it will be. Very different scenario, very different people involved. Under the circumstances, it should go very well, and I'm looking forward to it.
Back to the stuff in the Kane warehouse. Would any of it have brightened his life if he'd actually spent his days looking at it? My hunch is that it might. I have a higher than normal tolerance for the new and different; I like comfort-music too, but I'm just as happy, a lot of the time, hearing something I haven't before. Maybe that I won't ever hear again; lotta garbage out there, especially this year, especially contributing to The Singles Jukebox. But forcing yourself to make contact with the world, even if it's just through that world's works, gives you some kind of perspective on yourself. That's what you lose when you just start hoarding shit and just hoping that it sorts itself out in the end. It won't, though--you have to do the sorting.
When I started chucking CDs--even the hundreds I ripped for potential research purposes--I was, in a sense, eating crow. Of course I wasn't going to listen to all those Greensleeves Rhythm Albums I'd either been sent or picked up in cheapo bins. Of course a bunch of those techno comps were gonna hit the dirt. And what was I holding onto? Classically-structured rock albums. Old jazz. The basics. The classics. All the stuff I'm basically skeptical of in the present day, in part because it allows for a lot of work that's slack or worse, partly because I really do like hearing new stuff. Looking now at what's left--about 1,500 CDs, give or take--I realize how accurately what's left on-shelf reflects my interests. Part of it is that much of what I listen to in the present tense is on my laptop or EHD, not the CD shelves--I hope to remedy that as certain titles reveal themselves as classics. What's more important is that I've finally admitted to myself that I can't hear everything, and that I need to focus on what's important to me rather than what I think I ought to know about at some point. When that point comes, I'll dig into it. A lot of the nervous feeling that I might possibly--gasp! shock! horror!--miss out on something has been silly anyhow: clearly I've been missing plenty.
But so has everyone else. Crates and crates of art. A stove worth $2 and a statue worth $25,000. (In 1941 money, of course.) Throw the sled into the fireplace. All of this and nothing. That's the state of the music hoarder's hard drive in 2009: untold treasures, untold trash. The difference is that all of it is trash unless you make the effort to hear it. I write about music because I believe it's worth talking about; it is inherently interesting, and discussing it is a way of bonding with it. No amount of "here's the MP3, bye" blogging is going to change that.
I've listened to more podcasts and MP3 mixes this year than, I think, every other year before it combined. It's not hard to figure out why: you can just leave them on to play out, like an album, and it becomes an experience, also like an album. Of course--duh. I'm not the first to notice this. But I think between that and the increase of streaming-not-downloading among even teenagers, people are slowing down on their own. I think people want music to be an event again; something time-consuming, hence meaningful.
Unfailingly, almost every music writer I talk about SLM with says the same thing: Whoa, hey, good luck with that, because I could certainly never do it. I'd have said the same thing last year. Not to turn into Richard Simmons or anything, but you know, you can. It's not hard at all. It just requires some diligence. I'm currently 14 hours behind (again). I can make it twice that if I want to. But I'll catch up. That's the point. And once that goal is in mind it's pretty easy. Especially since if I don't like something, I zap it--or write something on it. I learn a lot more from doing that than avoiding it. Same with everything else, really. It's either that or letting it sit around in crates, gathering dust.
Coming back has been frustrating. I won't be in contact with my girlfriend for a week, which is fairly depressing. I'd forgotten just how much stuff I need to go through and either sell, give away, or pack: a good friend has volunteered her basement to help me store things--a very good friend, like so many I have. I have an apartment waiting for me in Brooklyn, with another very good friend. I'm making some progress on a big project, though I should be making more; I've got steady work, which is more than I could have hoped for even a few months ago; I'm going to be OK. This is something I've worried about a lot this year, and it's a relief. I even have been thinking about what I might do beyond writing: nothing glamorous, nothing horrifying. Just a mountain of stuff to do, in a place that makes me want to do nothing at all, which I'll do anyway. It's a good way to end things here--it's long overdue.
Watching Kane, watching all that glittering crap in the warehouse, I obviously thought about SLM. The way that things accumulate and never get touched; the way the long-ago sense that you might want to explore everything curdles into acquiring everything and exploring nothing. I worry a lot that I've lost my inquisitiveness. I don't really think I have; two pieces I did for The Onion A.V. Club's New York edition were both enjoyable and encouraging--I'd allowed myself to forget I know how to write features, and not write them about music. But I worry. I didn't go out much in New York, and I don't go out much in Seattle, partly because I put myself in a work bubble years ago thinking it would strengthen my writing itself. It has. It hasn't done much for me socially, though, and as I get older the habits become more rigid. I use the excuse that I'm broke in order not to do things, but it's not good to stay in all the time. I grow paranoid; the weed I'm often smoking doesn't help. But having rid myself of a lot of CDs before leaving in July helps a great deal; it tells me I can do it. So, in a way, does SLM.
Part of me is really annoyed I'm doing anything at all. I love Seattle; I want to settle here. I had such a bad experience in New York three years ago that I never wanted to go there again. July and August were fraught in some ways; I don't have much money. But I really do belong there, albeit temporarily. The big project is one reason; Angela is another. But I've become inert here, dysfunctional. It's my fault insofar as I've succumbed to my own worries; having the person you love tell you it's going to be OK really does help a lot, even when you don't believe it at the time. I know that's not a chimera now. And the pace of New York is a draw too, even when it's aggravating. This time, though, I don't think it will be. Very different scenario, very different people involved. Under the circumstances, it should go very well, and I'm looking forward to it.
Back to the stuff in the Kane warehouse. Would any of it have brightened his life if he'd actually spent his days looking at it? My hunch is that it might. I have a higher than normal tolerance for the new and different; I like comfort-music too, but I'm just as happy, a lot of the time, hearing something I haven't before. Maybe that I won't ever hear again; lotta garbage out there, especially this year, especially contributing to The Singles Jukebox. But forcing yourself to make contact with the world, even if it's just through that world's works, gives you some kind of perspective on yourself. That's what you lose when you just start hoarding shit and just hoping that it sorts itself out in the end. It won't, though--you have to do the sorting.
When I started chucking CDs--even the hundreds I ripped for potential research purposes--I was, in a sense, eating crow. Of course I wasn't going to listen to all those Greensleeves Rhythm Albums I'd either been sent or picked up in cheapo bins. Of course a bunch of those techno comps were gonna hit the dirt. And what was I holding onto? Classically-structured rock albums. Old jazz. The basics. The classics. All the stuff I'm basically skeptical of in the present day, in part because it allows for a lot of work that's slack or worse, partly because I really do like hearing new stuff. Looking now at what's left--about 1,500 CDs, give or take--I realize how accurately what's left on-shelf reflects my interests. Part of it is that much of what I listen to in the present tense is on my laptop or EHD, not the CD shelves--I hope to remedy that as certain titles reveal themselves as classics. What's more important is that I've finally admitted to myself that I can't hear everything, and that I need to focus on what's important to me rather than what I think I ought to know about at some point. When that point comes, I'll dig into it. A lot of the nervous feeling that I might possibly--gasp! shock! horror!--miss out on something has been silly anyhow: clearly I've been missing plenty.
But so has everyone else. Crates and crates of art. A stove worth $2 and a statue worth $25,000. (In 1941 money, of course.) Throw the sled into the fireplace. All of this and nothing. That's the state of the music hoarder's hard drive in 2009: untold treasures, untold trash. The difference is that all of it is trash unless you make the effort to hear it. I write about music because I believe it's worth talking about; it is inherently interesting, and discussing it is a way of bonding with it. No amount of "here's the MP3, bye" blogging is going to change that.
I've listened to more podcasts and MP3 mixes this year than, I think, every other year before it combined. It's not hard to figure out why: you can just leave them on to play out, like an album, and it becomes an experience, also like an album. Of course--duh. I'm not the first to notice this. But I think between that and the increase of streaming-not-downloading among even teenagers, people are slowing down on their own. I think people want music to be an event again; something time-consuming, hence meaningful.
Unfailingly, almost every music writer I talk about SLM with says the same thing: Whoa, hey, good luck with that, because I could certainly never do it. I'd have said the same thing last year. Not to turn into Richard Simmons or anything, but you know, you can. It's not hard at all. It just requires some diligence. I'm currently 14 hours behind (again). I can make it twice that if I want to. But I'll catch up. That's the point. And once that goal is in mind it's pretty easy. Especially since if I don't like something, I zap it--or write something on it. I learn a lot more from doing that than avoiding it. Same with everything else, really. It's either that or letting it sit around in crates, gathering dust.
3.8.09
Immersion here and there.
Things have been moving in odd directions since I got to New York about four weeks ago. Aside from a brief housing scare I needn't detail here, the basic gist is that I've been having a great time, and after a couple weeks where writing anything was a struggle it's been fairly smooth sailing, not that I've gotten as much done on a big project as I'd like, though I plan to change that this week. But in terms of Slow Listening, the major change is also the most logical: last week I trashed my ongoing lists of URLs I'd been hoarding. Basically, I am no longer trying to keep up; instead I'm playing it by eye and ear and letting whatever happens happen.
"Keeping up," obviously, is a fictional conceit. There's no way to do it even if I/you keep my/your options narrow, which I clearly can't even when I try. And as with most things where my eyes are bigger than my stomach, it's taken me a change of scenery to realize that dipping back into the endless/needless list of stuff I might try and check out sometime isn't going to help me move forward any. So I jettisoned it, and boy does it feel good.
It's not just being in NYC that catalyzed this--not that "being in NYC" is the reason, per se; I'd have probably done the same thing if I were camped out in Montana or something. It's that shortly after arriving I realized that I missed the way I used to do things--getting interested in a particular area and stocking up, then evaluating that. Basically, I equated feeling unsatisfied with acquiring too much willy-nilly with a dissatisfaction with any other kind of willy-nilliness--clearly a mistake. Being a pop fan ("pop" being a deliberate fudge meaning anything that isn't jazz or classical) is in many ways about wandering in whatever direction seems likeliest. So in being deliberate about listening to what I acquire, I wanted to be deliberate about the acquisition as well. That's a perfectly valid operating procedure, especially since I listen professionally and want to be fair in doing so. Not even as in giving everything a shot, either--just as in giving a shot to the stuff I figure I'll like and/or have something to say about. If 2009 is going to sound so fucking rote, why shouldn't I approach it that way?
It doesn't anymore, though, largely because I said to hell with it and spent the last three weeks immersed in the last few months' worth of FACT Mixes. In a sense, this was ill-advised: no one, I figured, would want me to write about them. That's one reason I didn't dig into them sooner: better to concentrate on stuff I might have a chance to be paid for. Surely being away from home registered as "vacation," however much I planned to actually work (and have actually worked), freed me from this cockamamie notion, because I had more fun playing FACT Mix after FACT Mix than I have had all year with any particular bloc of concentrated listening. Not to mention the mixes' length forbade me from listening to much else besides stuff I was writing about for pay--and convinced me further that the post-dubstep/U.K. funky/wonky/whatever so heavily represented by the FACT Mixes (and other FACT-finds, such as these four live mixes from the FWD club) is the most fertile, exciting stuff around right now.
And what do you know: I actually did get to write about it. So much for the straight-and-narrow being the only path. Given how tough a year it's been for everyone in my field (and most others), that's encouraging.
In previous years I'd felt vaguely dissatisfied with the immersion-here-and-there path. Too dilettantish, I feared; too uncommitted. I don't know what I was thinking: trying to understand something you don't already know doesn't exactly bespeak a lack of commitment. I like music because it's the most obviously adventurous of the arts even when things seem stale, as so much of 2009 does. (The mid-'70s cultural malaise that always seemed overstated in retrospect now seems like a clear and present fact.) I seem to have forgotten how rewarding immersion-here-and-there has been for me in the past; it made 2008 seem like a better year than it actually was. I try to approach music with a sense of overview, however incomplete. But there is no "complete" at this point, if there ever was. Informed selectivity, I've relearned, comes in more ways than a simple checklist.
Of course, I have had a checklist: The Singles Jukebox. Grading records for it (here's a consistently updated list of my scores) has taken care of the overview aspect of my listening; praises be to Will Swygart for helping me do the dirty work, and the other participants (including the ones I disagree with all the time) for making that work feel like something other than simply shouting in the dark. Maybe we're just shouting to each other, but I'll take that over the lesser alternatives.
In short, I've simply enjoyed listening more than I have in a while, even if the music, per se, isn't all that exciting. A lot of it isn't. I make a lesser living doing so than I used to. But I'm still glad I get to, and now that listening to everything I acquire is ingrained, I do it with more discipline, and enjoy that too.
Finally, because this is a self-indulgent blog, and because I'm guessing a couple of you might care, here's what I just dumped into the "Unheard 2009-08" folder that I have yet to process. (I've gotten to about two dozen tracks while writing this.)
BBU, "Chi Don't Dance"
Blaq Poet ft. MC Eiht & Young Maylay, "Aint Nuttin Changed (Remix Dirty)"
Blue Roses, "I Am Leaving"
Cocadisco, FACT Mix 68
Codebreaker, "Follow Me (The Juan Maclean Remix)"
Crystal Fighters, "Xtatic Truth" remixes
Damn Arms, "Destination (Jaunt Remix)"
Dark Party, "Status"
Vladislav Delay, "Melankolia (Edit)"
Delsin 2.0 Compilation
Del the Funky Homosapien, "King of Fighters"
Dimitri From Paris Presents: Nightdubbin'
DJ Food ft. Natural Self, "The Illectrik Hoax"
DJ JS-1 (CL Smooth/Brother Ali/Sadat X), "Nuthin'"
DJ Kaos, "Love The Nite Away (Tiedye Mix)"
Dungen, "Samtidigt" (tour-only 12-inch version via MBV Music; pretty great)
FaltyDL, "And I Really Know..."
Free Energy, "Dream City"
Fortune, "Highway (James Pants Remix)"
Freeland, "Do You (Joker Remix)"
Gemma, FACT Mix 25
Glasser, "Apply (Lemonade Remix)"
Glimpse and Alex Jones, "Bad Monday"
Gold Panda, "Quitters Raga"
Hauntologists, "A1"
Holy Ghost, "I Will Come Back (DJ Mehdi Remix)"
Ikonika, "Phonelines VIP"
Insight & Nas, Dancehall Is Dead (ragga remixes of Nas's Hip-Hop Is Dead; my hopes aren't high but I was sufficiently intrigued to grab it off of eMusic)
Jaelin, "Vibrationz"
Jogger, "Nice Tights (Nosaj Thing Remix)"
Karotte, "All She Wants Is (Microdinamic Remix)"
Kid606, "Monsters (Doshy Remix)"
Keaver & Brause, "Airborn"
Lone, "Karen Loves Kate"
Antoni Maiovvi, "The Chase Part 1"
The Juan MacLean, "One Day (James Curd Remix)"
Major Lazer, "Hold the Line - NROTB Remix"
Maxwell, BLACKSummer'sNight
Michna, "Triple Chrome Dipped (Osborne Remix)"
Milky Disco II: Let's Go Freak Out
Minus 8, "Last Nite"
Move Merchants
Neon Indian, "Deadbeat Summer"
Ne-Yo ft. NatStar, "If You Want Me to Stay (Remix)"
Alexander Nut, Rinse 08
Oddz v Tempz, "Strung Up Hype (Oneman Blend)"
Polvo, "Beggars Bowl"
Quantic And His Combo Barbaro, "Arianita"
Raffertie, Do That/Boy Better Know EP (playing right now: cartoony, absurdist, the kind of thing that makes dance purists' teeth itch, so obviously I adore it)
Rainbow Bridge, "Big Wave Rider"
Ras G, "Stealth Mode"
The Revenge, RA Podcast 166
Scottie B & King Tutt, "African Chant (Top Billin' Remix)"
Serengeti, Dennehy (Christgau-beloved indie-rap; I find less common ground with Christgau's tastes every year, but he raved convincingly, so why not?)
Shit Robot, "Simple Things (Work It Out) (Serge Santiago Version)"
Smith Westerns, "Be My Girl"
Scottie B & King Tutt, "African Chant (Top Billin' Remix)"
Sally Shapiro, "Miracle (Bogdan Irkuk remix)"
Sally Shapiro, "Love In July" + remixes
Shit Robot, "Simple Things (Work It Out) (Serge Santiago Version)"
Shortstuff, Crazylegs 003 mix
Smith Westerns, "Be My Girl"
Spirit Catcher, "Sweet Deal"
Steffi, LWE Talking Shopcast 05
Stush, "Riddim Sirens - We Nuh Run"
John Talabot, "Sunshine"
TBD, "What Is This?"/"I Don't Know"
10-20, "Landforms Promo Mix"
Thunderheist, "Nothing 2 Step 2 (Idiotproof Remix)"
Uproot Andy, "Brooklyn Cumbia"
Curtis Vodka, Hook N Sling EP
Warlock, "20 Best Euro Mix for FACT"
Woodstock 40 Years On: Back to Yasgur's Farm (6CD box)
The World Is Shaking: Cubanismo From The Congo, 1954-55 (amazing looking new Honest Jon's comp)
Yo La Tengo, "Here To Fall"
"Keeping up," obviously, is a fictional conceit. There's no way to do it even if I/you keep my/your options narrow, which I clearly can't even when I try. And as with most things where my eyes are bigger than my stomach, it's taken me a change of scenery to realize that dipping back into the endless/needless list of stuff I might try and check out sometime isn't going to help me move forward any. So I jettisoned it, and boy does it feel good.
It's not just being in NYC that catalyzed this--not that "being in NYC" is the reason, per se; I'd have probably done the same thing if I were camped out in Montana or something. It's that shortly after arriving I realized that I missed the way I used to do things--getting interested in a particular area and stocking up, then evaluating that. Basically, I equated feeling unsatisfied with acquiring too much willy-nilly with a dissatisfaction with any other kind of willy-nilliness--clearly a mistake. Being a pop fan ("pop" being a deliberate fudge meaning anything that isn't jazz or classical) is in many ways about wandering in whatever direction seems likeliest. So in being deliberate about listening to what I acquire, I wanted to be deliberate about the acquisition as well. That's a perfectly valid operating procedure, especially since I listen professionally and want to be fair in doing so. Not even as in giving everything a shot, either--just as in giving a shot to the stuff I figure I'll like and/or have something to say about. If 2009 is going to sound so fucking rote, why shouldn't I approach it that way?
It doesn't anymore, though, largely because I said to hell with it and spent the last three weeks immersed in the last few months' worth of FACT Mixes. In a sense, this was ill-advised: no one, I figured, would want me to write about them. That's one reason I didn't dig into them sooner: better to concentrate on stuff I might have a chance to be paid for. Surely being away from home registered as "vacation," however much I planned to actually work (and have actually worked), freed me from this cockamamie notion, because I had more fun playing FACT Mix after FACT Mix than I have had all year with any particular bloc of concentrated listening. Not to mention the mixes' length forbade me from listening to much else besides stuff I was writing about for pay--and convinced me further that the post-dubstep/U.K. funky/wonky/whatever so heavily represented by the FACT Mixes (and other FACT-finds, such as these four live mixes from the FWD club) is the most fertile, exciting stuff around right now.
And what do you know: I actually did get to write about it. So much for the straight-and-narrow being the only path. Given how tough a year it's been for everyone in my field (and most others), that's encouraging.
In previous years I'd felt vaguely dissatisfied with the immersion-here-and-there path. Too dilettantish, I feared; too uncommitted. I don't know what I was thinking: trying to understand something you don't already know doesn't exactly bespeak a lack of commitment. I like music because it's the most obviously adventurous of the arts even when things seem stale, as so much of 2009 does. (The mid-'70s cultural malaise that always seemed overstated in retrospect now seems like a clear and present fact.) I seem to have forgotten how rewarding immersion-here-and-there has been for me in the past; it made 2008 seem like a better year than it actually was. I try to approach music with a sense of overview, however incomplete. But there is no "complete" at this point, if there ever was. Informed selectivity, I've relearned, comes in more ways than a simple checklist.
Of course, I have had a checklist: The Singles Jukebox. Grading records for it (here's a consistently updated list of my scores) has taken care of the overview aspect of my listening; praises be to Will Swygart for helping me do the dirty work, and the other participants (including the ones I disagree with all the time) for making that work feel like something other than simply shouting in the dark. Maybe we're just shouting to each other, but I'll take that over the lesser alternatives.
In short, I've simply enjoyed listening more than I have in a while, even if the music, per se, isn't all that exciting. A lot of it isn't. I make a lesser living doing so than I used to. But I'm still glad I get to, and now that listening to everything I acquire is ingrained, I do it with more discipline, and enjoy that too.
Finally, because this is a self-indulgent blog, and because I'm guessing a couple of you might care, here's what I just dumped into the "Unheard 2009-08" folder that I have yet to process. (I've gotten to about two dozen tracks while writing this.)
BBU, "Chi Don't Dance"
Blaq Poet ft. MC Eiht & Young Maylay, "Aint Nuttin Changed (Remix Dirty)"
Blue Roses, "I Am Leaving"
Cocadisco, FACT Mix 68
Codebreaker, "Follow Me (The Juan Maclean Remix)"
Crystal Fighters, "Xtatic Truth" remixes
Damn Arms, "Destination (Jaunt Remix)"
Dark Party, "Status"
Vladislav Delay, "Melankolia (Edit)"
Delsin 2.0 Compilation
Del the Funky Homosapien, "King of Fighters"
Dimitri From Paris Presents: Nightdubbin'
DJ Food ft. Natural Self, "The Illectrik Hoax"
DJ JS-1 (CL Smooth/Brother Ali/Sadat X), "Nuthin'"
DJ Kaos, "Love The Nite Away (Tiedye Mix)"
Dungen, "Samtidigt" (tour-only 12-inch version via MBV Music; pretty great)
FaltyDL, "And I Really Know..."
Free Energy, "Dream City"
Fortune, "Highway (James Pants Remix)"
Freeland, "Do You (Joker Remix)"
Gemma, FACT Mix 25
Glasser, "Apply (Lemonade Remix)"
Glimpse and Alex Jones, "Bad Monday"
Gold Panda, "Quitters Raga"
Hauntologists, "A1"
Holy Ghost, "I Will Come Back (DJ Mehdi Remix)"
Ikonika, "Phonelines VIP"
Insight & Nas, Dancehall Is Dead (ragga remixes of Nas's Hip-Hop Is Dead; my hopes aren't high but I was sufficiently intrigued to grab it off of eMusic)
Jaelin, "Vibrationz"
Jogger, "Nice Tights (Nosaj Thing Remix)"
Karotte, "All She Wants Is (Microdinamic Remix)"
Kid606, "Monsters (Doshy Remix)"
Keaver & Brause, "Airborn"
Lone, "Karen Loves Kate"
Antoni Maiovvi, "The Chase Part 1"
The Juan MacLean, "One Day (James Curd Remix)"
Major Lazer, "Hold the Line - NROTB Remix"
Maxwell, BLACKSummer'sNight
Michna, "Triple Chrome Dipped (Osborne Remix)"
Milky Disco II: Let's Go Freak Out
Minus 8, "Last Nite"
Move Merchants
Neon Indian, "Deadbeat Summer"
Ne-Yo ft. NatStar, "If You Want Me to Stay (Remix)"
Alexander Nut, Rinse 08
Oddz v Tempz, "Strung Up Hype (Oneman Blend)"
Polvo, "Beggars Bowl"
Quantic And His Combo Barbaro, "Arianita"
Raffertie, Do That/Boy Better Know EP (playing right now: cartoony, absurdist, the kind of thing that makes dance purists' teeth itch, so obviously I adore it)
Rainbow Bridge, "Big Wave Rider"
Ras G, "Stealth Mode"
The Revenge, RA Podcast 166
Scottie B & King Tutt, "African Chant (Top Billin' Remix)"
Serengeti, Dennehy (Christgau-beloved indie-rap; I find less common ground with Christgau's tastes every year, but he raved convincingly, so why not?)
Shit Robot, "Simple Things (Work It Out) (Serge Santiago Version)"
Smith Westerns, "Be My Girl"
Scottie B & King Tutt, "African Chant (Top Billin' Remix)"
Sally Shapiro, "Miracle (Bogdan Irkuk remix)"
Sally Shapiro, "Love In July" + remixes
Shit Robot, "Simple Things (Work It Out) (Serge Santiago Version)"
Shortstuff, Crazylegs 003 mix
Smith Westerns, "Be My Girl"
Spirit Catcher, "Sweet Deal"
Steffi, LWE Talking Shopcast 05
Stush, "Riddim Sirens - We Nuh Run"
John Talabot, "Sunshine"
TBD, "What Is This?"/"I Don't Know"
10-20, "Landforms Promo Mix"
Thunderheist, "Nothing 2 Step 2 (Idiotproof Remix)"
Uproot Andy, "Brooklyn Cumbia"
Curtis Vodka, Hook N Sling EP
Warlock, "20 Best Euro Mix for FACT"
Woodstock 40 Years On: Back to Yasgur's Farm (6CD box)
The World Is Shaking: Cubanismo From The Congo, 1954-55 (amazing looking new Honest Jon's comp)
Yo La Tengo, "Here To Fall"
20.7.09
New York City?! Get a rope.
I've been here two weeks now. It's enjoyable if stressful ($$), and I've been stupid lazy about getting things done, but I'm starting to kick myself back into gear. I also downloaded some insane number of mixes from FACT and other places, and will be listening to that for, oh, a week at least. Anything to keep busy, right? Anyway, more forthcoming when it happens.
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