Thirty-three Days later, the "B's" are Complete; Hiatus Imminent
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Artist:
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About 2 months ago, I had this insane idea to listen to all of my dust collecting albums in alphabetical order. It took 33 days, but the B's are complete. On top of all of this, I'm taking November and December off to listen to nothing but 2009 albums (prepping for my Best of list). Looks like this venture will be complete in early 2012 (if I'm lucky).
Here are some stats to the B list.
Total B's Listened to in those 33 Days: 100, exactly
First album listened to: Baby Chaos "Love Your Self Abuse"
Last album listened to: Bjork "Homogenic" - (it was misfiled for some reason) If not Bjork, it would have been Butthole Surfers "Electriclarryland"
A List B's listened to: Bowie, Beatles, Badu, James Brown, Count Basie, Bad Religion, Beck, Beach Boys, Beasties
D List B's listened to: Breaking Pangea, Black Grape, Boy Sets Fire, Baby Chaos, Bumblebeez 81
Pleasant Surprise(s): Blue Epic, Budapest, Buckethead, Blackstar and Brad
I've gotta play this James Brown record more often: any of 'em!
Sounds the most like Smashing Pumpkins: Baby Chaos
Band that got Riley bobbing his head the most: Bloodhound Gang???
She really couldn't stand listening to 6 consective albums of them, so we skipped a few: Boy Sets Fire
Sounds too much like Coldplay: Blue Merle
Most albums by one band: 6, Bad Religion
I'll probably never listen to __________ again: Bumblebeez 81, Black Grape, Blondie "The Curse of Blondie"
Biggest bummer: Getting to Jeff Buckley "Grace" and realizing the CD was missing!
Comments (20)
Maybe Riley copped your Buckley disk.
He's been known to get into the CD books from time to time. I noticed you had Blue Epic on your recommended list - great EP that I had stashed away from a number of years ago!
That's a lot of listening! And very structured, too...I have still been listening to my "zero playcount" stuff on shuffle to prevent being bored (and a lot of it has zero playcounts for a reason!) I have also deliberately been breaking it up with new stuff too, so I don't get out of touch with year-end and decade-end bests!
Great call. I really miss not having current albums in rotation. You've got to have an equal mix and listening to older stuff really takes away from current listening. Are you axing any zero play count songs from your collection (computer that is)?
There are artists, albums and songs I don't think I will listen to again, but I have lots of storage space for the time being, so I'm not axing anything. Also, I do put iTunes on shuffle once in a while and it's kind of amusing when a dud comes up and I shake my head and think, "How could I ever have liked that?" :)
As mentioned earlier on the previous thread for this endeavor, I purged my entire collection and only kept the songs I like. Like meaning "I like this" not neccessarily I am familiar with this, or it was popular.
I wound up with about 1500 songs in 2006:
Earlierst: 1955 Harry Belafonte's "Day-O Bannana Boat Song"
Total # of Artist/groups/bands : 527
# of Bands with only 1 track in library: 42
Bands with most tracks in library: Sting (35), Billy Joel (32), Electronic (25), Seal (24), Coldplay (23), DJ Shadow (22), Jimmy Buffett (20), The Cure (19), Elton John(18)
Most skipped over bands: Elton John, Billy Joel, Sting, Seal, Jimmy Buffett
Collection by Decade
50's : 1
60's :45 Some things you have to have
70's :314 Product of 3 older siblings
80's :446 High School Years
90's :631 Bartending Years
00's : 253 Got Married, had kids, stopped going out.....
Total # of Tracks in Library now: 1807
This is a good idea. Can't imagine parting w/ that much music. How much did you lose (or not keep)?
Right now, I have a selection of 15,000ish songs in my library. Made a 5 star playlist through iTunes, but really, shouldn't everything at least be 4 stars or better? What's the use of having just an average 3 star song in a collection? Nostalgia's sake?
Is this something you put together from Last FM or on your own (skipped over bands, most tracks - how do you calculate)?
Might be worth doing although purging even the worst of the what is on the shelf is tough (well, maybe the bottom 1% can easily part).
I like the idea -If you know you don't like something, what's the point of owning it?
Media Monkey is a great tool for managing your library.
As an example (happen to have it handy), Green Day "Dookie" album, I burned Longivew and Welcome to Paradise, the rest of the album just did not do anything for me. So why bother with it.
The CD goes to the box which went to the attic. The two tracks are on the PC. Some "Purist" would say you should burn it all, its just PC memory, and that somehow I am doing a disservice to the artist by interupting their intended experience.
Pffftt is what I say. The other songs suck arse and I would only FF through them anyway.
Look at it this way. If god came down from heaven, and took away all the FF buttons. Would you suddenly hate your collection? Are you prepared to listen to Every Single Track...
If you are, then kudos... but for me, life is to short. I hear it once, it either grabs me, or it doesnt.
I will say there are some albums that I did not burn, because they are played from beggining to end. As examples:
1. The Wall
2. Days of Futures Past
3. Joshua Tree
etc... and they do not appear in my "Library". When I travel, I go with about 12 CD's and an iPod.
I'll have to try Media Monkey, although I always need a push to try something need, especially something like a library clean up (or organization of sorts).
I emphathize w/ both sides of the arguement - cover art and the full CD/vinyl/album is still very valueable to me; however, I don't neccesarily have to listen to Basket Case, She and Coming Clean to hear Longview.
Some are album purists. Yeah, I like to hear the entire album, but a lot of times my ADD catches up w/ me on track 3 and I want to hear something else.
We're certainly spoiled and having any song from our collection at our fingertips certainly numbs the experience. Hopefully this Media Monkey can do some of the leg work for me and help me effectively organize!
"need" above is actually supposed to be "new" ^-----
iTunes is just about the most pathetic excuse for a organizer of music there is. And somehow, they rule the musical universe as we know it today.
They refuse to talk with any other program or platform.
You need to understand that iTunes will be where you need to import your music and buy it from, and that Media Monkey is only good for a seperate tool for managing your library.
Or you can throw away your iPod, and get your music from anyplace other than iTunes and Media Monkey is your new best friend.
iTunes does not recognize anything you do in Media Monkey.
I tip my hat to you eric, I would not have the time to do this. I used to be able to listen to every record in a year but that was 1980. I now have 5,000 vinyl, about 2,000 CD and am approaching 1,000 downloaded and am looking at the 5 year plan. Can't seem to part with any of it and I'm probably at 40% of transferring vinyl. Besides a lot of my time is spent creating art. Would like to hear how you feel at the end.
Looking from the front end to the rear end - I feel this task will never be accomplished. It will, but I won't have a chance to listen to anything else in the meantime. It does open eyes as to what you really need in a collection and why certain records and albums are still there. I guess it boils down to years ago, getting rid of some albums I really wish I still had.
Suprised to se someone else ended up with the Baby Chaos CD. They openned up for Elastica when they played the the black cat on their first tour. They weren't that bad. Elastica was awesome! I hated Boy Sets Fire for years! They always seemed to play with every band I wanted to see. Over the summer I checked out a friends copy of the two Wind Up albums and have to say they are pretty good.
I've def. outgrown BSF over the years, but they were a good band to watch live (although a little too political). An ex of mine was really into them. Almost obsessively into them.
I actually checked and seem to have 6 Bad Religion discs too. I wonder if they are the same as yours
Suffer
Against The Grain
No Control
80-85
Recipe For Hate
Generator
(my favorite is Generator)
I had a bunch others but sold them along the way
The Bad Brains just beat out BR with 7 CDs
I against I
Roir Tapes
Quickness
Rock For Light
Bad BArains Live
Back Dots
Omega Sessions
I think next is Black Flag but this is your post and not mind
Oh man... I think I have every Bad Religion disc (cept for maybe 1 or 2 new ones) - those were just the ones in the books. I have...let's 6 on the shelves, so...yeah, I have all of those. I had a lot of the mediocre ones in the book - New America, No Control, the Process of Belief and my all time least favorite - No Substance (aptly titled). I do like the Gray Race and that one was on there as well.
I only have one Black Flag (Damaged) and zero (don't stone me!) Bad Brains - that's a must have one. Just hard to find. I also had a lot of "Black" albums - Black Sabbath, Frank Black, Black Eyed Peas, Blackstar, Black Heart Procession - seemed like it was never going to end - how bout your "Black" bands?
Black bands? Let's see
Black Flag
Big Black
Black Sabbath
Black Train Jack
(No Frank Black)
Black Grape (not sure how I ended uo with this one)
Barry Black (Archers Of Loaf frontman Eric with a late 90s soo album)
Black Eyes dischord band)
Black Lips
Paint It Black
None More Black
the last two have ex Kid Dynamite members and I always wondered if they were trying to compete with each other
Black Cross who were the Black Widows but had to change it because of legal issues
Black 47 (still pull this disc out around March)
I think that is it withut digging too deep
Then there is
The Big Boys
Big Dipper
Big Drill Car
and Mr Big (just koking on the last one)
Eric, you shoud do a colors of the rainbow (or any color)post. I would but you have more friends
good idea. working on a 50 states feature right now (ie sufjan stevens)