(no subject)
I'm slightly addicted to an album, and it makes me happy.
One of the perils of studying music - especially in my own area of pop music - is that you tend to start thinking about all music, whether you hear it in the classroom or on the radio, with a critical ear. I find it frustrating to listen to a longing ballad and think "Well, they're just using what's probably a V-vi deceptive cadence to evoke a wistful subject-position. How obvious." It sounds pretentious when I write it down, but that is honest to god what actually goes through my head, and I feel pretentious and pathetic just thinking it, involuntary as it may be.
It makes it harder to listen to music for pleasure. A quote by Jason Toynbee from a discourse with Tim Quirk that I adore and whole-hearted believe in describes it best: "The more music you play, the more music you hear, the harder it becomes for the music to affect you, and the better it feels whenever it does anyway."
When I was a kid and teenager, I'd find an album, and listen to it nonstop for days. I used to have a boombox [hah, remember the days of those?] that would sit on a shelf right above my head in bed, and I remember listening to the whole of the Little Shop of Horrors movie soundtrack before going to sleep for weeks. Once I taped "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" off of the radio - this was back in elementary school, when cassette tapes were still in vogue - and listened to it over and over, until I knew all of the words. Still remember them, too.
I think it might spring from the way my mom and I listened to music in the car. [My dad, to this day, only listens to sports and talk radio in the car.] We always had roughly half a dozen CDs in the car, and I pretty much only listened to those any time I was in the car growing up - this is through high school, mind you. The core collection was the soundtrack to Jesus Christ Superstar, the aforementioned soundtrack to Little Shop of Horrors, Foreigner's The Very Best and Beyond, Genesis' Invisible Touch, The Baddest of George Thorogood and the Destroyers, Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon and a few Gloria Estefan CDs. [There was also the Classical Thunder collection and the Sibelius Edition, but this is about pop music.] It was eclectic, to say the least.
Just flipping through my iTunes, I can find CDs that I remember buying and memorizing. Squirrel Nut Zippers' Hot. Cherry Poppin' Daddies' Zoot Suit Riot. The Dresden Dolls' eponymous album. Joe Satriani's Surfing With the Alien. Because I bought the albums in physical form with my allowance, I didn't get them all that often and so savored them when I did. Now, I can probably find a half dozen albums that I now have [mostly ripped from friends or the library] that I've never listened to. Just off the top of my head, Menomena's I am the Fun Blame Monster [that one's mostly suffering from my second-album-problem, though], Operation Ivy's Energy, and three of Dan Deacon's albums that Charlie just gave me.
I'm not examining [aesthetically, not theoretically] and savoring the albums like I used to, and it makes me sad. I think it might be because some of the music I get because I should, as a musicologist and early-20's reject hispter, own it, rather than actually wanting it. And it makes me sad.
This all sums up why I'm happy that I've once again found an album to get addicted to. I got a $10 iTunes gift card with a basket I won at the silent auction before the concert in Syracuse. And it just so happens that Florence + the Machine's album Lungs cost $9.99. I'd known a few of her songs - "Kiss With a Fist," "Dog Days Are Over" - but now I have the album, and it's really fantastic stuff. It's one of those albums that I can quote from/relate to my own life, in a way I haven't found since Who Killed Amanda Palmer? I find it very reassuring, that my musical soul isn't dead inside.
Go go addictive personality, I suppose.
There's a drumming noise inside my head
That starts when you're around
I swear that you could hear it
It makes such an all mighty sound
Louder than sirens
Louder than bells
Sweeter than heaven
And hotter than hell
One of the perils of studying music - especially in my own area of pop music - is that you tend to start thinking about all music, whether you hear it in the classroom or on the radio, with a critical ear. I find it frustrating to listen to a longing ballad and think "Well, they're just using what's probably a V-vi deceptive cadence to evoke a wistful subject-position. How obvious." It sounds pretentious when I write it down, but that is honest to god what actually goes through my head, and I feel pretentious and pathetic just thinking it, involuntary as it may be.
It makes it harder to listen to music for pleasure. A quote by Jason Toynbee from a discourse with Tim Quirk that I adore and whole-hearted believe in describes it best: "The more music you play, the more music you hear, the harder it becomes for the music to affect you, and the better it feels whenever it does anyway."
When I was a kid and teenager, I'd find an album, and listen to it nonstop for days. I used to have a boombox [hah, remember the days of those?] that would sit on a shelf right above my head in bed, and I remember listening to the whole of the Little Shop of Horrors movie soundtrack before going to sleep for weeks. Once I taped "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" off of the radio - this was back in elementary school, when cassette tapes were still in vogue - and listened to it over and over, until I knew all of the words. Still remember them, too.
I think it might spring from the way my mom and I listened to music in the car. [My dad, to this day, only listens to sports and talk radio in the car.] We always had roughly half a dozen CDs in the car, and I pretty much only listened to those any time I was in the car growing up - this is through high school, mind you. The core collection was the soundtrack to Jesus Christ Superstar, the aforementioned soundtrack to Little Shop of Horrors, Foreigner's The Very Best and Beyond, Genesis' Invisible Touch, The Baddest of George Thorogood and the Destroyers, Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon and a few Gloria Estefan CDs. [There was also the Classical Thunder collection and the Sibelius Edition, but this is about pop music.] It was eclectic, to say the least.
Just flipping through my iTunes, I can find CDs that I remember buying and memorizing. Squirrel Nut Zippers' Hot. Cherry Poppin' Daddies' Zoot Suit Riot. The Dresden Dolls' eponymous album. Joe Satriani's Surfing With the Alien. Because I bought the albums in physical form with my allowance, I didn't get them all that often and so savored them when I did. Now, I can probably find a half dozen albums that I now have [mostly ripped from friends or the library] that I've never listened to. Just off the top of my head, Menomena's I am the Fun Blame Monster [that one's mostly suffering from my second-album-problem, though], Operation Ivy's Energy, and three of Dan Deacon's albums that Charlie just gave me.
I'm not examining [aesthetically, not theoretically] and savoring the albums like I used to, and it makes me sad. I think it might be because some of the music I get because I should, as a musicologist and early-20's reject hispter, own it, rather than actually wanting it. And it makes me sad.
This all sums up why I'm happy that I've once again found an album to get addicted to. I got a $10 iTunes gift card with a basket I won at the silent auction before the concert in Syracuse. And it just so happens that Florence + the Machine's album Lungs cost $9.99. I'd known a few of her songs - "Kiss With a Fist," "Dog Days Are Over" - but now I have the album, and it's really fantastic stuff. It's one of those albums that I can quote from/relate to my own life, in a way I haven't found since Who Killed Amanda Palmer? I find it very reassuring, that my musical soul isn't dead inside.
Go go addictive personality, I suppose.
There's a drumming noise inside my head
That starts when you're around
I swear that you could hear it
It makes such an all mighty sound
Louder than sirens
Louder than bells
Sweeter than heaven
And hotter than hell