Many times I have been approached about the music I listen to. Okay, that's a small lie. The truth is many times I have run into people and have wanted (and in some cases needed) to expose them to the wonder that I call... "The music I listen to".
I have decided to embark upon the impossible. I shall go through my entire music library and hand pick the best of the best. I have a mere 11,000 tracks to go through so it shouldn't be too bad. All; my request of you is to provide any input you have on this task of tasks.
So far I have broken it out into 6 distinct areas. Please suggest any if I have forgotten. Also feel free to suggest if I am way off track in putting these artists where they are. Lucky posters will get a free copy of these discs when done. I anticipate doing only data discs this time so I can incorporate the maximum amount of music.
Alternative (Radiohead, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Gorillaz, Weezer, etc...)
Chill (Massive Attach, Portishead, Tricky, Thievery Corporation, etc...)
Classics (Depeche Mode, New Order, Bjork, etc...)
DJ/Club (Oakenfold, Tiga, Stardust, etc...)
Hard/Industrial (NIN, Front 242, 16 Volt)
New/Eclectic (Figurine, Peter Bjorn and John, Royksopp, etc...)
Any input on categories or tracks that you feel are musts for this please let me know. Until then I will be glued to iTunes. All input is "warmly" received.
TST
15 comments:
a test just to make sure this post is alive
I'll test, also. Because you asked so nicely!
As my third time commenting on this post, I will also let it be a test.
omg, you mean our comments just appear now? mwa haha
What? No Polka?
I second polka.
Sean, you've always had amazing taste in music. I'll try to think of something useful to add to your massive quest, but seriously I think you have nothing to fear in following your own proven instincts.
Reading through this post again, I would add a "New Wave/Goth" category to contain things like The Cure, Siouxsie, etc. I not only think it is a large enough group to separate these out from the other two categories of yours they may fall in (Alternative/Classics), but also because these songs were a part of your personal growth in high school, so they deserves their own section.
Oh...and I've never heard of the band Massive Attach. Do they sing about glue and velcro? :-)
Alright.. my first question: what's the purpose here? To turn people onto great new stuff, share old favorites, or exorcise some musical demons?
-Cash
I would say the mission here is to expose people that aren't quite familiar with many types of great music to a very very big slice of mine/all of yours. People that say generally never escape a single genre (Blues heads and the likes) or Top 40 purists need our help.
A more noble calling I couldn't imagine.. hmmmm.. Much to consider I have, ponder this I shall
-Cash
If this is *truly* some altruistic project, then some of my previous advice is definitely more "selfish." Although every time I have approached something like this I've been selfishly doing it for me and my own playlists.
Honestly, I've found most people don't really give a shit about my music...it's a small circle of friends (mostly you guys) that I've ever shared stuff with or gotten new leads from. What can I say, I work with Top-40 mainstreamers who gaze puzzled at my vacuum tube amp and giant Greg Brady headphones sitting in my cubicle. "Why would you spend more than $20 on headphones?" they say.
But...since you're doing it for others, you could have your 6 or so top-level categories broken down into sub-categories. This way you're breaking things down a bit more...and even having a "Set A" and "Set B" for each of these subs which represent a general intro to the genre and then a deeper-cuts type list. Similar to the way I've seen lists done on iTunes when viewing user-created collections. Plus, this helps keep the number of songs down...frankly I feel overwhelmed when someone gives me huge chunks of music, so I would stick to 20-30 tracks max for the final Set A and Set B lists.
But even within the Set A intro-type list...don't just fill it with all the well-knowns. Throw in an early influence for one of the well-knowns, or something deeper or more fringe-like. This way you're introducing even more seasoned music listeners to something new.
Of course, none of this would be complete without some sort of "liner notes" to go along with them. Since you're planning on doing data-CDs instead of audio, why not throw together a small set of HTML pages with some album covers, band images, history, etc...I know that's a lot of work, and heck, I probably wouldn't mind helping with that. Even just link directly to Wikipedia so they can learn more. But when I was a member of the Yahoo LaunchCAST service for streaming music several years ago I loved the fact I could click the currently playing artist/song/album and it would open up a web page with this type of bio info. I even like having the lyrics, too, to help me figure out what they're talking about since I'm more of a visual-person.
As a side note, check out the site Muxtape.com where you can create a mixtape complete with full-songs (although you're limited to one per person to help skirt piracy issues). There's even a site created by others that let you search Muxtape for songs - Muxfind.com. While iTunes is great for finding new and related artists, sometimes these two Mux-sites are kinda nice to just listen to what others have put together.
oh my gawd, you just sank my battleship. Grrreat post Jason.
This sounds like it's turning into a much bigger project than you originally had in mind. Perhaps the easiest thing would be to start with just one genre and get that completed before moving on to the next. Another method might be doing something by country of origin, France, England, Bangladesh, etc. I already feel overwhelmed by this, and it's not even my project. It definitely is a noble cause, however. I just hope you don't become a martyr when the enormity of it catches up to you!
11,000?
Not counting my audiobooks and podcasts, I have 10,749 titles on my iPod and I've not even made it half way through the drive of music I've ripped but not rated!
Your list looks like a good start... but why not some
Jazz (Dianna Krull, Michael Franks, Guideon Freudmann...)
Classical (Elgar, Liszt, Mahler...)
Reggae (Marley, Uh... there are others... )
Folk (Christine Lavin, The Wayfarers, Peter Paul and Mary...)
C'mon... Broaden your horizons! There's a whole world of music that you haven't touched upon.
(World! --- I am sure that is a musical genre!)
djb
This is a bit of a stretch from the original topic, but after doing such a organization and selection of the "best of the best" have you considered doing a radio station? I've been looking into doing a on-line hobby one, just to see what it would cost. If you have the bandwidth and static IP at home, you can always host it at home...but then you have to worry about license issues (even if you run the station for free and don't try and make money via advertising).
But, I found a site, Loud City that will host the site and you fall under their blanket licensing so you're kosher with the RIAA and other entities. For a hobby station, it runs about $30 a month for about 10 simultaneous listeners at 128 Kbps. Not too bad - especially if you go in with others and divvy up the time to form different "shows."
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