The Grand Tour, as you may guess by the lurches and u-turns, by the way it has sprawled over the years, is hardly scientific.
It doesn't have a rigorous review system.
But a rating system there is.
All albums are rated by stars, 1-5.
1- awful, likely to be deleted from my collection, physically AND digitally.
2- Pretty damn bad. Kept only for archival value or so I can say, see this really bad album I have it.
3- Meh to Ok, meh.
4- Pretty darn good. Honestly, most of my collection, I expect to be four stars.
5- Amazeballs. Stand out album, really feel it.
If a CD is SO DAMN AMAZING I CAN'T CONTAIN MYSELF, it goes up to 6. Well there be more stars?
A key factor is "Will I listen to the album again?." So albums that are not... shall we say, considered as good or actually not as amazing others, but are more likely to be listened, will be higher rated than some of the most important albums in all of history.
Feel free to disagree, in fact.. I hope you do. People disagreeing will be well enjoyed.
And don't worry.. the East Germans will not be allowed to skew ratings to favor Russian artists.
Though Zvuki Mu and t.A.t.u. will be will reviewed. We love those rocking Slavs.
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Calling London, Come in.. +44
+44 presents fun challenges for a music listener, collector.
Firstly, how to alphabetize. As you can see, well, it goes after (500) Days of Summer.
Secondly, how do you feel about the band issues?
You see, I was always an unapologetic Blink-182 fan. Why apologize? Sure, they were part of the pop machine that ate punk, but they never portrayed themselves as the saviors of punk.
They were a fun band, with just enough soul. And they were always in on the joke. If the joke overwhelmed the music, so fucking what?
So when +44 ( a reference to the London area code, and the bands stated intention to be a little more New Wave) and Angels & Airwaves came out, it took a sec to decide which way to go.
Actually, it didn't. Angels & Airwaves will be skewered when I get to their CD. It was awful. But +44... it was good stuff. Blink 2.0, but good stuff. They tried a little bit, got a slightly different couple of songs, and quite frankly, rocked.
Album: +44
Year: 2006
Date Listened in Tour:10/18/10
Rating: ****
Best Song: Make You Smile
Firstly, how to alphabetize. As you can see, well, it goes after (500) Days of Summer.
Secondly, how do you feel about the band issues?
You see, I was always an unapologetic Blink-182 fan. Why apologize? Sure, they were part of the pop machine that ate punk, but they never portrayed themselves as the saviors of punk.
They were a fun band, with just enough soul. And they were always in on the joke. If the joke overwhelmed the music, so fucking what?
So when +44 ( a reference to the London area code, and the bands stated intention to be a little more New Wave) and Angels & Airwaves came out, it took a sec to decide which way to go.
Actually, it didn't. Angels & Airwaves will be skewered when I get to their CD. It was awful. But +44... it was good stuff. Blink 2.0, but good stuff. They tried a little bit, got a slightly different couple of songs, and quite frankly, rocked.
Album: +44
Year: 2006
Date Listened in Tour:10/18/10
Rating: ****
Best Song: Make You Smile
Monday, February 14, 2011
Alphabetization and (500) Days of Summer
When maintaining a large music collection, the first thing you have to do is decide on how you are going to organize it. I might have touched on this a while back in my LiveJournal blog, http://j-bkl.livejournal.com/. The most important discussion of how to organize music in literature ever?
High Fidelity, by Nick Hornsby. If you are reading this, you likely know this. If not, you need to a) read the book and b) see the movie.
But how do I do it?
Simply put
Alphabetically, then Chronologically. In other words, Abba before Erasure, and within Abba, in order of release.
If it's an artists name.. last name first.
The dangerous bit? "The."
How do you alphabetize "The".
Think about "The Who," "The Pink Floyd", "The Jimi Hendrix Expeirnce," "The Jam," and of course "The The."
Now, not having any serious training in the library sciences... I wing it. For movie titles, and when appropriate, I use "The." Most of the time, ignore it. "The Who" belong in the W's, not T's.
This will lead to inconsistency, and people trying to move cd's in your collection when you aren't looking, but hey, it's your damn collection.
Now, let me mention an album in my collection that completely fucks up any and all alphabetization.
"(500) Days of Summer" is the soundtrack of the 2009 movie of the same name. I have a special love for good soundtrack cd's. You get good buried tracks, introduced to artists you never heard of, and sometimes you get this album 10 million times better than the movie that spawned them. You get raw material for mixes... and when there is dialog snippets? JOY!!!!
"(500)" as an album is brilliant. Don't fear the hipster, don't fear the drama over whether the writer/director is a self centered douchebag completely twisting his failed relationship for our enjoyment and his vengeance. You get a swath of songs that capture the feel of the movie, obscurities that make you feel like a musical Indiana Jones, and good choices without irony.
And, with the parensthesis, it shoots to the front of your collection.
And, maybe... the front of your heart.
Album:(500) Days of Summer
Year: 2009
Date Listened in Tour:1/11/10
Rating: *****
Best Song: There Is A Light That Never Goes Out
High Fidelity, by Nick Hornsby. If you are reading this, you likely know this. If not, you need to a) read the book and b) see the movie.
But how do I do it?
Simply put
Alphabetically, then Chronologically. In other words, Abba before Erasure, and within Abba, in order of release.
If it's an artists name.. last name first.
The dangerous bit? "The."
How do you alphabetize "The".
Think about "The Who," "The Pink Floyd", "The Jimi Hendrix Expeirnce," "The Jam," and of course "The The."
Now, not having any serious training in the library sciences... I wing it. For movie titles, and when appropriate, I use "The." Most of the time, ignore it. "The Who" belong in the W's, not T's.
This will lead to inconsistency, and people trying to move cd's in your collection when you aren't looking, but hey, it's your damn collection.
Now, let me mention an album in my collection that completely fucks up any and all alphabetization.
"(500) Days of Summer" is the soundtrack of the 2009 movie of the same name. I have a special love for good soundtrack cd's. You get good buried tracks, introduced to artists you never heard of, and sometimes you get this album 10 million times better than the movie that spawned them. You get raw material for mixes... and when there is dialog snippets? JOY!!!!
"(500)" as an album is brilliant. Don't fear the hipster, don't fear the drama over whether the writer/director is a self centered douchebag completely twisting his failed relationship for our enjoyment and his vengeance. You get a swath of songs that capture the feel of the movie, obscurities that make you feel like a musical Indiana Jones, and good choices without irony.
And, with the parensthesis, it shoots to the front of your collection.
And, maybe... the front of your heart.
Album:(500) Days of Summer
Year: 2009
Date Listened in Tour:1/11/10
Rating: *****
Best Song: There Is A Light That Never Goes Out
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
First That I Remember
We all hold the firsts in our life dear to our hearts.
No, I'm not talking about THAT first. This is a music blog, and I don't blog about that part of my life. I'm not a 20 year old using sexual history to get noticed on the internet, and then using her regret about that for a career after that.
But I thought I'd get a couple of firsts out of the way. These are not accurate, some go WAY BACK, but just some first.
First '45 I ever owned/was given: Elton John's Island Girl. True, about the same time I got the Marvel play along cd/comic for "Spider Man VS. Man Wolf", but the first '45, the first album I recall being given specifically to me was this little gem of a woman facing a world with gender, race, AND culture against her.
LETS DANCE!!
First Bands I Dug: The Beatles, Monkees, and of course, The Wombles. You can see the Wombles in "Breakfast on Pluto." They were a bunch of dudes in funky monster suits with tartans, who Wombled about.
First CD I ever bough: "Love and Rockets". By the band of the same name. This was back when all CD's came in ridiculously huge cardboard boxes, and at the tail end of goth/new wave. "So Alive" was such an amazing sultry song, the entire CD had to be amazing? Right? RIGHT?!?!?!
Eh. Was worth it for the song.
First Radio Station I regularly listened to: WNBC. They used to play music on the AM radio. Lots of it. I probably heard "Jackie Blue" two billion times until I was the age of 12.
First Radio Station that mattered: WNEW. They always had an amazing spread of rock, and while you might not hear Duran Duran on them, they embraced a lot of the new while keeping the old. The day Opie and Anthony threw out their amazing LP collection was the day New York radio died.
And, to close it off, a Last.
Last Radio Station that mattered: WLIR/WDRE. This was a new wave station out of Long Island, which folks across the NYC/NJ area would bend their antennas in the most bizarre ways to get. They were incredibly innovative, low budget enough to have a slightly punk air, and were willing to stretch beyond their boundaries. Their Scream/Screech of the weeks were hotly contested battles to see which was the top song of the week, and they fought as long and as hard as they could.
Then one day, it may have been April Fools in fact, they went to Latin broadcasting without warning. I had just been talking with a programming director about their overplaying the Darkness before hand.
And now they were gone.
So yes, a lot of pop music memory will be bitter sweet or saccharine, but it will still be memories.
Have a good day, y'all!
No, I'm not talking about THAT first. This is a music blog, and I don't blog about that part of my life. I'm not a 20 year old using sexual history to get noticed on the internet, and then using her regret about that for a career after that.
But I thought I'd get a couple of firsts out of the way. These are not accurate, some go WAY BACK, but just some first.
First '45 I ever owned/was given: Elton John's Island Girl. True, about the same time I got the Marvel play along cd/comic for "Spider Man VS. Man Wolf", but the first '45, the first album I recall being given specifically to me was this little gem of a woman facing a world with gender, race, AND culture against her.
LETS DANCE!!
First Bands I Dug: The Beatles, Monkees, and of course, The Wombles. You can see the Wombles in "Breakfast on Pluto." They were a bunch of dudes in funky monster suits with tartans, who Wombled about.
First CD I ever bough: "Love and Rockets". By the band of the same name. This was back when all CD's came in ridiculously huge cardboard boxes, and at the tail end of goth/new wave. "So Alive" was such an amazing sultry song, the entire CD had to be amazing? Right? RIGHT?!?!?!
Eh. Was worth it for the song.
First Radio Station I regularly listened to: WNBC. They used to play music on the AM radio. Lots of it. I probably heard "Jackie Blue" two billion times until I was the age of 12.
First Radio Station that mattered: WNEW. They always had an amazing spread of rock, and while you might not hear Duran Duran on them, they embraced a lot of the new while keeping the old. The day Opie and Anthony threw out their amazing LP collection was the day New York radio died.
And, to close it off, a Last.
Last Radio Station that mattered: WLIR/WDRE. This was a new wave station out of Long Island, which folks across the NYC/NJ area would bend their antennas in the most bizarre ways to get. They were incredibly innovative, low budget enough to have a slightly punk air, and were willing to stretch beyond their boundaries. Their Scream/Screech of the weeks were hotly contested battles to see which was the top song of the week, and they fought as long and as hard as they could.
Then one day, it may have been April Fools in fact, they went to Latin broadcasting without warning. I had just been talking with a programming director about their overplaying the Darkness before hand.
And now they were gone.
So yes, a lot of pop music memory will be bitter sweet or saccharine, but it will still be memories.
Have a good day, y'all!
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Roll Up, Roll Up For The Grand Tour
Welcome.
Do you know me? If you are an LJ member, you may know me from http://j-bkl.livejournal.com/. I'll still be over there, but felt ambitious.
I felt the need to have TWO formal blogs I don't post enough to.
The Grand Tour started a bit back, as I looked at my CD collection, and despaired. I've got a lot of friggin' cd's. Partly from having had family in music, having worked in music, having friends in music, and having spent WAY TOO DAMN much on music. The only solution? To listen to my collection, alpha/chronloglically.
As life and other things get in the way, this is taking time. Since officially starting in July, 2008, I've listened to 613 albums, ep's and downloads, posting and twittering about it on and off.
While I'll see about copying these to LJ, my goal is to have a relatively coherent music chat up here, whether it be the Grand Tour, live shows, or music as hits me on a day to day basis. LJ will be the broader ranging rants, and we'll see how the two go.
So, Roll up for the The Grand Tour, STEP RIGHT THIS WAY!!!
Do you know me? If you are an LJ member, you may know me from http://j-bkl.livejournal.com/. I'll still be over there, but felt ambitious.
I felt the need to have TWO formal blogs I don't post enough to.
The Grand Tour started a bit back, as I looked at my CD collection, and despaired. I've got a lot of friggin' cd's. Partly from having had family in music, having worked in music, having friends in music, and having spent WAY TOO DAMN much on music. The only solution? To listen to my collection, alpha/chronloglically.
As life and other things get in the way, this is taking time. Since officially starting in July, 2008, I've listened to 613 albums, ep's and downloads, posting and twittering about it on and off.
While I'll see about copying these to LJ, my goal is to have a relatively coherent music chat up here, whether it be the Grand Tour, live shows, or music as hits me on a day to day basis. LJ will be the broader ranging rants, and we'll see how the two go.
So, Roll up for the The Grand Tour, STEP RIGHT THIS WAY!!!
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