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Recommended Listening

Graphical Proof That I Am A Nerd

Thursday, February 25th, 2010

I almost did this manually by creating Smart Playlists for years and putting the number of songs into Excel, but it turns out there’s a Java program for it already:

This is a graph of the music I have/listen to by release year.  The blue line represents songs I have.  The green line is songs times the number of times I listen to them.

1994 was apparently a big year, surpassed only by 2008, which gets a huge bump listening-wise, I’m assuming due to the presence of Gods Of The Earth.

The program can break it out by genre, too, which is fun:

This is Metal only  (ranging from Black Sabbath to Goatwhore)

(Anybody know any good metal albums that came out in 1998?  Apparently, I’m missing out)

Rock: (a pretty generic category, ranging from AC/DC to Clutch to The Big Wu)

Alternative (Soul Coughing, Cake, The Decemberists, Murder By Death):

Punk:

(Note:  I lived with Ben in 2001)

Pop (LOL):

This stuff only covers listening history for the last three years or so since I had lost my iTunes Library somewhere in there and had to start over.

Top 10 albums of 2009

Tuesday, January 5th, 2010

10: Pearl Jam – Backspacer (iTMS)

9: The Company Band – The Company Band (iTMS)

8: Tardy Brothers – Bloodline (iTMS)

7: Mike Doughty – Sad Man Happy Man (iTMS)

6: Weezer – Raditiude (iTMS)

5: Mastodon – Crack The Skye (iTMS)

4: Flight Of The Conchords – I Told You I Was Freaky (iTMS)

3: Slayer – World Painted Blood (iTMS)

2: Clutch – Strange Cousins From The West (iTMS)

1: Phish – Joy (iTMS)

ATTENTION: The new Mike Doughty album is awesome.

Thursday, October 8th, 2009

When Golden Delicious came out, I was really excited for new Mike Doughty. Meghan, Melissa & I went to a CD release party for it and watched Mike Doughty put on a little mini-concert at the Electric Fetus and it was really fun and exciting.
And then the album wasn’t that great. Too much of it relied on repetition and beat and it was honestly overproduced. Parts of it were honestly annoying to listen to on the first listen because he just kept saying the same thing over and over again.

A couple weeks ago I happened to look at Mike Doughty’s website during a moment of boredom and found he had a new album coming out. I had a short moment where I my heart jumped a little bit and I was really excited, but that was quickly replaced by a feeling of trepidation as I remembered my disappointment in Golden Delicious. So I made a mental note to keep an eye out for it and moved on.

About 20 minutes ago, as I was waiting for a server update to download, I had another moment of boredom and found out that Sad Man Happy Man had come out today. Not expecting much, but wanting to support Mike Doughty in his artistic efforts, I purchased the album from iTunes…

… and was pleasantly surprised to find an album full of the sorts of things I loved about Mike Doughty when I first started listening to his solo efforts: simple, moving songs with melody and grace played by a man and his acoustic guitar. And, even better, the album benefits from the addition of a cello and some honest-to-goodness rapping.

Basically, it’s album produced by one guy with a passion, rather than a record company.