The soundtrack of my life

14. October 2009 by Samldanach.

I just recently completed a grand tour of my iPod.  That’s just shy of 8000 songs.  I listened to them one album at a time., in alphabetical order by album title.

(In the interest of full disclosure, I did skip a few country albums my wife likes, a few albums of Italian tenors, and most of our Christmas collection.  I intend to catch up on the Christmas albums in, oh, December, like a decent person.)

I discovered a few albums I had no idea we had.  I discovered that I really liked some of those albums, and was iffy about others.  Crash Test Dummies is much better than I remember.  I can’t really seem to get into Tegan and Sara, and can’t put my finger on why.  75 songs in a row of many bands is just too much (from a couple multi-CD box sets).  I also discovered albums that I’d forgotten how much I really liked.  Starfish by The Church is still a fantastic album.

During that time, I also discovered some other new music.  I discovered Abney Park right about the beginning of the project.  I went ahead and bought a Cruxshadows album shortly after, as many of my friends seem to like them.  About a month ago, I discovered the glory of Enter the Haggis.

Seriously, go find an Enter the Haggis album.  They are nominally Celtic rock, but with more emphasis on the “rock.”  They are phenomenal.  I wish I knew how to review albums, so I could express just how incredible these guys are.

I’ve also been thinking about other music from my life.  I realized that all of my Violent Femmes albums are actually still on cassettes.  I really need to fix that.  I also need to replace all my Heart albums that are still on cassette.

It’s kind of funny.  I don’t associate much music with particular events in my life.  However, I have a whole lot of ’80’s music that I associate with various things I’ve read.  I will always think of Spider-Man when I hear George Michael’s “Father Figure.”  Billy Joel’s  “This is the Time” is associated with romance novels (I had a stack that a friend gave me to schlep to donate to the library, and read through them in the space of couple months).

I do love music, despite a maddening inability to produce it.  And, I have to confess that I don’t entirely understand it.  I can’t ever tell what separates a good song from a bad song.  I don’t know art, but I know what I like.  It comes down to what touches me.

I also do know that lyrics are extremely important to me.  There are huge swaths of music that I can’t get into because there are no lyrics for me to follow.  I can’t listen to most opera for that reason.  And, yet, I still like Rammstein.  They are the exception that proves the rule, I guess.

I think I’m going to go back to shuffle.  I may actually get around to hijacking the wife’s computer and assembling a few playlists.  Maybe.

Meantime, if music be the food of life, then variety is its spice.  Or something like that.

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