Category: recommended

my most listened tracks over the years

I did not realize you could easily export your Youtube history – besides my car and Jellyfin, that’s mostly what I use to listen to music these days, with an adblocker – and thought I would write a script I listen to the most there. Here are my results:

De La Soul – A Roller Skating Jam Named Saturdays: 66
Xmal Deutschland – Peel Session 1985: 62
Kraftwerk – Computer Love: 57
Glaxo Babies – Who Killed Bruce Lee: 55
Killing Joke – America: 53
Crystal Castles-Doe Deer Ep: 52
Buzzcocks – Ever Fallen In Love (With Someone You Shouldn’t’ve?) (TOTP, 1978): 50
Killing Joke – Let’s All Go (To The Fire Dances): 50
The Sisterhood – Rain from heaven: 50
Sparks – Tryouts For The Human Race: 50
Hypnobeat (1984) ► Daktari Missiles: 49
Sparks ‘Nothing is Sacred’: 48
Asylum Party – The Desert: 48
Klaxons – Flashover: 47
“the approaching of the disco void” john fahey @ the new varsity: 46
Disco Inferno- Footprints in Snow: 46
Colonel Abrams & Boards of Canada – Trapped (Hell Interface edit): 46
A Tribe Called Quest – Jazz (We’ve Got) Buggin’ Out: 45
Xiu Xiu – Wondering [OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO]: 45
Can – The Empress and the Ukraine King (1976): 44
Boards of Canada – Dave (I’m A Real Traditionalist): 44
Alternative TV – Action Time Vision: 44
Glaxo Babies – This Is Your Life: 44
Crystal Castles ‘BAPTISM’ //official video: 43
Boards of Canada – Chinook: 43

I’m not sure how accurate it is – I’m sure deleted videos aren’t on there, and this only goes back a few years, but it’s about what I expected, a bit of everything really – Boards of Canada seems to be listed the most, and I’d guess if I listened to anything the most, it’s them (both volumes of Old Tunes is massive and I listen to that a lot). Lots of english punk & post punk – Killing Joke and Glaxo Babies twice (I really like both of them), and lots of experimental electronic stuff. I see both disco Sparks and glam Sparks, that surprises me (those are the only two Sparks eras I’ve listened too, there’s just too much of it and I’m not sure I like what new stuff I’ve heard).

I think the Daktari Missles song I only found a few months ago, but I’ve listened to a lot in that amount of time, I think I found that trying to find recommendations for the best song containing a Roland 303 or 808 (or both). My choice would be this, Jaquarius – Acid Rain / Love is Happiness, or Chris & Cosey / CTI – Dancing Ghosts

Maybe I should match this up with my old last.fm playlist too, but I’d guess it’s just more experimental electronic & english post punk.

lots of live music

I do love the archiving aspect of the internet and how much stuff it’s saved – there’s so much media and information lost to time, and will continue to be lost, like countless vinyls sitting at a thrift store or old TV shows. For example, I was at one today, and saw an album called “Skeptic Union – From The Hills Of Arizona” and it looks like a self released album with not a whole lot of information out there, just an RYM and Discogs page. I’m not really into country, but I do wish I had picked it up, just because it seems like it’s rare – discogs confirms that, with a range of $28 to $208, shockingly. There does seem to be a rip on youtube, but it’s surprising how much stuff out either has no information, or is just not available at all.

Old music shows and concerts seem like they would be at risk, but surprisingly there’s a lot on Youtube. Some of really awful quality for various reasons, but some has aged pretty well, and either way some of them are worth watching, especially if the audio quality is still there. These are some of my favorites I’ve found?

Mudhoney – Live in Berlin. I think Mudhoney is my favorite Washington band? besides Unwound and Melvins
Half Japanese – Live in Hell
Wire – On the Box (Rockpalast – Germany)
The Chameleons – Live Nov 1984 London, Camden Palace
Wall of Voodoo – Live at Steve Wozniak’s US Festival 1983
Kraftwerk on Ohne Maulkorb (Austria) w/ interview
Au Pairs – Live at The Tempodrom, Berlin, 1981
Cows on “What” (Minnesota Public Access)
David Bowie on Musikladen, playing a Chamberlin on the first track, and Adrian Belew is his guitarist. Kind of an odd piece of history?
XTC – Sight and Sound 1978 – I think this is the best version of “All Along The Watchtower”? That harmonica is going all sorts of crazy.
Liaisons Dangereuses – Live at the Hacienda

also, I don’t know if I would call these good exactly, but here is two videos that amuse because I like music heavy in ideas or theory, although the execution isn’t always perfect… both of these videos end up seeming very culty, lol.

Robert Fripp’s weird ovation guitar cult
Steve Reich’s Music For Pieces of Wood (and human metronomes)

the mystery of John Fahey’s Grammy (and 4 other unrelated albums)

The worst thing about writing is editing, I find writing easy but actually sitting down and editing takes quite a bit longer.

Anyways, let’s try one album at a time?

John Fahey – America

John Fahey is pretty great and under-rated for all he’s done for archiving blues and folk music, let alone his own music. His story is really sad, he died semi-homeless in Salem, Oregon, his Grammy for writing about folk music was stolen, and it sounds like he was a pretty severe alcoholic in general. He painted and one of his paintings was used as the cover for the final Sonic Youth album. It’s sad that he’s unknown in most regards, but that’s kind of the standard for the blues I guess.

I do wonder where his Grammy ended up. Google says you can’t sell a Grammy, and that they aren’t worth melting down. Is it just sitting on the shelf of a house in the forests of Marion/Polk county somewhere? Hopefully it’s found some day, and wasn’t just tossed into the river or forest when his car was broken into.

C Cat Trance – Screaming Ghosts

This seems to be Medium Medium with arabic instrumentation and aesthetic? It’s funky as heck, I really like it. I can only compare it to 23 Skidoo.

  • Shake The Mind
  • She Steals Cars
A Primary Industry – 50 Hertz

Sounds a lot like early Cocteau Twins and Dead Can Dance, that sort of post punk + female vocals + drum machines. “Ultramarine” is a very good album, it’s probably better than this but I this showed up on my list and I hadn’t heard it, it seems to be demos or related to it somehow.

Nature and Organisation – Beauty Reaps the Blood of Solitude

I think this has to be the ultimate acoustic neofolk album? next to maybe “Earth Covers Earth” by Current 93. It’s very folksy and only goes into heavy industrial on one track – the rest is all acoustic. The cover of Willow’s Song from Wicker Man is probably the best on the album, the rest of it sounds like a Current 93 album for obvious reasons.

Destroy All Monsters – Self Titled

This is great, I really like the guitar on this. I think I learned about this band from this Cows video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5hf488M4Kw – then he mentions Kraftwerk and the host says he’s surprised, lol. there’s a longer Destroy All Monsters 74-76 set I need to listen too, although it doesn’t seem like actual songs compared to this.

  • Bored
  • Goin’ to Lose

That’s all for now. I’ve got a few more focused topics I should write about after I get through my next set of posts:

  • Microtonality, and tips and tricks for playing fretless guitar.
  • Interesting uses of drum machines outside of pure electronic music
  • 303 bass lines
  • interesting rhythmic music
  • amazing bands with really awful names
  • bands who changed styles completely
  • list of songs with clean harmonics on the level of Jaco’s “Continuum”