My Changing Musical Preferences

I was emailing with Sally today about the increasing distaste I feel for the habit of rating everything one encounters, and it occurred to me that this relates a bit to my changing tastes (or, really, a change in the way that I have tastes at all) in music.

When I was a kid (through middle school or a bit beyond), I liked most of the music I heard, though of course I liked some things more than others. But I was largely unconscious of what I liked - I usually didn't know what bands or artists or albums the songs I liked came from (with the exception of the music my mom really liked, which she would tell me about). I just listened to the radio and liked what I heard and was crazy about a few things. (Some songs I remember being crazy about: Do Ya Think I'm Sexy? by Rod Stewart, Strip by Adam Ant, We Built This City by Jefferson Starship.)

Sometime in high school, I started to really have taste. There was some music I loved (Erasure, Depeche Mode, Midnight Oil, Jane's Addiction, The Cure, plenty of other stuff I'm not thinking of at this moment) and other music I loathed and detested (New Kids on the Block, Tiffany, Madonna - who I had loved when I was younger - and in general most top 40 things). Through college and beyond, I developed and expanded and refined these tastes, and they were a part of my identity. (This identity-by-tastes seems really common among my friends, particularly younger ones.)

When I was 19, I think, I did have a surprising experience. I hated the song "Vogue" by Madonna. I was visiting the Netherlands at the time, and I walked into a club with some friends. In the club was a leather-clad half-naked guy in a cage, and he was dancing to "Vogue." And it was the perfect music for exactly what was happening in that moment. I had not known such a phenomenon could occur: that a song you hated could turn out to be perfect for a particular occasion.

I've noticed over the years since college that my musical tastes are not only expanding but in general just loosening. There began to be a ton of music that I enjoyed hearing despite not officially "liking." (For instance, I am now ready to admit that I really do love hearing the song "Dust in the Wind." I will always sing along.) Sometimes I felt as though, if my friends learned of my real tastes, they'd think less of me.

That kind of anxiety is part of why we (some of us, anyway) identify with the famous xkcd cartoon about Pandora:

It seems silly that there is such a thing as "embarrassing music" in a way. People make all this music for us to listen to and enjoy - what is embarrassing about enjoying it? I mean, I'm embarrassed about liking "Dust in the Wind" which is not exactly nazi death metal or anything. It's pretty innocuous.

I am moving more and more towards viewing my musical tastes as being more probabilistic (I tend to enjoy dance music, alternative, 80's pop, blue grass, dixieland jazz, and Beethoven, and don't tend to enjoy metal, classic rock, new country, or jazz, but I can enjoy a lot of things in the right context) and not really related to my identity. It's actually hard for me to let go of the idea that musical tastes have more than practical importance.

But I am getting more and more to the point where it seems useless to describe various artists as good or bad. Sally and I both remember a time that Robin defended Pearl Jam (who Sally didn't like) as "a quality product," but most commercially produced music could be so described (depending on what qualities you think are important). Does Garth Brooks suck just because I don't really like his sound and his lyrics aren't clever and edgy or deeply meaningful (for me)? Or is he great because his music (apparently) brings pleasure to millions of people? Who cares what I think anyway?

Tricking My Brain

Disclaimer/spoiler alert: The following insights are brought to you by the miracle of introspection, and should not be confused with factual statements about the human brain.

Sitting down to do work for a few hours at a time is very hard for me. Hell, sometimes even sitting for half an hour to do math (which I like better than most kinds of work) is hard for me. I sometimes think that I have ADD, though I can certainly read a novel for hours.

It feels like there is a part of my brain that is fundamentally discontent to sit and work. It feels like a relatively animal part of my brain - not a conscious, smart part. And it is somewhat easily tricked.

I usually listen to music while I work. I can work to a variety of music, but I find that dance music (the kind you'd hear in a club - any kind of dance club) is one of the most effective kinds. It seems to trick my brain into thinking I am having fun and moving around rather than sitting and working. It's like a part of my mind is actually moving and doing something with a rhythm, and gets soothed/tricked into letting me get some work done.

Today, Pandora on my phone was acting up and sounding shitty as it sometimes does, so I switched to Simply Noise, which I haven't tried to work to before. I have an app for it on my phone.

Of the different noises, I like the brown noise the best, and I like to make it oscillate. It sounds like ocean waves to me.Very soothing.

After listening to this for a while and working, I realized it was extremely soothing indeed. It feels very much like it makes that part of my brain think I am actually asleep. That part doesn't seem to mind sleeping - in fact, it's pretty much content to let me sleep forever. It was really an amazing feeling. I think I may try this more often in the future.

Landslide

There are certain songs that speak to me very strongly, sometimes for reasons I don't understand. "Landslide" by Fleetwood Mac is one of them. I've always felt an affinity for the idea of speaking to my younger self, or more generally the relationship between younger and older selves, which is what the song strikes me as being about, at least today.

Poor Leno

Lately I've been listening to a lot of Royksopp. I came here to post something about the song "Poor Leno," but then I saw the video on Youtube, and it is awesome. So instead of the other thing, I am going to post about the video. Go see!

Sweet Little Pandora

In the spirit of this XKCD cartoon, I will share with you all an experience I had tonight. A song came on Pandora that I think I have literally not heard since high school -- a song I would never in a million years have remembered -- and it immediately touched me, and I remembered loving it quite dearly. It was "Blue Savannah" by Erasure:



(I can't recommend the video, unfortunately. If this song were more famous it would be absolutely ripe for one of those literal video remakes.)

Erasure is one of the only two bands I have ever seen in concert, and I was totally into them in high school. There is a swoony (gay) voice thing they do that, for my adolescent self, brought up vast feelings of romantic and sexual longing -- you can hear that when he sings "to you only" in this song. In the development of my musical tastes as well as what I thought was sexy, Erasure fell chronologically right between George Michael and Depeche Mode.

Thank you, Pandora.

Fake English

I really enjoy listening to people do "fake English" - I mean things like improv comedians in foreign countries doing gobbledegook that is supposed to represent someone speaking English. This guy did a whole song, and to me, the "English" is really so convincing that it's almost frustrating that I can't understand it. It's actually a pretty good song too, of a particular, easily recognizable American genre. I've seen this a few times, anyway, but ran across it again today, so here it is:

See more funny videos and Music Videos at Today's Big Thing.

Oh, Pandora, You Kidder

Before the song even started, I saw in my Pandora window the following album cover.


Oh my goodness. Not a good sign, and yet it perfectly captures a certain aesthetic, doesn't it? Don't you just know what the music will sound like? It was "Heat of the Moment":



And we get even more dragons!

Early Meaningful Songs

Sometime around when I was a teenager, the world of music exploded into meaning. Those were the days when you would lie around clutching the little sheet of lyrics that came with some albums (tapes in my case) and reading them while listening dreamily to the songs.

When I was younger, most songs were just music, or I understood them really superficially. They didn't touch me. (Of course, most of the songs I liked when I was little, e.g., Rod Stewart's "Do You Think I'm Sexy," didn't really merit careful listening anyway.)

But some songs always touched me. Here are some of the earliest ones I remember associating strong feelings with, in (subjectively) chronological order:

Song I Can't Remember!

There is some song from the late 70s that I think became popular again in a more recent decade (a cover version). I used to hear this as a little kid and I thought it was really creepy and it gave me chills, though I think it's a standard social movement kind of message. I want to say it has lyrics like "can you hear the sound?" or "see what's coming round." It's about something (spooky to me as a child) that is approaching (which I now think is just some kind of social change). Can someone remember/figure out what song this is?

"Total Eclipse of the Heart" by Bonnie Tyler

After moving away from New Orleans after the fourth grade, I associated this song really strongly with Mrs. LeBlanc, my teacher in the previous two grades, who I had no further contact with. And sometimes with my mom or other adults. It seemed to capture the longing that I sometimes felt to be loved and attended to and understood (seen). I can still feel those old associations pretty keenly, though they seem a bit objectively ridiculous when I pay attention to the actual lyrics.

"The Rose" by Bette Midler

I saw this movie with my mom when it came out (1979, apparently) but it was a few years later (early middle school) that I started listening to the soundtrack of it. This song just seemed really meaningful and beautiful to me. Another song that struck me the same way (and thus gets an honorable mention here) around the same time was "Memory" from Cats (another soundtrack I owned; I later saw the musical live and it was disappointing).

"Things Can Only Get Better" by Howard Jones

The line in here that goes, "And do you feel scared? I do, but I won't stop and falter," was incredibly meaningful to me around the middle school years. It still moves me and seems associated with my approach to relationships. (And wow, is that ever an 80's video!)

I want to say, I actually listened to a lot of meaningful songs as a little kid - Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Simon & Garfunkel, and all of that kind of stuff - but most of the meanings didn't really speak to me even when I loved the songs. (Well, why would they, you know? "If you're offering me diamonds and rust, I've already paid" is not exactly something a kid would identify with.)

What are the earliest songs you remember having a lot of feeling about?

When Inanimate Objects...Cooperate

Tonight, I had to clean the kitchen. It was pretty bad, both because we hadn't cleaned it all week and because Ed finally unpacked some ancient boxes and donated some more equipment that was all over the counters. Over the course of the day, we ran five (5) dishwasher loads, and in addition to putting in that fifth load, I had to handwash a few items and then clean the counters and stovetop. It's not really that huge of a deal, but I was feeling overwhelmed by it. I also felt that if I didn't do it, I would never want to come home again.

I decided to try listening to my iPod in case it would help. Music is generally motivational.

Now, I have to admit, I skipped the first couple of songs that came on. But then I got this amazing assortment of, for me, possibly the very finest collection of songs to get some shit done to:

1. "Rapture" by Blondie. A fantastic beat, plus the story it tells fascinated me as a kid.

2. "Touching the Untouchables" by Men at Work. All right, this is not a great song. But I had this album on tape as a kid, recorded with my tape recorder from my almost-brother Thad's record player, so it brought me warm childhood feelings.

3. "Disco Inferno" by the Trammps. I can hardly imagine a better song to work to. So catchy! So hot!

4. "No One Knows My Plan" by They Might Be Giants. Yet another energizing song with a recognizable dance beat. The fact that the narrator is probably a serial killer is just a bonus when you're stuck scrubbing counters at 9:00 at night...

(All links go to Youtube videos featuring the studio versions of the songs.)

A Pressing Question

Now that Sally is moving east of the Mississippi, will it become WSAL??

Metaphor Songs

There is a type of song I've noticed that I particularly like, to wit: songs that feature a lot of parallel (in some sense) metaphors. I've noticed this largely through KSAL, so I have a feeling that Sally likes them as well. Some examples:

Leonard Cohen's "Is This What You Wanted?"

You were Marlon Brando,
I was Steve McQueen.
You were K.Y. Jelly,
I was Vaseline.
You were the father of modern medicine,
I was Mr. Clean.
You where the whore and the beast of Babylon,
I was Rin Tin Tin.

Or how about "If You Were a Bluebird," of which there are many versions (Joe Ely, Butch Hancock, Emmylous Harris...)

If you were a hotel
Honey, you'd be a grand one
But, if you hit a slow spell,
Do you think you could stand one
If you were a hotel,
Well I'd lean on your doorbell
I'd call you my home

If I was a highway,
I'd stretch alongside you
I'd help you pass by ways
That had dissatisfied you
If I was a highway,
Well I'd be stretchin'
I'd be fetchin' you home

Or there's Butch Hancock's "Like a Kiss on the Mouth", which I'll give a good chunk of lyrics for (especially since I can't find it on Youtube):

A sky full of fire wheels a-burnin' my heart
A handful of moon beams a-stretchin' my eyes
A woman on the mountain says I gotta lay low
And a woman on the river says the water's gonna rise
And the Earth's gonna shake, the sky's gonna fall
The sad face 'n the glad face are painted on the wall
One's a cryin' in the North
And one's a smilin' in the South
Your love sticks with me like a kiss on the mouth

There's a big city wind whistlin' at the women
A sign above the back door about to blow down
The woman in the alley wants me to hurry up
And the woman on the highway wants me to slow down

And the Earth's gonna shake, the sky's gonna fall
The freight plane and the jet plane are painted on the wall
One rollin' North, one flyin' South
Your love sticks with me like a kiss on the mouth

The farmer's from Dallas and the freak is from Frisco
The wino's from nowhere and the cook's from Japan
The woman at the window, she waves without thinkin'
And the woman by my side got my heart in her hand

And the Earth's gonna shake and the sky's gonna fall
The red bird and the blue bird are painted on the wall
One flyin' North and one flying South
Your love sticks with me like a kiss on the mouth

Obviously some artists are much more prone to writing songs like these than others, and I think they tend to be the kind of folksy, verbose songwriters that I often like. John Denver's "Annie's Song" is a simpler version of the same thing - I like the song, lthough I'm not sure it hits this precise button, since it's not very clever:

You fill up my senses
like a night in the forest
like the mountains in springtime,
like a walk in the rain
like a storm in the desert,
like a sleepy blue ocean
you fill up my senses,
come fill me again.

Incidentally, I have a strong tendency to hear the John Denver lyric as "like a knight in a forest," which is a much richer idea for me, though I realize it isn't very Denver-like.

Rock Band

Our friend Christine had a birthday party Saturday night, so we went. There were 9 people total, and we spent a significant part of the evening playing Rock Band 2 on (I'm guessing) their PS3. (It might have been the Wii. They have everything.) And it was...awesome. I've never played Rock Band before and I just had a fabulous time.

The way the game works is that you and up to three of your friends play fake plastic instruments or sing into a microphone. (You can do one each of guitar, bass, vocals, and drums.) There is a huge list of real songs, such that almost anyone would know many of them. When you choose a song to play, each person gets to choose a difficulty level for their own effort, and then the song starts. Each instrument gets a track that shows what notes to play when - shown in a style similar to how Dance Dance Revolution or a similar game shows it. The vocalist gets lyrics and a line representing the pitch, and when you sing it shows a little arrow showing where your pitch is, so you can adjust if desired.

For the instruments, how many keys are involved and how complicated and fast the passages are is determined by what difficulty level you choose (easy, medium, hard, expert). For the vocals, all that changes is how strictly you are graded.

I got to sing a fair amount, and found that singing songs that I've sung many many times in the car went very well. I think I got 99% on Expert on Bob Dylan's "Tangled Up In Blue" and a similarly high score on songs by Blondie and Fleetwood Mac.

In a funny moment late in the evening, I chose to sing "Black Hole Sun" by Soundgarden (since I know it and have enjoyed dancing to it a couple of times over the decades), and was then shocked to find out how nonsensical the lyrics are. (You don't get to see all of the lyrics at one time - you pretty much just sing whatever comes up on the screen - so it can be a bit of a surprise. Snakes? What?)

So, the singing part is like karaoke, I guess, which I've never tried. I also played guitar a couple of times, and bass (same plastic instrument) a whole bunch of times. Once I got decent at handling the necessary keys for the medium level of difficulty, I started to get into the rhythms and really understand what I was playing on a broader level. (I guess I mean I was playing phrases and not just individual notes.)

One nice thing you might not expect is that the music for the songs is the real music from the real recordings, so it's not like a cheesy elevator-music version or anything. And, while you can hear yourself play well or make mistakes, you can still hear the whole song even if all of your bandmates suck. I'm not sure how they integrate that, but mostly it does just work.

Anyway, I thought it was just about the funnest thing ever, and I may have to buy it. Fortunately I already own a PS2, and there is a PS2 version, so I would not have to buy an entire game console in order to play this one game. Buying the game, guitars, microphone, drums, etc., is bad enough.

Rhapsody

Some people swear by Rhapsody, which is a subscription music service. Rather than (or in addition to) buying specific songs, you can listen to any of their entire (giant) catalog for a flat monthly fee. You can play the songs on your computer or Tivo, or put them on your portable music player (though not an iPod).

I was curious what that was like, so I signed up for a free 14-day trial. Afterwards, two buttons appeared - one to allow me to download the Rhapsody music player, and one that promised I could listen to music on Rhapsody's website. I was at work, so I went to try the website.

The interface is junked up with a million things, including ads (which, I'm subscribing, why should I have to see ads?), but I was able to find where you could look up artists or albums you might want to hear. The songs have buttons next to them - one that allows you to play them, and one that allows you to add them to your playlist.

The play button did nothing. The bottom edge of my browser said it was downloading data, but no sound ever happened. (Pandora is playing just fine, so there's no sound problem on my end.) I tried the playlist button, and then I went to where I could view my playlists. But I have no playlists. I guess that button only works if you start a playlist first?

Honestly I just can't be bothered with this. I was already skeptical once I found out that Rhapsody was related to Real because I remember what a nightmare the Real Player was when I had it installed on my computer in the past. But I just thought it would be a nice, clean service - something like Pandora except with options to listen to exactly what you want - and instead it's, well, like I described.

So before I forgot, I figured I would go cancel my 14-day free trial before I get charged. I went to the page to manage my account, and clicked on "Cancel Membership." Here is a screenshot of where that took me:

So now I'm just fucking pissed. There is absolutely no technical reason that you shouldn't be able to cancel a membership online. They're just purposely making it difficult by requiring me to talk to a real-life human who will probably try to sell me some of the many packages and services that I had to un-check on my way to getting the free trial already. (I also had to un-check the box for "send me a bunch of spam email with crap offers all the time" more than once on different pages.)

So between the non-working interface, the ads, the constant upsells, the opt-out spam bullshit, and now the intentionally difficult membership-cancelling process, I am well and truly done with Rhapsody.

Fuck you, Rhapsody.

A Shameful Confession

I love Moby. (His music, I mean, not him personally. On a personal level I think he's kind of a flake.)

I feel guilty about this, believe me. The music is...well, a bit formulaic, to be honest. Want to make a Moby song? The most common formula goes like this:

1. Get a clip of a black person or choir singing 1-30 seconds of something.

2. Play the clip a few times with a simple rhythm behind it.

3. Play the clip a few more times with some more sounds behind it.

4. Add some soaring electronic chords.

5. Continue adding more and more sounds to the clip, but never letting go of the original simple rhythm.

There are other types of Moby songs, but these are the kind I like best. And I mean, I totally adore them. I just put a new Moby CD in my car today and I could not get past the first song because I had to play it over and over. Here, see for yourself:



Embarrassing. Oh yeah, here's another one I like. This isn't the original video, just someone's collage.

Exercise Music

I usually listen to music when I exercise. I'll listen to almost anything, but some songs give me extra joy when my iPod plays them. There are even songs I've intentionally bought through iTunes just so I'd have them for exercising. My tastes run towards inspirational lyrics and cheesy 80s-ness. Without further ado, here are some of my favorite songs to hear while working out.

"Africa" by Toto



(I am now trying not to let the horror of that video destroy my enjoyment of the song.)

"Eye of the Tiger" by Survivor



"Rain King" by The Counting Crows



NB: This is NOT the real video for this song, but it was the best YouTube version I found. Don't let the images inform your understanding of the music.

"Jeopardy" by the Greg Kihn Band



This song just has a fantastic beat that I can't get over.

"Lose Yourself" by Eminem



"Success is my only motherfucking option, failure's not."

"I Wish" by Skee-Lo



"First We Take Manhattan" by Leonard Cohen

See the video here. Note that this should also be known as the only Leonard Cohen song that it is even possible to exercise to.

There are others, but this is a good chunk.

The Strokes

I remember seeing an article in Slate - or maybe Salon - asking whether The Strokes were as good as people said. I had never heard of them at the time, so I just skimmed the article, but it made me curious about them. (I'm always curious about things if I find some commentary on them.)

A few months later, three Strokes songs showed up on one of Sally's KSAL collections. I totally loved them.

The Strokes are like crack cocaine to me. There is some cockamamie idea about how music makes some primitive part of your brain respond in a similar rhythm (I'm not going to provide a link because I doubt this is true), and I feel like their songs do that to me.

The pattern seems super simple - every song seems to alternate some heavier guitar-rhythm parts with some more melodic parts, with vaguely jerk-ass lyrics that are interesting enough not to annoy you, but not so interesting as to actually engage you. It drives me up the wall - in a good way, of course.

Here is a video: