Introduction
Shellsharks has a weekly blogging challenge, consisting of a quiz with a list of questions for writer’s to answer. This weeks writing challenge involves music, and since I have long been very interested in music I thought it worthwhile for me to answer the questions. Here’s the list:
- What are five of your favorite albums?
- What are five of your favorite songs?
- Favorite Instrument(s)?
- What song or album are you current listening to?
- Do you listen to the radio? If so, how often?
- How often do you listen to music?
- How often do you discover music? And how do you discover music?
- What’s a song or album that you enjoy that you wish had more recognition?
- What’s your favourite song of all time?
- Has your taste in music evolved over the years?
I’m going to answer these questions and try to add some context, or a story as needed for these answers. Let’s get started
What are five of your favorite albums?
Yikes, I dislike questions like this. There are generally too many albums to select a limited number of “favorites”. As it is, there isn’t any space for me to really select any jazz, classical, folk, ambient, experimental/weird, outsider, etc. albums.
So, I am chosing five albums that have persisted in my memories for a long time. Albums that will still find their way into play lists, or on my computer, etc. But, by no means, is this a good representation of my complete musical range. It’s a small window into some of the music I like, and it’s some of the music that people who know me have likely heard when they are around me.
Yes: Relayer
I discovered Yes when I was in high school. I used to listen to a local radio station that would do blocks of music by artists. Yes were one of the groups that appeared on the station all the time… Especially when the DJ wanted a long break, as many of their songs were 9-10 minutes long, playing two or three of them in a row would allow the DJ to go to the bathroom, grab a smoke or whatever. (At least that’s my vision of what’s going on, based on watching WKRP In Cincinatti, and stories from a friend who was a DJ.)
Relayer, however, wasn’t an album that would get airplay on the radio. It didn’t have the popularity of the other Yes albums. I discovered this album when I went digging into their catalog more on my own.
After Hours: Miles Away
This was when I started getting into more producer trip-hop music. It’s a compilation (and one that is difficut to find, at that) that features a lot of classic jazz samples that have been transformed into really smooth and bouncy tunes.
It’s one of those accidental finds that still just feels amazing to listen to.
Crowded House: Crowded House
I could choose almost any Crowded House album, but their first album holds a special place for me as it was a total surprise. I was browsing the stacks in a record store when I heard a song (Mean To Me) over the in-house audio system. I coiuld swear that the vocalist was Neil Finn, but they weren’t popular enuogh to get played in a store like this. (At the time I didn’t know Split Enz weren’t together.)
I went to the counter to find out what they were playing, and the guy behind the counter showed me the CD case for the first Crowded House album. I looked it over, and found that I was right: it was Neil Finn with a couple of people that were involved with Split Enz. I bought the CD immediately.
Klaus Schulze: Audentity
Probably a more controversial pick from Klaus’s five decades of albums (over 150 releases, of which over 100 releases were albums). This was a real turning point in Klaus’s work, it was early in his adoption of digital synthesis as part of his keyboard arsenal.
Also, this album includes work from Michale Shrieve, who was mostly known for his drum / percussion work with Santana. Klaus once said of Michael that he was the only person that actually taught him something about percussion and time…which Schulze thought was remarkable as he was a drummer himself.
Rush: Permanent Waves
I’ve been re-visiting a lot of Rush lately. Permanent Waves really marks the transition point of Rush condensing their progressive style into more accessible song structures. Songs like The Spirit of Radio and Freewill are generally the best known songs on the album, I also really love Entre Nous and Different Strings.
What are five of your favorite songs?
God, this is an almost worse question. Yes, there are songs that I like, however many of the pieces I like are long-form works. Let me list five that don’t have any overlap with the five albums above.
Vola: Straight Lines (from Witness)
This is one of the most interesting bands I’ve heard over the past five years. Mixing progressive, industrial, and straight rock elements they are pushing things in interesting directions. The first time I heard this song my jaw was nearly in my lap, and the whole Witness album is amazing.
How To Disappear Completely: Lucid Void (from Absentia)
This is just one of those deeply mesmerizing and haunting tracks. I only learned of HTDC a few years ago, and they have been one of the best discoveries I’ve made in the last ten years.
Band Maid: Play (from World Domination)
Band Maid was a complete surprise to me. I wasn’t really into much (of any) of the music coming out of Japan until I found some of the live videos that they released just as the Covid Pandemic was shutting down the world.
Discovering Band Maid lead me to discovering tons of other music from Japan, including bands like Gacharic Spin, Polkadot Stingray, Trident, Tricot, Doll$Boxx, Suspended 4th, Super Beaver, LiSA (not the one from Black Pink), and many others.
Cousin Silas: The Sky Road (from The Sky Road)
Just a long, gorgeous piece of ambient music. Cousin Silas has literally tons of albums that he’s recorded, and yet he doesn’t seek recognition beyond the people that find his works and enjoy them. He’s not on a campaign to become some big artist.
Jon & Vangelis: And When The Night Comes (from Private Collection)
Jon Anderson from Yes with Vangelis? Absolute must. This one is possibly one of the most sensual (and dare I say sexy) songs that Jon has ever recorded… Of all the works of his that I have heard (I admit, there is is still a lot that I haven’t heard from him).
Favorite Instrument(s)?
This is just as bad as the first two questions. There are probably at least fifty instruments that I would say that I like. A lot of what I like depends on the context and use of the instrument in the piece of music.
But, just to condense a few things down:
- Keyboards: piano, organ, harpsichord, synthesizers, etc.
- Guitars of all types: electric, acoustic, bass, six string, twelve string, seven and eight string, etc.
- Percussion: wide range from trap-kits, timpani, congas, vibraphone, etc.
- Strings: bass, cello, viola, violin, and a wide range of variants on these instruments.
- Brass instruments of all sorts
- Woodwind isntruments of all sorts
- And things that you don’t think are instruments, like drinking glasses, kazoos, random clacks and ticks from an engine, etc.
There’s just a wide range of sounds out there, and any of them can be used in a musical context.
What song or album are you current listening to?
Nujabes – Spritual State. New artist to me…a continuation of my exploration of Japanese music.
Do you listen to the radio? If so, how often?
I haven’t really listened to the radio in the last 25 years… Except for a little while ago when I had a trial period of satellite radio in my car, but I didn’t sign up for it.
Personally, I found that radio was a bad way to discover music that I liked. There was a lot that I didin’t care for, and I spent too much time waiting for the music that I did like. And all the advertising was annoying.
How often do you listen to music?
Daily. I can’t imagine going for a day without listening to something.
How often do you discover music? And how do you discover music?
Kinda randomly now. I “follow” some random music channels on YouTube that have introduced me to some new music (like HTDC), I sometimes hear references to music from other people, or I hear things randomly in a store or somewhere.
I also read a lot. Recently I’ve been reading several books that deal with the history of pop music… That’s turned up quite a few interesting artists that have been forgotten that I need to check out.
What’s a song or album that you enjoy that you wish had more recognition?
When you have a collection the size of mine, it’s difficult to pick just one. But I’d start with the Cousin Silas release I mentioned above: The Sky Road. It’s a gorgeous album. And then there are literally over 200 more albums of music from him to explore.
What’s your favourite song of all time?
The song that had the biggest impact on me is Sound Chaser by Yes. It’s from the Relayer album. It was just such a different sound from the band, and it has so much texture and incredibly different performances from the whole band.
Has your taste in music evolved over the years?
Yes, it definitely has. In grade school I was listening to folk and bubble-gum pop types of music. By high school I’d found rock, jazz, big band, classical and started to discover progressive rock.
In college everything was turned on it’s ear. I discovered all sorts of experimental and electronic music, as well as fully realizing what progressive rock was about.
After college I found myself getting disgusted with the music industry, and turning to largely independent, self-produced musicians, which lead me into a lot of ambient music. I also discovered a lot of trip-hop and producer based music. I also started to listen to a little bit of rap.
And,as I mentioned above, the Covid shutdown lead me to discover a lot of music from Japan. Not only pop, rock, and tri-hop, but also some of the classical and folk-style music from Japan.
I’m basically down to listen to almost anything. I haven’t even talked about being into music from India or other middle-eastern countries that I started to discover during college, and continued to listen to after college.
So, yeah, my tastes have evolved and expanded over the years.