Due to the beautiful weather, I worked from home today. I'm a software developer, so I usually do two things at work; I write code, and I thrash. An ideal work day will feature those two things and nothing else. In a perfect world, I wouldn't have to speak to another human being (besides my wife). Today was like that.
I'm an album guy; I usually only listen to entire albums while I'm working. I decided to do something different today, so I threw my entire music collection on random. This is what happened:
Guns N' Roses - Appetite For Destruction - Rocket Queen
Napalm Death - Inside The Torn Apart - Birth In Regress
Carcass - Necroticism - Descanting The Insalubrious - Corporal Jigsore Quandary
My Dying Bride - The Dreadful Hours - Le Figlie della Tempesta
Suffocation - Despise The Sun - Despise The Sun
The Clash - The Story Of The Clash Volume 1 Disc 1 - Should I Stay Or Should I Go
Derek & The Dominos - Layla & Other Assorted Love Songs - Key To The Highway
Bloodbath - Nightmares Made Flesh - Eaten
Napalm Death - Noise For Music's Sake [Disc 1] - Siege Of Power
Suffocation - Pierced From Within - Thrones Of Blood
The Rolling Stones - Exile On Main Street - Tumbling Dice
Dissection - Storm Of The Light's Bane - Where Dead Angels Lie
Muddy Waters - The Anthology [Disc 2] - You Shook Me
The Who - Quadrophenia [Disc 1] - I've Had Enough
The Rolling Stones - Goats Head Soup - Silver Train
Nasum - Shift - The Deepest Hole
Napalm Death - Order of the Leech - The Icing on the Hate
My Dying Bride - The Light at the End of the World - Into The Lake Of Ghosts
Skeletonwitch - Beyond The Permafrost - Baptized In Flames
Afgrund - Vid Helvetets Grindar - The Great Cover-up Apocalypse
Radiohead - The Bends - My Iron Lung
David Bowie - The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars - Ziggy Stardust
Pelican - The Fire In Our Throats Will Beckon the Thaw - Sirius
Metallica - Black Album - The Struggle Within
Opeth - Blackwater Park - Bleak
Wanda Jackson - Queen Of Rockabilly - Funnel Of Love
Bergraven - Dödsvisioner - Döende (En Avslutning)
Egberto Gismonti - Saudações - Palhaço
Alice in Chains - SAP - Got Me Wrong
Bob Dylan - The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan - Masters Of War
In Flames - A Sense Of Purpose - Condemned
Cynic - Focus - Sentiment
In Flames - Colony - Coerced Coexistence
Katatonia - Brave Yester Days Volume 1 - The Nothern Silence
Social Distortion - Mommy's Little Monster - Moral Threat
Porcupine Tree - Deadwing - Mellotron Scratch
Gojira - From Mars To Sirius - Where Dragons Dwell
Burst - Lazarus Bird - I Exterminate The I
Tombs - Winter Hours - The Great Silence
Cryptopsy - None So Vile - Phobophile
Arch Enemy - Burning Bridges - Pilgrim
Against Me! - Searching For A Former Clarity - Joy
Slough Feg - Atavism - Portcullis
Misery's Omen - Hope Dies - Desecrated Icon In Ruin
I am also a programmer, and I also listen to albums. I can't handle random switching between artists on each track; it keeps distracting me and forcing me to reorient my listening.
ReplyDeleteAlso, if you love a particular album and get a track from it which is not amongst the best, I feel cheated, somehow. With this playlist, I would have made it as far as 'Should I Stay Or Should I Go' or perhaps 'Key to the Highway', and I would have been forced to stop there and listen to the album those tracks came from!
Yeah Matt, I do my best work when I'm listening to well worn albums. I can't listen to new music and/or random playlists and have any hope of being productive.
ReplyDeleteI think you totally nailed it on the head with the feeling of being cheated. I couldn't articulate that feeling, but you got it right. I get distracted by sub-par songs, because then I want to go listen to the rest of the album that the song came from.
I feel like I should listen to music as albums more; it may not always be this way but most of the time I feel like it's the way the artist intended for me to listen to it. But I tend to have a short attention span so I like to put my new acquisitions in a giant playlist and let it shuffle among them. It almost feels a little disrespectful.
ReplyDeleteMellotron Scratch is one of those songs that I never tire of. It makes me think about music instead of just passively listening.
Eclectic. I love it. It's a good thing you don't have to talk to anyone. If I had to explain how Clash, Bowie and Carcass go together my only response would be "it doesn't have to make sense if it's cool."
ReplyDeleteI don't get to work from home, but I do get to listen to my mp3 player while I'm at work, and I'm an album guy. I almost never put it on shuffle.
ReplyDeleteAnd I can't pay full attention to the music, usually, but I manage to get all of my album reviews done at work. It's nice having a job with a lot of downtime.
I've had to stop myself lately from writing album reviews at work. It's so much more fun than work, but not particularly good for the career. I'm not supposed to have any downtime...but you know how that goes.
ReplyDeletePutting my iPod on shuffle is very liberating cause it takes me away from searching through thousands of songs and hundreds of albums trying to decide what I want to listen to at that particular moment. The problem is that I find a lo0t of music that I really don't listen to that I acquired and it takes up a lot of space. I'm not a track person either. I normally will put on an album and listen to at least 70% of it before moving on to something else.
ReplyDeletePutting my iPod on shuffle is very liberating cause it takes me away from searching through thousands of songs and hundreds of albums trying to decide what I want to listen to at that particular moment. The problem is that I find a lo0t of music that I really don't listen to that I acquired and it takes up a lot of space. I'm not a track person either. I normally will put on an album and listen to at least 70% of it before moving on to something else.
ReplyDeletenice blog + post.
ReplyDelete"shuffle" mode is for lamers.
I never understood peeps who use that mode. Anyone who says: "Whoah, how eclectic" is first in line to get my old-school METAL-beatdown.
arrrrrrrrrgghhh!
Play the whole damn album, if it's not at least 75% good then don't buy it.
I agree about today's music, very distracting and too "A.D.D." for me.
I will admit there is something attractive about Thrashin' while at work, hopefully you wear headphones so you can blast it!
**I got to jam like that at the last place I worked and it made the time go by so fast and I was about 60% more productive because of it (and not having to listen to whatever crappy Muzak-themed chunes most lameo offices force-fed their employees).
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Rock on!
Curt King
Demolish HQ