MyTunes
Reading someone’s Ipod playlist is a modern version of reading his diary. What are a person’s habits of mind or cultural background, and where are they catalogued? On his Ipod, of course, or in my case in CD mixes burned from Itunes downloads.
It is a revealing process. There is no generalized and non-specific icon such as just owning the White Album. I have to pick a song, one song, 99 cents at a time, making an affirmative choice of What I Like, not just what is on the CD. It would be an invasion of privacy if someone were to see the 150 songs I have downloaded to date, worse than, say, a dissection of my wardrobe or house furnishings. There is something about our music and its choices which defines us.
What do I see in my list?
Age and gender come screaming off the list. Bob Dylan is the only artist with 6 entries, although I would note that later work (Hurricane) and even new work (Spirit on the Water) define me as a genuine Dylan guy, not someone who got off the bus in 1970.
Bruce Springsteen would be tied for second with 3 entries (including live Thunder Road) were it not for an oddball personal favorite - the Everly Brothers. I do have their 1957 debut album with its elegant liner notes (“Frails sent mail by the bale”), but I am partial to their ballads (Devoted to You, Love Hurts)
My folk music period is long, but perhaps not really as deep as I think. I have Woody Guthrie (Pastures of Plenty) and the Weavers (If I Had a Hammer – pre-Peter Paul and Mary), but not really genuine folk like Delta Blues from the 30’s. The Cambridge coffeehouse world circa 1960 is prominent with Jim Kweskin (Washington at Valley Forge), Eric Andersen (Thirsty Boots), Dave Van Ronk (Nobody Knows You) and Tom Rush (No Regrets) who we actually saw live a couple of weeks ago. He is pushing 70.
Some choices are like The History of Rock and Roll (Rock Around the Clock, Heartbreak Hotel, Rave On, Come Go With Me) and some are perhaps Evolutionary Folk (Suite: Judy Blue Eyes, Touch of Grey) with some End of An Era Rock (Hotel California, Man on the Moon).
Some choices are just for fun – I like pairing Lipstick on Your Collar with It’s My Party, (I thought about their bookends Who’s Sorry Now and Judy’s Turn to Cry) and I did my Sue trilogy together (Robin Luke’s Suzy Darlin, Sue Thompson’s Norman and Suzy Quattro & Stormin Norman Stumbing In), passing on Wake Up Little Susie. I always wonder about songs glorifying war (Kingston Trio The Alamo, or Sink the Bismarck).
What I discover, though is that when not looking for artist or genre I seem to head more than my intellect would like toward the Bubblegum aisle. In the A’s alone I have ABBA’s Dancing Queen, Air Supply’s Lost in Love and America’s Sister Golden Hair. I fear there are that many in each letter of the alphabet. I like melodies, harmonies and simple rhythms. I am anesthetized on the table. The bubblegum is probably the most embarrassing.
Or perhaps the omissions. Women are seriously underrepresented, although Linda Ronstadt has 3 (Long, Long Time, Desperado, and Blue Bayou), Norah Jones (Don’t Know Why) is this century and I include miscellaneous salutes to Bonnie Raitt (Nick of Time) and Carol King (Tapestry). Black music, which perhaps today is almost all music, is present (Johnny B. Goode – or is that a black guy playing white music?) and a few others from Motown, but all old, nothing of current black music. My loss.
Looking at my list I would say that I’m a white guy over 60 for whom music is nostalgia and no longer the lifeblood that it was 40 years ago. The modern music I like is throwback music, not current. The collection is mainstream, falling off the track before Aerosmith in the 1980’s, more or less Bubblegum since then, with some breadth in a sidetrack of Cambridge Folk which had its day. I will need some help from Son #2, an expert in the industry to develop a list that will create a more sophisticated profile.
It is a revealing process. There is no generalized and non-specific icon such as just owning the White Album. I have to pick a song, one song, 99 cents at a time, making an affirmative choice of What I Like, not just what is on the CD. It would be an invasion of privacy if someone were to see the 150 songs I have downloaded to date, worse than, say, a dissection of my wardrobe or house furnishings. There is something about our music and its choices which defines us.
What do I see in my list?
Age and gender come screaming off the list. Bob Dylan is the only artist with 6 entries, although I would note that later work (Hurricane) and even new work (Spirit on the Water) define me as a genuine Dylan guy, not someone who got off the bus in 1970.
Bruce Springsteen would be tied for second with 3 entries (including live Thunder Road) were it not for an oddball personal favorite - the Everly Brothers. I do have their 1957 debut album with its elegant liner notes (“Frails sent mail by the bale”), but I am partial to their ballads (Devoted to You, Love Hurts)
My folk music period is long, but perhaps not really as deep as I think. I have Woody Guthrie (Pastures of Plenty) and the Weavers (If I Had a Hammer – pre-Peter Paul and Mary), but not really genuine folk like Delta Blues from the 30’s. The Cambridge coffeehouse world circa 1960 is prominent with Jim Kweskin (Washington at Valley Forge), Eric Andersen (Thirsty Boots), Dave Van Ronk (Nobody Knows You) and Tom Rush (No Regrets) who we actually saw live a couple of weeks ago. He is pushing 70.
Some choices are like The History of Rock and Roll (Rock Around the Clock, Heartbreak Hotel, Rave On, Come Go With Me) and some are perhaps Evolutionary Folk (Suite: Judy Blue Eyes, Touch of Grey) with some End of An Era Rock (Hotel California, Man on the Moon).
Some choices are just for fun – I like pairing Lipstick on Your Collar with It’s My Party, (I thought about their bookends Who’s Sorry Now and Judy’s Turn to Cry) and I did my Sue trilogy together (Robin Luke’s Suzy Darlin, Sue Thompson’s Norman and Suzy Quattro & Stormin Norman Stumbing In), passing on Wake Up Little Susie. I always wonder about songs glorifying war (Kingston Trio The Alamo, or Sink the Bismarck).
What I discover, though is that when not looking for artist or genre I seem to head more than my intellect would like toward the Bubblegum aisle. In the A’s alone I have ABBA’s Dancing Queen, Air Supply’s Lost in Love and America’s Sister Golden Hair. I fear there are that many in each letter of the alphabet. I like melodies, harmonies and simple rhythms. I am anesthetized on the table. The bubblegum is probably the most embarrassing.
Or perhaps the omissions. Women are seriously underrepresented, although Linda Ronstadt has 3 (Long, Long Time, Desperado, and Blue Bayou), Norah Jones (Don’t Know Why) is this century and I include miscellaneous salutes to Bonnie Raitt (Nick of Time) and Carol King (Tapestry). Black music, which perhaps today is almost all music, is present (Johnny B. Goode – or is that a black guy playing white music?) and a few others from Motown, but all old, nothing of current black music. My loss.
Looking at my list I would say that I’m a white guy over 60 for whom music is nostalgia and no longer the lifeblood that it was 40 years ago. The modern music I like is throwback music, not current. The collection is mainstream, falling off the track before Aerosmith in the 1980’s, more or less Bubblegum since then, with some breadth in a sidetrack of Cambridge Folk which had its day. I will need some help from Son #2, an expert in the industry to develop a list that will create a more sophisticated profile.
posted by Contraria | 5:39 PM
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