Entertainment For Lively Minds
When was the last time you just spent time purely listening to a whole album?
Posted by Uncle Wheaty on 6 September 2011 - 10:53pm.
This is an avenue of pleasure likely to be closed off to me for a long time. Two young kids and self employment with no dedicated commuting time preclude any dedicated music listening, it is all background listening for me as I do other things.
But I wonder if I really am missing out.
Is the dedicated music listening pleasure a thing of the past?
Music listening these days, for many, seems to be based on individual tracks rather than immersing yourself for 45 minutes in a whole album.
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Nope
Do it all the time.listened to "Rio Grande Mud" by ZZ Top today whilst eating my lunch. Brilliant!
Lucky you
I am envious.
I guess in a couple of years time I can try indoctrinate my eldest in the ways of Supertramp under the guise of musical education and get to immerse myself in Crime of The Century again!
Vinyl
This was, natch, on vinyl, recently rebought!
Since I discovered Smirnoff...
sorry, vinyl...it is a regular occurrence, interrupted only by the inconvenience of having to get up to turn over the record. But then my children are now off doing their own thing, so at weekends I can plonk myself down, relax and listen
Twice tonight
a vinyl copy of 'Kimino My House' I picked up today and Tom Waits 'Blood Money' which is Cookie Monster-tastic
Vinyl is indeed, the answer.
The act of taking it down from the shelf, carefully separating it from the sleeve and placing it on the turntable before dropping the needle just makes you WANT to listen. I'm currently re-buying stuff on vinyl I already have on CD. Who thought THAT would happen!
Me too
I rebought "Thick as a brick" by the mighty Tull on vinyl which I originally had on tape then on CD. With the full newspaper sleeve. A beautiful thing.
Me too
Re-buying. In the last 24 hours I've listened to
Stranglers' Black and White and
Jackson Browne's Late for the Sky
Both albums, both sides, start to finish. Both great in their own way.
Finding the time is difficult but worth it.
Also guilty
I bought Magnolia Electric Co - Josephine - on vinyl a couple of weeks ago. Just so tactile and a snip at £3 from Rise in Bristol
Miles Kane
"Colour of the Trap" (see post up there a bit) in the car. A bit 60's, a bit Weller, a bit pop, a bit rock and a bit good.
Doing it now.
Hopefulness by Michael Carpenter.
I listen to the radio or entire albums. I'm not really a playlist person.
My album listening time is from about 2200 every evening when Mrs L goes to bed.
Me too
One of the many joys of shift work is time at home during the day and midweek. Here I am on Wednesday morning with no alarm to go off until early Friday. I've already knocked off the first Imagined Village over breakfast. I sometimes wallow in entire box sets, complete with bonus CDs; I am eying up Sandy Denny's Boxful of Treasures with bonus 5th CD as I type. Don't care what any prog detractors say, 'Toppo' goes down wonderfully on these days. Nearly always listen to whole albums.
Lovely.
DP
"Is the dedicated music listening pleasure a thing of the past?"
Not in my house! I occasionally put the iPod on shuffle but often I'll hear a track and decide to listen to the whole LP.
It helps that I've noticed that LP lengths are now reducing and actually between 35-40 mins seems to becoming the norm again. The days of bands filling all of the 74 mins of CD are perhaps the one good thing of the demise of that format. So even if you're busy you can cram an album in somewhere (easy for me to say as I've no kids but I have child-rearing friends who still make time for albums too..)
I also actually think there is nothing wrong with background listening while doing other tasks either. You may not be absorbing ever nuance of a record with the lights off but it's still possible to enjoy the music around you. Not all records are meant to listened to in reverential silence anyway.
You can do both!
I bought Soft Cell's Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret on Itunes yesterday and listened to the whole thing during an evening run around the suburbs. Not only that, but it had one-off singles (Memorabilia, What, Torch) and sveral B-sides added on. All for NZ$10 (about five British pounds) - bargain!
Ipod mainly
I only put full albums on my ipod and I reckon that I listen to about 5 a day on average. The new Fountains of Wayne album came out just over a month ago and I've listened to it all the way through about 25 times. Mind you, that's not really dedicated listening, I ought to be working at the same time!
Not so new dad anymore
My boy is two now, and thankfully likes music so we do listen in the house sometimes. But listening to a whole album all the way through, that is probably the only upside - along with being able to read a book - about my daily commute, between four and six hours a day in total....
Does mean I've gotten into listening to music properly far more than I have for years. Proper albums in order go down a treat sometimes.
Also plug in the Ipod sometimes for the walk to the shops on a Sunday morning. That's quite nice.
Yesterday evening
I listened to Please Please Me to see what all the fuss was about on the other thread.
I know now.
Do it all the time.
And not on vinyl - iPhone. I only listen to albums, really, except when in the gym (at which point I shuffle a 4 hr compilation of good-time music, which keeps things quite nice and fresh).
Yesterday I listened to Janelle Monae's "The ArchAndroid", which is flawed and bonkers, but which I love. The day before, it was two live albums: "A Positive Rage" by The Hold Steady and "Full House" by the J. Geils Band. This morning it was "HaHa Sound" by Broadcast while reading "You Never Give Me Your Money".
But then, I commute. It's easier for me.
Increasingly listening to albums
I still listen to whole CDs at a sitting, especially now that the standard length of a CD album appears to be reverting to the 40-minute Gold Standard. For a while, after acquiring my iPod and building up my iTunes library, I used to listen to everything on shuffle, which seemed like having the greatest jukebox in the world. But more recently, even on iTunes and iPod, I've gone back to listening to full albums. Which probably makes me some kind of dinosaur - but they did pretty well for 100 million years!
Every day
Rock 'n' Roll compilations mainly.
Right now: 'Teen Town U.S.A Volume 1'.
It offsets the fact that in the entire Radio 2 and BBC 6 Music schedules there isn't one rock 'n' roll show.....indie landfill, you're covered, but rock 'n' roll? Nah.
I drive a 20-year old car, so ...
My in-car entertainment system is a cassette player and I often get through a whole album on one of my long drives across NSW. Last weekend I did Be Bop Deluxe's Modern Music.
..Sonos...
I've recently built a house and my 'biggest joy' was building in a Sonos system - where I can lazily select music and listen to it through my ceiling speakers... Must admit that I (and the wife - she has no choice) are listening to more Albums than ever before!
Have done today.
.in fact i've specifically started to bring my portable CD player into work so I can do it, 1 CD per day, played start to finish
Today's selection? Tappa Zukie in Dub, 43 and a half minutes of classic period dub perfection.
Come to Newcastle...
...and do just that.
http://www.tynesidecinema.co.uk/whats-on/mr-draytons-record-player
I know that I need to get out more
But I bought a stand alone mp3 player a while ago and filled it with classic albums, most of which I'd never heard before. 110 of them to be precise. I did this in ordere to take me back into the whole "album" thing, and to listen to all the classics that I've never got round to.
I have discovered some real corkers, Dusty In Memphis, What's Going On, Dummy etc. Some wonderful reaquaintancies such as Bat Out Of Hell, Blue, and Blood On The Tracks. Then there has been the odd one that has left me cold, A Love Supreme springs immediately to mind.
What I will say though is that it has been so refreshing to move away from "shuffle" and rediscover the album as a body of work.
As I said, I need to get out more...
At the risk of sounding like an OCD Case
Most evenings follow this pattern:
- Drive home from work thinking about which album to listen to later
- Refine the choices and decide whilst eating dinner
- Select album and play whilst washing up, clearing up, drinking Lucozade and smoking
Repeat daily
Tonights album of choice: The Chords - So Far Away
Most weekends usually involve between 4 and 8 albums, depending whats going on (I have convinced the wife that I am unable to cook, clean, fix stuff, or generally function without a background soundtrack)
Sweet Jeebus
I'm not alone!