The Listening Experiment, Day 5

In which I remember why it sucks to put my iPod on Shuffle, am unsurprised by the solo outputs of two respective Beatles and am categorically impressed by Gene Ween

I decided that the best way to systematically listen down my entire music collection would be to go alphabetically by album. This would be easy to keep track of and would prevent overdosing on any particular artist*. After 5 days of self-enforced listening I was slightly behind on my 50 song per day goal but only slightly. Luckily I have plenty of breathing room to finish this by New Years Eve 2010.

My journey began with Abbey Road, as good a place as any to begin. The first few days were a big reminder of why having a broad listening palate makes it tough to listen on shuffle. I would be in a nice, chill indie rock mood and suddenly be hit by bluegrass and then, immediately after that, metal. Also, some artists really suffer as a result of their juxtapositions. For instance, in an excellent coincidental transition, Tool came right after the Deftones. Similar music. But Tool is just way way better than the Deftones. Sorry, fellas.



Similarly, A collection of Paul McCartney/Wings output was followed immediately by Geroge Harrison's All Things Must Pass with the result being that the younger, subordinate Beatle came out looking like the greatest genius of his generation. Harrison's contributions to the Beatle catalogue have always been my favorites but Lennon and McCartney had him beat in sheer numbers and, truth be told, almost all of their songs were at least very good and at best sublime. But listening to this string of McCartney's post-fab-four hits was kind of like eating a bowl of sugar upon which raw sugar has been sprinkled and washing it down with a gallon of Strawberry Quick. Oh, and also, you're eating the sugar with a spoon that is made out of sugar. I may have trouble listening to McCartney for a pretty long time after those 17 saccharine studies in gag-reflexology. Thankfully I don't think there are any Beatles on the menu any time soon. Harrison, on the other hand, delivered a double album set worth of some of his best songcraft with all of the humor and emotion he always displayed in his few and far between offerings on Beatle records. I have a feeling that when I get to Lennon's Plastic Ono Band period I'm going to "discover" what everyone knows but won't say: that Paul and John sucked without each other. Imagine how rough that was for both of them, because I'll bet they dimly suspected it.

I have never seen the band Ween live but I really want to now having listened to an album worth of live studio cuts. The way Gene and Dean disguise their voices and saunter with inane virtuosity from genre to genre is made more remarkable only by the fact that they use their copious talents to sing some of the least accessible (to a mass market) songs ever laid to tape. They wrote a folk song ("Cold Blows the Wind") that is better than most folk songs but then a weird nonsense-word song with growling vocals that are more like Tom Waits than Tom Waits.



Speaking of that, I also had a chance to fall in love with Alice again. So far I am enjoying the experience.

*unless a particular artist has a maximum allowable dosage of two songs...this has yet to occur but I imagine it might.