5 posts tagged “music”

Do you own all the albums of any particular musical artist or group? Who?
Submitted by dutterman.

Oh boy, this is one hell of a question...especially since there are several ways to interpret it.  Do we count only studio albums, or are we supposed to include live albums as well?  How about remixes or EPs?  And then what about bands that have only released one album?  Surely they don't count.  And then what about bands you collect obsessively, but you won't buy any albums of theirs from a specific era?

For the purposes of this post, I'll define "all albums" as studio albums only (no singles, no EPs), and exclude artists that have only released one or two albums (which means that Blackfield, LCD Soundsystem, Gruff Rhys, and others would have to be excluded).

Here's the list:
Richard Ashcroft
Björk
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
Kate Bush
Stephen Malkmus
Opeth
Pavement
Porcupine Tree
Radiohead
Super Furry Animals (okay, I don't have Hey Venus yet, but it just came out earlier this week and won't be released in the US until next year, so give me a few weeks to scrape up the cash for the vinyl...there's too many things coming out right now that I need)
The Verve
The White Stripes

When driving alone, what do you do?  Sing along to the radio?  Think about your day?  Something else?
Submitted by carapiccoladiva.  

When I'm alone in my car, I stick a CD in the stereo and crank the volume up (but not too loud...six and a half bars usually suffices...I do care about my hearing).  Because of how fussy I am about the condition of my CDs, I burn copies for the car (sourced from FLAC files of paranoia-mode rips from the real CDs that I keep on my hard drive) of what I want to listen to.

So what albums do I have copies of in my car right now?  Here goes:

The Life Pursuit

Belle & Sebastian

Blackfield II

Blackfield

Tago Mago

Can

Future Days

Can

At War with the Mystics

The Flaming Lips

If_Then_Else

The Gathering

Sound of Silver

LCD Soundsystem

Blackwater Park

Opeth

In Absentia

Porcupine Tree

Deadwing

Porcupine Tree

Fear of a Blank Planet

Porcupine Tree

Candylion

Gruff Rhys

(Yes, I know that's not what the line really is, but my motives will be clear soon enough.)

Today was one of those dreadful blurs at work...painfully slow until the last half hour, at which point the store was the busiest I've seen in a long time on a Sunday afternoon.  Of course, except for an elderly couple that came in early in the day, it wasn't so bad.  But man, that elderly couple...*shudders*

You see, elderly people can be some of the worst customers out there.  Don't give me all that "respect your elders" talk--I'll respect someone if they behave in a manner worthy of respect--being old in itself isn't a strong enough criterion for respect.  I don't know what it is, but it seems like the older ones are always the most belligerent, and they almost never pick up after themselves (and to think they whine about how irresponsible my generation is!)--once they find that shoe that they think won't rub their bunion the wrong way after leaving behind a pile of fifty scattered boxes, they're out of there.

Well, at least the couple that came in today did make a decent effort to pick up...I'll give them that, but they certainly picked up the slack as far as attitude goes!  First, the wife comes up to me and asks for a try-on sock for her hus and gets a little indignant when I hand her an athletic sock.  She obviously doesn't realize that no one gives out dress socks as try-ons, and very few stores provide anything other than those shrively little bits of nylon hosiery (it's a public health issue if they're not disposable).  Then the wife brings me over because her husband has a question about the shoes.  Basically, the husband's having a fit because the 9.5W doesn't fit, and "I've been wearing nine-and-a-half wide for the past fifteen years, and I've always bought my shoes from your store".  Then he holds up two left shoes and asks me if I can see any difference between the two of them, and I tell him the one on his right is bigger than the other.  He says the 10.5W is the exact same size as the other shoe, which I can clearly see isn't true at all...I line the shoes up and show him that the difference between the two is about the thickness of my index finger...roughly a half inch, or in other words, completely normal for a whole size difference.  He doesn't believe me, and I show him the Brannock device (yes, that's the proper name for the measurer) and indicate to him how much distance there is when you go up a whole size...it's not even a half inch.  The man is still just as cross with me as one can possibly be, and I continue to explain that because everyone has outsourced to China that there is no consistency in sizing these days--even within the same brand and sometimes even the same style (side note: it's amazing to think that a country with such horrible quality control standards and even worse standards for worker treatment is poised to take over the world in the next few decades).  I have to wonder what the man really wanted from me...did he expect me to say, "Oh, it's really just a joke, let me fetch the real 9.5W from the back" or perhaps conjure up a pair of 9.5W dress shoes that fit perfectly?

I have to wonder if the man has purchased a pair of shoes in the past fifteen years--inconsistency in sizing has been a problem for most of my life.  I mean, I wear anything from a US Women's 6 to 8 depending on the style and manufacturer (and if it's about a 7 or bigger, I'll need a narrow if comes in widths)...that's two whole sizes.  Clothing is even worse--my size can be anything from a 0 to 5 depending on the manufacturer.  I just don't understand why people get so fixed on the idea that they are this one shoe size and that's it...it's not like it is with clothing sizes where there's a stigma attached to larger sizes.  Amazingly enough, most wide-footed people are willing to admit they're wide, and will get very cross if they can't find wides in every style.  I say fuck the wide-footed people...the narrow-footed have it much worse...over half the styles in our store come in wide (not to mention many other brands just run wide), and yet there's only one style of shoe we have in narrow and it's only in the women's section.  Granted, Puma (IMHO the ultimate fashion sneakers) does run nice and narrow, and narrow feet look great in pretty much anything that fits correctly, whereas almost nothing flatters a wide foot.

Anyway, let's get to the bit that'll explain the title.  I noticed when I came into work the other day that the Muzak wasn't on (yes, it is a genuine Muzak brand unit).  Turns out that the receiver isn't getting any signal.  One of our assistant managers likes to hook up his portable CD player to the sound system (and I'm certain they'll try to blame him), but that involves unplugging the RCA cable running from the receiver to the amplifier...nothing that would interfere with the functioning of the receiver.  After doing some investigation to the unit, we concluded that everything was plugged in correctly.  About the only thing we can think of is that it's been raining heavily the past few days, and it's possible that the antenna (we think there's an external antenna--the coax cable runs up into the ceiling) got damaged on Friday.  Of course, I don't care too much that the Muzak is broken, since that just gives us more of an excuse to play our own music.  They did get rid of that horrible tropical-themed playlist that they experimented around with when we switched over to our summer promotions (I never thought the day would come when I would say I missed the original Muzak playlist, but that day came when they switched to the tropical stuff--I think Muzak must have gotten a lot of angry calls from our employees or something), but the normal playlist still sucks.  I have to wonder if paying ASCAP/BMI fees wouldn't be cheaper than this Muzak subscription--it'd certainly make everyone who works in the store happier.  Oh well, at least I got to play Fear of a Blank Planet (in its entirety) on the store's sound system today--that certainly makes up for most of the day.

As you can probably tell, I've still got a lot of work left getting everything set up.  It is definitely going to take a while before the audio section is finished, since I own over three hundred CDs, about seventy LPs, and a handful of 7" singles.  For now, I'll merely settle for tagging the items based on the genres given by AMG (but slightly simplified, because really, is the difference between "Alternative Pop/Rock" and "Adult Alternative Pop/Rock" worth noting?).  I don't care for genre tags personally, so I'm doing it for the sake of my readers (however few they are).  Books and videos hopefully won't take too long after I finish with the audio section.  Eventually I'll go through and rate all the items, and maybe I'll even write reviews at some point, but don't hold your breath on either.

Now, about the banner and tagline.  I took the photo of that yarn skein in the banner, which is now a pair of Pomatomus socks.  I bet that gorgeous hank of hand-painted merino (Great Adirondack's Soxie in Grenada) is making knitters reading this salivate...I assure you the results are every bit as drool-worthy as the yarn is.  Unfortunately, my camera died about a week ago, or I'd show you the results.  This blog is probably going to suck in the knitting department until I get a functioning camera (I should probably teach myself how to use that film-based SLR I've got lying around).  As for the tagline, it's just a parody of the phrase "sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll"...there probably won't be much (if any) sex talk, but you'll get a fair bit of knitting and music talk if you stick around.  Speaking of music, I'll try to have every post that isn't a QoTD or Vox Hunt have a title that comes from some song lyrics (feel free to identify the post titles).

Video:  Show us the first video that appears when you search your name on YouTube.