listen to better music

my older laptop yesterday, and even on wireless the streaming was fairly smooth, so I guess there’s no rush to start investing money in it. Sure I’d like slightly better quality sound that’s ads-free, but until I get a job, I won’t reactivate my subscription. At least I’m not stuck listening to “Pop FM” anymore!

my older laptop yesterday, and even on wireless the streaming was fairly smooth, so I guess there’s no rush to start investing money in it. Sure I’d like slightly better quality music and ads-free, but until I get a job, I won’t reactivate my subscription. At least I’m not stuck listening to “Pop FM” anymore!

I found a bunch of my old CDs… forgot I had some of these. I definitely need to put a few of these in my car – some good driving music!

Wish I could put some of it on my iPod, but lots of it is from illegal(?) downloads – you know, back in the days when that was relatively acceptable, like 6 years ago.

on the radio. Vancouver has 2 million people, you’d think there’d be a better variety of music than 6 different rock radio stations.

I haven’t been following my own musical interests for the past couple years – since I moved back here, and I kind of “forgot” how annoying and tiresome popular music gets.

So, I need to set up my older laptop as a music centre. First I have to make a space for it, take it off wireless internet (wireless sometimes messes up streaming), get some decent speakers, and reactivate my Live365 subscription.

I’d also like to get some better music on my iPod, but that costs money. I’ve started a little, but need a lot more new music. The problem is, I don’t even really know how to describe/ what to call the type of music that I like.

Oh yeah, I’ll eventually also need to get something to connect my iPod to my car stereo.

alright, suggestons here, so let’s just say for the sake of argument that I like bands like:
Underworld
Orbital
Amish Rake Fight
Micronaut
Fluke
Chemical Brothers
Crystal Method
Monstrum Sepsis
Fatboy Slim

what’s next?

And no, for some reason, as a whole Prodigy doesn’t do much for me.

but I feel like I’m connecting more and more with the bands that I do listen to and am weeding out the cheesey and ridiculous in the process.

the thing about listening to music is that you want to avoid being a snob, while at the same time giving every artist a fair chance.

also, everyone has their own idea about what “better music” is.

usually you can frequent music stores and ask clerks for the music they like.

i also avoid the radio.

When I’d have music on in my room, I might start off by listening to something socially acceptable, but it would invariably skip to Clay Aiken or JC Chasez’s “All Day I Dream About Sex,” where he mostly just screams that title over and over. So I picked an artist I knew I liked and listened to his similar artist station on http://last.fm and that introduced me to a lot of different stuff. I bought two new CDs last week because of it. I do my best to listen to the rock/alternative station when I’m in the car. I deleted over 150 songs I’m not that excited about last night. I intend to be much less embarrassed from now on.

Lately I’ve been listening to more and more Top 40 and crappy myspace bands. I know what good music is, I just need to listen to it more.

I know, I know. It’s cliche. But the radio sucks. I more or less stopped listening to it when I got my iPod. (Except for NPR, which is awesome. Obviously.)

So I started listening to my mp3s, most of which are legal, some of which are illegal downloads from back in the day. (And by back in the day, I’m referring to sixth grade when Napster was free and I genuinely thought Eminem was a musical prophet. Ah, how times change.) And then I realized that there was sucky music on my iPod! Imagine my surprise.

So when I tagged everything perfectly, I deleted all the crap. My litmus test was basically, “Does the artist have something to say?” In the case of…say, Brittany Spears, the answer was definitely no. With other artists, I had to ask a follow up question: “Is this a message I agree with?” Maybe I’m overthinking things, but once I realized the overall lyrical theme of 99 Problems, “Because it sounds good,” wasn’t really a good enough answer to the question, “Why am I listening to this?”

Now I’m at a point where I’m a little…stagnant. I’ve started hearing some new bands from NPR’s Open Mic podcast, but other than that, I’ve pretty much been listening to my old stuff.

I’m really picky now. I need good lyrics in addition to good sound. It makes it harder to find new stuff to listen to, but at the same time, I’m not listening to pablum anymore. It’s a mixed blessing.