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ExecuDork
Feb 25, 2007

We might be fucked, sir.
Fallen Rib
I am running a project/gift for my nephew. Every week, ideally on a Wednesday, I buy one music album. He turns 9 today, and I've been accumulating music for him for a year, with the overall goal of giving him more than 500 albums over 10 years, from his 8th birthday to his 18th. For the first two years, I'm just accumulating these albums in a sub-folder on my harddrive, and I'll give him the 100+ albums on an MP3 player for his 10th birthday, then give him one album per week for the next 8 years, plus whatever more-special presents I can think of on his actual birthdays.

This is an excuse for me to do a couple of things I've been meaning to do, either more seriously or more regularly or just at all, as well as being what I think is a pretty good present for him. I'm not going to talk about my nephew much at all here, I fully acknowledge that this is 99% about me, not him, and anyways goons ruin everything and I can't trust any of you. So all you know is his age, and that his uncle is a lunatic who clings to obsolete technology and ideas.

I'm a goddam magpie, grabbing every shiny bottlecap, bit of foil, and plastic bauble I see, but I do want to use this project to explore music more broadly than my usual "I like this stuff / I don't like this stuff" reaction to tunes I hear.

If this buying-music project is not a good fit for NMD then I'm happy for a mod to kill it or move it and appropriately reprimand me.

******************************
I'll post the details of each album I buy, generally on a Wednesday (I'm in Australia, so it might be Tuesdays for many of you), a link to the album itself if it's online in its entirety somewhere (such as a Bandcamp page), and video of one song if I can without violating copyright or otherwise being dumb.

Because I waited a year before posting this thread, I'll post two each week for the next year. I reserve the right to post a bunch of weeks' worth in quick succession to cover for times I might be away and not able to update on schedule.

Why post this? Because I want to talk about all things music, especially the weird and counter-intuitive experiences I've had buying music - it's often surprisingly difficult to accomplish take-my-money with some musicians. And this is a chance for everyone to pile on and tell me I should just buy him a Spotify subscription and go back to playing video games.

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ExecuDork
Feb 25, 2007

We might be fucked, sir.
Fallen Rib
001 Arrogant Worms Discography 200304
I started this project with a big pile of comedy albums - because every pre-teen needs some funny music to yell at his friends/teachers/family at inappropriate times.

The complete collection, to early 2020, of Canadian comedy band The Arrogant Worms. Here's their bandcamp page: https://arrogantworms1.bandcamp.com/. That's 166 songs on 18 albums, but there a bunch of duplicates, live versions, and other overlap.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IehQRVylI0U
My favourite of their songs, The Last Saskatchewan Pirate.

A live show of the Worms was one of the first "real" dates my now-wife and I went on, a few days before my nephew was born, so of course I had to kick this off with them.

ExecuDork
Feb 25, 2007

We might be fucked, sir.
Fallen Rib
Digression: Bandcamp.

I really like Bandcamp, you should get yourself an account there if you haven't already. I'll leave it to others to describe Bandcamp in detail, reveal its secrets, discuss its scandals, etc., but I quite like it.

I try to overpay for music, and bandcamp makes that easy. I usually add 1 of whatever currency a given album is being sold in to the price I pay, so $11 for a $10 album, or £5 for a £4 album (I haven't yet found any albums for sale in currencies that trade at dozens or hundreds to the US dollar). For free albums, I usually pay about $5. And I buy several albums at once on Bandcamp Fridays, when Bandcamp.com forgoes their usual cut and 100% of the money goes to the artists.

ExecuDork
Feb 25, 2007

We might be fucked, sir.
Fallen Rib
002 Radiohead - In Rainbows (2 Disk set) 200311
An article in The Economist, of all places, let me know that this 2-disk album from 2007 was the first pay-what-you-want, digital-only (at first) release from a major band, a band that was well established and had already sold millions of albums.
https://www.radiohead.com/library/#ir/in-rainbows
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bahTUVLXZw

Before I started this project I thought about what I wanted to achieve, and I already knew that a large amount of music was not available for purchase as digital downloads. This is obviously ridiculous in 2020, yet here we are.

ExecuDork fucked around with this message at 00:25 on Mar 5, 2021

ExecuDork
Feb 25, 2007

We might be fucked, sir.
Fallen Rib
003 Arctic Monkeys - AM 200318
I'd been meaning to listen to Arctic Monkeys and I ordered a couple of CDs from Amazon when I could not find another, more direct way to buy their music. Again, my naive assumption had been that the overwhelming majority of music I buy for this project would be in the form of direct downloads of MP3 files. Fortunately, I have a USB-CD-ROM drive for these occassions. It also came from Amazon; it works fine on my Windows 10 laptop but refuses to play nice with my wife's Macbook. Not that we have many CDs or DVDs, but I do use it a few times a year because of this project.
https://ukstore.arcticmonkeys.com/collections/albums/products/am?variant=17144180867190
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpOSxM0rNPM

This album, and the next one, were the seed that got me thinking more about what I'm trying to accomplish here. I chose Amazon because I have Prime and the shipping price (UK -> Australia) from the band's website was enough that I went with Mr. Bezos' Big Faceless Corporation. I've since bought a few more albums from Amazon, but now I try to keep the money closer to the artist whenever possible, and I'll pay a premium to support my "money goes to artist" ideology. Within limits, of course.

Also, this purchase was a big success for me - I really like these songs. I came up with a kind of rule: buy once from a given band or musician in each year. I don't want this project to just fall into some kind of completion-ism that I know I'm prone to, and keep the focus as broad (and unfocused) as possible.

ExecuDork
Feb 25, 2007

We might be fucked, sir.
Fallen Rib
004 Tame Impala - Currents 200325
I bought Lonerism a few years ago when I briefly lived in Tasmania as a souvenir of my 4 months in Australia. I'm living in the land of Aus again, and my nephew is in Canada, so I've got a kind of secondary goal of providing lots of Australian music that he might not otherwise get to hear.
https://official.tameimpala.com/collections/merch/products/currents-vinyl-lp?variant=40940155982
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFptt7Cargc

Album micro-review: surprisingly different from the previous album, this is more like dance music I'd expect to hear in a club, while Lonerism felt less like music mainly for (drug-assisted) dancing. Still, I like it.

ExecuDork
Feb 25, 2007

We might be fucked, sir.
Fallen Rib
005 Weird Al Yankovic - The Essential "Weird Al" Yankovic 200401
For April Fool's day, a Weird Al greatest hits seemed appropriate. I bought this on Amazon and it was backordered for a couple of months but I backfilled my calendar to line this up. I'm keeping with a kind of Wednesday-based pattern, choosing music that somehow, in my mind, fits whatever special day happens to fall on a Wednesday.
https://www.weirdal.com/catalog/the-essential-weird-al-yankovic/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMhwddNQSWQ
It's hard to choose just one Weird Al song to represent this 2-disk compilation album. But in honour of SomethingAwful.com's subtitle, "The Internet Makes You Stupid" - which is objectively true - I'll go with Dare to be Stupid.
EDIT 210820 - I was browsing my own thread and noticed the Video Unavailable thing. It links directly to the video on Mr. Yankovic's VEVO page, so it's legit. I guess he just doesn't want us watching his vids outside of Youtube. Oh well.

Some holidays never happen on Wednesdays - think of all those "first Friday..." or "Monday following..." holidays. But most special days are tied to a numbered day of a specific month and over a 10-year span most of those holidays will fall on a Wednesday at least once. In 2020, 1 April was the first notable Wednesday after my nephew's birthday in early March. I find 'special' Wednesdays by simply browsing forward in Google Calendar on my phone - somehow I ended up with it set to show me holidays for Australia, Canada, the USA, and most states and provinces (at least in Australia and Canada) as well as major religious holidays (leaning heavily Christian). The next notable Wednesday in 2020 is not until Rememberance Day, 11 November, but (spoiler alert) I failed to notice the only "holiday" I've yet found that always happens on a Wednesday. Stay tuned for April 2021 for that one.

ExecuDork fucked around with this message at 08:59 on Sep 25, 2021

ExecuDork
Feb 25, 2007

We might be fucked, sir.
Fallen Rib
006 Various Artists - Fire Fight Australia 200408
I saw this CD on the tables at the entrance to the anarchonistic music store in the local shopping mall. I've since discovered this chain, Sanity, continues to operate shops selling CDs, DVDs, and board games (plus various celebrity-related accessories) into the third decade of the 21st century. Somehow. Walking into that store felt like I'd stepped back 30 years to the music store chains of my junior-high-school days, like HMV or A&B Sound, though at a much smaller scale. Sanity occupies a single small retail bay in this modest-sized mall, flanked by jewelry stores, asian grocers, shuttered-by-COVID restaurants, and a big anchor department store at the far end of the hallway (in this mall, KMart - which is a whole 'nother timewarp for me, a Canadian who last saw the KMart logo in Canada around the time I was going into that HMV).
It's the recording from a big benefit concert to raise money for recovering from the devastating wildfires Australia suffered in late 2019.
https://firefightaustralia.com/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RJSbO8UZVY
I picked 5 Seconds of Summer as the representative of this compilation album from a live concert because the sing-along version is incomprehensible. I'm listening to this youtube video while I write this so I can figure out what the hell they're saying. At the concert, 5SoS (as they are apparently called) was so popular and well-known that they let the audience do most of the singing. I'd never heard the song before, nor heard of the band, so the wall of noise completing half-screamed sentences from the singers was just a roar to me.

The rest of the album suffers from similar problems, generally to a lesser extent. Some songs are inherently sing-alongs, I've been to plenty of concerts and had a transcendent time when the band rolls out their big, everybody-claps-and-chants-and-belts-out-the-chorus-together song (every good band has at least one of these). Other songs, because of structure or lyrics or the emotions the song is built around, don't really work as a sing along. Tina Arena's Chains, for example, is a song that I kinda like, and it's on this album (I'd never heard it before, this album helped me find some interesting artists. Which is a big part of why I bought it). But when Tina exhorts the audience to join in and really sing out their feelings about the fires, it just doesn't fit. "C'mon! Everyone! IIIIIIIII'M IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIN CHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAINNNNSSS!!!!!!"

EDIT: Oh hey! See for yourself and decide if Chains works as an audience sing-along for celebrating community resilience in the face of natural disasters. 18 minute Youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnorHYUTRRE

ExecuDork fucked around with this message at 05:14 on Mar 24, 2021

ExecuDork
Feb 25, 2007

We might be fucked, sir.
Fallen Rib
007 Jet - Get Born (Live) 200415
Another Amazon purchase. This live album was a bit disappointing to me, because I'm not familiar enough with Jet's music to get the songs when the singer is playing around with the audience. But it did lead to an idea for this project overall: to include studio versions as well as live versions of many songs, to allow comparisons that should modify my opinion that live recordings are almost always inferior to polished studio versions. I've seen plenty of discussion about this, with most opinions seeming to decry the over-produced studio versions while simultaneously ignoring the importance of the non-band-members mentioned in the liner notes of every album.
https://www.jetofficial.com/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBy2Nu97cqo

I'm not sure if this video is from the same concert that any of these songs came from, but the way the audience does most of the singing is at least consistent with the track on the album.
This also continues my efforts to increase the Australian content of my music collection. And most of these songs were recorded at Jet concerts in Australia.

ExecuDork
Feb 25, 2007

We might be fucked, sir.
Fallen Rib
008 Special Request - Offworld 200422
My first wander through Bandcamp turned up this when I started browsing electronica, a music genre that I have little history with. I'm a bit of a space nerd, and this album's theme (as least as far as titles go) appealed to me.
https://special-request.bandcamp.com/album/offworld
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLv61b8D8Hs

I'd never heard of Special Request before I stumbled across this on Bandcamp, but he (I think it's just one person) has been consistently putting out tracks for years. I've never spent any time in British or European dance clubs so I have no real experience of this kind of music. Perhaps my nephew will turn into a raver, and it will all be my fault. Or something.

Cobra Commander
Jan 18, 2011



Wheres the Bolt Thrower????

Also, get him Dopesmoker sooner rather than later.

ExecuDork
Feb 25, 2007

We might be fucked, sir.
Fallen Rib

Cobra Commander posted:

Wheres the Bolt Thrower????

Also, get him Dopesmoker sooner rather than later.

Both are very interesting, thanks! Any particular albums / tracks you'd especially recommend from Bolt Thrower?

I like that Dopesmoker is apparently an hour-long song that took years to write.

ExecuDork
Feb 25, 2007

We might be fucked, sir.
Fallen Rib
009 - The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets - The Dukes of Alhazred 200429
The "Lovecraftian Rock" band The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets has been on my want list for more than 10 years, I finally got around to buying one of their albums. The lead singer, Toren Atkinson, was one of the three hosts of the now-defunct podcast, Caustic Soda. Everybody needs a little Chthulu mythos in their ears from time to time.

https://thedarkestofthehillsidethickets.bandcamp.com/album/the-dukes-of-alhazred
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQfMXmvPNYA
This is probably my favourite song from the album.

ExecuDork
Feb 25, 2007

We might be fucked, sir.
Fallen Rib
010 Corridor - Le Voyage Éternel 200506
Another from Bandcamp, this time looking for French-language music. My nephew lives in a part of Canada with a strong but quite small minority of French-speakers, tracing their ancestry to the voyageurs, the French explorers and traders who famously travelled long distances with heavy cargoes of furs from the interior of Canada a few hundred years ago. Corridor popped up when I was browsing for a Bandcamp Friday special, and they're from Montreal, the point of departure for many voyageurs.

https://corridormtl.bandcamp.com/album/le-voyage-ternel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlO_XhHLTCw

incoherent
Apr 24, 2004

01010100011010000111001
00110100101101100011011
000110010101110010
Powerful uncle posting itt. Bless u op.

Cobra Commander
Jan 18, 2011



ExecuDork posted:

Both are very interesting, thanks! Any particular albums / tracks you'd especially recommend from Bolt Thrower?

I like that Dopesmoker is apparently an hour-long song that took years to write.

Depending on who you ask, Bolt Thrower got better with each album or stayed consistent through their entire career. They are goon favorite death metal band for good reason. Those Once Loyal is their final album and it's their most accessible but still retains exactly what you want from Bolt Thrower. If I were a kid and got to listen to Bolt Thrower earlier than when I actually found them, I would have said this is the coolest album ever. You could basically pick any BT track and get a great idea of what the band is and what their aesthetic and sound are.

Also, the vocalist does not support Nazi bands!

ExecuDork
Feb 25, 2007

We might be fucked, sir.
Fallen Rib

Cobra Commander posted:

Depending on who you ask, Bolt Thrower got better with each album or stayed consistent through their entire career. They are goon favorite death metal band for good reason. Those Once Loyal is their final album and it's their most accessible but still retains exactly what you want from Bolt Thrower. If I were a kid and got to listen to Bolt Thrower earlier than when I actually found them, I would have said this is the coolest album ever. You could basically pick any BT track and get a great idea of what the band is and what their aesthetic and sound are.

Also, the vocalist does not support Nazi bands!

Excellent, thank you! I found a long guide to Bolt Thrower at The Quietus (never heard of them before, looks interesting): https://thequietus.com/articles/29400-bolt-thrower
Seems the CD for Those Once Loyal is available from a few different sellers, but nothing seems to be available through Bolt Thower's actual website. Oh well. They do have a Bandcamp page, but that album isn't on there. Looks like I need to spend some time listening and thinking - great!

incoherent posted:

Powerful uncle posting itt. Bless u op.

Thank you!

EDIT: seems Bandcamp does have Those Once Loyal, and I won't have to ponder the "Best of" album.

ExecuDork fucked around with this message at 04:23 on Apr 8, 2021

ExecuDork
Feb 25, 2007

We might be fucked, sir.
Fallen Rib
011 Kraftwerk - Trans Europa Express 200513
With this album, I started a minor tradition for myself relating to recently-deceased artists. I'd heard of Kraftwerk before, as a kind of pseudo-legendary progenitor of all things electronica, but it wasn't until I read an obituary of Florian Schneider that I decided to actually listen to them. This is, by the descriptions I read, their most influential album, and I managed to find the German-language version.

http://www.kraftwerk.com/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMVokT5e0zs

ExecuDork
Feb 25, 2007

We might be fucked, sir.
Fallen Rib
012 Clutch - From Beale Street to Oblivion 200520
I discovered Clutch a few years ago, and I already had their self-titled album. I installed Shazam on my phone out of boredom, and the first song I used it to identify was Electric Worry. I had thought I was at a bar, but this was during COVID lockdown so that couldn't be it. My notes tell me I was watching a trailer video for Farm Simulator 19.

http://pro-rock.com/index.cfm?page=discography&categoryid=1&view=album&albumid=75 The band's website is, it seems, just their Facebook page. But they're flogging their stuff through pro-rock.com, perhaps because "clutch.com" wasn't available?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4ABpbxIPFI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKWR8B0LlhI

I really like Clutch, they're my go-to for "get poo poo done", like cleaning the house, working on the car, or some stupid repetitive task. But my wife really doesn't like the singer's voice when he dips into his growly vocalising. Clutch is one band, I've met others, that mix melodic singing with other vocal forms. I've never played the Slipknot album I have (All Hope is Gone) in my wife's presence. But this isn't Slipknot so I don't need to go into that here.

Nam Taf
Jun 25, 2005

I am Fat Man, hear me roar!

This thread could easily just become a PYF albums for each poster.
However, I'm going to try to pick the albums that most influenced me throughout my teen and 20s years. I don't believe they are necessarily appropriate for the initial mp3 drop, but I think that at some point they should at least have the chance to shape someone's musical taste. I also don't believe they're necessarily the artistically best productions of the respective bands, but I think they're the best example of 'if you have to listen to one album to get this band, this is it'.

1) A Perfect Circle - Mer De Noms, or 13th Step. You can't go wrong with either, and I think they are spectacular hard rock albums

2) Sigur Ros - Takk... - This is the IMO the most accessable of their albums, but I think it's a pretty good taster of the style of post-rock you get out of there.

3) Oceanlab - Sirens of the Sea - It's never going to be everyone's favourite dance album, but I think it's probably the most concentrated example of good uplifting, vocal trance.

4) Devin Townsend (Project/Band) - Synchrestra, Addicted, Epicloud - Any of these 3 albums I think best encapsulates his more progressive side. Addicted is probably the most accessable, but I got in on Synchestra within the context of liking a lot of opther metal

5) Strapping Young Lad - City - Alien might be more popular, and I bounced off this album about 50 times, but once I 'got' it I understood what extreme metal was. It's a barely-shackled bipolar manic episode in album form and once you start peeling back the layers it has so much to offer.

6) Aqua - Aquarium - It's europop at its greatest. It's unashamedly cheesy, fun and uplifting.

7) The Prodigy - Fat of the Land - Jilted is better, but this is way more accessable. It's the purest encapsulation of what they're about.

8) John Farnham - Whispering Jack - Aussie pop's best production. You don't need me to say more, you already get this.

9) Simon & Garfunkel - The Essential Simon and Garfunkel - you could go multiple of their albums, but I think none in particular stands out beyond a best-of and you're missing out on a true encapsulation of their genuis without that broad exposure.

10) The Beach Boys - Pet Sounds - I refuse to write words here

11) Rammstein - Reise Rise, or Mutter - I feel there should be more non-English albums here, as I've only listed 2, but I'll leave that up to someone else

12) Lady Gaga - The Fame Monster - album is good and quintessential 2010ish, suck it haters

13) Nine Inch Nails - Downward Spiral - The Fragile is probably better artistically, but TDS is more focused and a better example of what they do

14) Hilltop Hoods - The Hard Road - they're held up there for a reason. Aussie hiphop might be better elsewhere, but this is certainly its leading example

15) Oasis - What's the Story (Morning Glory) - Britpop 101

Off the top of my head, I think those albums have gone a long way to shaping my musical taste for a variety of reasons. In some cases, they're environmental - it was the right album at the right time when I was in the right place. However, I think they're genuinely good examples of what they represent, even if I don't listen to them

ExecuDork
Feb 25, 2007

We might be fucked, sir.
Fallen Rib

Nam Taf posted:

However, I'm going to try to pick the albums that most influenced me throughout my teen and 20s years. I don't believe they are necessarily appropriate for the initial mp3 drop, but I think that at some point they should at least have the chance to shape someone's musical taste. I also don't believe they're necessarily the artistically best productions of the respective bands, but I think they're the best example of 'if you have to listen to one album to get this band, this is it'.

Excellent suggestions

Off the top of my head, I think those albums have gone a long way to shaping my musical taste for a variety of reasons. In some cases, they're environmental - it was the right album at the right time when I was in the right place. However, I think they're genuinely good examples of what they represent, even if I don't listen to them

These are great ideas. I've got at least two goals with this project, beyond simply providing my nephew with an extensive and impressive music collection he can show off when he's 18 or 19 or whatever. First, I'm using this as a motivator to get me exploring beyond my ossified tastes. What other people imprinted on in their teens and 20s is absolutely ideal, I know I missed a ton of great stuff simply because it's not what was playing at my friends' houses when I was that old. Second, I want to avoid simply piling all of my want-list from that age onto my nephew. He was born in 2012, I was born in 1978. I don't want this to feel like what "classic rock" radio was to me when I was in high school - a boomer stranglehold on musical tastes that excluded nearly all music from the 80s and 90s as worthless "pop" as opposed to proper "Rock & Roll". I was remarkably sheltered and naive when I was 16, I know.

I particularly like the suggestion for more non-English music, this is also a big gap for me. I'm just gonna copy-paste your entire list into my rambling Word document where I keep track of ideas and purchases and so forth for this project. And I need to carve out a separate section for stuff to get in a few years, when he's old enough to appreciate it (maybe - it's also possible that he'll hate most of what I supply and I'm looking forward to his suggestions and requests).

One of my favourite aspects of this project are the stories that come up behind the music. I'm finding little stories in my own efforts to buy music (I'm in the middle of an amusing (to me) micro-project around Jamiroquai's Travelling Without Moving, which will hopefully appear in the later part of 2021 or early 2022). Plus how I'm discovering some of the interesting background, like the way band members move between groups and sometimes form "supergroups" (e.g. Queens of the Stone Age), or strike off on their own individual projects (e.g. various things Gord Downie did in between fronting The Tragically Hip).

Nam Taf posted:

This thread could easily just become a PYF albums for each poster. .

I would be very happy if this happened! Everyone :justpost: Seriously, the end-goal for this project is 600 albums, there's room for nearly anything here.

Good Soldier Svejk
Jul 5, 2010

I'm going to limit myself to an essential 5 albums and see where that ends up and then give you some of the non-english recs as a freeform.

1. Outside - David Bowie: Perfect concept album. Just weird and beautiful. A fever dream of music and lyrics.
The Fragile - Nine Inch Nails: The first album I ever bought. I was way too young for it, like probably 8 or 9 even, but my mom let me get it and I loved it. Listened to it until the second disk exploded in my walkman. It is arguably the most ambition album Reznor ever made. Each song is so goddamned dense with sound that even two decades later I'm still hearing new things in it.
Stop Making Sense - Talking Heads: I hope it's not cheating to pick a live album but a lot of these are the best versions of the best songs the band made so how can you not?
Deltron 3030 - Deltron 3030: I don't know much about hip-hop but I do not without Deltron there'd be no Gorillaz, and Deltron is without contest the better album than the self-titled Gorillaz release. Essential listening sci-fi fantasy concept rap album.
The Complete Collection - Mississippi John Hurt: I was trying to avoid compilations but due to the nature of his weird releases throughout his lifetime, this is probably easier to find. I love blues and folk and no one does it better than John Hurt did. He is absolutely 100% essential.


Non-english recommendations:
We Ate the Machine - Polysics: Japanese power punk new wave. Really any Polysics album will do, this is just a personal favorite. They're all so energetic and frenetic and awesome, you can't go wrong. Heavily influenced by Devo.
Woman Worldwide - Justice: French house glam rock.
Akira Soundtrack - Geinoh Yamashirogumi: Even if you've never seen the film, the soundtrack is something entirely its own. A mix of world music, percussion, and experimental design.
Tetsuo the Iron Man Soundtrack - Chu Ishikawa: More than Nine Inch Nails, Chu Ishikawa defines the industrial sound. His percussion and synth mixture is gorgeous, unlike anything else you will ever hear.

BigFactory
Sep 17, 2002
Would a smaller quantity of physical media be a cooler present? With some of these albums there’s not a big difference between “owning” the digital files and getting handed a piece of paper that says “stream this album”. Some of the ones you chose are probably not on most streaming services, so I understand that’s a little different.

ExecuDork
Feb 25, 2007

We might be fucked, sir.
Fallen Rib

Good Soldier Svejk posted:

I'm going to limit myself to an essential 5 albums and see where that ends up and then give you some of the non-english recs as a freeform.

This is fantastic, thank you! Top-5 albums, First-purchased/memorable birthday present, I-can't-stop-coming-back-to-this, all great ideas. I've copied your entire list into my tracking / thinking document.

Good Soldier Svejk posted:

Stop Making Sense - Talking Heads: I hope it's not cheating to pick a live album but a lot of these are the best versions of the best songs the band made so how can you not?

There's no cheating here, the rules are self-imposed guidelines and I routinely find ways to break my own rules. They don't apply at all to anyone else. I'm trying to wrap my head around the whole concept of live and studio versions of music, and the Talking Heads are yet another band I really want to include but I don't know where to start. That's what the Where do I start with ___ ? thread comes in, which you have handily avoided the need for in the case of the Talking Heads - cheers! I have to keep restraining myself, I keep going on minor binges and buying a month or two worth of music in a single afternoon. I've got a decade, there'll be time for certain things later. But talking about them now is perfect. Often, it comes down to whim when I'm actually clicking "buy" (or, rarely, physically picking up a CD from a rack in a store. Time has no meaning, everything is happening at once, the universe is fathomless mystery).

BigFactory posted:

Would a smaller quantity of physical media be a cooler present? With some of these albums there’s not a big difference between “owning” the digital files and getting handed a piece of paper that says “stream this album”. Some of the ones you chose are probably not on most streaming services, so I understand that’s a little different.
It would be a different present, and yes, possibly cooler. Part of my inspiration is remembering how impressed I was in first year at university, age 19, and a new friend had been collecting CDs pretty seriously since his early teens. He had 500 CDs in his student-basement apartment, and a pretty awesome (to me) stereo to blast them on (we were 19 or 20 years old, there's no such thing as quiet). I'd like to imagine my nephew pulling out some obscure track or album to impress his new friends (or his old friends) when he's about that age. Maybe that's vain of me. I feel like the technological advancements since that evening in 1997, looking at the sheer mass of shiny plastic piled up on the floor, means I can give him that amount of music without also giving him the dozen moving boxes needed to carry it around.

Having said that, a considerable fraction of what I'm getting, probably 40% or so, is in the form of physical media. I cannot buy some music in pure electronic format, it is only available pressed onto foil encased in plastic (CD) or vinyl. I haven't bought any vinyl yet, I don't have the necessary hardware to play it (obviously, I could get a turntable pretty easily), and the appeal of vinyl seems largely based on factors beyond this project, like the purported sound quality that wouldn't survive the digitisation-and-global-sending needed for music to get from me to him. I could send the physical media, and I might do that with the CDs at some point. And as he gets older his own opinions will become more and more important, and maybe he'll decide to dive into vinyl.

The actual process of buying music is a major part of this project. A friend, who has a 13-year-old son, told me to just get a Spotify account for my nephew because that's what he'll really want anyways. But I like the idea of owning music, rather than listening to it once and then maybe forgetting it completely. I'm planning to put together a few playlists as I go, but that's just a way to re-arrange the music that I've already purchased. A streaming list, as you suggest, is basically a playlist but for music he might never hear again.

And I want to continue discussing these ideas. There are advantages to streaming services, new and old music gets added to those services regularly, and there are professional music critics out there with some well-developed ideas about the experience of enjoying music.

BigFactory
Sep 17, 2002

ExecuDork posted:

This is fantastic, thank you! Top-5 albums, First-purchased/memorable birthday present, I-can't-stop-coming-back-to-this, all great ideas. I've copied your entire list into my tracking / thinking document.


There's no cheating here, the rules are self-imposed guidelines and I routinely find ways to break my own rules. They don't apply at all to anyone else. I'm trying to wrap my head around the whole concept of live and studio versions of music, and the Talking Heads are yet another band I really want to include but I don't know where to start. That's what the Where do I start with ___ ? thread comes in, which you have handily avoided the need for in the case of the Talking Heads - cheers! I have to keep restraining myself, I keep going on minor binges and buying a month or two worth of music in a single afternoon. I've got a decade, there'll be time for certain things later. But talking about them now is perfect. Often, it comes down to whim when I'm actually clicking "buy" (or, rarely, physically picking up a CD from a rack in a store. Time has no meaning, everything is happening at once, the universe is fathomless mystery).

It would be a different present, and yes, possibly cooler. Part of my inspiration is remembering how impressed I was in first year at university, age 19, and a new friend had been collecting CDs pretty seriously since his early teens. He had 500 CDs in his student-basement apartment, and a pretty awesome (to me) stereo to blast them on (we were 19 or 20 years old, there's no such thing as quiet). I'd like to imagine my nephew pulling out some obscure track or album to impress his new friends (or his old friends) when he's about that age. Maybe that's vain of me. I feel like the technological advancements since that evening in 1997, looking at the sheer mass of shiny plastic piled up on the floor, means I can give him that amount of music without also giving him the dozen moving boxes needed to carry it around.

Having said that, a considerable fraction of what I'm getting, probably 40% or so, is in the form of physical media. I cannot buy some music in pure electronic format, it is only available pressed onto foil encased in plastic (CD) or vinyl. I haven't bought any vinyl yet, I don't have the necessary hardware to play it (obviously, I could get a turntable pretty easily), and the appeal of vinyl seems largely based on factors beyond this project, like the purported sound quality that wouldn't survive the digitisation-and-global-sending needed for music to get from me to him. I could send the physical media, and I might do that with the CDs at some point. And as he gets older his own opinions will become more and more important, and maybe he'll decide to dive into vinyl.

The actual process of buying music is a major part of this project. A friend, who has a 13-year-old son, told me to just get a Spotify account for my nephew because that's what he'll really want anyways. But I like the idea of owning music, rather than listening to it once and then maybe forgetting it completely. I'm planning to put together a few playlists as I go, but that's just a way to re-arrange the music that I've already purchased. A streaming list, as you suggest, is basically a playlist but for music he might never hear again.

And I want to continue discussing these ideas. There are advantages to streaming services, new and old music gets added to those services regularly, and there are professional music critics out there with some well-developed ideas about the experience of enjoying music.

I don’t know if it matters or not, but the way you hooked up external media drives to a computer 20 years ago was pretty different, if I remember, than how it is today, and while I don’t see USB going anywhere any time soon, I didn’t think FireWire was going anywhere at the time either, and I liked Zip drives a lot.

On the other hand, the way you hook up a CD player to a stereo hasn’t changed since 1980, a turntable longer than that.

ExecuDork
Feb 25, 2007

We might be fucked, sir.
Fallen Rib

BigFactory posted:

I don’t know if it matters or not, but the way you hooked up external media drives to a computer 20 years ago was pretty different, if I remember, than how it is today, and while I don’t see USB going anywhere any time soon, I didn’t think FireWire was going anywhere at the time either, and I liked Zip drives a lot.

On the other hand, the way you hook up a CD player to a stereo hasn’t changed since 1980, a turntable longer than that.

My plan - subject to change, like all plans - is to send my nephew a collection of MP3 files after the initial 2-year album drop (which includes a way for him to listen to this music. More discussion on that later). I'm assuming the MP3 format will be still widely useable in 10 years, but I agree with you that this is by no means guaranteed. How those files get onto the music-playing hardware is an open question, but currently my sister-in-law has a laptop computer and a decent internet connection at home, so if I wanted to send an album of MP3 files today he could listen to it, at least, on her laptop's (presumably not great) speakers.

When I buy music on Bandcamp, I use an account I set up for him; I have my own account that I use for stuff for me but not for him (not much of that, recently, but it means I can follow artists without worrying about age-appropriate concerns). I'll transfer this account to him at some point, and all of that music will be effectively on the cloud, accessible to any internet-connected music-capable device he might have. I'll put everything else into some kind of cloud storage, too, and make sure he'll be able to access it. My main motivation for this, besides it being inherent in Bandcamp's business model, is to provide a theft- and loss-proof storage for his music. Losing a MP3 player or phone or headphones will almost certainly happen at some point, and I'm sure he'll be unhappy about that loss. But his music will remain, as soon as he has the necessary hardware again.

****
You raise a very interesting idea, though. Imagine a gift for someone you know (I'm talking to the whole thread here, not any one poster in particular), a gift different from this one I'm giving my nephew, a gift of physical media and the hardware to play it.

Which era of home stereo would you invoke? The 90's, with a silver or black CD, Cassette, AM/FM Radio integrated unit with oddly-shaped speakers, detachable from the main body, with a pile of CDs in bright jewel cases? The 80's, with a boombox (and a stack of D-cell batteries so the boombox can be carried around on a shoulder), and a suitcase full of cassettes? Or earlier (pick your styles), built around a turntable and a milk crate stuffed with vinyl? Something else? What albums would you include?

BigFactory
Sep 17, 2002

ExecuDork posted:

My plan - subject to change, like all plans - is to send my nephew a collection of MP3 files after the initial 2-year album drop (which includes a way for him to listen to this music. More discussion on that later). I'm assuming the MP3 format will be still widely useable in 10 years, but I agree with you that this is by no means guaranteed. How those files get onto the music-playing hardware is an open question, but currently my sister-in-law has a laptop computer and a decent internet connection at home, so if I wanted to send an album of MP3 files today he could listen to it, at least, on her laptop's (presumably not great) speakers.

When I buy music on Bandcamp, I use an account I set up for him; I have my own account that I use for stuff for me but not for him (not much of that, recently, but it means I can follow artists without worrying about age-appropriate concerns). I'll transfer this account to him at some point, and all of that music will be effectively on the cloud, accessible to any internet-connected music-capable device he might have. I'll put everything else into some kind of cloud storage, too, and make sure he'll be able to access it. My main motivation for this, besides it being inherent in Bandcamp's business model, is to provide a theft- and loss-proof storage for his music. Losing a MP3 player or phone or headphones will almost certainly happen at some point, and I'm sure he'll be unhappy about that loss. But his music will remain, as soon as he has the necessary hardware again.

****
You raise a very interesting idea, though. Imagine a gift for someone you know (I'm talking to the whole thread here, not any one poster in particular), a gift different from this one I'm giving my nephew, a gift of physical media and the hardware to play it.

Which era of home stereo would you invoke? The 90's, with a silver or black CD, Cassette, AM/FM Radio integrated unit with oddly-shaped speakers, detachable from the main body, with a pile of CDs in bright jewel cases? The 80's, with a boombox (and a stack of D-cell batteries so the boombox can be carried around on a shoulder), and a suitcase full of cassettes? Or earlier (pick your styles), built around a turntable and a milk crate stuffed with vinyl? Something else? What albums would you include?

I would rely on bandcamp as loss proof storage least of all. They’re probably not going bankrupt anytime soon, and if they do you’ll probably get plenty of notice, but anything could happen.

I don’t think mp3s are going to be obsolete in 10 or even 18 years, but any kind of storage device you put them on now probably will be. If you’re giving him the files in smaller chunks it solves that problem.

ExecuDork
Feb 25, 2007

We might be fucked, sir.
Fallen Rib
013 The Rolling Stones - The Very Best of The Rolling Stones 1964-1971 200527
The first of my "he'll need a solid foundation of everybody-knows-these-song" purchases. Satisfaction, Paint it Black, hell - pretty much the entire album is songs I've heard innumerable times before, and I know are very widely known. Last night I went to a pub trivia thing, the music round was us trying to guess the songs being played, mutated by Finnish Polka. Nothing from the Stones came up, but every song was in this same category of music embedded in popular culture. And I need to add Motorhead to my list (Ace of Spades was the last song in the trivia round). I bought this CD from Amazon, it's not like it's hard to find a Stones album for sale and I'm less worried about directly supporting the artists when they're among the top-10 best selling bands of all time.

https://rollingstones.com/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4irXQhgMqg
I've always especially liked this song. It's like 'acceptable' emo, 'cuz it's Jagger.

ExecuDork
Feb 25, 2007

We might be fucked, sir.
Fallen Rib
014 The Music - The Last Dance (live) 200603
I've been a big fan of The Music for a long time, but they have the worst band name ever. Go ahead, throw "The Music" at google and try to find their website, or news about them, or anything. Bad decision, guys.

This is the first (and so far only) "legacy" album I'm giving my nephew - an album I already owned before I started this project. I've been a completionist about The Music, and I bought all their stuff* years ago, including this live compilation & concert DVD. Like the other live albums, this one includes a lot of incomprehensible audience singing/roaring. Maybe at some point I'll augment this with studio tracks so my nephew can learn the songs. The Music is one of my favourite bands, I'm sad they broke up. But some of the post-The Music stuff from the individual former-band members I've seen has been interesting. And I just discovered their Facebook page, which teases at the possibility of a reunion tour in 2022.

*after I started this project I discovered an EP, four tracks, including at least one song that I do not yet have. A mini-project for some time in the future.

https://www.facebook.com/themusicuk/
Apologies for the Facebook link, I gave up googling for "The Music", seriously guys pick a different name.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_CKkJH_D38
(flashing lights warning)
This is possibly their best-known song, from the DVD of their final concert(s).

ExecuDork fucked around with this message at 03:06 on Apr 15, 2021

ExecuDork
Feb 25, 2007

We might be fucked, sir.
Fallen Rib

BigFactory posted:

I would rely on bandcamp as loss proof storage least of all. They’re probably not going bankrupt anytime soon, and if they do you’ll probably get plenty of notice, but anything could happen.

I don’t think mp3s are going to be obsolete in 10 or even 18 years, but any kind of storage device you put them on now probably will be. If you’re giving him the files in smaller chunks it solves that problem.

Good point about Bandcamp - I agree, so far they seem fine but plenty of companies looked healthy right up to the moment of implosion (there's a famous quote about bankruptcy from some serial-CEO that's basically "gradually and very slowly, then very quickly"). I've got plenty of room in my personal on-line backup storage, I'll add the music collection as another layer of protection.

I feel like the MP3 format will be readable by every-day, ubiquitous hardware for a very long time - even if the globally-prefered format changes, MP3 will probably get grandfathered in for new player software. That's a change that I should unfold slowly, so I should have a chance to react if the world does change direction on this particular detail. Worst-case, there's likely to be free or cheap tools available to convert MP3 into whatever other format, much as I do with downloads from iTunes (converting from M4A to MP3 so I don't have to use iTunes software nor Apple hardware).

ExecuDork
Feb 25, 2007

We might be fucked, sir.
Fallen Rib
015 The Offspring - Smash 200610
This is one of the albums that practically defines my high school years. I never had this album, and started buying The Offspring later, with Ignition and Ixnay on the Hombre (both bought many years ago), but several songs from this album were pretty much constantly being played on the radio stations I was listening to and coming out of my friends' stereos. In my view, a classic.

https://www.offspring.com/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Abrn8aVQ76Q
Self Esteem was played around me pretty much constantly. Maybe that some effects on me? I was a sadsack in the late 90's. The less said about that, the better.

ExecuDork
Feb 25, 2007

We might be fucked, sir.
Fallen Rib
016 John Prine - The Tree of Forgiveness 206017
I'd never heard of John Prine before he died (of COVID-19) and my wife requested some of his music for this project. Country is the genre of music I'm both most ignorant of and most resistant to exploring. One of my housemates in university was from Mexico, and by chance the music he most associated with his acceptance to university in Canada was top-40 country (I hazily remember this is the music his host family liked when he was suddenly immersed in English and trying to find his feet in his new country; there are certainly worse reasons to like some music). When he would play this music, I would just get angry. I was angry a lot at the time (see previous entry), so it's not like the change was easy to see and he didn't understand when I would complain about his choices. Since then, I've mellowed, and I have discovered the existence of non-lovely country music. This is the last album John Prine released.

https://www.johnprine.com/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gn2MwHGbP1A
I found this song first when I googled "John Prine" after my wife asked me to buy some of his music. This song kind of annoys me, I'm a scientist and a big part of my work has been related to greenhouse gases and climate change; one of the verses seems to dabble in climate-change denial, and another verse tells scientists to stop working on things that John doesn't approve of. But, since then (and listening to this and other songs) I've learned that John Prine was famous for his sense of humour and playing around with ideas, sometimes mocking pretty much anybody.

My wife had heard none of these songs, having grown up with a couple of Prine's earliest albums playing out of her father's stereo regularly. Maybe some day I'll buy some more Prine and dive back to his early stuff. He's got a hell of a reputation, I'll give him that.

BigFactory
Sep 17, 2002
Why not ask your wife for her favorite John Prine album instead of picking one at random? Seems really impersonal for something that’s supposed to be a personal project for you.

The Rolling Stones pick is weird too. If you want to go with a compilation,that’s fine, but that’s just a gas station best of, not even one of their famous collections like Hot Rocks or Flowers. And like, if the Offspring are coming in this close to the top, what does that say about the last 100 albums? Are you going to run out of ideas long before 500?

ExecuDork
Feb 25, 2007

We might be fucked, sir.
Fallen Rib

BigFactory posted:

Why not ask your wife for her favorite John Prine album instead of picking one at random? Seems really impersonal for something that’s supposed to be a personal project for you.

The Rolling Stones pick is weird too. If you want to go with a compilation,that’s fine, but that’s just a gas station best of, not even one of their famous collections like Hot Rocks or Flowers. And like, if the Offspring are coming in this close to the top, what does that say about the last 100 albums? Are you going to run out of ideas long before 500?

I probably should have asked my wife before buying anything Prine. Oh well. It's my project and she's staying on the sidelines, by her choice. And it's 10 years, plenty of time to try out different ideas. If I chose to explore something I'd never listened to before and discover that I don't like it, am I insulting my nephew by gifting him the album anyways? Not that I dislike the John Prine stuff, and my wife has enjoyed listening to newer stuff from an artist she'd kind of forgotten about for a few years.

The Stones was what I impulse bought on Amazon, not having really looked into them beyond recognising pretty much every track. I read up on them a bit after it arrived, and yeah, the Stones are fond of putting out compilations. My intention was just to put something into the bin labelled "basic pop culture stuff that he probably has already heard" (also in that category: my nephew is already familiar with Sweet Home Alabama, and I haven't decided how I'll get him that).
More post-hoc rationalisation: gas station albums are absolutely included in this project. A large part of it is just me using my nephew as an excuse to indulge in an odd hobby of exploring how money <-> music happens in the real world. I've got music from before this project that came from me finding a CD in the street and discovering that the scratches don't prevent my computer from ripping it. I've got albums that were in the discount bin on the last day of a music festival, from bands that worked that festival 5 years previously. I've got a stack of CDs I bought for 50 cents a piece in a pawn shop in a small town. I've got thrift-store finds. I've got albums I bought as the band was packing up after a concert (aside: if you are a touring musician, please always have a merch table. Please take my money!). I'm continually getting suprised that some people, somewhere, are still buying music in ways that feel like ren-faire anachronisms in the era of Spotify and iTunes. And I've bought albums on iTunes, and Bandcamp, and directly from artist websites like Radiohead.

I'll talk about my experiences buying used CDs through Discogs in a few months. Maybe by then the two CDs from Serbia will have arrived.

I really hope I don't run out of ideas before 500, but I'm also not worried about it. This project is not in ranked order, like I'm counting down my personal best-of list. It's much less organised and much more haphazard than that.
I can wander around Bandcamp for 15 minutes and find 5 artists and a dozen albums that I would include in this project, all new to me or semi-new to me (like solo projects by members of bands I already know and like). One big category I haven't yet explored but am very much going to include is Musicals. I listened to Les Miserables, Jesus Christ Superstar, The Phantom of the Opera, and a few others many, many times on family road trips when I was a kid.

BigFactory
Sep 17, 2002
Soundos like a radical plan.

artism
Nov 22, 2011

eh good luck op

artism fucked around with this message at 17:30 on Apr 23, 2021

ExecuDork
Feb 25, 2007

We might be fucked, sir.
Fallen Rib
017 John Prine - For Better, or Worse 200624
The other album I bought at the same time, this one a set of duets with female singers. I've since learned a bit about John Prine, and besides being very well regarded by pretty much everyone who ever met him, he was well-known as an artist who liked to work with other musicians and singers.

https://www.johnprine.com/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMTq8VGxTZU
I like the attitude in this song, that she'd rather hang out in the local small-town bar with the transient bands than with John.

The songs are sung as if the singers are husband and wife, which is a bit jarring when the female singer sounds decades younger than John, who was in his 70's (and sounds at least that old) when these songs were recorded. Still, I like this album more every time I listen to it.

ExecuDork
Feb 25, 2007

We might be fucked, sir.
Fallen Rib
018 Various Artists - Cracking the Code: Tribute to Kraftwerk 200701
I ordered this at the same time as album #11, Kraftwerk's Trans Europa Express, but the two CDs arrived separately from Amazon. Because I got into Kraftwerk after hearing about the death of one of the founding members, I thought a tribute album would be appropriate, even if it pre-dated Florian's passing.

I've linked to the Kraftwerk fandom wiki entry for the album rather than any specific seller.
https://kraftwerk.fandom.com/wiki/Cracking_the_Code:_Tribute_to_Kraftwerk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Yf_QRtJNRc
The Robots, just because.

ExecuDork
Feb 25, 2007

We might be fucked, sir.
Fallen Rib
019 Silverchair - Frogstomp (20th Anniversary Re-issue) 200708
I've never been a fan of Nirvana, but grunge is an important innovation in popular music. As a Canadian living in Australia, and I don't know for how long, I decided to include a large proportion of Australian music where I could. Silverchair fits the bill nicely.

The band announced an "indefinite hiatus" (according to Wikipedia) in 2011 and it looks like they sold their whole catalogue to Sony Music Australia. I bought this from Amazon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZD982yrmx4
Tomorrow, one of their biggest hits. I heard this pretty often in the mid/late nineties.

The original release of Frogstomp happened when the band members were only 15 years old, which adds another twist. Sudden success for muscians, especially when the are very young, is something that I find very interesting. There are a whole bunch of obvious "what if" questions that spring to mind whenever I hear about that kind of thing happening. By coincidence, lately I've been listening to a podcast hosted by the guitarist from The Music, Adam Nutter. They signed with a label at age 16 or 17, and hearing those stories has been pretty entertaining.

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ExecuDork
Feb 25, 2007

We might be fucked, sir.
Fallen Rib
020 Hoodoo Gurus - Stoneage Romeos 200715
I heard about the 'Gurus from a friend. My wife and I had visited some friends shortly before COVID-19 came to Australia, and I asked them about their favourites and for some recommendations. They had many suggestions, having amased a respectable collection of music over the past few decades. And they're Australian, providing a nice entry to some muscians that were very popular in Australia but not in Canada.

I bought this from Amazon, before I had really committed to buying from as close to the artist as I can. Here's the page for the album on the Hoodoo Gurus' website: https://hoodoogurus.lnk.to/SR
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZWXa7x4LME
I Want You Back because the video features claymation dinosaurs.

EDIT: The previous video was rendered unavailable. Here it is on a new link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqxC5I1eVl8

ExecuDork fucked around with this message at 05:26 on Mar 12, 2023

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