I've started writing a series of posts for the KEXP Blog called "Know Your Subgenres". The first article on shoegazing is now posted, and you can read it here. If you have suggestions for other subgenres you'd like to read about, let me know.

Recently in my notes on upcoming shows, I've been talking up this Friday's show at the Sunset Tavern, an album-release celebration for both Point Juncture WA and for Hotels. I still haven't heard Point Juncture WA's album, just some songs on KEXP, so I don't have much to say about that except that I've been eagerly anticipating seeing them live to learn more about them. However, I'm quite pleased to say that not only do I have Hotels' new album Where Hearts Go Broke, I've written a review of the album which is now featured on the KEXP Blog. So if you're wondering what all the fuss is about Hotels, go read the album review, and come see them this Friday!

KEXP just played a song I've never heard, "Kick the Tragedy", by a band I've never heard of, the Drop Nineteens, although the DJ described it as an "older" tune. (Checking Wikipedia, I see that they were a Boston band active in the early '90s.) From the very first notes it was clearly a cool shoegazer track and I immediately decided I loved the song having heard all of one line of music.

A few weeks ago I finally made myself pull my violin out of my bedroom closet and put it under the futon in the living room where it'd be more easily accessible, in an attempt to get myself to actually play a bit. For some reason, hearing this song made me actually take the violin out of the case and try just matching notes as the song played, to see what would sound good with it. It was a pretty simple song, just alternating two chords, but as a violinist I'm not used to thinking about chords so this was an easy opportunity for me to think about what worked. I didn't do much else, not even try to come up with rhythmic patterns, but just getting out the violin to play along is something.

I might even have played some more, but I haven't had dinner yet and I must make pancakes. Still, I'll have to do that more.

Saturday night during DJ Spooky's set, he dropped "Message in a Bottle" by the Police into the mix. He only played it through the first two verses and choruses and then extended the bridge as an outro, leaving out the final hopeful verse. It kind of broke my heart a little. However, it made me realize that I need to get in touch with my roots again, feel the ground beneath me. The Police is the very first band I fell in love with, just as I was becoming a teenager, and their music meant a lot to me all through high school, in the way that my slightly-younger friends fell for The Smiths. 

Back when Message In A Box: The Complete Recordings by The Police came out, I created cassette versions of the original albums from the CD set so that I could listen in my car or on my Walkman at work. I carefully chose which of their singles and b-sides to fill in the extra space on each cassette, and how to order them, either before or after the album itself. That gave me five albums plus an extra mix with the live tracks and leftover singles and b-sides, all on three cassettes. It was a labor of love, and I made sure to always have those cassettes available in the car or my carrying case. 

For years now my music collection has been growing, and since getting my iPod and then iTunes being released, I've shifted away from listening to whole albums to leaving my whole collection on shuffle song mode to take advantage of the variety. In the past few years I've added enough new music that I've been focusing on listening just to that in order to make it familiar. However, today (meaning Sunday) I re-created those custom Police album mixes as playlists in my iTunes library. I've been listening to each one straight through and singing along, and it's made me feel really good, and grounded or centered if you prefer. 

My high school 20th reunion is coming up in just under four weeks, the day after Thanksgiving. I've been looking forward to it for months, surprisingly eager to reconnect and catch up with old friends, a lot of which has been happening already on Facebook. A quick check on the definition of synchronicity suggests that it is particularly apt that this weekend I should've been reminded so strongly of my love for the Police and my need to get back to my roots and be grounded. I think I'm going to be listening to the music of The Police a lot over the next month.

These two songs seem to say a lot about how my life's going lately. Or maybe just how it's always been.

"Message in a Bottle", The Police - lyrics

"Go!", Tones on Tail - lyrics

Over on bluishorange, Alison pointed to Shaun's post about the film High Fidelity. Something Shaun wrote jumped out at me:

The only conversations the characters care about are about music and film, solidly passive art forms. Their real thinking is limited to art criticism and introspection.

I have not actually seen the film, but I can understand that in the context of how those characters behave, "solidly passive" could be a fair description of their relationship with music. Still, my immediate reaction was to strongly object to the characterization of music as a "solidly passive" art form.

Music moves people, literally - at the least, it can make you tap your toe or nod your head or maybe even sway your body a bit. You find yourself humming the tune later on, with no particular prompting. There's interaction and feedback with the performers in a performance: at a concert, you'll applaud or yell or scream or whistle or whatever's appropriate in response. And of course, anyone can participate in the creation of the art even during a concert, just at the basic level of singing along or tapping the beat. That's not to mention learning to make music on your own, with voice or instrument or whatever's at hand. 

Yes, music can be absorbed in a passive manner, just as film (or television) or other performing arts can be. And just like film or television, mediocre music lends itself to passivity. However, I submit these are flaws not in the art forms, but in the particular instances of artwork or in the particular members of the audience. Music itself asks for your attention and evokes a response; to call music a solidly passive art form or to treat it as a solidly passive art form is to miss its entire reason for being. And in truth, it's arguable that anything worthy of being called art cannot be a solidly passive experience.

Last week the Boston Phoenix posted a feature called 50 Bands, 50 States, listing the all-time best band, all-time best solo artist, and best upcoming band or artist from each state (with Washington DC included too "as a bonus", so really "153 bands and artists, 50 states and a federal district", which isn't nearly as catchy). I figured I should post about it here at least for parkbenchzine's benefit, to see what he has to say.

Note that there are three positions in contention, one of them being Jon Spencer versus Ronnie James Dio for best solo artist from New Hampshire, and there are polls to let the readers decide. (The other two are Prince versus Bob Dylan for best solo artist from Minnesota, and the Four Seasons or the Misfits for best band from New Jersey.)

It's worth noting that the all-time best band category is based on where the band was formed, with some leeway if the band members met in one state but actually started performing elsewhere, while the best solo artist is based on where they were born, not where they started performing. So New Hampshire gets credit for Okkervil River as best new band because the members met there in high school, even though the band itself really isn't from NH.

I was happy to see Annuals named as best new band from North Carolina, and touched to see The Dambuilders make the list as all-time best band from Hawaii - I still miss them, and I only ever got to see them once in concert.

Here I am again at Bauhaus on a Friday night, working. This project has been keeping me up all night, in part because there's an editor on the East Coast working on the document during the day, handing it off to me to review his work and do my own editing at night. Since I've been up even later than usual, but still getting up around the same time, I'm starting to feel pretty dragged out and irritable.

However, one of the baristas has put on a mix CD of The Police. I own their complete recordings box set myself, but rarely listen to it anymore because it's so familiar and I have so much new music to get to know. So unexpectedly hearing this mix CD has forcefully reminded me that The Police are so good! This has cheered me up a lot and given me a little energy boost.

A similar thing happened last week actually, when I went to Caffe Ladro and discovered that the barista there was playing a mix of classic Steely Dan albums. It's thrilling to hear old favorites in public and discover that someone else shares your taste.

Both Steely Dan and The Police are playing in the Seattle area this summer, and I'd love to see them, but lawn seats are $65 for Steely Dan and $78 for The Police. I guess I'll always have the recordings to listen to, but man it'd be something to see them live...

Well, Jay (parkbenchzine) and my brother Jeremy (bandtechiegeek) may have wimped out (as discussed in the comments of my previous post), but at least Farida came through with her life in music albums, following up on my previous post. If you haven't before, you should check out her blog Saints and Spinners - she writes a lot of cool stuff, generally but not always about storytelling, children's literature, and her guitar playing.

Once again stealing a post idea from an ongoing thread in the Sk8J forum... This time the idea is, for each year of your life, name your favorite album released that year. The person who started the thread did not insist on one and only one per year, so I have some ties in the list. She also included "honorable mentions" for some years; when I made my list, I decided to use "honorable mention" status only for compilations or soundtracks. However, I did give the favorite album status to one compilation, Now That's What I Call Quite Good, partly because I've always felt it works fine as an album in itself and partly because it was simply my favorite for that year.

1969: Blood, Sweat & Tears, Blood, Sweat & Tears

1970: Time and a Word, Yes
1971: tie - Who's Next, The Who; The Yes Album, Yes
1972: Fragile, Yes
1973: The Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd
1974: Pretzel Logic, Steely Dan
1975: Wish You Were Here, Pink Floyd
1976: Dreamboat Annie, Heart
1977: tie - Little Queen, Heart; Aja, Steely Dan
1978: Dog & Butterfly, Heart
1979: Look Sharp!, Joe Jackson

1980: Duke, Genesis
1981: Ghost in the Machine, The Police
1982: Night and Day, Joe Jackson
1983: The Politics of Dancing, Re-Flex
1984: Three of a Perfect Pair, King Crimson
1985: Songs from the Big Chair, Tears for Fears
1986: Big World, Joe Jackson
1987: Louder Than Bombs, The Smiths
1988: Now That's What I Call Quite Good, The Housemartins - honorable mention to Live 1980/86, Joe Jackson
1989: Deep, Peter Murphy

1990: Reading, Writing and Arithmetic, The Sundays
1991: The Real Ramona, Throwing Muses
1992: Imperial f.f.r.r., Unrest
1993: tie - Deep End, Tsunami; Perfect Teeth, Unrest - honorable mention to Message in a Box: The Complete Recordings, The Police
1994: tie - Encendedor, Dambuilders; Destroy All Astromen!, Man or Astro-man?
1995: tie - Ruby Red, Dambuilders; Silt, Mistle Thrush
1996: The Sonora Pine, The Sonora Pine
1997: Downward Is Heavenward, Hum - honorable mention to Then: The Earlier Years, They Might Be Giants
1998: Decksanddrumsandrockandroll, The Propellerheads - honorable mention to Everything!, Tones on Tail
1999: Haley, Reflecting Skin - honorable mention to Retrospective, Red House Painters

2000: Peregrine, Tara Jane O'Neil - honorable mention to Stars & Topsoil: A Collection (1982-1990), Cocteau Twins
2001: Long Distance, Ivy - honorable mention to The Matrix Revisited soundtrack (never released as such, but all the music was available as a hidden feature on the DVD)
2002: Turn on the Bright Lights, Interpol
2003: tie - Airs Above Your Station, Kinski; The Happiest Days of Our Lives: The Complete Joan of Arc Tapes, My Favorite
2004: Sun Q, IQU - honorable mentions to The Incredibles soundtrack and to Left of the Dial: Dispatches from the '80s Underground
2005: Witching Hour, Ladytron
2006: Be He Me, Annuals
2007: so far, Mirrored, Battles

In my original list, three more of the years were ties: 1979 had a tie with Regatta de Blanc, 1980 with Zenyatta Mondatta, and 1983 with Synchronicity, all by The Police. However, I've since decided that because I have their Message in a Box compilation in the list as an honorable mention, I would just give those years to the other album in consideration.

The hardest years to decide were 1979, 2000, 2002, and 2003. But even in years like 1997 and 1998 where there was an immediately obvious answer, I usually still had other good contenders. The years 1970 to 1978 were a problem for a different reason: although I know plenty of songs from that time period, there were very few whole albums I knew, so there wasn't much choice.

I generally avoid participating in or promoting blog memes, but I'll just say that if some of you happened to post your own lists, I'd certainly be interested in seeing them... You might consult Wikipedia's Table of years in music to help craft your lists, although their years in music articles aren't all-inclusive: they have an article on Re-Flex's The Politics of Dancing from 1983, but it wasn't listed in the 1983 in Music article (it's listed now...).