Album listening - a lost artform

I was reading some album reviews on the net and a reviewer was mentioning that a certain album would be difficult to listen through for the average listener. This got me thinking: how easy is it to listen through a CD without skipping tracks? It turns out it is harder than it seems. There are many deciding factors in this challenge; general interest in the artist, free time to spend listening, and like-ability of the songs. I have found that more experimental or concept albums are very hit and miss for this experiment as they are either coherent (successful concept) or just plain wrong (unsuccessful concept).

I think these days people are not really interested in sitting and listening to a whole CD. We just grab the tracks we like (the singles most likely), bop them on our Iphone/android/mp3/etc and listen to only those songs... after all they are the best: right? I want to buck the trend. I want to listen to it all and I'll only put full albums on my mobile device!

Yesterday, I challenged myself to listen to Smashing Pumpkins 'Machina' album. When I first bought this CD (way back in 2000) I hated it. I thought it had a lot of annoying songs. I guess I missed the concept. Upon listening again I actually like the CD, now maybe I don't get the 'concept' part of it but I think it actually gels well: it grew on me. It is a good album. not five star material but definitely above average.

My challenge to you gentle readers is to grab a CD and listen to it from the first to last track... and in the car doesn't count!

Comments

ESL Writing Tips - Paragraph Structuring

I've been working on some writing materials for a course I am supposed to be teaching next week, so I thought I would get the ball rolling by making a post about basic paragraph structuring. What is a paragraph? The most basic thing to learn when tackling writing a paragraph is to understand the relationship between the components and understand the definition of a paragraph. Our end result is the paragraph but before that we must have some sentences, those sentences are made up of words, those words come from ideas, and hopefully our ideas have a theme or topic. To sum up a paragraph is a bunch of words on on topic organised into a series of sentences. Simple right? What are the parts of a paragraph? So glad I asked because I have a picture just for this: So Informative Many learners do not pay close enough attention to the impact that a good topic sentence can have. In order to have a good topic sentence you must ensure that you have indeed made a logica...

Urbanfresh at Setia City Mall

I recently made the unfathomable trip from my home to Setia City Mall in Setia Alam Malaysia. I was, of course, in search of interesting shopping and imported food. Some background. For those of you living in Setia Alam congrats on picking a beautiful place to live; however, my condolences as you all live in the bloody boonies! Setia City is an INCREDIBLY nice mall with a fine selection of shops and F&B outlets, but unfortunately no game stores or Chilis (TGIFridays? Really? Ugh.) I stumbled upon a grocery store that looked quite up-scale and my import sense started tingling. What a classy place with words like Urban and fresh right in the name it must be good. The pillar says "fresh food" for seal's sake so come on! They had this interesting apple display going on at the front of the store. This is actually a cardboard tree with apples all around it. It is a neat idea... I just hope the apples didn't grow on cardboard! The fresh fruit and veg...

Free coffee

well today, as some of you malaysians may know, starbucks was giving out free drinks today between 12 and 2pm. it was a mystery frapp with no whipped cream (for shame) with red beans or tea jelly depending how lucky(or unlucky) you were. I wasn't really bothered one way or the other because the love of my life my favourite barrista was there. In true, giving out free crap fashion the line had to have about 50 people in it and took the better part of 30minutes to get through. I had once on a whim calculated how much I get paid per minute of life... let me tell you... my free frapp cost me in that equation... lucky we don' count life that way or else we would never find the joy in free coffee.

The way I see it

Search This Blog