Sunday, August 3, 2008

Introduction/What is this crap?

The description above should give you some idea about what's going on here, but here are some thoughts on what to expect...

I have a large music collection, and I currently own a lot of music that I feel like I don't know very well.  I feel as though having a blog like this will encourage me to actively listen more often.  

This is NOT rock criticism.  Rock criticism purports to be objective on some level (even though no one, in my opinion, gets into rock criticism to report facts or write objectively--one gets into it to foist one's opinion on an unsuspecting world), and this blog will not be objective at all.  I think there may not actually be any such thing as objectivity, at least in our broken, human world.  How can one person, who is an individual, and usually subject to what they're writing about at least to some degree, ever achieve true objectivity?  I know, I know...I am pretty much tearing apart every artistic/literary criticism world in existence, but hey.

I am not going to give the reader any information on an artist that I don't feel like going into at the time.  If I don't give you the background you desire on someone you want to know more about, too bad.  That's what AllMusic is for.  

If I am expounding on a record made by someone I know personally, I will tell you--that way you know that objectivity, whatever that is, is even less likely.

Like anything I do that has anything to do with music, I created this blog to please myself first. This isn't to say I don't want you to read it.  I really do.  If you find it informative or entertaining, even better, but the aim is just to make it into something I like or would be interested in reading.  This means that I'm not going to write about any record that I wasn't interested in enough to buy.  This is about me getting to know my own music collection--not passing judgment on stuff I don't care about.  

My goal is as follows: to post my thoughts/opinions/whatever in regards to about 5 records a week.  "Record" means full album, whether it's something I own on vinyl or in some sort of digital realm (and in a few VERY rare cases, cassette).  More than likely, I'll do it all in one post, towards the end of the week.  I may, at times, talk about a song that was a single, even if it appeared on an album or compilation later.  If I make a mixtape for someone or some reason, I'll post the track list and also talk about the selections.  Definition of "mixtape": I no longer make mixes on cassette.  No point.  Most people cannot/will not listen to anything in that format.  What I've starting doing is burning 2 CDs that are about 45 minutes a piece, each representing a "side" of a 90 minute cassette.  Instructions are given with these mixtapes to the recipient (listen to the sides in order, do NOT skip songs).  OCCASIONALLY, I may just make a boundless, less strict playlist (usually when I don't have time to adhere to my more strict policies), so I reserve the right to post a track list for a few modern abominations of that kind.  

I think that about covers it.  First mixtape post coming soon, first record report coming in around a week.  Enjoy.

2 comments:

Crescentius said...

Hey, David.

You know me, I'll follow every post.

Think you might be using muxtape or something similar to post streaming versions of these mixes?

Mixtape Jones said...

I'd like to find something similar to Muxtape that is less strict in its parameters...On Muxtape, you can't create a mixtape that has more than one song by the same artist on it (Clam Snout would be out...It has 4 Ween songs and 2 TMBG songs on it), and you can only do 1 mixtape per user. LAME. So, the search is on.