Recs Request and Project: 22 Days of Music

[rsadelle]

dedalvs responded to my post about Proust Was a Neuroscientist with a list of ways to find new music. They're good ideas, but, as I told him, I don't care enough about music to put in the effort. (I think if I were interested enough, I could write a music version of my post about how visual art doesn't do it for me.) But his idea about asking friends is something I do have the effort for. (I've also downloaded a few fic soundtracks over the last few days. So far, I've only listened to the one that's the soundtrack to a Chris/Steve cowboy AU. It's pretty good, although there's one song that doesn't fit with the atmosphere of the others.)

Recs Request
What music would you suggest? Is there anything that you're loving right now that I would like? I have a $3 mp3/movie/TV show credit from Amazon that I'd love to use before it expires at the end of the month, so anything that you think I should buy from them (from a non-RIAA label) would be an extra bonus.

Project: 22 Days of Music
In return for any recs you may or may not make, I'll make some recs myself. Every day between now and Valentine's Day, I'll post about one song I like. Rules to keep me on track:

• I will make sure you can listen to the song somehow (this may take the form of YouTube videos fairly frequently because almost everything is on YouTube and I'm probably too lazy to upload every song for you).
• For those of you who fear 22 songs by Christian Kane and Steve Carlson (yes, fuseji, I am looking at you), I promise not to repeat artists.
• Valentine's Day will be a love song. (I didn't have to tell you this, but two seemed like not enough rules.)

Comments

[lakeeffectgirl.livejournal.com]

Empires have both their album and their single up on Amazon! (I would buy "Shame", the single b-side, if you just want one track - and then grab the free download of the album off their website (http://www.weareempires.com/) while it's still free.)

I used to find new music by browsing Amazon and listening to samples, or going to B&N and doing the same thing at their listening stations, but now I mostly find new music by going to shows.

And omg I am not awake enough to be leaving comments. WHERE'S MY COFFEE?

[rsadelle]

*snicker* I knew you would rec Empires!

I browse Amazon's mp3 albums when I want to dance but not to anything in specific - I find a belly dance album, hit play all samples, and dance. It keeps me on my toes, especially if it's an album with lots of different rhythms.

[dedalvs.livejournal.com]

You know, this list is getting too long, so I'm going to make a blog post about it (look out for it in a little bit).

Hey, I was wondering. For the first time in a long while, I clicked on the link to your actual LJ, and I noticed you had a style for it. Whenever I comment on your journal, though, it's in the normal or default style. I may have asked you this before, but is this done on purpose?

[rsadelle]

Don't make it too hard! I won't go listen if it's too much work. (Or I will, but it'll take me a year.)

That is deliberate. I read a lot of relatively long fic on LJ, and I want the page to be as plain as possible so I'm not distracted by a bunch of stuff off to the sides. I have it set so comment pages, including my own, are plain.

[dedalvs.livejournal.com]

Okay, then perhaps the question is, why isn't your LJ the default; why just the comments?

My list (http://dedalvs.livejournal.com/6183.html) is up. I didn't put the asterisks in, though, so I'll go do that now (should take just a second).

[rsadelle]

Because it's set that way, I guess. I have customized comment pages disabled for my LJ, and then persistent style=mine (a paid feature; you can get the same effect by adding ?style=mine to the end of an LJ URL) so that wherever I go on LJ, journals will look like mine and comment pages will be the default. I do reload my friends page eighty bajillion times a day, so I do need my LJ to look nice enough to look at (when I was playing with styles, how my friends page looked was more important than how my LJ looked). People generally put fic behind a cut tag, so reading it puts me onto a comment page anyway.

[dedalvs.livejournal.com]

Okay, the asterisks are up. Hopefully that'll help you.

Oh, and it goes without saying that I have all these songs, if you can't find them.

[dedalvs.livejournal.com]

Oh, one more question: Why 22 days?

[rsadelle]

Why not? I thought about doing it from now until the end of the month, but by the time I got my act together to write this up, that would only be seven days. Valentine's Day seems like a good arbitrary ending, and 22 is a nice number.

[dedalvs.livejournal.com]

Ohhh... It ends on Valentine's. Okay, that makes sense.

[fuseji.livejournal.com]

yes, fuseji, I am looking at you

I was just kidding you!

Do what thou wilt; I may even try this on my own journal. The quote about the way the auditory cortex picks up music seems to be why a lot of geeks (at least the ones I know) are still rocking a lot of music that they listened to in high school.

I try to challenge my audio palette regularly but I don't do recommendations, as my musical taste is so esoteric it's pointless for me to try and sonically 'read' people like Brad does.

Also your old post on visual art reminded me: do you actually have Daisy Kutter: The Last Train? I was interested in reading it ages ago, but I was a little wary as to whether I'd like it or not and couldn't find it anywhere at the time.

P.S. I have to give you props -- your comparison of the Leverage team to classic Generation X was spot-on. I totally want to see them cosplay now!

fuseji should really end his thoughts a sentence earlier.

[rsadelle]

Yeah, it does explain a lot - also why songs I might not have liked the first time have grown on me.

Ah, but the point of asking for music recs is to listen to things I would never in a million years listen to. I would never think to go looking for the three songs I've recced so far, but I love them.

I do have Daisy Kutter. It's excellent. I definitely recommend it.

I used to just love Generation X. Maybe there'll be an episode where they have to do some sort of cosplay.