How to Savor an Album

During second semester of my freshman year of college, my brother gave me a gift. An incredible one: a hard drive loaded with over 60 gigs of music. Combined with my own music collection, that made way too much music. Thanks to the virtues of the NYU interweb, I also (and ashamedly) downloaded craploads from ourtunes, the iTunes sharing network. Again, I had way too much music. I couldn’t handle it. I cried for days. How was I to approach this cumbersome task of listening to everything?

Days passed and I still couldn’t handle the pressure. My body curled like a painful footcramp where you can feel your toes digging into your soles. I tried a bunch of crazy balls-to-the-wall approaches of listening to every song: alphabetical order one after the other, songs by track length, or any other funky way iTunes could organize my despair. I was so focused on getting through the music that I could never get into the music. There would be artists that I would want to keep listening to over and over, but my obsessive drive to finish my task stopped my natural musical urges.** My obsession died around the middle of the A’s during the alphabetical album crawl. A year and half passed, and I still barely recognized half of the artists and albums on my iTunes. Determined, I found another obsessive solution, but this time more enjoyable.

The new perilous and obsessive track was not much different from one of my previous ones. To listen to my music alphabetically, album by album. I would listen to each song over and over until I knew the words, could sing the guitar solos, and air-drum the rhythm perfectly. I haven’t gotten too far. I’m only about half-way through the A’s in a matter of 4½ months. But it’s paid off. I love my music so much more.

The greatest joy to be found in listening is by hearing out an entire album. I don’t care about the digital age and how it promotes the buying of ninety-nine cent single songs and that’s all people really care about, the singles, the singles, the singles, blah, blah, blah. That’s bullshit to me. Artists go on the road, and they write songs. Lots of them. Then they hit the studio and iron out the details. Every song on an album is one they care about, and they put it on the album because they feel it’s worth listening to. A song becomes much more when you hear that happy chord alleviating the pain from the previous painfully sad song, or that pulsing drive from drum and bass opening an album, or a subtle acoustic closer after a tragic harmonic denouement. These are things that matter to the artist.

This doesn’t mean you can’t love individual songs. You must. But understand that they have a role in your favorite artists’ greater expression. Once this is appreciated, you can more fully delve into those individual songs.

From the albums that I deep dig into and other personal favorites, I’ll be giving you my albums to savor, ones to hold close to you late at night, or to run out with during the fire. They’re albums that influenced my views on life and music and are essentially essential. So Fucking Important. These albums will be labeled thusly as savory.

If you disagree, bring it on. If you have an album that you find just as important, write about it. Don’t be shy. Coyness will not be allowed.

**Always listen to these urges. It doesn’t matter if there are demonic voices in your head telling you to listen to The Stooges or JoJo, they’re probably coming from some deep suppressed urges in your subconscious. The very same as the Freudian death drive. It’s what we need to survive.

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Come Join the Youth and Beauty Brigade

"Writing about music is like dancing about architecture - it's a really stupid thing to want to do." –Elvis Costello, amongst many others

I am glad to have been invited to this community, though as my opening quote may indicate, I am not quite sure how, exactly, I want to approach this. I guess the best way, I see, to start is at the beginning.

I was in sixth grade when I bought my first, of many, CDs. It was Ben Folds Five’s The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner (If I were being completely truthful, I’d talk about my adolescence and its relationship to ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic albums, but that is all together too commonplace and not quite as influential as one would imagine.). Honestly, a lot of Reinhold Messner would go over my head until much later in my life. I was compelled to buy it because my friend Dan DeMaria (who continues to shape and influence the music I listen to) had shared with me an album that his cousin had shared with him: Ben Folds Five’s Whatever and Ever Amen. Although I did not recognize it then, there was a technical proficiency on that album that still amazes me. I was young and inexperienced, so I trusted in my friend’s musical tastes. Yes, it would be the first of many times that I would give it peer pressure.

From there, I would spend the next two or three years influenced by popular culture, buying albums of catchy radio singles. It was at this time, I also started playing the bass guitar. And while my teacher was more than patient with me, both in terms of the music I listened to and the infrequency with which I practiced, I also began to explore the back catalog of the classic rock greats.

By the time I was in high school, my lifelong friendship earned me a place in a four piece garage band. Though we were young and relatively inexperienced, I stand by my position of weak link of the band. Either way, though, it was fun. We played a few shows at talent shows, for parties, or just because we wanted our other friends to be impressed with us. As Dan became more and more invested the whole singer/songwriter aspect of our band and explored more and more of the local music scene, he was exposed to more and more new and lesser known work. And subsequently so was I. So that began a long journey down the proverbial rabbit-hole in a world that was simultaneously Do-It-Yourself and extremely collaborative.

In case you couldn’t tell where this was leading to, some would consider my music tastes as "mainstream indie hipster with a side of mainstream indie emo” or some variation on related words. Though, as many that try to write or think about music, I hate labels. I’ve already written several papers, in varying degrees of scholarly quality, about the ever increasing arbitrary-ness of musical labels and divisors. I think I will save the rest of this debate for another post though.

Those of you who know me, know I find a certain pride in being a little elitist in my choices of music. But also know that I am not opposed to guilty pleasures derived from either nostalgia or just plain good hooks (I mean dance parties need music you can dance to).

It is my intention to share with you the best of both newly emerging and staple classic music of what was once seen as ‘indie’ and is quickly blurring that line with ‘mainstream.’ I am self-depricating and may mock many musical stereotypes, especially ones that I am guilty of. I enjoy music through concerts, dance parties, and as a soundtrack to whatever I am doing. I try to avoid dance clubs, music explication, and lining up Dark Side of the Moon to The Wizard of Oz. I am a big fan of Top 5 lists, and you are sure to see many from me. Here’s a couple now:
My Top 5 Desert Island Bands:
5. Rilo Kiley
4. Ted Leo and the Pharmacists
3. Ben Folds Five
2. Death Cab For Cutie
1. The Decemberists

I’m sure I’ll explain my choices in another post, one that will, once again, reflect more upon me than the actual music.
5 Really Good Albums from 2007 (Though I am uncomfortable labeling them ‘Top 5’):
5. Radiohead – In Rainbows (I am pretty sure I would get kicked out of NYU if I didn’t mention them)
4. The Field – From Here We Go Sublime
3. The National – Boxer (Though I am critical of all the attention it’s getting, it’s not necessarily undeserved)
2. Bishop Allen – (As a high school and college student, I have a certain fondness for anything remotely related to TheSpark.com and, in a nutshell, this album is like Modest Mouse meets Mickey Mouse, all clever fun)
1. Band of Horses – Cease to Begin

So I hope you have an idea of my musical tastes, how I think, how I write, and if you’re interested in hearing more from me.

And, as a point of interest related to this whole notion of ‘indie’ music, Filter just ran an article about ‘Indie Music’ and ‘Indie Comedy’ with John Krasinski and The Shins (basically equating The Office to The Shins). And while I don’t agree with a lot of the content, it’s still a fun read because I would want to hang out with everyone involved in the interview (cross pimping: I also happen to run a newly emerging tv blog, for those interested).

“Some people talk about me like a revolutionary. That's nonsense; all I did was copy B.B. King.”
-Eric Clapton

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Novo Amor

I happened upon Roberta Sa on Pandora Radio. Her voice is beautiful, and so is she. Check it out. I'll look for an album so I can review it for the blog. Also some sweet Portuguese Guitar (I believe) playing. Novo Amor indeed!

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Driven to Tears

Music as diplomacy should be our next foreign policy. The New York Philharmonic got it right in North Korea unifying both parties not with sticks or carrots, but song. It is truly a beautiful story.

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Owner of a Lonely Heart

Move yourself
You always live your life
Never thinking of the future
Prove yourself
You are the move you make
Take your chances win or loser

Kudos to Jaimito for the awesome find.

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The Critical Period Hypothesis

"According to the critical period hypothesis, the brain of the young child is particularly well suited to the task of language learning."
-Psychology Gleitman, Reisberg, and Gross

So all my little chickadees here comes your exposure to the world of music according to me. Let this be your own critical stage with your young under-developed musical minds. There's so much out there in the world for you to listen to and feel good about yourself, or feel bad. But as long as your adolescent and nascent brains are developing a vast musical vocabulary, let me and the other contributors to this blog help drive your next CD, vinyl, or iTunes purchase (or free download but please don't).

We will provide album reviews, thoughts on music and how it affects our lives, thoughts on our own music writing processes, how songs and albums interact with our lives, the ways we rock out, and plenty of sweet articles/videos/quotes/excerpts about psychology, life, and music to always keep you informed on how the world works.

The contributors to this blog will include myself, Ariel (REL) Bitran, a good friend of mine Jamie (Jaimito) Straz who attends the UofMiami, a skinny Asian boy named Ryan (Ryan) Harrington, Kyle Deas, and members of my nuclear family: Alberto Bitran and Debbie Bitran. Hopefully, this diverse candidate selection will provide not only interesting musical vantage points but polarizing writers who all greatly dislike some of another's music.

So now put this link in your bookmarks toolbar so you can click on it everyday drooling, wanting to know more about how the contributors and I can enliven your lives with our melodic narratives. Do it. Now.

Insert cheesy music quote here: "Music produces a kind of pleasure which human nature cannot do without" Confucius

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