The Results of the Rediscovering!
- Posted by mariteaux on February 25th, 2022 filed in Rediscovering
- Comments Off on The Results of the Rediscovering!
Well, as of yesterday, we have finally completed the Rediscovering pile! This started as 25 albums in July 2020, but an extra five were found elsewhere in my room and added in afterwards, making for a total of thirty. Here’s how the pile splits up, with losses on the left and wins on the right.
I’ve been writing a wearisome amount lately, between the final sprint of Scratchpad stuff, a post on the Atari 2600 version of Pac-Man for the group blog, and pages for the somnol.net top-level site redesign, so my goal is to keep this relatively brief. Here’s my takeaway from listening to all that music!
On the Rediscovering project itself
Rediscovering was a necessity. Some of those albums, like the Dead Weather one, I’d tried over and over and could never get through over the years. Turning it into a project where I had to listen intently and share it with all of you made a lot of sense, and yeah! I discovered some fantastic music doing it, and made a definitive choice about the ones I just wasn’t too keen on.
I tried my best to be as fair as I could be to these albums. They all got two listens each, each on separate days (because mood can affect how into the music you are), and I never started another fatigued from the last one. It was always with fresh ears on my big stereo. Admittedly, part of the reason the pile took this long is because I’m autistic and refused to carry on any listening unless it was in the exact way the rest were done!
Wins, losses, and where they all go
As for the albums I’m keeping, well, they stay with me! Following up on the last paragraph, the Rediscovering was also not meant to be a definitive study of these albums. These were all cursory listens to sort the wheat from chaff, and the goal for the keeps is that I can go back and listen to them again and get properly familiar with them like any other album I like.
The losses will get sold or donated to clear up space in my collection. I haven’t decided. None of them are particularly valuable albums, last time I checked. That said, because there were plenty of overall losses that had songs I loved (like Hole’s Live Through This), the good stuff will get ripped and burned to mix CD-Rs I will be keeping ahold of. I’ll probably start doing this for any other new albums I pick up that I’m not fond of (but ideally, those will be rather rare–streaming’s still good for a preview!)
But why wins aren’t necessarily so…
And…honestly that goes for some of the at-the-time keepers. Some of these albums were hard sells for me back when I did cover them, I simply had to choose keep or toss, and keep seemed like the less harsh option for the ones I was middling on. Especially seeing how the pile split to 18 keepers and the original goal was to clear out space on my CD racks, I’m sure there’s a few rather weak “keepers” in the bunch (though not that many).
Now that I can be a lot more choosy with which ones I keep and still keep the songs I like in the collection, it makes some of the “yeah, I guess I’ll keep it” albums worth a second look on my own time. If I’m still not sold on them next time I hear them, they’ll probably get the same treatment.
Why I’m never doing this again
The Rediscovering has outstayed its welcome for sure, though. To be clear, this was never meant to be the new, official way I listen to music, just a fun way to clear out a particular set of thirty albums. I haven’t listened to much music for pleasure in a little while, just grabbing a handful of CDs or a cassette or record and listening while I played a game, and I’m absolutely changing that. Maybe some of the losses could’ve been sweetened by my doing something fun while I listened, but again, that wouldn’t have been fair to the rest of the pile.
I still have plenty of tapes and vinyl I’ve not listened to ever or in a while, and those are not getting Rediscoverings. For one thing, no disc pun (though I guess the vinyl still counts). For two, no more Scratchpad after tomorrow. Three, this added significant time between each new album, and it’s kind of a drag! I’ll be really happy to be able to try them for what they’re worth without needing to write an essay to go along with it. Especially given that I’ve probably written over 10,000 words total this week, the idea of doing more writing makes my arms hurt.
It’s something I’ll expand on tomorrow in the final blog post, my classic way of doing something fun to the point of overdoing it and being relieved when it’s over. Honestly, I haven’t started anything like that since the Rediscovering itself, and I’m absolutely not starting more. I’m happy listening for fun, playing some games, doodling, hanging out with my friends, and slowly trying to cart real life forwards amidst economic ruin.
Caby’s mentioned that the Rediscoverings would make their own nice little subsite, and I’m inclined to agree. Perhaps I’ll think about moving these to cammy.somnol when I archive the Scratchpad.
A new marimix?
But hey–you’ve got everything you need to try all thirty albums yourself. Because that’s a lot of music, though, and because I sat through a lot of dross to get here, I’d like to give you a much easier to digest sampler platter of two mix CDs roughly 35 minutes long each. You can download them on archives in MP3 format. In case you’d like to know what made the cut (and get links back to their original essays):
Disc one: redisco
- “Dumpweed” – blink-182 (Enema of the State)
- “Wait a Minute” – The Hives (Lex Hives)
- “I Sat By the Ocean” – Queens of the Stone Age (…Like Clockwork)
- “Bones of Birds” – Soundgarden (King Animal)
- “Asking for It” – Hole (Live Through This)
- “Selling the Drama” – Live (Throwing Copper)
- “Comfortable Liar” – Chevelle (Wonder What’s Next)
- “You in the Glass” – Devics (The Fold Compilation)
- “The Warmth” – Incubus (Make Yourself)
- “Smash” – The Offspring (Smash)
Disc two: vering
- “Hotel Yorba” – The White Stripes (White Blood Cells)
- “All Your Jeans Were Too Tight” – American Music Club (No Alternative)
- “Doll Parts” – Hole (Live Through This)
- “Lonesome Tears” – Beck (Sea Change)
- “Summertime Rolls” – Jane’s Addiction (Nothing’s Shocking)
- “Cada Casa Que Crece” – Devendra Banhart (The Fold Compilation)
- “Gone” – Pearl Jam (Pearl Jam)
- “Fade to Blue” – John Gold (The Fold Compilation)
- “Modern Romance” – Yeah Yeah Yeahs (Fever to Tell)
Stay tuned for the final post tomorrow, my friends!
