April Tracks, 2020

I use an IFTTT applet that adds tracks that I’ve saved on Spotify to a monthly playlist. In March I tapped the heart icon 19 times.

This was the first month of full lockdown and I actually thought I’d added more songs. I guess my listening went back to more comfort food? Dunno.

It’s a funny old list. Plenty of tracks that I’ve loved a long time: your Lambchops and Bill Callahans.

Hackensack is my favourite Fountains of Wayne songs. Of course I put it on after I found out the news about Adam Schlesinger. I read Tom Breihan’s warm tribute to Schlesigner’s work a couple times.

I fell in love with Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa a few years ago when a Vampire Weekend festival performance was on telly.

I was listening to a playlist on a run when The Only Living Boy In New York came on and it struck me as the right tone for lockdown. It’s a great song.

It looks like May might be about new music. There’s a new Hinds track out. The new Car Seat Headrest album is out and I’m not sure what to think of it yet. Antonie Tonnon and Beastwars have new music on Bandcamp.

What are you listening to?

March Tracks, 2020

The The - This Is The Day (HD) - YouTube

I use an IFTTT applet that adds tracks that I’ve saved on Spotify to a monthly playlist. In March I tapped the heart icon 24 times.

What a month March, 2020 turned out to be. Like much of the planet I spent the second half of the month isolated at home, checking the news a lot, trying to work, and listening to a lot of comfort music.

Once the PM announced a real, proper lockdown I kindof relaxed a bit. Put on new stuff. Chucked on the more obscure radio streams. Some good stuff was found.

My eight year old daughter picked up on The The’s This Is The Day so let’s put that down as the favourite track. You can listen to all the songs on Spotify or in the embedded player below. I guess a Spotify sub is required.

An aside about The The. In the early 2000s I was “the technical guy” at a small company that ended up running an online music store. We used an open source project to manage the catalog and commerce. I had to modify it a bit suit the music content and display different store fronts but it was a pretty great tool.

The search functionality relied on the database’s full text search functionality. Out of the box the full text search wouldn’t index stop words (things like a, the, and, or) or words shorter than four characters. This meant customers searching for “U2” or “the the” didn’t find any results.

It was relatively easy to come up with a way to make “U2” searchable. “The The” required more work, including installing a custom build of the database. It was more effort than it was probably worth but I figured it out! I was quietly proud when you could find “The The” in our search box but not on quite a few other, more popular, e-commerce stores.

I would be very surprised if we sold more than one The The disc.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4t4YFiG0SqxsGfS74ot2Zv

February Tracks, 2020

Listen to The Wolf by Shooter Jennings on Spotify

I use an IFTTT applet that adds tracks that I’ve saved on Spotify to a monthly playlist. In February I tapped the heart icon 24 times.

Another relatively eclectic mix, I guess.

My favourite “new to me” track is Shooter Jennings’s cover of Walk Of Life. That was my first ever favourite song. I was ten and I danced with a girl I “liked” while it played. This version is fucking great.

Listen to Satch Plays Fats by Louis Armstrong on Spotify

After watching a bunch of Amoeba Records What’s In My Bag videos, I went on a Satch Plays Fats kick for a few days. A few tracks are from that rabbit hole.

Fade Into You wasn’t already in my liked tracks and the day I after I added it the news that David Roback had died came out.

You can listen to the full playlist below.

January Tracks, 2020

I use an IFTTT applet that adds tracks that I’ve saved on Spotify to a monthly playlist. In January I tapped the heart icon 14 times.

January was a month of camping and travel. I didn’t play a whole lot of stuff deliberately until the last few days when I went of something of a later-Wilco trip, triggered by getting a copy of Uncut magazine’s Wilcovered covers collection.

I’ve been Wilco (The Album) the short shrift for a decade. It’s an excellent collection of songs and stands up as well as anything Wilco have put out. Tracks from it make up half the playlist. Bull Black Nova is probably my favourite.

Pearl Jam released Dance Of The Claiirvoyants in January. Pearl Jame are trying a new direction and style with this track. I listened to it a few times the day it came out and liked it. But I couldn’t even hum it now, so maybe tapping the heart icon was premature?

The rest of the top tracks are a hangover from sitting in the sun with random “radio” streams on in the background. Favourite among those is Holly by Aussie muso Hayley Mary.

December Tracks, 2019

I use an IFTTT applet that adds tracks that I’ve saved on Spotify to a monthly playlist. In December I tapped the heart icon 14 times.

I haven’t gone back and listened to this playlist yet. Much of December’s listening was Spotify radio tunes and nostalgic tunes to keep the mood up as the year wound down.

I have to hand it to Jarvis Cocker for making a great singalong chorus that I’ll pretty much never be able to sing in the car with my kids. I’ll count Running The world as my favourite. What’s He Building? by Tom Waits confused my kids. FFunny FFriends by Unknown Mortal Orchestra was their favourite.

November Tracks, 2019

I use an IFTTT applet that adds tracks that I’ve saved on Spotify to a monthly playlist. In November I tapped the heart icon 16 times.

This month is mix of all-time favourites and new-to-me songs. No Doubt’s Don’t Speak, Bon Jovi’s Wanted Dead Or Alive, and Biz Markie’s Just A Friend are singalong bangers. Get Me is probably my most played Dinosaur Jr song, thanks to it’s inclusion on the first The Trip compilation.

But the best track this month has to be 16 Words, a kindof protest song by Margo Guryan, who recorded the song at age 70. The lyrics are a repetition of a quote from George W. Bush asserting some bullshit about Saddam Hussein’s attempts to create weapons of mass destruction.

October Tracks, 2019

I use an IFTTT applet that adds tracks that I’ve saved on Spotify to a monthly playlist. In October I tapped the heart icon 26 times.

This playlist is mostly tracks I’ve very much liked in the past and it’s the first time I’ve told Spotify of my fondness.

Most of the tracks, too, were added while singing along to a Spotify radio playlist based on I Don’t Feel Like Dancin’ by Scissor Sisters. Honestly, reader, I don’t think there’s a better seed song for a playlist. Every track is golden.

My favourite new track was Prelude For Time Feelers by Eluvium. It’s a simple piano-based instrumental track that slowly snuck into my head while I was working on a document. Eluvium is actually a bloke named Matthew Cooper, who, among other things has scored at least one film. Prelude For Time Feelers would feel right at home in an action scene where our heroes die valiantly against impossible odds.

My favourite old track was Parables by Rebekah Higgs, an artist I found via an SXSW mp3 download probably a dozen years ago. I distinctly remember playing some new songs on the stereo in the other room and sorta dozing. When Parables came on I was kinda, sorta unsure if I was fully awake. Dream pop indeed.

There’s some new tracks from the new The Hold Steady album on there. A couple of tracks from The National’s excellent I Am Easy To Find. And a bunch of britpop and songs I’d dance to if I was the kind of person who found dancing fun.

Enjoy.