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Music Diary Project Day 4
Another fairly typical day today, not really any huge deviation from the normal routine. I've noticed that a lot of people involved in this project have been noting a little more about how they are hearing this music and who they are hearing it with. To answer the latter first, about 90% of what I listen to is by myself - on the train during my commutes, during work. On a typical day the only music I listen to with other people is in the car with my wife or sitting at home when we are both working on our laptops. As to the how, all of the music I play at work and on the train is through my iPod Touch and my Skullcandy ear buds (don't laugh, I've done plenty of research into cheap headphones that sound good but wouldn't cause me horrible heartburn if I lost them, and they aren't bad at all for the price). At home I'm usually listening through my laptop that outputs the music via AirTunes to our Philips surround sound system. Not exactly the ideal audiophile approach, but with limited space in our small house, it works well enough. If I'm doing private listening at home I would normally listen through my Bose AE2 cans but, much to my chagrin, the jack plug recently broke so I'm in the process of researching replacements. Anyway, with that boring information out of the way, on to what I heard today.

Much like yesterday, the first music I heard was lying in bed listening to the WFMU stream on my iPod. I tuned just in time to hear a cool little stretch of hip-house:
Doug Lazy - "Let It Roll"
Monie Love - "Grampa's Party"
Jungle Brothers - "I'll House You"

After that I went to sleep and didn't listen to anything else until morning. Today's car time was split between B96 and WXRT:
Katy Perry f. Kanye West - "E.T."
The Wallflowers - "One Headlight"

For this morning's commute I listened to:
Lifeguards - Waving at the Astronauts
Another one of the three albums Bob Pollard has released this year, this time resurrecting his collaboration with Doug Gillard first heard on 2003's Mist King Urth. This project allows Pollard to dig a little deeper into his prog-rock fascination, but there are still plenty of his trademark pop hooks. His batting average this year is pretty high so far, but I'm anxiously awaiting the upcoming Boston Spaceships 2xLP.

Walking from the train to the office I switched to shuffle, where I stayed for the first part of the morning while I cleaned up some drawings:
Captain Beefheart - "Ella Guru"
Glassjaw - "Two Tabs of Mescaline"
Wild Nothing - "Summer Holiday"
The Mountain Goats - "Birth of Serpents"
Electric Wizard - "Barbarian"
Joy Division - "Twenty Four Hours"
Deerhunter - "Slow Swords"
Quasimoto - "Return of the Loop Digga"
Britney Spears - "Big Fat Bass"

I took a break from my music for a bit this morning to listen to the Sound Opinions podcast, where I heard significant snippets of the following songs:
Pinetop Perkins - "Pinetop's Boogie Woogie"
Le Butcherettes - "Dress Off"
Glasser - "Apply"
The Bewitched Hands - "Happy With You"
P.S. I Love You - "Facelove"
Esben and the Witch - "Marching Song"
tUne-yArDs - "Bizness"
Dominique Young Unique - "Music Time"
Wild Flag - "Glass Tambourine"
The Strokes - "Under Cover of Darkness"
The Strokes - "Taken For a Fool"

Then it was back to full albums while I picked up some redlines on another project:
Young Galaxy - Shapeshifting
See my previous entry for more thoughts, but I like this album more and more every time I hear it.

James Blake - James Blake
The same cannot be said for this one though, I'm just still not feeling it. I've tried approaching it from a few different angles now, trying to get a feel for it, but it just continues to hit me in the wrong way. I'll still return to "The Wilhelm Scream" and his Feist cover, but the rest leaves me cold. I just don't get the hype.

Lunchtime and since the weather was pretty crappy, I hit up a cheap pizza place just down the block. They had some pop radio station on, but the volume was really low and I could only pull two tunes out of the noise of the place:
Cee-Lo Green - "Forget You"
Rihanna - "Umbrella"

I spent a lot of time during the afternoon on the phone and collaborating with a co-worker on one of his projects, so I didn't spend a whole lot of time listening to music, but I did get through:
Mars Classroom - The New Theory of Everything
It was a Pollard kind of day and, why not? Still really liking this one and I'm glad ol' Bobby is still able to bring in new collaborators to keep things fresh.

Spiritualized - Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space
Because sometimes you just need to hear an old classic. Still amazing.

The commute home was a long one again, since I had to catch the bus home from the train station today too:
Radiohead - The King of Limbs
Even though this is still probably my least favorite Radiohead album since Pablo Honey, it keeps growing on me. Today I was head-over-heels for the closer, "Separator".

Young Galaxy - Shapeshifting
Because I had bits of it stuck in my head from earlier.

At one point this evening I had to make quick run to Target with my wife and it was like hair-metal mania on the classic rock station:
Bon Jovi - "Bad Medicine"
Aerosmoth - "Love in An Elevator"

After dinner and catching up on some television, it was time to respond to some work emails and update this very blog, so I jumped around between iTunes and videos from blogs:
Death Cab For Cutie - "You Are A Tourist" (via YouTube video, twice, yes, I really like this song!)
The Byrds - "Eight Miles High (live from Royal Albert Hall)"
Kelly Clarkson - "Miss Independent/Walk Away/Since U Been Gone (Medley)" (via Popdust video)
Cake - "I Will Survive"
Can - "Smoke"
Liquid Liquid - "Cavern" (via YouTube video)
Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five - "White Lines" (via YouTube video - thanks Flaming Pablum!)
Can - "Tango Whiskeyman"
Can - "Spash"
Spiritualized - "Come Together"

Favorite Track Heard Today: The Byrds - "Eight Miles High (Live)"
Favorite New Track Heard Today: P.S. I Love You - "Facelove" (surprised me too, I expected to hate this considering the name copped from a depressing rom-com)
Least Favorite Track Heard Today: tUnE-yArDs - "Bizness"