I’ve been fiddling around with electronic music for a while now. I’m working to do some collaborative stuff with others who are into it, and also with a couple of real-life drummers.

My stuff so far is here.

While I enjoy listening to a variety of electronic stuff, I’ve decided my goal is to make electronic music that is impossible to dance to. Make it interesting, geeky, and/or ugly. I hate seeing rooms full of drunk people dancing. Makes me want to sick.

Not that I’d ever be in such a situation. Just a point of reference.

This is what I listened to at work on day a couple of weeks ago. I can see myself needing the bigger, oldschool iPod soon.

David Bowie – Starman
Led Zeppelin – Presence – the whole album
Mercyful Fate – the Oath
Pavement – Greenlander
the Big Boys – Self Contortion
John Coltrane – Giant Steps
Deep Snapper – Anchor Babies
Mux Mool – Brothers
Thom Yorke – ILUVYA
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers – Change of Heart
the Doors – Strange Days
Dinosaur Jr – Seemed like the thing to do
the Prevaricators – Jesus H. Falwell
Slayer – Cult
Willie Nelson – Pancho & Lefty
Wilco – Art of Almost
the Jam – David Watts
Massive Attack – Inertia Creeps
Primus – American Life
Yes – Roundabout
TokiMONSTA – Little Pleasures
Faultline – Awake
Dio – Holy Diver
Trembling Blue Stars – Ripples
Joy Division – Unknown Pleasures – whole album
Gary Numan – Telekon
Gary Numan – Remind me to smile
Billy Bragg – There is Power in a Union
Devo – Gates of Steel
+/- – Ill Advised
the Stratford 4 – Hydroplane
Tycho – the Daydream
Tycho – the Disconnect
Black Sabbath – Neon Nights
AC/DC – Shoot to Thrill

…or at least a complete side.

That’s how you listen to music when you are listening on a turntable.

I’ve always loved putting on an album, laying on the floor, and listening to the whole thing. When you are listening to a nice vinyl LP you tend to listen to the whole side, because changing songs is a pain in the ass.

You can do that with a CD too, but the remote makes it real tempting to skip songs.

And of course, iPods and other mp3 players make listening to an entire album more unlikely. Too easy to hit the skip button. Hell, you may not even listen to an entire song. You don’t have to worry about scratching the album, or even the CD. The mp3 file is the new patron saint of the short attention span.

The problem with this is that sometimes the better songs, the ones with staying power, take time to grow on you. I think the best songs challenge you a bit. They don’t want to be your immediate new best friend. They want to spend some time with you, before you use and degrade them.

This weekend I’ve been listening to a lot of my old albums on vinyl. I’ve finally listened to the Big Boys reissue I ordered a couple of months ago. Today I went to an actual record store, with actual real physical records (Good Records) and picked up two authentic physical LPs – Fugazi’s 1993 “In on the Kill Taker” and Dinosaur Jr’s “Bug”.

Both sound fantastic, but what’s even better is I’ve heard the entirety of both albums. The Fugazi album came with a code for a free download of the mp3 from Dischord’s website, so it’s nice and easy to get it on my iPod. I wish the Dinosaur Jr. LP did the same thing. But having it on the LP is fine. I can deal.

You owe it to yourself to listen to the whole album from time to time. And if the album is good, you’re morally obligated to do so.

For someone who didn’t play any musical instrument, and who never sang an audible note to my recollection, my dad sure loved music.

When I became musically aware, and started buying music, first in the form of 8-track tapes, my dad began acquiring music too. For my 10th birthday I got a small stereo from Sears. No turntable. A radio and an 8-track player, and two small speakers were the setup. It was good enough. I’d come home to find my dad laying on my bed, listening to music.

This started a nightly ritual for my dad. Almost every evening he would lay down and listen to music for about an hour. As I went through junior high and highschool, once a week we’d go to a nearby music store and each buy a cassette tape. We ended up with a lot of cassettes. They are still at my mom’s house, I think. Eventually he bought a similar but slightly nicer Sears stereo for their room. Nothing too great, but it got the job done.

Though his musical tastes expanded over the years, country music and bluegrass were my dad’s primary preferred genres. Occasionally I’d find him listening to a rock band if the song sounded like country or bluegrass. Once he was listening to Led Zeppelin. He had no idea it was them.

I’ve been remembering this stuff for a few hours now. You see, a few days ago I got a new stereo. Not super expensive, but not a cheap one either. A nice Yamaha amp and some Klipsch floor speakers. After almost 10 years of listening to music mostly on headphones and an iPod, having the BIG sound filling a room is fantastic. I think a lot of people have forgotten how great that is. While I wait for a new phono needle to arrive for my turntable, and wait to get a nice new CD player, I’ve had my iPod plugged into the system a lot and running it on Shuffle.

Last night, for the first time, some Willie Nelson came up. I’m not a country music fan at all, but I do love Willie. Over the nice big speakers, turned up loud, it sounded so good. Just beautiful. My dad listened to a lot of Willie.

I wish that at some point I had given my dad a really nice stereo as a gift. He would never have gone out and bought a nice system. Before he died, he and my mom had a small compact system. It doesn’t sound horrible, but it isn’t a rich sound. Dad would have enjoyed a good stereo so much. I really regret not thinking of this 15 years ago.

Willie Nelson deserves a rich sounding stereo.

And so did my dad.