Days 52-54 Slowly but surely

So I'm back from Vegas and can at least listen a little more than the past week. Unfortunately work continues to try to hold me down and make this challenge even more difficult. I'm in all day meetings from now until December 16th. To make things worse the majority of the meetings are in the UK in a wonderful place known as Slough. Hopefully you'll know it from a little show called the Office. In SAT terms... Slough is to London as Scranton is to NYC.

As far as listening goes I'm still chugging through DMB. I have listened to the following albums...
Busted Stuff
Central Park Concert- an ok but not a great live album
Crash- This is probably my favorite studio album I've listened to so far
Everyday- my 2nd favorite. Surprisingly much much better than I remembered
Gorge- the best live album yet

and I just started "The Lillywhite Sessions"

More to come tomorrow.

Days 47-50- Too much vegas

So I'm still in Vegas and I can't wait to get out of here. A full 7 days in Vegas is just too much for anyone to handle even when staying at the Venetian Palazzo.

I've been listening to tons of DMB and am now in the middle of Crash. I hope to finish Dave by Thanksgiving and post several full DMB reviews before then.

A few treats from my Vegas adventure...
I saw a dance off (seriously, a real dance off) between a guy and a girl at Pure at Caesars. It was probably just as good as JT vs. Britney back in the day.

Mike Tyson is the easiest celebrity to spot since he has a ridiculous face tatoo.

I saw Elvis walk a bride down the aisle

Adios Vegas

Day 45-46 Vegas limits listening time

Unfortunately I haven't had much time to rock out and even less time to blog. I started Dave Matthews on the flight to Vegas and have made it through 4 albums so far which probably means I have about 10 left.

So here's a quick post until I have time to go into more depth.

What I've listened to so far...

1. Solo Acoustic- This is some live recording I acquired a while back of Dave playing by himself at a DEKE party at what I guess is UVA. It's not bad but nothing special either
2. Some Devil- Dave's only solo album. Overall I think it's a good album but I think he does better with the band.
3. Live at Luther College - not a bad album with Tim Reynolds
4. Before these Crowded Streets- I always liked this album but have never been a fan of "Don't Drink the Water" and "Stay".

Day 45- Off to Vegas for a week

I definitely won't be posting every day this week. I'll be off in Vegas for the week for work. Work + Vegas + 7 days = not fun. I'll be at the Venetian if you want to sit in my hotel room and listen to some Dave Matthews for a few days with me.

Also just finished Dar Williams, The Darkness and Dashboard Confessional.

The highlights were "Christians and the Pagans" by Dar, "I Believe in a Thing Called Love" by the Darkness (the rest of the album is horrible unless you think the year is 1989) and "Hands Down" by Dashboard Confessional. If you like Emo or lots of acoustic jams then you'll love Dashboard.

Day 44- Daft Punk

Even though I finished Daft Punk yesterday I think they deserve a post today. They are hands down my favorite Techno/Electronic group.

If you don't know Daft Punk then you'll definitely know their music or at least "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger" which Kanye used for his song of the same name.



So here is a ranking of my favorite Daft Punk songs.

1. One More Time- makes me feel like the weekend is here. Such a feel good song, reminds me of some fun nights out in NYC


2. Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger- If you haven't seen this youtube video then prepare to be amazed. Make sure you at least make it through the first 2 minutes.



3. Voyager- my favorite easy listening techno song of all time. Great for running




4. Veridis Quo- I'm convinced that this is a cover of the theme song from Zelda but have no proof. Abomb turned me onto this one. He has it on his Wii mix... yes he plays Wii to it.



5. Digital Love- just a great Daft Punk song



6. Around The World- I think this is the first Daft Punk song I heard. It must have been on late night MTV or something back in the day. I feel old when I remember MTV playing music videos or even older when I remember when MTV2 actually played videos.

Day 43- Music is my...

Hopefully all of you have at least heard CSS's (Cansei de Ser Sexy) song "Music is My Hot Hot Sex", you probably don't know it by name but definitely remember it from the first iPod Touch TV ad. I had to do a little research on CSS to figure out what language they sing in other than English and it seems to be Brazilian Portuguese since they are from Sao Paulo.

Anyway I love the song and all the random things that are used to describe what music is. I thought it would be worth ranking these statements in honor of Alex and Emily who love this song.

Here is a link to the lyrics and song so you can listen and then comment.
Top 5 "Music is my..." from the song

1. Imaginary friend
2. King sized bed
3. Beach house
4. Back rub
5. Great granddaughter

To add my own statements, Music is my...

1. Flip flops
2. 5-blade razor
3. Jet ski
4. Saturday morning
5. Bluetooth

Add some comments on what "Music" is to you.

Day 42- The C's are Complete!

So I finished the C's and began the D's today. I'm amazed at the amount of music that I own by artists that begin with the letters A, B or C. I am about 20% complete with the challenge and am just beginning the D's, very strange.

Some quick stats...
1460 total songs listened to
93.6 hours
19.8% complete in listening hours

I closed out the C's with some Cyndi Lauper ("Girl's Just Want to Have Fun" and Cypress Hill ("Insane in the Brain" and "Rap Superstar"). I think it's interesting that "Rap Superstar" first came out in Europe and there it was titled "Rock Superstar" with essentially the same lyrics but no Eminem talking about how hard it is in the rap game. I used to have the "Rock Superstar" version but lost that somewhere while replacing computers.

Looking ahead I have what could be the biggest challenge of all.... Dave Matthews. Being a native of VA I am required by commonwealth law to love DMB and purchase all the live albums that all sound exactly the same regardless of if they were recorded in 1996 or 2006. Therefore I have over 24 hours of listening coming up on DMB. If I keep up at the current rate that will take me about 13 days to complete. And I thought Bjork was bad.

I'm off to Vegas this weekend (for work not pleasure) so I'm hoping to get at least 4 hours of listening in on my sweet ass Bose noise-canceling headphones. The best Christmas gift I've ever received.

Day 41- More Cranberries and The Crystal Method

I finished off the Cranberries today. It was good work background music. Easily their worst album that we own is "To the Faithful Departed". There are two songs that are not only horrible but mildly offensive. The first is "I Just Shot John Lennon", if the title isn't strange enough the song ends with gun shots. I thought I was listening to Dr. Dre circa 1992.

The next song was "Electric Blue" which again was horrible musically but also had lines about Kurt Cobain. Apparently this album was all political for this crazy pop group.

I'm currently listening to The Crystal Method and gettin' my techno dance on. Anybody got any glow sticks I can borrow.

Corrections on the previous post

I realized, thanks to Cantando, that my last post had several errors in it.

First the Cranberries song I mentioned was not walking back but rather "Waltzing Back" I blame CDDB for importing it incorrectly in iTunes. But then after listening to it again I actually stated the incorrect song that the "attitude" verse is in.

The correct song is "Still Can't..." off of "Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can't We?". The "attitude" line comes at about 1:27 into the song and after listening to it again is hilarious. Glad I listened to it again.

Days 38-40 - Counting Crows and The Cranberries

I didn't post for the first time this weekend, sorry to my loyal readers (I feel important when I say that).

I continue to make progress on the C's but have slowed down significantly. I blame it on other distractions such as work, weekend to do's (man I'm old), parenthood, inauguration planning, sleep, etc.

I realized I have a ton of Counting Crows. I was thinking I would be making some serious cuts since I had a few of the new CDs. First and foremost, the lead singer, Adam Duritz needs a new hair cut. I didn't know it was possible to keep the same cut or lack there of for 15+ years. It makes me wonder how many times he's washed those dreads in that time period. Also I'm not sure I'm supposed to talk about this, but is the lead singer black or white?

So in summary, Counting Crows are great and definitely some perfect easy listening while doing some work. My two favorite albums are easily This Desert Life and August and Everything After. The other albums are ok but far behind these two.
Top Songs:

1. Sullivan Street
   
2. Mr. Jones
3. High Life
   
4. Mrs. Potter's Lullabye
5. Rain King
6. Anna Begins
7. Omaha

It's tough to rank the above songs because there are so many great songs on August and Everything After. I would highly recommend you dust of these albums and give them a listen as they are great. They also reminded me that in early high school I was supposed to go see Counting Crows play with Craker in VA Beach. The Crows pulled out a few weeks before and my friend Justin and I were pissed and constantly joked about it for the next 5-7 years.

I'm now listening to a ridiculous amount of Cranberries. Monica is a big fan and therefore we have three of their albums. One thing I noticed when listening to "Walking Back" from the album Everyboyd Else is Doing It, So Why Can't We? Each line of the song ends with the lead singer repeating the word in her trademark way. For example she sings "...taking you away from my life, my li-ife, my li-fe". Anyway later in the song she ends a line with "attitude" and tries to sing that in the same style. Well its too many syllables and its obvious that she just sort of softly mumbles it and thinks we won't notice. Well I did and I thought it was pretty funny. I guess I'm listening to way too much music when I notice this stuff.

Thanks for reading. More to come tomorrow.

Day 37- Weekly Stats

I listened to a ton of Counting Crows and almost done with them before moving onto The Cranberries.

I'm really looking forward to completing another letter and progressing to the D's. Should be Monday or Tuesday if all goes well.

I added some stats on the left regarding my progress to date.

Total Songs listened to: 1345

Total Hours listened: 3.6 days or 86.4 hours

Assuming I keep up at the current pace I should finish on April 21st, 2009. I have a few upcoming business trips that I know will slow my progess so I'll have to make sure I listen while in transit.

Thanks for all the comments on the Coldplay post. Keep them coming, without comments I have no idea if anyone is reading this.

Day 36- Finally Coldplay

So after some delay because I had to participate in our country's democratic process I finally finished Coldplay today. I did make a mistake and listen to several songs on X&Y out of order. According to the rules I went back and re-listened to the full album and am now in compliance.

I certainly don't have to tell you that Coldplay is great. So here is an album ranking up front. This was much harder than I thought because all the studio albums are pretty incredible and pretty equal. So here goes and let me know if you agree

1. X&Y- I think this is the most complete album of the four
   
2. A Rush of Blood to the Head
   
3. Parachutes
4. Viva La Vida
   

Overall their top songs in my opinion...

1. Clocks
2. Speed of Sound
3. Amsterdam
4. Viva La Vida
5. Square One
6. Fix You

But on a hopefully more entertaining note... You know how the cool thing for celebs to do these days is talk about how they were uncool or dorks in high school even though we all know they weren't. Well I can imagine Chris Martin says the same thing but from his recent SNL appearance it is clear that he really is a douche. Sure he's got plenty of talent but he has zero stage presence and moves like Bender from Futurama (too vague a reference? Maybe I'm the dork).

I should know about Mr. Paltrow's stage presence from personal experience. I went to see Codplay in the summer of 2006 at Nissan Pavilion in Northern VA. Unfortunately because of the traffic hell hole that is 66 it took us over 2 and a half hours for what is normally a 40 min drive. We made it to the show while they were finishing their 2nd to last song. We went with a group of friends and when we they informed us they were playing their last song before the encore we all decided, F it, we're going home. No need to sit in the car for another 2 plus hours. So technically I've been to a Coldplay concert but only seen them perform one song... White Shadows just in case you were wondering and we did hear them playing Fix You from the parking lot. I hate you 66.

Of course whenever I think about Chris Martin I of course think about Gweneth. And when I think about Gweneth I think about Sliding Doors. Great flick.

Day 35- Stupid Work

I was in meetings all day today and then on calls with Australia and Japan at night. I was still able to listen to some Coldplay today and I'm so close to being done. I'm on X&Y and only have a few songs left.

I definitely promise a good Coldplay post tomorrow. Also please let me know if the post is any good. I haven't seen any comments in a few days so I hope people are still reading.

Also I did receive one comment that said my blog caused Obama's victory. Glad to see I have so much impact.

Day 34- Voting, too busy to blog

I had to spend all of 3 minutes at the polls in Arlington. I love the feeling you get after voting, it really feels good to be an American. Wish I could do that once a month or so.

As far as music today- all Coldplay today and still more to go.

A more compelling blog tomorrow.

Day 33- Artists I Miss

Another quick post before what I think will be an all Coldplay post tomorrow.

Nothing too thrilling today just some Christina Aguilera, Clipse and then Coldplay. Clipse is great if you like Neptunes VA Beach inspired hip hop (I felt akward saying rap). My favorite Clipse song is definitely "When the Last Time".

I thought today it would be worth mentioning the music I miss listening to the most since I started this adventure 33 days ago on October 2nd. What's sad to think is that many of these artists I won't be able to listen to for months.

First and foremost Vampire Weekend (the nerdy/preppy looking white kids above that create amazing music including Pau Gasol second from left). Up until October 2nd all I really listened to for about a month was Vampire Weekend. They are amazing and essentially every song off their first album is incredible. If you haven't heard them before definitely check them out, I would say that their album is 2008 album of the year in my book. Highlights include "A-Punk", "Oxford Comma" and "Mansford Roof". I wish I could describe them well but they are definitely an up beat English inspired alternative pop band. Not sure if that really makes sense but just listen to them and let me know what you think. If I stay on pace I should next listen to Vampire Weekend in May 2009.

Next Kate Nash. Kate is another female British pop star with a tude. She's like Amy Winehouse minus the drugs, plus some teeth, minus the bee hive, plus white girl raping skills. Monica enjoys her especially because of her amazing accent and lines like "don't tell me that you didn't try check out my bum, cause you know that you did, cause your friend told me that you liked it" from "Merry Happy". Highlights from Kate include "Merry Happy", "Foundations" and "Pumpkin Soup" all from her album Made of Bricks.

Lastly Phoenix. If you haven't heard of Phoenix then shame on you. Phoenix is a French alternative/pop/rock band that for some reason doesn't utter a line of French on any of the albums I have. I would have never realized they were French if I hadn't done some research. No throaty accents, no general rudiness, no bad odors and no attitudes. Best songs include "Everything is Everything" (quite possibly one of the greatest songs of all time, yes I'm serious), "Run Run Run", "Napolean Says", "Consolation Prizes", "Sometimes in the Fall" and "If I Ever Feel Better". I'm sure I will ramble on about Phoenix when I get to the P's but that should be a few months away. I'm guessing February.

I'll be bringing my hot jams to the polls with me tomorrow. Hopefully I won't be in line for long.

Day 32- Busy Weekend

Unfortunately I only had a very short amount of listening time this weekend between Halloween, play dates and other activities. I am making progress on the C's and am now on Christina Aguilera. Before X-Tina I listened to Chingy and The Chipmunks.

Other than Chingy's radio hits he his horrible. But I'm not sure I should saw bad stuff about street tough rappers on the internet. I could get a beat down for it.

Regarding Christina, I'm sort of amazed that out of the three blond pop-tarts that came about at the same time- the others being Jessica Simpson and Britney- that Christina is the one that seems to be the most normal. She certainly has the most talent

Getting close to Coldplay which should set up a lengthy post either Monday or Tuesday.
Adios until tomorrow.

Day 31- The Captain and Tennille

I've hit a patch of a bunch of random C's including The Captain & Tennille.

There is so much I would like to ask the Captain and yes of course Tennille about this picture.

Other randoms Carl Douglas and Kung Fu Fighting followed by Carlos Santana and Oye Como va and then Celine Dion. Luckily it was only one song.