Journalistic Tendencies

I have a sort of 'listening journal' that I keep up with from time to time, and I suppose it wouldn't hurt to somehow tie my blog in with my journal.  Btw, what a listening journal does is simply allow me to chroniclemy musical discoveries.  Recently I had a fantastic evening that involved my discovery of a few great bands.

The Shins

My Morning Jacket

Animal Collective

Two-Bit Charlie

Couldn't find any videos of these guys.  I'm pretty sure they're a recent development, and not much has come out of them yet, but I really enjoyed their set at Green Bar when they opened for...

Electric Moon

Man, let me tell you - the venue of this video is an amazing environment, but the acoustics stink like shit.  That's putting it nicely.  It's proof of this band's skill that they can sound at all decent in that basement.  Any one of their songs might won't tell their whole story, but hearing the entirety of a set list makes sense of how their style works, and how great they really are for a recently-formed band.

Dreamy

Today was a day of little more than browsing Youtube for music.  The rest was sleep and food, so all in a good day, but mostly because I turned up some great bands!  Shoegaze is a genre I'd really only known of through My Bloody Valentine and Sigur Ros, and unfortunately I must admit I overlooked ever delving deeper.  What I discovered is that Dream Pop and Shoegaze are not unlike Post-Rock, only a lot catchier.  Enjoy these videos. :3

Ride

Slowdive

Vidulgi Ooyoo

I didn't expect to fall in love with a Korean girl, but I think it might have happened.  The best part about this band is that unlike the others I've posted here, these guys are still together and touring.

Listening Habits

http://www.last.fm/user/godownhornout

I'm just going to throw that out there to start things off.  Last.fm is the only online listening hotspot I subscribe to, and while I'm not crazy about my own participation, I really like the service it provides.  Long story short, that page shows what I listen to, and will do the same for you if you want it to.

But that's only half the story.  I don't own an iPod, so all my 'scrobbles'* to last.fm come from my trusty MacBook.  I sing (see also: failed attempts) along with pop-punk and rock CD's in my car, and have been known to blast classical music from my stereo.  A turning point in my development as a musician was when I was told by several men I respected that the importance of one's music collection is huge, and therefore not to be ignored.  While not big on pirating straight from the internet, most of my new music comes from ripping friends' CD collections and trading via external hard drives either one on one or at larger info swaps, so really I don't pay for much music.  On that note, I have to say pillaging 'used CD' sections in record stores is definitely a favorite passtime!

*Scrobble - What happens when a song you listen to is tracked by last.fm's system.  The song title, artist, and time of play are kept for later review on your profile, and it's pretty neat to see how years of listening looks in chart form.

THESE

...have been my happy place since I got them a few days ago.  I decided earbuds weren't cutting it, so I went to BestBuy to survey my options and came home with these.  How do they sound?  There are more expensive and higher quality headphones on the market, but Sony built these guys to simulate sitting by yourself in the middle of a large room, then suddenly being punched in the gut by sheer bass.  I'm really excited about the fact that an MDR-XB700 exists - they'll be my next pair.