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Purchase log, 2022-05-31

[Death Cab for Cutie with the Magik*Magik Orchestra - Live 2012]

I catalog my music purchases on Collectorz and Discogs, but they don’t give me a sense of change over time. So I’m noting them here weekly as well.

New releases

CD
  • MONO. My Story, The Buraku Story

Catalog

CD
  • Modest Mouse, The Moon and Antarctica
  • Rush, 2112
  • Shonen Knife, Let’s Knife
  • Shudder to Think, Funeral at the Movies / Ten Spot
  • The Cult, Electric
  • The Donnas, Spend the Night
Vinyl
  • Blondie, Autoamerican

Reissues

Vinyl
  • Death Cab for Cutie with the Magick*Magick, Orchestra, Live 2012

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Favorite Edition Rewind: 1994

[Soundtrack - Interview with a Vampire]

A decade ago, I wrote a series of entries ranking my favorite albums from 1985 to 2004. My collection has expanded greatly since then, particularly in the last five years. So I wanted to see what has changed in 10 years.

The original list from 1994 didn’t even include an extended list. That’s how austere the selections from the year were.

  1. Talitha Mackenzie, Solas
  2. Freedy Johnston, This Perfect World
  3. Wayne Horvitz/Pigpen, V as in Victim
  4. Harry Connick, Jr., She
  5. Guided By Voices, Bee Thousand
  6. Everything But the Girl, Amplified Heart
  7. Kronos Quartet, Night Prayers
  8. Jayne Cortez and the Firespitters, Cheerful & Optimistic
  9. John Zorn/Masada, Alef
  10. Madonna, Bedtime Stories

Other favorites from the year:

  • Prince, The Black Album
  • Blur, Parklife
  • Pizzicato Five, Made in USA
  • Shudder to Think, Pony Express Record
  • Elliott Goldenthal, Interview with a Vampire

At the time of its limited release, I was actually very curious about The Black Album. Part of it was all the hype surrounding its initial aborted release, but I was still mostly ambivalent about Prince to pass on it. Its underdog status among Prince’s work makes me like it just a bit more.

A top 10 list I would have compiled in 1994 would have listed the Interview with a Vampire soundtrack. It’s actually a really good score. It’s too bad the movie sucked eggs. I watched twice — the first time to evaluate its faithfulness to the novel (somewhat), the second to evaluate it as a film (awful). The only thing that mars the soundtrack is the unfortunate cover of Sympathy for the Devil by Guns N’ Roses.

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Purchase log, 2018-10-02

[Janelle Monáe - Dirty Computer]

I catalog my music purchases on Collectorz and Discogs, but they don’t give me a sense of change over time. So I’m noting them here weekly as well.

New releases

CD
  • Craig Armstrong, Sun On You
Vinyl
  • Janelle Monáe, Dirty Computer

Catalog

CD
  • Amuro Namie, SWEET 19 BLUES
  • Backstreet Boys, Millennium
  • Bill Frisell, In Line
  • Eminem, The Marshall Mathers LP (Explicit)
  • Freedy Johnston, Can You Fly
  • Huun-Huur-Tu, 60 Horses in My Herd
  • John Adams, Doctor Atomic Symphony / Guide to Strange Places
  • John Adams, El Dorado
  • k.d. lang, Absolute Torch and Twang
  • Lisa Gerrard, The Mirror Pool
  • Lou Harrison, Scenes from Cavafy
  • Love and Rockets, Earth, Sun, Moon
  • Semisonic, Feeling Strangely Fine
  • Shakira, MTV Unplugged
  • Shudder to Think, 50,000 B.C.

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The ones that nearly got away: Shudder to Think, Pony Express Record

[Shudder to Think - Pony Express Record]

On paper, Pony Express Record by Shudder to Think ought to be an album I adore. It has complex rhythms, angular melodies, dissonant riffs and lots of distortion. It even arrived at time in my life when modern classical music started occupying my wheelhouse.

But for many years, I could muster at most an intellectual appreciation for the album. Something about it prevented me from internalizing it the same I would music by, say, Wayne Horvitz or Meredith Monk.

Part of the problem was the fact I never paid for it — Pony Express Record was an assignment for the student newspaper. I listened to the promo and found the album had potential. Because I didn’t discover it the way I did with Jayne Cortez or Bang on a Can, I didn’t feel invested in my opinion.

And because I was a snob where avant-garde music was concerned, I couldn’t take Shudder to Think too seriously. Just what were their bona fides anyway?

That ambivalence meant Pony Express Record would not survive a purge for cash. I don’t even know at what point it left my collection.

But it has always nagged at me. I felt I was missing something about that album, something that made it difficult to dismiss.

I’ve tried at different times after subscribing to Google Play Music to give Pony Express Record another shake, but my attention would drift, and it would end without my realizing I had it been playing.

When I spotted a copy at Lifelong Thrift Store for $1, I welcomed it back into my collection, and I gave it the attention I couldn’t afford it in the past.

As it turns out, my inability to embrace Pony Express Record comes down to my tolerance for odd, angular music — which is pretty high. For all its weirdness, Pony Express Record sounds quite normal to me.

I call this my Beck affect. When Beck released Odelay, critics couldn’t stop tripping over themselves to praise his whiplash cuts. I thought it was just poorly-executed John Zorn card pieces.

Pony Express Record is strange, but it’s not the strangest thing I’ve heard. It doesn’t stop it from being a good album, even an important one.

Shudder to Think made a loud, noisy album that relies on precise musicianship to pull off. Rather than dial up the metal influences of grunge the way nü metal bands would eventually do, the band made the punk influences veer into something a whole lot brainier. And they do it while throwing in an occasional hook over mountains of crunchy distortion.

I’m a lot more familiar with Pony Express Record now, and I’m OK with not being able to hum more than a few measures of “Hit Liquor.”

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Purchase log, 2018-03-27

I catalog my music purchases on Collectorz and Discogs, but they don’t give me a sense of change over time. So I’m noting them here weekly as well.

Catalog

CDs
  • 808 State, Ex:el
  • Carole King, Tapestry
  • Guadalcanal Diary, Flip-Flop
  • Shudder to Think, Pony Express Record
  • Squeeze, Babylon and On
  • Terence Trent D’arby, Introducing the Hardline According to Terence Trent D’arby
Vinyl
  • French Kaiser Frith Thompson, Live, Love, Larf & Loaf
  • The Human League, Crash

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