Casual Rants

7.29.2011

Headphones Recommended: What Exactly Is the "Alternative" Genre?

Don't know about you, but I find how music industry handles their genre classifications infuriating.

What is especially infuriating, is people who work within the music industry seem to use "Alternative" as a dump genre. It is like they think, "hmmm, I really don't know exactly what this is, so let's just label it Alternative." This just isn't limited to the Alternative genre, it is like the people behind classifying music really don't have a clue as what exactly a good portion of their product is. It is personal interpretation to a fault in many ways. When looking at genre listings (any of them...after all, we've all seen major label releases classified as "Indie"...wtf?!), you don't really know for sure what you're going to get until you listen to it & correct the genre listing in your library.

Take a look at every other art medium & you'll find they have a pretty good handle on their genres. If a book is tagged "fantasy", you pretty much know the type of story you're going to get. Same w/ movies in the "horror" section at the video store, & "sci-fi" when it comes to a TV show (the exception being SyFy channel reality shows, but we all know they're all on crack). Even the art industry has a handle on their descriptive genres (which has a lot of room for personal interpretation). If a painter is tagged as "Abstract", that is pretty much what your going to get from them.

Just so this isn't a total whine of a blog post, the music industry is unique in another way too. It is the only industry that after an artist releases their work (an album), the songs on that album remain lucid. Meaning as the artist practices/performs the songs, they inevitably tweak them over time, so the song you hear live (6 months, a year, etc.) down the road more than likely is slightly different (improved...hopefully) from the version released on CD. Works from the publishing, movie, TV, art industries are concrete in their releases, and no matter how much the artist might want to change this small thing here or there, they can't w/o taking the product off the market or redoing it entirely.

Thanks for reading my rant, feel free & listen to some Alternative songs...

6.17.2011

Headphones Recommended: Cow Tipping Flash Mob

Last time I approached this theme, tried to put together an Alternative Country/Bluegrass mix. That didn't quite work out. I strayed. I admit it. End result is a great collection of songs, but a few tracks are neither Alternative Country or bluegrass.

This time around, was honest with myself (yep, surprised myself w/ that one too), and approached the mix w/ a broader theme in mind.

For the next 80 minutes, let's get outta the city, take that random freeway exit, and find ourselves so far off the beaten path, the roads are just as likely to be unpaved. This Rural Mix includes Alternative Country, Bluegrass, Americana, Folk, & any combination thereof.

Enjoy!

Oh! Almost forgot:
Meet @ Mr. Johnson's farm, west field, 10:30p.

6.08.2011

Headphones Recommended: Amidst Hell & High Water

This one took some doing. A few weeks ago, I perused the 'ol recently played list & threw all the songs I liked onto the playlist I set aside for this compilation. Found my jaw slightly a gap when I saw the total time exceeded 4 hours. It took a couple of weeks to whittled it down to 80 minutes, a very excruciating & emotional task at times.

To top it off, I kept adding more songs...such is the price of having so much new music on hand. It seriously took 3 days to break below the 2 hour mark. There was a lot of eliminating songs, listening to the comp, re-adding songs, eliminating other songs, re-listening, repeat. Even today I switched out the Wye Oak song w/ the one I just listened to earlier.

All in all, turned out to be a really fun process, & I'm very happy w/ the results (especially considering I've listened to most of these songs at least 5 times over the last week).

It is my hope you start this only to realize you've lost 80 minutes after the last track fades.