I think you may have inspired me to listen to some KINKS albums this long weekend. Everybody’s in Show Biz, Lola vs Powerman and the Moneygoround, Muswell Hillbillies, Arthur - or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire.
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Based on “Classic Album Sunday” my 2 brothers my daughter and a couple of friends have Classic Album Sunday every couple of months, where I pick three or four old albums (Ww are in our late 60’s early 70’s) and listen completely. Try not to talk while listening just listen to the music and the system. A lot of fun and good memories of listening sessions back in the day.
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That sounds amazing! I’ve never heard of any of those, so I may check them out myself!
This is so cool! Nothing else but music…sounds like a great time!
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I’ve found myself listening to more full albums for a while. When I initially stumble on a new album/artist I always listen to the full album. As time goes on though, sometimes I skip around. It really depends on my mood or if I’m listening for enjoyment vs listening critically.
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When a new release comes out, full album; usually nothing but that album until I’m thoroughly familiar with it, actually. Besides that, it all depends on my mood.
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It was probably in the last decade that I transitioned from a Kinks greatest hits album to listening to their actual albums and I really kicked myself for not doing this earlier.
@jhsmastering , I’m sure everyone has their favorite Kinks albums but if you’re dipping your toes in the water, I’d recommend you start with “Something Else” and “The Village Green Preservation Society” to get a feel for their sound, and then go through @pennstac’s list in chronological order to see how their sound evolves. And also go back to the earlier albums because there is a lot of classic music you don’t want to miss.
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That’s similar to what I do. I think there are still a lot of good albums being produced. I’m not really sure if the Golden Age of the 60s and 70s were really all that much better, because there have always been artists that have focused on albums and artists that have focused on singles, and then release albums containing those singles plus filler.
Sometimes, it’s not the artist’s fault. I’ve just been listening to the Beach Boys’ discography, and I think they’re a good example of a band that would have preferred to focus on quality, but were forced by their record company to release product at a rapid rate.
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I will definitely do so, thank you!
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Albums. 92.3% of the time. Or, in the classical world, I listen to complete pieces, which sometimes get lumped on albums with other pieces that don’t go together.
I do have a few playlists for specific moods, or to remind me to look up albums by people I get recommendations for, but I’m an albums guy.
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While Village Green is one of my favorites, Arthur is a very accessible jumping in point. And with @jhsmastering ’s bluegrass proclivities, he’ll eventually get a charge out of Muswell Hillbillies (which is offbeat for the Kinks) once he understands that Muswell Hills is a rather low-rent section of London. And the album is a bit of a tribute to some US sound of the time.
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No argument from me. I just think “Something Else” is the first in a run of classic albums, and it’s interesting to start there and see how they evolve from album to album. Doing that would take longer to get to “Muswell Hillbillies” but it would still be a fun journey to get there.
I think Muswell Hill was considered a working class area when Ray Davies grew up there, but like the rest of London, it’s probably not within the grasp of normal people any more. I owned a very cheap one bedroom condo in a low-rent section of London in the 90s. It was what you would have considered a starter home, the first place I could afford to buy with the meagre wages from my first job out of college, but when I looked it up recently, I saw that it last sold for $500,000. I don’t understand how anyone can afford to live in London any more.
But to bring this back to music, I saw that “Something Else” was made in 1967. What a magical year for music (Sgt Pepper, The Doors, Velvet Underground & Nico, Are You Experienced etc etc). I think 1966-67 was the tipping point for albums being special.
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Absolutely no Greatest Hits albums.
I also keep a notebook of full albums. That I’ve listened too on my own. Just to see how many more of my nearly 4000 ripped cds I have to go.
Looks like I have to live another 60 years.
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When a new release comes out, full album; usually nothing but that album until I’m thoroughly familiar with it, actually. Besides that, it all depends on my mood.
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I’ve gone through every stage myself. When I was younger it was the radio and cassettes recording radio stations. Or flipping through my parents 8-track player so I don’t know what that counts as lol. It was both a full album and flipping around. Then came CD’s and that was always full albums while riding around with my parents. Then I could drive and had a CD player in my car and my co-pilot would DJ the binder of CD’s for me. Then I went back to full albums in the early 2000’s. I didn’t get into the internet music until rather late. Ever since I started streaming with Pandora years ago I’ve rarely done albums but on occasion I will.
It’s crazy all of the albums I thought of writing this. My best friend when I was younger idolized the Mortal Kombat Soundtrack, one day I walked into the livingroom and the CD was on the floor with a crack in it. We must have listened to that thing start to finish hundreds of times so we held a ceremony for it’s funeral and printed something up like a headstone. That was my first introduction to electronica. The most recent album I’ve listened to start to finish repeatedly was by Veela, I think it was called Versatile. Just loved falling asleep to that.
I’m planning on going back to full albums soon though.
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Falling asleep to an album doesn’t count unless the last song you remember hearing is the stylus forever repeating the end groove’s quiet glide, slightly clicking about every 1.8 seconds.
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Me, too.
If I really like any songs more than others, they’ll get rated in my jukebox software, and added there to one or more of my static playlists where I think they’d fit into content-wise. I really like having playlists which include different artists, and many times, a mix of genres.
I still predominantly consume albums straight through, though. Probably due to the fact I was accustomed to doing it this way during the vinyl and CD eras.
Absolutely no Greatest Hits albums.
My answer is:
- Almost always with vinyl.
- Frequently, maybe even more often than not, with CD.
- Maybe once, ever, with streaming? Almost never.
It’s streaming’s fault that we don’t listen to albums anymore.
Cue the howls of execration: “I don’t know about you, man, but I listen to full albums with streaming, I give the artist the utmost respect,” etc. etc.
But the data doesn’t lie. Streaming is an attention-span killer. Listen to CDs and vinyl.
Cheers,
S. Owl
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Maybe … but I’m not so sure. I think it’s more nuanced than that.
In my early years, almost all my contemporaries listened more to, and usually bought, singles. I have never bought a single in my life. Just albums. I’m not convinced that that has changed much over the years, but music delivery mechanisms sure have, and the music industry has had to as well, albeit kicking and screaming.
I reckon younger people, for the main part, still have that tendency towards singles, charts and so forth. Where streaming comes in is that it has never been easier to get access to a vast range of material, easily, and ‘right now’. So for those more inclined to singles, I wonder if in these streaming-enabled days, they ever really do get into listening to albums.
Personally, having digitised my entire music collection, I can listened to what I want, when and where I want, be it lounging in a comfy chair, in the car, out and about with IEMs, in a hotel room on headphones, whatever. What I listen to, in the sense of tracks or albums rather than genre, depends on where I am and what I’m doing. Relaxing in that comfy chair is when it’s primarily and indeed, almost exclusively about the music, about really ‘listening’. On headphones in a hotel room too. But out and about, in the car, or while I’m doing something else be it working or cooking dinner, it’s more about … background. About ambience. And then, I’m more likely to pick an artist, or a genre/style, and go for random track selection, because I’m not focussed on listening as such.
So in that sense, I guess I’m ‘streaming’, albeit from my own album selection from my NAS (or files on my phone), not what is usually meant by streaming. I do turn on a paid sevice from time to time, but mostly just to ‘audition’ stuff I’ve come across but don’t know whether to buy. If I like it, I’ll buy (physical media) and add it to my collection. But I don’t leave a subscription running for more than a month or two, these days.
I’m really still listening to music, with or without streaming, but the way I did as a teen, which is either albums, or as ‘background’. All that’s changed is the delivery and storage mechanics. I rather think the “kids” these days getting music via streaming, are the current version of the same group that bought singles and listened to new singles on radio, in my childhood. Mostly (with exceptions) those that I knew as a child and am still in contact with, haven’t much changed. If they were singles-oriented then, they still are, but are streaming. And if they were album-oriented, they nearly all still are, subject to listening circumstances.
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