Your Charles Mingus

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When the new The Books album came out, I decided to check out their back catalog first, downloading Lost and Safe. A big fat holy shite came flying out of my Scottish heritage mouth. How did a band this amazing dip under my radar for so long? I'm not talking about this kind of band. This is the kind of band where you hear one song and you say that's it, I'm getting everything they have. As much as I love music, that doesn't happen much for me, and it's fun.

But that's now what I'm talking about in this thread.

I'm curious if others have discovered music long after you downloaded a bunch of their albums. I didn't know much of anything about Charles Mingus, but at two credits, I got the Town Hall Concert for Eric Dolphy long ago. The hard part with long, live old school jazz songs like those is the space and time I need to truly move into them. I listened through a couple times and felt no need to add more Charles. Then more came to eMu through whichever drop, I dug the samples, felt stupid I didn't have any of his stuff, and got Mingus Ah Um and Mingus Dynasty. They went unlistened to. Then came the next big eMu drop, and Charles Mingus box set was available for 12 credits. Check.

I suddenly had ten albums by someone I had barely listened to. Months have passed and I'm just loving all these albums. I can barely think of many artists who are having as a great time or express as much passion as Mingus. Weird though to "discover" someone by listening to your own collection. But I'm willing to bet others here have done it too...

Dr. Mutex

I have 72 days worth of unlistened music. I'm sure there's much head-smacking in my future.

selfrisinmojo

i do regret that i apparently only have one lifetime to listen to the music i have accumulated; i have not seen any data that suggests you are allowed to carry any anxiously held yet unheard favorites with you to the other side.

kargatron

72 days worth of unlistened music

*cough* That's more than half of my entire library, which is not considered small in most quarters. I'm having difficulty imagining the context of your stated situation... I mean, that's on the order of 20,000 songs, right?

Bad Thoughts

i do regret that i apparently only have one lifetime to listen to the music i have accumulated; i have not seen any data that suggests you are allowed to carry any anxiously held yet unheard favorites with you to the other side.

The 'loyal' slaves building my pyramid informed me that I would be taking all my music into the afterlife, including the collected works of Mojo Nixon and Ray Lemur (or was that Ray Emure).

Amie Street is a big source of music that is yet to be discovered, though on my hard drive. The CRI drop gave me a lot of music that I haven't been able to give the attention it deserves--a lot of long form classical and avant-garde that can't be absorbed in a thirty minute period while cooking dinner. (Conversely, Amie Street has also given me a lot of music the didn't play as well the second time around. ) However, it was a two disc set of choral work by Heinrich Schütz that really caught my attention almost a year after dlíng it. It set off a small spree in which i purchased several other albums of his work.

BigD-Bluez

I regret to say I am duly chastened/embarrassed on a routine basis by the musical treasures that are slipping through the cracks. I'm trying to remedy this by periodically poring over the master playlists I keep for each download service, to try and keep better track of stuff, but I have to admit on the other hand that I kind of enjoy those Ooh, I forgot I have this moments, especially if it's really good listening. I like those Gomer Pyle moments, you know, "Surprise, surprise, surprise!". Two of the artists I've sort of rediscovered this way were Laurindo Almeida, and Martin Taylor, and I should probably say John Renbourn too. All are more diverse than I realized and really good too. And I hit every single one of those Mojo Nixon albums when they were free on Amazon last year - got to go, Debbie Gibson is coming over later.

thomnottom

I probably have some better examples than this, but the first one to pop into my mind was Sloan. Way back in the days of plaid I bought this classic compilation (after 16 years I'm about ready to give up on volume 2) largely for the Counting Crows' track (go ahead and laugh, I don't care). But it was also the beginning of my attempts to find new "alternative" music. Based on half of the Sloan track I ended up ordering their sophomore release, which was weird considering the song of theirs I heard was actually a cover. Regardless, the album was decent and got played once and awhile.

Later on I made sure to pick up their first release and was excited when I found a copy of One Chord to Another with a bonus disc. Despite going out of my way to get all of these, I really didn't listen to Sloan that much.

Then came Navy Blues. Holy effin' hell. 4 years after I started buying all of the Sloan I could find it really clicked and they became one of my absolute favorites. Now I kind of laugh at the fact that Twice Removed was just another record to me for so long...

choiceweb0pen0

Not to mention albums and artists that you forget about, not be cause they're terrible, but just from having too much ready music. That was one so called problem I often had when I had the old 75 DL plan. Creating a recently added and unlistened to smart playlists helped, but it still happens. Most recently I keep forgetting about the new Max Richter album.

choiceweb0pen0

@thom: i had a similar experience with Sloan loving “Who Taught You to Live Like That?” and getting One Chord. Just never quite got on it.

elwoodicious

I'm trying to remedy this by periodically poring over the master playlists I keep for each download service, to try and keep better track of stuff, but I have to admit on the other hand that I kind of enjoy those Ooh, I forgot I have this moments, especially if it's really good listening.

I've gotten very OCD about managing playlists for each service, organizing them by month and playcount. While this helps me listen to an album at least once it can feel pretty sterile and as of late I often enjoy randomly queuing songs up for those forehead slapping listens.

amclark2

@thom: I used to love counting crows too, and I almost bought that comp., although I was interested in the Nirvana and Teenage Fanclub songs mostly.

I have a huge amount of stuff from Amie Street that I've never listened to - most of it I've never even downloaded - but up until I discovered Amie Street I did manage to keep pretty good track of everything I had. I'm sure right now something I love is in that Amie pile, but I'm starting to give up on the idea of ever getting through it all.

cafreema

That's a cool comp. I've never heard of it before.

I of course have things that I don't listen to for awhile and then hook me in again and make me think "why don't I listen to this ALL the time!?!" I can't say I've ever downloaded a large amount of stuff though and only truly discovered it for the first time much later. I only have about 48 days of music, though, so it's a bit tougher for me to lose something than for some of you folks.

Craig

jonahpwll

The closest thing I have to that is Sonic Youth. I purchased a whole bunch of albums by them even though what friends played for me didn't blow me away, but I kept finding cheap cds of their and figured what the hell. Then one day (a couple years after purchasing them) I put in Experimental Jet Set on a whim and there was no looking back from there. That was something like fifteen years ago and I still consider them one of my favorite rock bands.

But nothing like your Mingus in the digital age. I have some albums from Amie that I haven't given much of a listen to, but only one each. Emusic albums get listened to every month in the month I buy them.