Diario

Desert island, 10 albums, no order:

Elliott Smith - From A Basement On A Hill
The Arcade Fire - Funeral
Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
Death Cab for Cutie - Transatlanticism
Death From Above 1979 - You're a Woman, I'm a Machine
Cuff the Duke - Cuff the Duke
Hot Hot Heat - Make Up the Breakdown
Radiohead - Kid A
EELS - Electro-Shock Blues
The Go! Team - Thunder, Lightning, Strike

Extraordinary by Joel Plaskett Emergency is a very good song.

Not only is it super good in a million ways (intro, everything else, etc),
he has a super good simile:
"The crowd gets caught, like a needle in a groove"

And there's that 'post office' part.



I really like it.

So as much as I super hate surveys, I've had this idea in my head and really like the sound of it.

It took a long time, but is kind of neat to know.


So what I'm doing here is I'm taking my top 50 and dividing the number of tracks listened to by the number of tracks by them I have on my compy. I'll end up with a magical number, representing the amount of plays per track, showing me the most "efficient" bands. Maybe it means I like those bands most, or maybe it means I really like them but don't have any other music, or maybe they're really catchy and poppy and that's why I like them.

Column 1 is the rank in "plays/track"
2 is the rank in "overall tracks played"
3 is the band.
4 is the total tracks played
5 is the amount of tracks by that band that I have on the compy
and 6 is the actual plays/track

It was meant to be all nice and in columns, but I typed it all out in Notepad first, then copied to here, then realized that last.fm doesn't recognize the TAB button. Eugh.



131 The Dandy Warhols 112/3=37.3
219 The Weakerthans 147/4=36.75
35 The Arcade Fire 381/12=31.75
422 No Knife 138/5=27.6
519 They Might Be Giants 147/6=24.5
614 Sublime 179/8=22.38
747 The White Stripes 82/4=20.5
828 311 117/6=19.5
939 Supertramp 94/5=18.8
1045 Beck 87/5=17.4
1127 Simon & Garfunkel 118/7=16.86
1212 The Postal Service 202/12=16.83
138 Wilco 265/17=15.59
1441 Calico Drive 93/6=15.5
1517 The Go! Team 168/12=14
1634 Something Corporate 98/7=14
1710 Blur 245/18=13.61
181 Elliott Smith 928/69=13.45
192 Eels 483/36=13.42
2024 Air 133/10=13.3
213 Death Cab for Cutie 476/36=13.22
2215 Pulp 177/15=11.8
2339 Streetlight Manifesto 94/8=11.75
2418 Scooter 163/14=11.64
2541 Modest Mouse 93/8=11.63
264 Buck 65 409/36=11.36
2726 The Polyphonic Spree 122/11=11.09
286 Catch 22 284/26=10.92
2945 Metric 87/8=10.88
307 Sloan 274/28=9.79
319 The Blood Brothers 253/26=9.73
3249 MSTRKRFT 77 /8=9.63
3324 Joel Plaskett Emergency 133/15=8.87
3421 Death From Above 1979 144/17=8.47
3523 The Flaming Lips 134/16=8.38
3611 Cursive 216/27=8
3743 Depeche Mode 92/12=7.67
3830 Tears for Fears 113/16=7.06
3949 Cuff the Duke 77/11=7
4037 Matisyahu 95/14=6.79
4113 Coldplay 183/34=5.38
4216 Daft Punk 171/31=5.52
4337 Hawksley Workman 95/19=5
4432 Mindless Self Indulgence 110/25=4.4
4529 Franz Ferdinand 114/28=4.07
4633 The Strokes 102/28=3.64
4744 Hot Hot Heat 88/25=3.52
4848 Radiohead 80/24=3.33
4935 Murder by Death 97/30=3.23
5035 Gorillaz 97/33=2.94


The verdict: I guess I really like The Dandy Warhols, which I do. I only have three songs: Bohemian Like You, We Used to Be Friends, and Heroin is so Passé. And I really love all three of those songs, and pretty well never get tired of them. But they're not my favourite band, and I've heard some bad songs by them that are kind of boring.

The Weakerthans I really love, not only because the four songs are super poppy, like The Dandy Warhols, but I just love their overall style. If I had more songs, I'd definately listen to them, and I'm always considering buying an album.

The Arcade Fire, my 3rd, I'm pretty happy with because they are definately tied for my #2 favourite band. The fact that I only have one CD (they really only have one..ish..) is why they're so high, but I figure that I'd listen to them twice as much if they had another.


I wasn't surprised to see these so far down the list, but was surprised to see them right next to eachother: my #1 and (tied for) #2, Elliott Smith and Eels at #18 and 19. However, I kind of cheated for EELS: I have 36 songs, but 16 are M4A which I can't play with Windows Media Player. So really, they should be... #5 in plays/track. Whatever. I still really like them though.


I wasn't really surprised with any of the last ones; most of them I have recently bought/downloaded a new CD and haven't listened to it much. The only one there that I would totally expect would be MSI, because the CD I have has a lot of really small tracks and I'm kind of tired of them by now.


If I had done my top 100 instead of top 50, my #1 would have been De Jeugd van Tegenwoordig at 48 plays/track, because I only have one song ,Watskeburt, and I super love it.

My Bose Quietcomfort 2 headphones broke down yesterday.
The only other headphones I have are the free ones you get on Air Canada.
I guess I'm pretty unhappy.



What is cool though, is DJ Shadow's live album In Tune and On Time. I haven't really gotten into too much else, but the only comparison that I can make between it and his studio stuff is that Blood on the Motorway sounds a whole lot better live.


I've also gotten into Elefant in the past two weeks. The track Make Up is super good, and the rest of Sunlight Makes Me Paranoid is quite good as well. You should probably look into it, I'd say they're pretty similar to The Walkmen. I kind of also liken them to The Strokes, but I'm not sure why.
If you don't know, these three bands all come from NYC. Maybe there is some sort of "New York sound", but I don't think I believe in that sort of thing.

Yo so it's pretty much my one year Last.fm birthday. I'd write a lot about bands and stuff but I can't really. I'll mention my top five though (not based on charts), in case you wanna know

1Elliott Smith
2/3Eels/The Arcade Fire
4/5Wilco/Buck 65

Those are all pretty good eh

Here are some numbers:

14417 tracks/12 months
=1201 tracks/month
14417 tracks/51 weeks
=277 tracks/week
14417 tracks/365 days
=39 tracks/day

Cool.





In unrelated news, my good friend DomenicROSATI signed up today. He is pretty intense.

Same deal as V Fest in Toronto, but a little more promising for school children like me as it is BEFORE school starts. Montréal's also significantly closer than Toronto.




Saturday, September 2 2006
* Sonic Youth
* Clap Your Hands And Say Yeah
* K-Os
* Malajube
* Dinosaur Jr.
* Metric
* Stills
* The Magic Numbers
* World Party
* Amon Tobin
* Grace Potter & The Nocturnals
* Joseph Arthur
* James Chance
* Bush Tetras
* We Are Wolves
* Duchess Says
* Crystal Clyffs
* Think About Life
* The Hushpuppies
*
* +MORE

Sunday, September 3 2006
* Ben Harper & The Innocent Criminals
* Flaming Lips
* Damian Marley
* Bedouin Soundclash
* Dobacaracol
* Wolf Parade
* The Dears
* Bell Orchestre
* Lady Sovereign
* G. Love & Special Sauce
* Islands
* Starsailor
* Kid Koala
* Final Fantasy
* The Hidden Cameras
* Call Me Poupée
* Herman Düne
* Zombie
*
* +MORE

Sounds pretty good to me. If anything, day 2 would be perfect by itself. In fact this may be better than V Fest, except for maybe the Buck 65 difference.

Alright, so it's just been confirmed that this Virgin Festival thing will be coming to Canada in September.

A surprisingly small number of bands are coming (20ish I think), but they make up for quantity with quality:
The Flaming Lips
The Raconteurs
The Eagles Of Death Metal
2 Many DJ's
Alexisonfire
Massive Attack
Sam Roberts
Thrice
The Dears
Gnarls Barkley
K'naan

and more!


A whole bunch of details can be found here: http://www.virginfestival.ca/index.html

The dates: September 9-10th 2006 (the second weekend of September, first one once school stars for all us young'ens)
It's on that island by downtown Toronto, but ferry tickets from Union Station are generally included in the price.



..okay??

Youth is super good. If I was Jewish, I'd be hella proud of it