"L Y F" Wu Lyf Go Tell Fire To The Mountain
"L.A. County" Lyle Lovett Pontiac
"La Bamba" Ritchie Valens The Best of Ritchie Valens
"La Bayamesa" Buena Vista Social Club Buena Vista Social Club
"La Belle S'Est Etourdie" Kate & Anna McGarrigle The French Record
"La Bikina" Esquivel Music from a Sparkling Planet
"La Califfa" Ennio Morricone Film Music by Ennio Morricone
"La Camisa Negra" Juanes Mi Sangre [studio & live]
"La Camisa Negra (Sonida National Remix)" Juanes/Sonida National Mi Sangre
"La Collectionneuse" Charlotte Gainsbourg IRM
Once again it has been just about forever between posts. To the extent it is kind of ludicrous to even try to explain why, or to even suggest that it will get better. Whatever. The problems remain the same - the music comes in a little faster than I can keep up and catalog it. The Wu Lyf album is a prime example - the songs I come across, this one included, are consistently engaging when they float to the top, but then they disappears and gets lost behind the rest of life and other songs and go knows what all, and suddenly it is an album I have had for over a year and have not played in 8 months.
It is kind of true with everything, and maybe it is a part of getting older - you just get busy. Life gets more demanding as you get older - the job becomes more involved, your daily life becomes more . . . occupied. The stuff piles on, but the days don't get any longer. And you just . . . and this really sucks . . . you just aren't as young as you were. The days actually become shorter because suddenly you have to sleep at night. Partly because your job is no longer just a job, but a career, and if you don't show up and you get fired there isn't another shitty food-service job that is going to pay you the same amount just around the corner. There are people and things that depend on you, and you accept that responsibility. So something has to give, and maybe that something is your ability to go to shows a few nights a week, to just buy and listen to new music on a whim just because you read a review, or heard a clip or just liked the name or needed to get out of the house. And you certainly don't waste whole weekend days or late nights just trying to catch up on the music you may have missed. You just don't have time.
Or maybe that is all bullshit. It hasn't been my job that has gotten in the way of me doing this - other leisure activities - reading, TV, video games, just sitting around doing nothing, all at turns have taken more of my energy and focus over the past year than traversing my music library.
Regardless, here we are again. Since the first of the year, I have been trying to get out to more shows, and see more bands, and am again trying to get a grasp on the music collection. That is going reasonably well. It isn't exactly a resolution, it is just more a feeling of giving myself permission to go out. Sometimes it is easy to fall into a routine of staying at home, or at least being home at a reasonable hour. And reasonable hours and bar shows do not always go hand-in-hand. Another part of that is trying again to get a firmer grasp on the music I have (and still keep growing my collection).
I do want to keep discovering new music. I just hate "CLASSIC ROCK" - not the music itself, I actually really like a lot of that late 60s, early 70s guitar rock that has been pushed down my throat for the entirety of my life. But the title, and the attitude. I despise the idea that somehow there is a period of music that is intrinsically better, more important, more pure, than any other, and particularly anything that came later. I don't think it is an attitude inherent to baby boomers, but because they are the most abundant generation on the planet, they are the most visible, and have been able to control the narrative of music for a long time.
But that isn't really the issue here. The issue is that I don't want to be that guy - I don't want to be an '80s-'90s guy whose musical taste has calcified around a few bands from Minneapolis and Seattle a thousand years ago. I really think we are entering a golden age for music - in terms of its availability, its variety, its vibrancy. I don't want to miss it because I am playing Tim for the millionth time.
It is hard to reconcile, when for years I was among the youngest people at a show, that suddenly I might well be the oldest. I am trying to embrace that - I stay in the back now (no one wants to see their dad in the pit). I buy better beer. I tip well. I try to buy merch (CDs, not a t-shirt I am never going to wear) because these kids half my age probably could use the cash.
On the other hand . . . I still really like Tim. There are songs in everyone's life that they know so well that at their mere mention - the title, a lyric - they not only hear it, but have an emotional response. You have to keep time for those songs. Just because I know every note to "I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts" doesn't keep me from playing More Fun In The New World every month or so. I am just trying to find a balance - I don't want to become rigid, but I don't want to be looking for new music just because it is new.
Anyway - a lot of foreign language songs here, given iTunes' inability to strip articles in French or Spanish the way it throws away "the."
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