the_seeker's Last.fm Journal

Black

Wed, 7 Sep 2011 23:16:21 +0000

Black is quite an evocative colour, no wonder lots of songwriters use it. Here's some songs that use it, some of these are absolute classics. As The Raconteurs observe, there are Many Shades of Black and as many genres with songs about it.

Soundgarden sure love the colour. They wrote Fell on Black Days, which is possibly my favourite song by them. Their biggest single was Black Hole Sun and they recently put out a new song called Black Rain. Speaking of black holes, Muse had a massive hit with Supermassive Black Hole. AC/DC's most iconic song is Back in Black and Amy Winehouse was unfortunately almost prescient about her own life with Back to Black.

My favourite Pearl Jam song is quite possibly Black, whose sentiment is quite similar to The Rolling Stones' Paint It, Black, both songs about heartbreak. Pearl Jam's Spin the Black Circle is an ode to music on vinyl.

Michael Jackson doesn't care if you're Black or White, Santana is bewitched by a Black Magic Woman, Led Zeppelin know in their heart that The Girl I Love She Got Long Black Wavy Hair, Joan Osborne sings about a girl who left with a Man In The Long Black Coat and Melody Gardot tells her man that Your Heart Is As Black As Night. Love and the colour black seem to go together a lot. Speaking of nights, Deep Purple know that Black Night is falling.

Alannah Myles sings about Black Velvet and Lenny Kravitz about Black Velveteen. I'm quite sure they're the same thing.

A final round-up - The Charlatans have a very interesting song called Blackened Blue Eyes, Goldfrapp sings about a Black Cherry and Sarah McLachlan knows everything isn't Black & White.

50k

Fri, 10 Jun 2011 07:09:34 +0000

Almost exactly 7 months to the day since 45,000.

My top 10 then:
01. Brandi Carlile (-)
02. U2 (+1)
03. David Gray (-1)
04. Sarah McLachlan (+3)
05. Oasis (-1)
06. Pearl Jam (-1)
07. Lenny Kravitz (-1)
08. Bruce Springsteen (-)
09. Sheryl Crow (new)
10. Jonatha Brooke (-1)

My top 10 today:
01. Brandi Carlile (-)
02. U2 (-)
03. Sarah McLachlan (+1)
04. David Gray (-1)
05. Pearl Jam (+1)
06. Oasis (-1)
07. Lenny Kravitz (-)
08. Sheryl Crow (+1)
09. Bruce Springsteen (-1)
10. Roxette (new)

The usual up and down dance amongst most of the Top 10, with Roxette knocking out Jonatha Brooke.

Using this cool tool: Last.FM Explorer, I've been able to find out approximately what music I've listened to in the last 5000 tracks. Here's the top 5:

01. Sarah Blasko
02. Leona Naess
03. KT Tunstall
04. The Black Keys
05. Red Hot Chili Peppers

I was totally obsessed with Sarah Blasko at the end of last year. She's had a couple of totally fantastic albums. The same deal with Leona Naess earlier this year. Since I saw KT Tunstall in concert last month, I've been listening to her quite a bit too, and I did the same with The Black Keys when I saw them in concert late last year.

So, here's to the big 50k!

Blues all the way

Fri, 27 May 2011 15:26:40 +0000

Thu 26 May – Tedeschi Trucks Band

Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks form a potent combination. She has stunning vocal ability and is a very good blues guitar player, he is possibly the best blues guitarist of his generation. The band around them is stunning as well, with Michael Madsen on vocals and not one, but two drummers. Together they are the Tedeschi Trucks Band and are they good or what. Every song was at least 7-8 minutes long, with plenty of jamming and guitar solos sprinkled throughout. I can't wait to get my hands on their album.

2010

Mon, 24 Jan 2011 16:53:19 +0000

So, Last.fm has fixed their chart update issue and I can create my top charts for 2010. Here's the Top 20, created using this tool.

1. Sarah Blasko
2. Sarah McLachlan
3. Pearl Jam
4. U2
5. The Black Keys
6. Jenny Owen Youngs
7. The Prodigy
8. Norah Jones
9. Sheryl Crow
10. Muse
11. The Raconteurs
12. Joan Osborne
13. Ben Harper and Relentless7
14. The Doors
15. The Verve
16. Massive Attack
17. Gemma Hayes
18. David Gray
19. Silversun Pickups
20. Led Zeppelin / Soundgarden

Additionally, I've used the
Extra Stats tool to generate an visual timeline of 2010 below. The image is probably going to look horribly oversized, but that can't be helped.

I love how it shows so many trends in the way I listened to my music, which is a curious fascination of mine.

The last quarter of the year is dominated by my top artist, Sarah Blasko and also The Black Keys at #5. I listened to both pretty obsessively. Sarah Blasko just hit the spot and I saw the Keys in concert around then, which kicked off a listening frenzy.

Sarah McLachlan and Sheryl Crow were very strong in the middle of the year, around the time their new albums were released and Lilith Fair rolled by.

Pearl Jam, U2 and Jenny Owen Youngs, all had two distinct periods of heavy listening.

The Prodigy was my gym music in early summer, which explains that huge chunk in April / May. Muse were also strong then during workouts, fueled by the concert I attended around that time.

Norah Jones sneaks into the Top 10, which surprises me since I didn't listen to her much after the first few days of the new year. Also, Star Anna doesn't get in despite that burst in September, but she faded quickly.

So, that's 2010. I'm curious again as to what 2011 will look like.

45,000!

Mon, 8 Nov 2010 17:07:56 +0000

It's been a slow crawl from 40,000 to here.

The first time I started doing my Top 10s was at 5,000 tracks in Feb 2007. Here's my Top 10 from then:

01. Brandi Carlile
02. Apocalyptica
03. Def Leppard
04. Nelly Furtado
05. U2
06. Eric Clapton
07. Tori Amos
08. Kishore Kumar
09. R.E.M.
10. Pearl Jam
10. Meat Loaf

Where are they today on my list?
01. Brandi Carlile (-)
02. U2 (+3)
06. Pearl Jam (+4)
15. Eric Clapton (-9)
17. R.E.M. (-8)
19. Kishore Kumar (-11)
25. Apocalyptica (-23)
44. Nelly Furtado (-40)
48. Def Leppard (-45)
57. Tori Amos (-50)
87. Meat Loaf (-77)

I am more than a little surprised. Only Brandi Carlile, U2 and Pearl Jam survive from that original Top 10. Tori Amos and Meat Loaf have dropped out of the Top 50! In four years years, my music taste seems to have moved on somewhat.

Here's my Top 10 today, so I get to compare 4 years from now :)
01. Brandi Carlile (-)
02. U2 (+1)
03. David Gray (-1)
04. Sarah McLachlan (+3)
05. Oasis (-1)
06. Pearl Jam (-1)
07. Lenny Kravitz (-1)
08. Bruce Springsteen (-)
09. Sheryl Crow (new)
10. Jonatha Brooke (-1)

Sheryl Crow is new, Roxette drop out. Not much change otherwise.

On to 50k.

The crowd could use Kings of Leon on fire

Mon, 19 Jul 2010 10:01:35 +0000

Sat 17 Jul – Kings of Leon

Just fantastic. The opening act "Built to Spill" were great too, I have to look up some of their music.

Here is Kings of Leon doing Sex on Fire and Use Somebody. I love how the crowd sings the best part of both songs. Though I have to admit, if I was the mother of the two teenage girls in the row ahead of me, singing "Sex is on fire", I'd be a wee bit embarrassed :)

Lilith Fair 2010

Mon, 19 Jul 2010 09:56:11 +0000

Fri 2 Jul – Lilith
Sat 3 Jul – Lilith

The event at the Gorge was much better organised, which combined with all the comments I've been reading since then, leads me to believe that Lilith is going to be hit or miss for people all through the tour, depending on how much effort the organisers put into it at every venue.

All the performances were fantastic, no complaints there at all. I'm glad I went to both venues in Washington, I wouldn't have liked to come away with the Portland show as my only experience of Lilith this year.

Sarah McLachlan at the Portland show, just sublime.

Compilation of different acts at the Gorge show. The first act is The Submarines, not Grace Potter and I'm too lazy to go and edit and re-render the video. They did the same finale at both shows (Because the Night) and it was great both times.

One of the surprises was Sugarland. I'm not a huge fan of country but their sense of fun and high quality performance was infectious. What was remarkable was that they delivered almost exactly the same performance at the two shows. I'm not really complaining, but it does go to show how rehearsed some of the performances are.

One of the great moments at the Gorge show was Sheryl Crow singing to her son, who was totally cute. From the sound of it, her next album should be a cracker too.

All in all, I loved Lilith Fair 2010. If they come by next year, I'll be back too.

40,000

Fri, 30 Apr 2010 03:09:20 +0000

Took a little over 6 months to scrobble 5k tracks since October 18.

Top 10 then:
1. Brandi Carlile
2. Oasis
3. David Gray
4. U2
5. Bruce Springsteen
6. Sarah McLachlan
7. Lenny Kravitz
8. Jonatha Brooke
9. Roxette
10. Serena Ryder

Top 10 now:
1. Brandi Carlile (-)
2. David Gray (+1)
3. U2 (+1)
4. Oasis (-2)
5. Pearl Jam (new)
6. Lenny Kravitz (+1)
7. Sarah McLachlan (-1)
8. Bruce Springsteen (-3)
9. Jonatha Brooke (-1)
10. Roxette (-1)

Pearl Jam come in strong, knock out Serena Ryder. Some movement up and down, but it's mostly stays the same. This top 10 ain't changing much, is it? Here's to another 5k songs!

Polished ... or not

Mon, 19 Apr 2010 06:32:56 +0000

Sun 18 Apr – Norah Jones, Sasha Dobson
Thu 15 Apr – Florence + The Machine, Holy Hail

Norah Jones' concert was almost exactly like her albums - they start off energetically, drawing you in, midway they become more sombre, and finally they end in a sleepy sort of way. She does all this in a very polished manner, and thus was her performance today as well. There's wasn't much deviation from formula, bar the occasional improvisation, which was much welcome.

I couldn't help contrast it with Florence + the Machine from two nights ago - lots of energy but lacking polish (being a little tipsy didn't help clearly). All that energy couldn't stop her from going off key on almost every song. Despite some moments of brilliance, it wasn't a satisfying show.

In an ideal world, every concert would combine the best of both of these but sometimes it just doesn't happen.

Goodbye 2009, you were good to me.

Sat, 2 Jan 2010 15:44:16 +0000

I used the excellent Last.Fm Extra Stats tool to generate the image below:

I love how it captures my whole year of music listening and looks stunning at the same time. It's graphic art generated through mathematics. Somehow, a combination of mathematics, music, computing and colours is very satisfying to me :)

I listened to most amount of music in October last year. May and December were the leanest months. Serena Ryder dominates the early part of the year. Other artists with large chunks are Chris Isaak, Pearl Jam, Jessica Lea Mayfield, Snow Patrol, David Gray,The Swell Season, Howie Day, Florence and The Machine, Robyn and The Weepies. David Gray has an amazing chunk all the way from August to November! While he was second to Serena Ryder in my top artists of the year, he was the artist I listened to most consistently. Green Day round off the year with a strong presence at the end (almost the last couple of days of the year actually).

Also, here's my ten most listened artists for the year:
1. Serena Ryder
2. David Gray
3. Snow Patrol
4. Chris Isaak
5. Howie Day
6. U2
7. Florence and The Machine
8. Jessica Lea Mayfield
9. The Weepies
10. Pearl Jam