Yesterday, sprite and I were listening to music – James Taylor’s New Moon Shine, to be specific – as a way to chill in the Burrow. sprite had spun up “Shed A Little Light” in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr.
After listening to the album the whole way through (tracks 3 through 12, then tracks 1 and 2), I spun up U2’s Rattle And Hum for their gospel version of “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.”
Hmmm – first a “T” artist, then a “U” artist. Hmmm…
So sprite says “this year, let’s listen to every CD we have.” Quite the feat, given that we have over 1,500 in our collection. Somewhere along the line, I suggested that we go alphabetically, which would be a bit tedious – after all, I have over 100 CDs by The Beatles, which would get a bit old after a while. So the challenge was modified: do an album for each letter, A-Z (or, in this case, T-S), then start again. It’ll allow us to revisit discs and artists we haven’t listened to of late, and I can update the inventory database, which is about 16 months out-of-date.
We can fudge a bit with names – first name can work for alphabetical order, which opens up a few letters (e.g. Willie Nelson can be “N” or “W”). Sure, it’s not technically alphabetical, but who cares? It’s our challenge!
Got it? Good!
So I’ll be keeping track of this on the pages of this blog. I’m going to try and figure out a way to make it unintrusive, but the later posts will be shorter. And I’ll be linking to Amazon and the iTunes music store for the albums, as well, in case you also wish to indulge (though this post’s links will show up sometime tomorrow).
So, without any further ado, here are the first entries:
16 January:
T: New Moon Shine – James Taylor
U: Rattle And Hum – U2
V: Contraband – Velvet Revolver
W: Wings Over America – Wings
sprite
18 January 2006 — 10:47
I thought I’d add my thoughts on some of the music, since sometimes that’s just as interesting as the album itself.
So since JT is mine, I’ll add that this album was really my first adult exposure to him, courtesy of my friend ECN. I remember Dad explaining “Fire and Rain” to me sometime when I was young — we were in the car together in downtown Wallyworld — and certainly Dad had JT albums at home, but this was my own coming to an artist.
JT relies too much on his backing singers in this album, but I think they work as the chorale in “Shed a Little Light.” “Copperline” is a strong JT tune, worthy of the repertoire. And “The Water Is Wide” is just a beautiful way to end a cd.
And I wasn’t really familiar with Velvet Revolver, but they’re not bad.