auspicacious (Posts about music)

A thousand songs on Spotify, and some more that aren't

Andrew Todd — Sun, 11 Jul 2021 09:00:00 GMT

For the past five years, I've been slowly building a playlist that I call The Big Shuffle. Sometimes songs get added to remind me that an artist exists, and I should play their albums from time to time. Sometimes they're added because of something exceptional about the song itself. Sometimes, I add songs like "Surfin' Bird" by the Trashmen, just because I can.

Often, looking at the "Date Added" is enough to bring something half-forgotten to the surface; the music changed as my life changed. As I approached the thousandth song last month, Spotify serendipitiously suggested a new release to me -- an exuberant live recording of Glen Campbell performing Green Day's "Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)." Recorded in 2008, just two years before his Alzheimer's diagnosis, it seems especially poignant in retrospect.

But this post is about something else: to celebrate a thousand songs on Spotify, I'll talk about a few dozen that aren't.

Dignity

Andrew Todd — Tue, 06 Nov 2018 00:01:00 GMT

And I'm telling this story in a faraway scene
Sipping down raki and reading Maynard Keynes
And I'm thinking about home and all that means
And a place in the winter for Dignity...

Retrospective Music Genres: Northern Soul, Yacht Rock, City Pop

Andrew Todd — Tue, 23 Oct 2018 20:00:00 GMT

Lately, I've been listening to the neo-yacht rock duo Young Gun Silver Fox, which got me thinking about musical genres that have been rediscovered or redefined long after their creation. All three of the genres I'm writing about today have some roots in American soul music, which might be a testament to its lasting quality and influence worldwide.

Summer of Concerts, The Playlist

Andrew Todd — Sat, 15 Sep 2018 16:13:10 GMT

I've written about how I spent the summer of 2018 chasing concerts across Europe. Here's the (heavily editorialized) setlists from many of those shows, below and also available to play on Spotify.

Summer of Concerts, In Review

Andrew Todd — Mon, 10 Sep 2018 16:13:10 GMT

It's no secret that I have outdated taste in music. This summer, I indulged it.

I often check out Pollstar to see if anyone I'm interested in will be coming to town.

When I first started planning how to leave my job and take another long trip, I did the same thing in some of the first cities. I can't remember which concert I found first, but pretty soon one became a dozen. As I started looking up cities and some of my favorite artists' summer tours, things quickly snowballed. I decided that I would use concerts and music festivals to help draw my path east across Europe, to where I would finish in Finland. Since the beginning of this year, I have seen at least thirty bands perform.

I thought I'd make up some arbitrary awards for the shows I've seen. The full list of shows is at the bottom.

Paul McCartney, Brian Wilson, Paddy McAloon

Andrew Todd — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 09:06:27 GMT

(Another "music I like" entry, because I can.)

Symphony of Science

Andrew Todd — Fri, 20 May 2011 16:24:45 GMT

It's been a busy couple of days, so here's something excellent that I've rediscovered recently. John Boswell's Symphony of Science project creates fantastic music out of the words of some of the world's leading thinkers. This is the eighth video in the series, "The Big Beginning." If religion can inspire some of the greatest music in history, why not science? It's a start. http://symphonyofscience.com/ for the rest.