Bad at Listening: Introduction

Good people are good: you give them a CD (or vinyl record, or download card, or a myspace link, carrier pigeon, whatever), and they listen to it almost instantly, and then tell you what they thought of it. Bad people are bad. I’m bad about listening to things people give me. I’m bad about listening to things that I buy! Listening is hard. It’s hard work, and hard work never did nothing for nobody.

I play music at shows and one of the established rules about playing shows is, you end up with a lot of other people’s CDs. Being bad, I’ve heretofore been putting these on a particular shelf in my basement and then leaving them there. Now and again I notice that shelf, and how full it is — often while I’m adding another CD to it — and I admit it doesn’t feel good. It’s been weighing on me a bit.

But I got an idea what to do about it.

I propose now to listen to the pile and write reviews, because somehow that smells of justice. Or penance, whatever. Most of this music was traded for my own, some was just handed to me free, some I bought. Some of these bands are still around, some are long gone. Rules have been established to guide this project, but I’m not above breaking these:

• review things I haven’t heard until now
• only review the good ones (or more properly, the ones I like and can think of things to say about)
• review things acquired at shows, and try to remember something about the show (and write it down)
• find out where the artist is now

And now some results:

This is a Process of a Still Life – self-titled
The Lido Venice –Songs Written around the Campfire in the Belly of a Whale
Car Scars – A.M. Gold
Southerly – Best Dressed and Expressionless
Man Man – self-titled EP
Kat Terran – Lion & Blue