from It's Time They Knew to Jack Hinks

Day 982, Session 157:
When/Where: Thursday March 5th - Grocery run.
First song: It's Time They Knew by The Swimmers
Last full song: Jack Hinks (Live) by Great Big Sea
Progress: 2959-2982 of 7175
Total Songs Heard: 2026

It Ain't Love by House of Lords, please show yourself out. It's funny how hard they tried with this particular metal ballad. There's a fair amount of guitar riffing, an 'emotional' male solo voice, a shouting chorus helping on the refrain, and of course a wailing mid-song guitar solo and yet none of those pieces seem to fit together particularly well. Deleted, but saved here in case you've really been looking for this tune to complete you House of Lords collection.

It Ain't Love - House of Lords

The other event for the day was moving out of the 'I's (last song Ixtapa by Rodridgo y Gabriela) and into the 'J's (first song J Smith by Travis).

Since I recently passed 2000 and have hit an alphabet transition, it's time to look at some stats.

2026 songs in 982 days = 2.06 songs per day
7175-2026 = 5149 tracks to go
Of 2982 tracks so far, 956 (2982-2026) have been skipped/podcasts/added later/whatever = 32.1% skipped but this number is way high owing to the large increase in songs thanks to the library grift. So let's lower this to 20%.
5149-(5149*20%) = approximately 4119 songs to go accounting for skipped tracks
4119 songs/2.06 songs a day = 2000 days to go (5.5 years)
Estimated date of project completion = September 2014

Holy crap, my kid will be 5. Perhaps doing stats was a bad idea.

from Figure It Out to Fiona

Day 449, Session 94:
When/Where: Friday September 14th - Home for the weekend, or at least for a few hours before hitting the road.
First song: Figure It Out by Maroon 5
Last full song: Fiona by the Argument
Progress: 1328-1341 of 5311 (1 skipped podcast)
Total Songs Heard: 1100

1100 songs! We haven't done this in a while, so let's take a look at some stats:

1100 songs in 449 days = 2.45 songs per day (a not unexpected down turn after a 4-month layoff)
5311-1341 = 3969 tracks to go
Of 1341 tracks so far, 241 (1341-1100) have been skipped/podcasts/added later/whatever = 17.9% skipped
3969-(3969*17.9%) = approximately 3259 songs to go accounting for skipped tracks
3259 songs/2.45 songs a day = 1330 days to go (3.6 years)
Estimated date of project completion = April 2011

More realistically we should be able to get the rate back up to around 5 songs a day (at least.) Which would make it more like:
3259 songs/5 songs a day = 652 days to go (1.8 years)
Estimated date of project completion = July 2009

Well folks, it looks like I'm in it for the long haul. Of course it's also possible that there are life changes coming soon that will allow me to devote a little more time to this project. At least we can hope.

I realize this was a pretty pointless post. For more interesting content, I point you toward more pictures of my nephew. That awesome remote control bouncy chair? From a pretty great aunt and uncle.

from Dutch Wonderland to Earthquakes

Day 218, Session 78:
When/Where: Friday January 26th - In the air between Chicago and Nashville.
First song: Dutch Wonderland by Josh Joplin
Last full song: Earthquakes by Moxy Fruvous
Progress: 1053-1059 of 4791
Total Songs Heard: 906

Busy day here. Rolled the song count over from 899 to 900 (Dutch Wonderland by Josh Joplin) and moved the alphabet from D(ysfunctionally Yours by Wally Pleasant) to E(arly Morning Rain by Gordon Lightfoot). All this while listening outside of my normal train/work based comfort zone (flying down to Nashville for a weekend of drinking/hockey/video games/trivia/drinking.)

Since we've run off another 100 songs, it's time to do the math:

906 songs in 218 days = 4.16 songs per day
4791-1059 = 3732 tracks to go
Of 1059 tracks so far, 153 (1059-906) have been skipped/podcasts/added later/whatever = 14.4% skipped
3732-(3732*14.4%) = approximately 3195 songs to go accounting for skipped tracks
3195 songs/4.16 songs a day = 768 days to go (2.1 years)
Estimated time of project completion = March 2009

Well, that's still slower than I'd like to be. At this point reaching my goal of getting through this entire project by the end of 2007 seems to be a bit of the pipe dream. (Especially considering I haven't made any progress outside of writing these catch up posts for almost 4 months now.)

Dutch Wonderland was actually a place I visited several times during my childhood. Man did I love Holland. Kidding! Dutch Wonderland had nothing at all to do with Holland. Anyone who grew up in Eastern Pennsylvania will tell you that Dutch Wonderland was named that way because it is in the heart of Pennsylvania Dutch Country and that the Pennsylvania Dutch were actually from Germany not The Netherlands. Dutch was a mispronunciation of Deutsch which managed to stick through the years.

Anywho, Dutch Wonderland is an amusement park for kids. But aren't all amusement parks for kids? Well yes, but this place is basically full of rides for people 4'6" and under. There are no looping roller coasters. There is a ride called the Lady Gay River Boat Cruise. (I can't decide if that is open minded or oblivious.) Many of the shows are described as edutainment. They don't serve beer. Yes I realize that sounds kind of lame now, but when I was a kid I absolutely loved it.

My family used to go there at least once a summer. I specifically remember one trip where we loaded the family plus a few more (Mike, I'm pretty sure you were there) into the blue Chevy station wagon (it was exciting because we sat in the back (this was in the days before seat belts)) and we rode the log flume about 20 times. Even when we took my little sister there (she's 7 years younger) I still enjoyed it. I'm pleased to report that Dutch Wonderland is still around so if I should ever have kids, I will take them there (and also to Sesame Place.)

The funny thing about Dutch Wonderland the song (which I love) is that it's a melancholy look back on all the innocence Dutch Wonderland the amusement park represents. I should probably focus on that but, well, how hard is it to decide to be in a good mood and be in a good mood once in a while?

Dutch Wonderland - Josh Joplin

from Diamonds to Disseminated

Day 190, Session 67:
When/Where: Friday December 29th - Lounging poolside in Miami at high noon.
First song: Diamonds On The Souls Of Her Shoes by Paul Simon
Last full song: Disseminated by Soul Coughing
Progress: 914-942 of 4785 (2 podcasts skipped)
Total Songs Heard: 801

800! Song 800 was Disillusion by Badly Drawn Boy. With another 100 songs past, it's time to do the math.

801 songs in 190 days = 4.22 songs per day
4785-942 = 3843 tracks to go
Of 942 tracks so far, 141 (942-801) have been skipped/podcasts/added later/whatever = 15% skipped
3843-(3843*15%) = approximately 3267 tracks to go accounting for skipped tracks
3267 tracks/4.22 songs a day = 774 days to go (2.1 years)
Estimated time of project completion = February 2009

Excellent! I've picked up 1 month between songs 700 and 800. {Spoiler Alert - That's not going to last!} I was listening to these songs while taking a few days between Christmas and New Years to hang out with my family in Miami. The Wife, my Mom and sisters were all having a "spa day" which left my Dad and I to fend for ourselves. We dealt with the situation the best way we knew how. We hung out by the pool (but didn't actually get in) and drank.

There are a lot of beautiful people in Miami. Needless to say, I didn't really fit in all that well. Something about not having any outfits where each piece cost more than a car payment. It was ok though. I had everything I really needed: a good pair of sunglasses ($15 from CVS) so that I could look at the beautiful people without being obviously about it and a bar at the ready.

In honor of all the beautiful people in Miami, I present one beautiful pop song. Did I Say by Teenage Fanclub is all harmonies and awesome. This video doesn't quite do justice to the goodness of the song (the sound is a little muddled) but I think it conveys the general idea of how great the song is. I was going to link the actual song for you all (that's right, all 5 of you) to enjoy, but alas, I downloaded it from iTunes, and those guys hate sharing (unless you're willing to pay an extra 30 cents a song.)

Trust me, it sounds even better in your headphones by the pool with the Atlantic Ocean just over there.

Wednesday December 6th - Morning

Day 167, Session 59:
Location: Quickest train ride to work ever. Ever being at least the last 3 months.
First song: Cupid De Locke by Smashing Pumpkins
Last full song: D'yer Mak'er by Sheryl Crow
Progress: 798-806 of 4630
Total Songs Heard: 700

Look at that, a double milestone. In the same song I move from C's (Cut to the Chase by Rush) to the D's (D'yer Mak'er by Sheryl Crow) and hit song 700.

So... time for some stats:
700 tracks in 167 days = 4.2 songs a day.
4630-806 = 3824 tracks to go
Of 806 tracks so far, 106 have been skipped/podcasts/added later/whatever = 13.1% skipped
3824-(3824*13.1%) = approximately 3323 tracks to go accounting for skipped tracks
3323 tracks/4.2 songs a day = 792 days to go (2.16 years)
Estimated time of project completion = March 2009

Ok then. That's a long time. Perhaps I need to make some of these posts shorter so I can post more often.

For example, here's a shorter post. Custard Pie (Helmet w/David Yow)? I like it as a dessert and hated it as a song. Deleted.

Friday October 20th - Into the evening

Day 120, Session 45:
Location: Going home on the train, then driving around looking for pants
First song: Captain Jack by Billy Joel
Last full song: Catching on Fire by They Might Be Giants
Progress: 580-596 of 4500
Total Songs Heard: 514

Hooray! Song 500! 500 songs in 120 days. That puts me right around 4 songs per day, with approximately 4000 songs to listen to... 1000 days. So I've cut the overall project time to just under 3 years. 400 to 500 only took 18 days (or just over 5 songs a day) if I can keep that pace up this should take even less time. I suppose my goal is to actually have this whole thing wrapped up during 2007. So I'll have to push the pace a little more.

Unfortunately, coming soon there will be another decided downturn in song listening productivity. (You might be wondering how I could possibly be less productive when I'm 30+ days behind in my writing at this point.) I'm currently appearing in a play here in Chicago. It's my first actual theater gig in 8 years and I was incredibly nervous about it. The thing is, I'm not very good at remembering lines. That's one of the reasons I ended up in improv. I still get to be a goof on stage occasionally, but no one is depending on me to remember exactly what to say and do every time. Well October 20th is right around when we started rehearsing the show. Once rehearsals really started in earnest and I was supposed to be learning my lines, I put this project aside for a few weeks and concentrated almost exclusively on the show. The good news is twofold. One, since I am 30+ days behind, I still have plenty of music to write about. Two, all the hard work on the lines paid off. The show is going very very well. If you're here in Chicago or will be in the next two weeks, I encourage you to come see it. For more information on the show you can either visit the Rogue Theater website or click the link over on the right there for my other blog where I've done some more writing about it.

As for song number 500, it was Caramia by the Indigo Girls. I've seen the Indigo Girls in concert once. I went with The Wife and her roommates summer after junior year of college. At the time The Wife was not even the girlfriend, she was just the girl I had a crush on. The thing that made it weird was one of The Wife's roommates had just recently stopped being my girlfriend. Well, if you want to get technical about it, I don't think we ever passed the "just dating" phase into the "going out" phase, so I'm not even sure you could call her my ex-girlfriend, but she sure seemed to think of me as her ex-boyfriend.

While at the concert I was flirting a little with The Wife, much to the annoyance of the roommate. In a drunken "argument" later that evening the roommate accused the wife and I of having sex right there in front of everyone on the blanket in the middle of the concert. I tried explaining that I didn't think that maybe touching someone's leg exactly counted as having sex but the roommate would have none of it! (This is why we never passed beyond "just dating." She was CRAZY!) The good thing was, this gave the wife and I a little joke to share and actually brought us closer together.

Eventually The Wife and I did have sex (but certainly not until after we were married. Hi Mom!) Every time I hear a song by the Indigo Girls I think about the first time we allegedly had sex... right there on the blanket we were sharing with 5 other people... in the middle of a crowd of 2000... probably while Galileo was playing.

Monday October 2nd - Morning

Day 102, Session 32:
Location: From my front door to the train to the desk through hour one of the work week.
First song: Bleed To Love Her by Fleetwood Mac
Last full song: Body by Bush
Progress: 442-463 of 4424
Total Songs Heard: 390

To mark the first 100 (and 2) days, it's time for a statistical breakdown:

Number of songs I've counted myself: 390****
Number of songs iTunes says I've listened to: 396*
Average number of songs heard per day: 3.9
Listening sessions: 32
Average number of songs per session: 12.1
Number of files** on the iPod on day 1: 3925
Number of files on the iPod now: 4424
Number of files added in the last 100 days: 499
Average number of files added per day: 4.99
Average progress per day: -1.09 files***
Estimated completion time: Never if I'm adding music at a faster rate then I'm listening!

*I'm going to stick with my count, because going back to figure out where I made counting mistakes is too much trouble.
** "Files" on the iPod represents everything, songs, podcasts, videos, whatever else they count. I'm hoping I have not added more than 389 songs.
***This rate doesn't really alarm me, I don't think I've added that many songs. Plus these first 100 days were plagued with long listening delays (moving and laziness mostly.) I think over the next few weeks we'll see tracks per day increase greatly.
****I realized just now (the day after this was originally posted) that my math was off just between this post and the last one. Once upon a time I was good at math.

Most commonly heard artists:
Moxy Fruvous - 23
Barenaked Ladies - 18
Simon & Garfunkel - 16
They Might Be Giants - 13
Badly Drawn Boy - 12
Ben Folds Five - 11
Ben Folds - 9
Rufus Wainwright - 8
Sufjan Stevens - 8
Toad the Wet Sprocket - 8
The Jayhawks - 7

The only one on this list the least bit surprising was Simon & Garfunkel.

About today's songs: Bleed to Love Her is from "The Dance" a live reunion concert that Fleetwood Mac put together some time in the late '90s. I really didn't care at all for Fleetwood Mac until one fateful night my senior year of college. At the time "the wife" was just "the roommate of the girl I had briefly dated that summer." In fact, she was dating someone else at the time. In the course of the summer we had grown pretty close and I had been hinting in the best possible way (broadly) that perhaps we should date instead of her and this other guy.

This particular night I had decided to go to bed early (which was 100% different than every other night in college when I partied til dawn.) About 30 minutes after I had decided to go to sleep there was a knock at my door, and who should appear but "the wife." Apparently she and the other guy had broken up earlier that evening and she was kind of upset about it. We ended up talking for a few hours until she eventually fell asleep lying next to me in bed. While she was able to sleep, I couldn't sleep at all. The adrenaline from the combination of excitement and confusion was way too much to allow me to sleep.

Early the next morning, "the wife" got up and went home to finish sleeping in her own bed. I still couldn't sleep, so I turned on the tv. The only non-church/non-infomercial thing on that morning (it was Sunday) was VH1 showing "The Dance." I sat up through the entire hour of Fleetwood Mac and, no doubt aided by my super awesome frame of mind, greatly enjoyed the whole thing. That specific turn of events gives Fleetwood Mac a special place in my mind.

Thursday September 14th - the laziest post yet! (um, that's the next post)

Day 84, Session 24:
Location: Towards work.
First song: Beautiful People by Rusted Root
Last full song: Bed and Breakfast by Moxy Fruvous
Progress: 346-351 of 4293
Total Songs Heard: 305

[This post has been editted again because I am dumb and I can't count.]

300!

Beautiful People by Rusted Root was song number 300. In an alarming development, it took 50 days to get from song 200 to song 300. That's only 2 songs a day. What the hell? At this rate, with about 3800 songs left, I'd be finishing the project in November of 2011. (3800 songs/2 songs a day/365 days a year=5.2 years) Shit! Time seems to be working against me.

100!

You may be visitor 100 to this blog. If you read this post, leave a comment, then I may be able to congratulate you in a future post. Then we'll be best friends forever!

[comment redacted] - Turns I posted the bit about Beercan on the wrong day. That makes the next post really easy and this one really short.

Tuesday July 18th - Morning

Day 26, Session 12:
Location: Going to work in the morning after a solid 13 day delay in moving through the alphabet
First song: Aluminum by Barenaked Ladies
Last full song: American Made by Hulk Hogan and the Wrestling Boot Band
Progress: 167-176 of 3937

Why did I wait 13 days between listening sessions, did some horrible accident befall my ears?

No accidents thankfully. One of the main exercises for this whole project is to prove to myself that I can write all the way through it. So, things got busy/I got lazy and I've fallen seriously behind on my entries. I'm forcing myself to slow down moving forward through the music. If I get much further behind, then I won't remember what it was I was listening to and how am I supposed to reflect on things I can't really remember (cause they happened more than 3 days ago and my short term memory is shot.)

If you're particularly observant you'll notice that the progress count has gone backwards as has the total number of songs. As this goes on I'm constantly adding and deleting files from the iPod (mostly do to the disposible nature of podcasts.) It occurs to me now that I should probably keep a running count of how many tracks I've actually listened to. I'll be right back. While I'm gone try to wrap your mind around the thought of a singing Hulk Hogan...

Total Songs Heard To Date: 180!

Hooray, another stat! I love stats.

The song Aluminum contains the line "Aluminum to me, aluminium to some..." The summer after 7th grade I went for my only experience at summer camp up in the Poconos. One of my cabin's counselors was a guy from New Zealand (I think his name was Darren) who insisted that the material soda cans are made out of was pronounced "ah-lou-min-ee-um." At the time I thought that meant everyone from New Zealand was nuts.

Flash ahead slightly to an 8th grade science quiz on the periodic table. Just before class my friends and I were reviewing the periodic table that was hanging in the classroom. On the chart, aluminum was spelled aluminium, thus showing me that perhaps Kiwis weren't so crazy after all. So, since that was what we had just looked at moments before taking the quiz, my friends and I all spelled it aluminium on the quiz. Mr. Decampli (who was not well liked) marked it wrong on all of our quizzes. When we pointed out that the periodic chart in HIS CLASSROOM showed it spelled as aluminium, he accused us all of cheating by looking at the chart during the test. I remember being very angry about the injustice of it all at the time.

Looking back on it years later... I'm still very angry! IT WAS HANGING IN HIS CLASSROOM! IF IT WAS WRONG WHY WAS HE DISPLAYING IT!!!!!

Friday June 30th - Morning

Day 8, Session 9:
Location: On the way to and at work the morning before a long weekend.
First song: Alice Childress by Ben Folds Five
Last full song: All Over You by Live
Progress: 135-152 of 3975

Starting and ending on the same title is not all that surpising. With music I like, I tend to pursue all releases, so I end up with 2 or 3 versions of the same tune... live versions, demo versions, illegally recorded internet distributed versions. All that good stuff. There were only 2 versions of Alice Childress. Eventually I'm sure I'll come across the same song 3 or 4 times.

The last 14 songs I heard today started with the word All.

Thursday June 29th - Afternoon

Day 7, Session 8:
Location: Between work and practice with Last Minute Rock Show
First song: Alice's Restaurant by Arlo Guthrie
Last full song: Alice Childress by Ben Folds Five
Progress: 133-134 of 3975

So yeah... Alice's Restaurant. The version I have is a live recording from some time much later than the original release date. 22:26 long. Pretty sure that's the longest single track I've got.

Thursday June 29th - Morning

Day 7, Session 7:
Location: The trip to work, and some of the morning work day.
First song: Agnus Dei by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Last full song: Alice by Various Artists
Progress: 117-132 of 3975

Nothing like walking out the door first thing in the morning rocking out to a little Mozart.

AJ and Lisa Lo Cicero by Moxy Fruvous is the first of about 40 songs in the library that were recorded by Fruvous for fans who had attended a certain number of shows (18 maybe?) over the course of a certain amount of time. (18 months?) As if Fruvous weren't great enough, what other group out there has recorded 40 different songs about their fans? Seriously, if someone else has done this let me know. I'd probably like them. Unfortunately I didn't see enough shows to have a song recorded about me, but things ended up working out ok for me. We'll get to that in about 1800 songs.

If you'd like to hear any of the Fruvous awesomeness, I encourage you to visit Fruhead.com.

Random number of the day: 6 - The number of songs that started with the word Ain't.