Commitment to Listening
yuichi
Urban sprawl 11,332 Posts
I noticed that most of the time, I'm too busy to actually sit down to listen to the few jazz stuff I have. I already have a ton of good soul records just sitting around, and I end up buying more because I find deals or whatever.So my question is, when and how do you prefer to listen to your records? A couple times, I've actually stayed home on Friday, kicked back, drank some whiskey and actually listened by my lonesome self. It was actually quite refreshing. 
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then theres putting on a record i already know or have already heard - what normal folks would call "listening to records". even then, its usually while im cleaning something or doing some sort of work.
but once in a while a song, even a well known song, makes me stop in my tracks and freak out. i had Donovan's "hurdy gurdy man" on repeat at ear splitting volume the other night. dont sleep on that song! it sounds like the worlds ending soon.. must be the jimmy page guitar shredding.
There is no better listening aid if you really want deep into the grooves.
Granted, I have alot of free time.
- spidey
this was me in my prime 'listening time' aka 1-3am
I have a daily dose that is needed
but now wheni get back home i will try to combine the listening to other activities...
practising my voice training over soul-instrumentals or albums
practicing my spanish over latin, portuguese over bossa and so on and so forth
- J
Cooking, washing dishes, and hanging out with friends are good for whatever you feel like listening to.
Non-abrasive jazz or instrumental mellowness is great for reading.
If I'm really trying to work through a stack of new stuff, I'll bust out a jigsaw puzzle and listen to a bunch of albums.
When I have had cable in the past, 45s are great for commercials (portable on a table next to your chair related), or watch the ball game on mute and listen to a bunch of stuff. That's particularly great during baseball season if you're a hardball junkie, and dovetails nicely with flea market season here in New England.
I try and just sit down and listen to at least one record a day without distraction, but on busy days that doesn't always happen. I put stuff on while cleaning and reading too. Free Jazz is kind of an all in thing though. You can't do anything else or you will freak the fuck out.
ha! I've actually done this myself, only to switch back to the game sounds because listening to records was boring.
I can clean house, read, etc. with any kind of music in the background, but if it's spoken-word comedy, I gotta drop what I'm doing and listen. Rudy Ray Moore is a borderline case, 'cause half the time he speaks in rhythm so it may as well be music. But if it's somebody just straight-up talking, like Richard Pryor, I gotta laugh and let the jokes sink in...
sheeeeeeit, that's so 1960-2001.
I'm generally too busy in my virtual reality gear to stop and listen to anything. I created a virtual reality community called "Vinyltopia" and it allows me to go out digging in a basically limitless amount of "real world" spots, unknown places that people normal "ain't putting me up on." I'm talking about sealed boscoes in the dollar bin, with a 75% off sticker on them. boxes of unplayed East Of Underground, all signed by Bob Hope. Vertigo swirls for days. unreleased Main Source sessions with Large Pro farting inbetween a vocal take and laughing.
I've got a record room with 100 5X5 expedits. Here's a picture of me filing away a copy of RAMP I pulled out for some Wall of Fame shits and giggles.
I'm still working on the software, so unfortunately the only music I've been able to load in there has been a midi version of Van Halen's "Panama."
The thought of buying comedy records didn't come close to crossing my mind, but since you brought it up. Do you have any suggestions for a newbie?
Great stuff! I actually have Boscoe on pause right now, while the Laker game finishes!
Today:
(actually a pretty good idea!)
With kids its a bit different:
Mostly when the little fellas are all tucked up and sound asleep, wifey is watching TV or working on the PC, i will pour a nice glass of whiskey and select an album to play whilst i pick up the toys scattered all over the place, fill the dishwasher and generally potter around the house.
you dont know about comedy?
where are you from???
Hey, I live on the edge man.
I know we've touched on this topic before, but while my comedy collection is not deep, I do go out of my way to buy them when I find them. I haven't done any buying in a long time, so I'm going through the yearly bout of withdrawals, but one of the last times I went I came across 15 comedy albums, of the Robert Klein and Martin Mull variety. I like "white" humor, "black" humor, "other" ethnic humor, dorky humor, political humor, I like being able to hear different perspectives of certain eras in history through these albums, and of course they make for good samples too.
There was one album I bought where it was from a duo, and it is supposed to be a comedy routine, which it is. It's supposed to be live in a small club, but instead it's in a studio with very bad overdubbing, in fact I would say overeager dubbing, and at times that's the funniest part of the skits. What's always interesting is the engineering and mixing, because a few of them were given license to experiment, so you might find oddball "control room"-style effects.
Sometimes a good (or even bad) comedy album or two is all you need. There are loads of "private press" comedy albums, the local and regional stuff that border on... something.
While not complete, I'll recommend this book:
While he tends to prefer Jewish and Italian comedians more than someone like Wildman Steve, I've gone through it as a guide more than a price list. It has a list price of $22.95 but I bought mine for dirt cheap from Oldies.com, which had it on clearance last summer, and I wouldn't be surprised if they still had it.
Or toss out the book and go exploring yourself. I've used it to look over and see what this guy thought. Awful? Good, I'll play it and see how awful it is.
I'm always on the lookout for interesting comedy LPs. Stuff like Robert Klein, Godfrey Cambridge, Franklin Ajaye, Mort Sahl. I'll have to get a copy of that book.
Kleine wasjes, grote wasjes....
I can think of some private-press LP's he missed, but other than that, the book is mad thorough. It's true, he does tend to low-ball a lot of black comedians with a few sentences while the likes of Woody Allen get blow-by-blow rundowns. I've coauthored record guides to Redd Foxx and Doug Clark & the Hot Nuts in Roctober magazine that were far more detailed than what this cat had to say, but it's a good resource for comedy records in the same way that The Rolling Stone Record Guide is for music. As far as using it as a price list, (a) I don't really care, and (b) a lot of the records he says are big money items turn out to be cheap as dirt...even after The Cosby Show became big, I still saw Bill Cosby's albums at low prices. But then again, record collecting is regional anyway (or was, before eBay).
or on nightlike tonight ill go down and listen on the headphones a bit if im not sleepy..
yeah i dont really need any excuses to slip on downstairs at any time..