I usually listen to music in the car, and I play albums I’ve ripped to a thumb drive. It’s no doubt a sign of my age, but I expect songs to play in album order, and I find it jarring to listen to music on shuffle. The album in one car right now is R.E.M.'s Automatic For The People, and in the other I believe it’s Warren Zevon’s Life’ll Kill Ya. Because I haven’t driven very far lately, I only hear a few songs per trip, so I’m not sure that counts. They’re invariably in album order, though.
Not yet, I hope.
I do it all the time, but not recently since I retired and stopped listening to music.
I do it regularly, off of my iPhone, particularly when I go for walks.
The last few I listened to in their entirety:
- Pickin’ Up the Pieces, Fitz & the Tantrums
- Face the Music, Electric Light Orchestra
- Fragile, Yes
- In These Silent Days, Brandi Carlile
Huh? What connection is there? I also retired a few years ago, and one of the pleasures is having time to listen to music the whole day if I want to.
Weird Ak, several times. I listen to the Vds while driving. Not to mention Dr Demento.
I listened to music while I worked, but I don’t listen to it when I’m reading or trying to write – too distracting. At the times I might have listened to music (like when doing a crossword), I’m usually watching a movie or TV show.
(I also listened while commuting, so that’s out, but it’s not full albums, of course.)
Ah, got it. I’m not a good multi-tasker, except for one thing: I can easily work and write (maybe even better) while listening to music, even challenging music. But only music I like and choose for myself. I hate working while listening to some inane radio station I don’t care for that some colleague picked.
I play Not Available by The Residents in its entirety about twice a month. I never tire of it, and hear something new on each listening.
Yesterday for me was ‘The Incident’ by Porcupine Tree.
Listening to the whole album in one sitting is my favourite way to listen to music.
Good question. Not as much as I used to as I’ve recently retired and no longer have a daily 30-minute commute.
I think the last time was 5 or 6 months ago when I went through the entire Steely Dan catalogue, in order. Many of the albums I repeated. That was a very good experience.
mmm
I listen to music a lot when I work, so pretty often actually. Most recently a couple Talking Heads albums last week.
Not completely sure. It would have to be decades ago, with a manual record player.
Maybe Cheech and Chong.
Or Cher.
Picky, picky. Ok, Sergeant Pepper.
I partly listened to two Elvis Costello and one Squeeze albums today but not enough to count.
A couple days ago, I listened to Get Stoked on It! by the Wonder Years all the way through. I listened to it on YouTube because the last time I checked it was pretty much abandonware since the band took a different stylistic turn* and now disowns the album which means no rereleases or digital releases. A few years ago I tried to buy it but could only find used CDs and gave it a miss.
*Get Stoked On It! is “easycore” which is a blend of hardcore and pop punk featuring some screaming and breakdowns with occasionally heavy keyboards. They moved to a 2010s emo sound, which also has some rough singing, but less heavy backing music, more melodic and slower guitars, and more serious lyrical content.
I usually have 5 albums in the CD changer. Recently:
- Mint (Alice Merton)
- Nine Objects of Desire (Suzanne Vega)
- Mambo Yo Yo (Ricardo Lemvo and Makina Loco)
- משינה [Mashina] (Mashina)
- Putumayo Presents: The Laura Love Collection (Laura Love)
ETA: If I were to put on an album right now, it would be
- Test Pattern (Sonia Dada), or
- Don Tiki Adulterated: The Remix Project (Don Tiki and others)
I’ll listen to CDs in my car, but the only time I hear them straight through is on multi-hour drives with no passengers. I remember going through Lucinda Williams’ Car Wheels on a Gravel Road last year.
I can’t relate to this mindset. First, because if I like a couple of the songs on an album, the elements that make me like them are likely to be present to some extent on the other songs. (I guess that means I’m more of a “like a band guy” than a “like a song guy,” to use your terms.) And second, because I very often can’t tell just from one listen how much I’ll end up liking a song: it takes more familiarity than that to really appreciate it.
Still, nowadays I find myself listening to complete albums straight through a lot less often than I used to. I think this is partly because I don’t always have the exact amount of time it takes to listen to a complete album, but largely because I no longer listen to music by popping in a cassette or CD, but by cuing up a playlist of electronically stored music, where it’s easy to throw a whole bunch of albums and/or individual songs onto a playlist and play it in shuffled order, thereby getting some variety.
I’m on the other side. Even if I like a group or an album, one album in a hundred is worth listening to all the way through. Just because they have ten songs they liked doesn’t mean I’ll like or even tolerate all ten. And most of those 99 albums have songs that don’t sound anything like the reason I’m listening, so liking a band’s sound is usually irrelevant.
And there are the special cases. I’m listening to Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme right now. (Do you realize the entire album was only 28 minutes long?) I plan to stop before “7 O’Clock News/Silent Night” though. The 60s were full of gimmick tracks that are impossible to listen a second time.
The CD saved music.
Gimmicky tracks are one reason that I dislike having a large digital library set to random. While there are some tracks that aren’t listenable more than once, there are a few tracks that are okay to listen to only because they add to, or at least don’t detract from, the album flow or otherwise fit into the album if you play it all the way through, but become annoying if they show up by themselves on shuffle mode.